Colum McCann is an Irish-born writer of literary fiction, whose novels include This Side of Brightness, Dancer, and Zoli. McCann teaches creative writing at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.
Our London Lives (2024) Christine Dwyer Hickey "Our London Lives is a profound love story that doesn't shirk from the fact that all love stories contain just as much darkness as they do light. Like Barbara Kingsolver, Hickey captures the pulse of the living moment. A superb book by one of Ireland's finest and most honest writers."
There are Rivers in the Sky (2024) Elif Shafak "Walt Whitman said that a blade of grass contains the journey work of stars. William Blake wrote that we can see the world in a grain of sand. Toni Morrison said that we never shape the world, but the world shapes us. And so Shafak finds the world in a drop of water. She discovers the epic in the tiny, the global in the local, the love in the loss, the history in the momentary. An extraordinary novel, fresh and cleansing, like the rain bouncing off the metal roof of our lives."
Familiaris (2024) (Sawtelle Family, book 2) David Wroblewski "Tender, ambitious, fierce, deeply human, and of course wonderfully canine, David Wroblewski's second novel is an American tour de force. A story spun out over generations, to be read for generations, this is a big brave book that is old-fashioned in the very best sense of the word."
Great Expectations (2024) Vinson Cunningham "This is a novel of so many things - love and pride and pity and politics and sex and God and fatherhood - but, ultimately, it is about the human ambition to make sense of the troubled waters of our times. Brilliantly written, piercingly smart, quietly subversive, Great Expectations will be one of the talked-about novels of the year. I couldn't help thinking that there was a touch of Fitzgerald in Cunningham's words, borne back not just ceaselessly but also gracefully into the too-recent past."
Hard by a Great Forest (2024) Leo Vardiashvili "This novel blows open the heart of the past. It's a mystery, it's a picaresque, it's a comedy, and it's an authentic song of belonging and unbelonging. Tender and raw and funny, it's a rattling good read about the loss of home and the primacy of story-telling. By turns political and philosophical, it introduces a fine new voice in contemporary fiction."
Day (2023) Michael Cunningham "Day is a novel about the collisions of love within our days. Michael Cunningham crafts a glorious sentence, and at the same time he tells an achingly compelling story that speaks precisely to the times we live in. And it all flows so damn gorgeously that at times you just want to suspend the sacred day itself and hold it close, never let it, or the characters, go."
This Plague of Souls (2023) Mike McCormack "With stylistic gusto, and in rare, spare, precise and poetic prose, Mike McCormack gets to the music of what is happening all around us. One of the best novels of the year."
Brooklyn Crime Novel (2023) Jonathan Lethem "A blistering book. A love story. Social commentary. History. Protest novel. And mystery joins the whole together: is the crime 'time'? Or the almighty dollar? I got a great laugh from it too. Every city deserves a book like this."
The Suicide Museum (2023) Ariel Dorfman "The Suicide Museum is a memoir, a mystery, a tragedy, a philosophical treatise, a song of homecoming, and a spectacular mix of the real and the imagined. In this novel Ariel Dorfman puts his whole literary life on the page--and what a life it has been! For decades Dorfman has written in defiance of the ordinary. He gets to the very pulse of who we are: the social, the political, the artistic, and beyond. Right down to its moment of last-line grace, The Suicide Museum keeps the essential questions alive and, at the same time, joins us all together."
The Truth About Horses (2023) Christy Cashman and Christy Cashnman "This is a heartwarming novel about facing down the perils of adversity. It's also an examination of how and why we become stronger at the broken places. Christy Cashman has written a book for everyone, young and old, who wants to know about the elemental gallop of the heart."
Prophet Song (2023) Paul Lynch "I haven't read a book that has shaken me so intensely in many years... The comparisons are inevitable - Saramago, Orwell, McCarthy - but this novel will stand entirely on its own."
Sleeping Alone (2022) Ru Freeman "Stand in the doorway of these beautiful stories and admire for a moment the architecture of how they have invited you in. Then step fully inside into a textured world of borders breached, lands left behind, new territories discovered, families remembered, and vistas uncovered. These stories cross and criss-cross the world, making it tiny and epic at the same time. Dublin, Philadelphia, Maine, Sri Lanka, New York, they are all here, and we, as readers, are all there. Ru Freeman captures the moment when the thorn enters the skin, and then she leads us forward towards healing. A great collection from one of the best and most necessary voices of our times."
The Good Left Undone (2022) Adriana Trigiani "Adriana Trigiani reshapes the words of Phillip Larkin - 'the good not done, the love not given, the time torn off unused' -- as a focal point for a wonderfully agile novel that rounds off the sharp edges of our times."
The Pages (2021) Hugo Hamilton "A powerful, powerful piece of work. A wounded book making its own book. It brings so much to life – Joseph Roth, Chechnya, Germany, the art of writing, the whole notion of banning books, the lips of the past speaking to the present."
