My favourite books of 2023

To quote Paul Bettany playing Geoffrey Chaucer, without further gilding the lily, and with no more ado, in no particular order, here are my favourite ten books I read in 2023.

The Twyford Code - Janice Hallett

Hallett has established herself as a new queen of clever and charismatic crime. After telling her first novel, The Appeal, in email and text, this time the medium is dubiously transcribed audio files. Thrillingly original and captivatingly complex. The Twyford Code is catnip for anyone whose childhood was full of the famous five.

The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley - Sean Lusk

This is probably the book I bought for the most other people in 2024. It’s a completely lovely, rambunctiously fun, and beautifully written coming of age tale meets espionage thriller in 18thcentury Constantinople.  Joyous and memorable.

Mischief Acts – Zoe Gilbert

Every Christmas, I rewatch the now extremely dated BBC television series The Box of Delights, an adaptation of John Masefield’s 1945 novel. It’s a repository of myth and folklore that went on to influence many of the great fantasy novels later in the century. Included in The Box of Delights is a sympathetic description of Herne the Hunter, a character more usually characterised as a mischief maker par excellence and associated with the Wild Hunt, something you can read more about in very different contexts in Nick Hayes’ excellent Book of Trespass and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Taestry. All of which is a long-winded way of introducing the character – Herne – who takes a leading role in Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel of interlinked stories. This thought-provoking, shape-shifting novel traces the running battle between Herne mischief and his nemesis' Bearman's puritanical control, exploring the dangers of disenchantment with everything from joy to the natural world.

Booth - Karen Joy Fowler

A study in gradual disillusionment and the path to extremism, Karen Joy Fowler’s novel traces the house of Booth, a family of exceptional actors later made infamous by John Wilkes’ assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The most storied member of the clan is not the focus of this novel though, which takes a sprawling approach to telling of the travails of his parents and siblings before and after his fateful deed. Vivid and deep.

Lord of Emperors - Guy Gavriel Kay

The second trip to Constantinople on this list, although this time it’s a slightly alternative take on Justininan and Theodora. The sequel to Sailing to Sarantium is full of the verve and poetry that sets Kay’s blend of history and fantasy apart. This is a stunningly beautiful novel of tangled honour, impossible choices, epic achievement, and harrowing loss.

This Other Eden - Paul Harding

The muscular arrogance of ‘civilisation’ is at the heart of this heartfelt, lyrical novel, shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. Harding’s often dream-like prose brings the fire that his cast of characters – the mistrusted, ‘unclean’ inhabitants of an island off the East coast of America -  are powerless to bring in the face of their displacement.  

Trust - Hernan Diaz

This tricksy but compelling book (or really a book within a book) presents compelling, competing narratives. The reader is encouraged to untangle the truth of the at once glittering and dimly lit Rasks and their fortune. Often unsettling, frequently confusing, but also vivid and captivating, this puzzling novel was a worthy winner of 2022’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Stone Blind - Natalie Haynes

Bitingly sharp and immediately engaging, Haynes’ retelling of the tale of the much-maligned Medusa is a fine addition not just to the cluster of retellings of Greek myths but to the long history of Greek Myths themselves. Haynes’ scathing, skittish, witty, tone ably encapsulates the caprice of the the Olympians. She will make your heart break for the cursed, self-blinded Gorgon and rage against the thoughtless, often helpless Perseus in this highly entertaining novel.

This is perhaps the most personal inclusion on this list, in the sense that I’m not sure I would find it as easy to recommend as many of the others and would perhaps have to think more carefully about who I recommended it to. The second instalment in Richard Coles’ Canon Clements murder mystery series, there’s arguably more limited murder and mystery than in Murder Before Evensong, and yet I found this the more propulsive offering of the two. What sustains the novel in particular is Coles’ incisive reflections on tradition, the priesthood and the power dynamics of rural life of the 1980s. He is not afraid to challenge the church he himself as an ordained priest once enjoyed a rocky relationship with, setting up a central struggle between Daniel’s poetic, tolerant approach to faith and newcomer Chris Biddle’s zealous, prose approach to his parishioners. Thoughtful and cosy (despite a brutal murder), Coles takes his writing to a new level in this enjoyable novel.  

Light Perpetual - Francis Spufford

Spufford is in very select company in my mind as a writer whose books one should pre-order without even needing to know the premise. Golden Hill remains one of my all time favourite historical novels, and Light Perpetual sits in the same lofty echelons. Taking as its inspiration the incomplete, subjunctive lives of five children killed in the V2 rocket attack in Lewisham and enriched throughout by Spufford’s beautiful, kinetic language, this is a book that makes you grateful to live, however messy or muddled your life may be. I cannot wait to read Spufford’s newest novel, Cahokia Jazz, and fully expect it to take its place in my 2024 list.

Honourable mentions

Lanny – Max Porter

The last man from Bombay – Vaseem Khan

She who became the sun – Shelley Parker Chan

Act of Oblivion – Robert Harris

A Thousand Moons – Sebastian Barry