Five fiction books that I read in 2022.
- A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
Utterly charming or a joke that fell flat. I don’t know. But I happen to know an 80-year-old widower who was writing a textbook on an arcane topic — and the book reminded me of him.
2. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart
Gritty, bleak, devastating, and captivating recollection (in phonetic Glaswegian often) of teenage years spent on the last vestiges of family in a spiraling addiction.
3. Inverted World by Christopher Priest, issued by @nyrbclassics
Read this mind bending hard SF book by Christopher Priest (lovingly reissued by @nyrbclassics – bent space and a city on rails to stay at an optimum, managed by worker guilds. There is something British about the cities and trains. https://t.co/lF5jVUOoJF pic.twitter.com/EpXn1A5bq2
— Senthil Veeraraghavan (@senthil_veer) June 24, 2022
4. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Ishiguro writes achingly beautifully about beliefs and love that fill in what would be banal lives. The style is detached, wistful, and expectedly contemplative. It is intriguing how the robot which is completely logical, has such deep faith in the sun. How very human.
5. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco (translated by William Weaver).
When I read Foucault’s Pendulum in a frenzied hurry in grad school, I was thoroughly entertained but found it farfetched. In my slower re-read of the same copy two decades later, I appreciate Eco’s love for cramming trivia in, and with the widespread conspiracies during the pandemic, my older age understands Eco’s farsighted wisdom.