Phase Six (2021) Jim Shepard "Jim Shepard not only writes at the cutting edge of literature, but he IS the cutting edge of literature. He excavates the twin crises of our era—climate change and pathogens—and builds a story that is as poignant as it is true. The writing is stunning. The research is stunning. The after-effect is stunning. Phase Six is a great book for our times: the past, the present and those that—we hope—are yet to come."
Rockaway Blue (2021) Larry Kirwan "Poet, raconteur, novelist, rock star: Larry Kirwan is a man designed to bridge our times. If anyone can bring the disciplines together, and make sense of this stew of human experience, it is Kirwan in Rockaway Blue."
Foregone (2021) Russell Banks "Russell Banks is, word for word, idea for idea, one of the great American novelists. Foregone is a book about not coming to a conclusion. Banks presents us with a series of mirrors, some of them broken, some of them intact, and all of them wildly reflective of our times. It is a book about the shifting shapes of memory and the chimerical nature of our lives."
The Index of Self-Destructive Acts (2020) Christopher Beha "A significant novel, beautifully crafted and deeply felt. Beha creates a high bonfire of our era's vanities. . . .This is a novel to savor."
Peace Talks (2020) Tim Finch "There are war stories and there are love stories, but we only occasionally get war stories and love stories braided together. Tim Finch has written a wonderful novel, tiny and epic both. Laced with humour and sadness, this is an intimate account of what it means to make peace, both with others and with oneself."
Actress (2020) Anne Enright "With Anne Enright, we are always in the country of the first-rate. Her work is stark, clear, authoritative, funny and inventive. We come away from her books consistently refreshed and renewed. She understands the full capacity of our stories and our language, braiding them together with apparent ease."
The Butchers (2020) Ruth Gilligan "Gilligan braids beauty and brutality together in a seamless literary thriller. With plot twists worthy of Tana French and language reminiscent of Téa Obreht, this young Irish writer has crafted a story that is dark, wild, mythic, unsuspecting, and absolutely riveting."
The Falconer (2019) Dana Czapnik "An unsentimental education in all that is urgent, soulful and intimate. As much the portrait of an era as it is the portrait of an adolescence, this is a crossover novel that will thrill readers of all generations. The Falconer captures the grueling, exhilarating pathos of one woman’s quest to become whole. A wonderful debut."
The Douglas Kennedy Collection 3 (2018) Douglas Kennedy "Kennedy's characters embark on long, complex, provocative journeys, and their ultimate strength is that-like the writer-they can throw off bright sparks in the dark."
In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees (2018) Jeff Talarigo "As much a book of poetry as a novel, as much a symphony as a memoir, this is an extraordinary book from a writer at the top of his powers. Reminiscent of Berger and Calvino, Jeff Talarigo manages to capture the breadth and circumference of story-telling, while also giving us a privileged insight into the daily life and dreams of Gaza."
The Ruined House (2017) Ruby Namdar "In The Ruined House a ‘small harmless modicum of vanity’ turns into an apocalyptic bonfire. Shot through with humor and mystery and insight, Ruby Namdar's wonderful first novel examines how the real and the unreal merge. It's a daring study of madness, masculinity, myth-making and the human fragility that emerges in the mix."
Home Fire (2017) Kamila Shamsie "Into the ranks of international voices steps Kamila Shamsie, who seems as if she has heard, and listened, to the music of what surrounds us."
Shadow Man (2017) Alan Drew "Shadow Man revises the old detective story and turns it in several fascinating directions. Alan Drew writes with precision, subtlety, and a streak of suspense that does not often color the literary novel."
Reservoir 13 (2017) (Reservoir) Jon McGregor "Jon McGregor is a writer who will make a significant stamp on world literature. In fact, he already has."
A Line Made By Walking (2017) Sara Baume "When I finished Sara Baume's new novel I immediately felt sad that I could not send it in the post to the late John Berger. He, too, would have loved it and found great joy in its honesty, its agility, its beauty, its invention."
Away (2007) Amy Bloom "I haven't read a novel in a long time that I genuinely wanted to get back to, just to sit down and read for the pure joy of it. Away is a book full of tender wisdom, brawling insight, sharp-edged humor and - if it's possible - a lovely, wayward precision. Amy Bloom has created an unforgettable cast of characters. Lillian, the heroine, or anti-heroine, somehow always manages to do what great journeys always do - continue. A marvelous book."
Tenderwire (2006) Claire Kilroy "There is a fine balancing act going on here - Claire Kilroy walks the literary highwire. This is a marvelous novel - pacy, precise, lyrical, endearing and unpretentious."
The Parts (2003) Keith Ridgway "A truly ambitious, telescopic Irish novel just at the time when such ambitions seemed kidnapped. Funny. Gorgeous. Tender. Angry. Absurd. Tough. And beautifully written."
