Best of 2023: The Runner-Up Quartet

Just a couple of days back, I released my Best Books of 2023 list featuring 20 brilliant books by some excellent authors (past favourites and new discoveries). But there were four books I felt bad about leaving out, although I had to because I was determined to limit my list to 20. These books might have missed the list by a whisker, but on any other day, they could very well have been part of it. So then, this blog post is my way of highlighting these four terrific books separately.

As usual, for detailed reviews on each, you can click on the title links…

A WREATH FOR THE ENEMY by Pamela Frankau

Pamela Frankau’s A Wreath for the Enemy – a wonderful coming-of-age tale of family, morality, friendships, and navigating the treacherous terrain of growing up, alternately set in the glittering Riviera and the quiet English countryside.

A montage of distinct voices and first-person narratives, the book is divided into three sections, each section told from a different point of view. The first part called “The Duchess and the Smugs” is narrated by Penelope Wells, our unforgettable charming heroine with a singular style of speech and a bohemian upbringing. Longing for an environment of peace and stability, Penelope is entranced by the Bradley family next door and spends time with the two children, but a tragedy at the end of the first section will teach Penelope not to take her freedom for granted plus she will finally see the Bradleys for who they are.

The point of view shifts in the second section which is now told from Don Bradley’s perspective in the first person and charts his friendship with the crippled genius Crusoe, while in the final section called “The Road by the River”, we are back with Penelope, but this is also a section where a panoply of narratives are introduced notably those of Cara de Bretteville and Livesey Raines, two characters who take centre stage in the final part and whose lives collide with that of Penelope.

By turns tender, wise, and perceptive, shimmering with lively tête-à-têtes and lush settings, A Wreath for the Enemy is a glorious, beautifully rendered novel about love, death, freedom, friendships, and forgiveness. 

A HELPING HAND by Celia Dale

A Helping Hand is a deliciously compelling, brilliant tale of lies, greed and deception, loneliness, and the heartaches of growing old.

There’s something sinister about Josh and Maisie Evans, the novel’s other protagonists, in the opening pages. An elderly woman, Aunt Flo, lodging with them, has just expired, and the two are seen going through her papers and the contents of her bag. What also lends an eerie air to this chapter is the sense that Aunt Flo was not really related to them in any way and that Josh and Maisie had murky motives for taking her on. In the next chapter, we find ourselves in Italy where creepy Maisie and Josh befriend a wealthy old lady Mrs Cynthia Fingal and her niece-cum-chaperone Lena. Mrs Fingal and Lena resent living together and the Evanses, sensing an opportunity, offer to accommodate Mrs Fingal after their vacation.

Sharply observed, astute, and utterly riveting, A Helping Hand is domestic horror at its finest where Dale deftly and with aplomb exposes the hidden depths of sheer evil, the darkness prevalent in the banality of everyday life that often goes unnoticed. 

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal (Translated from French by Jessica Moore)

Set aboard the Trans-Siberian Express, Eastbound is a stunning, propulsive, and suspenseful novella of fugitives, flight, and freedom. A young conscript Aliocha, barely twenty, is travelling with a slew of men of his ilk to some godforsaken outpost in Siberia. Right till the last moment, Aliocha refuses to believe that he will be forced to sign up for military service even when all his attempts to avoid conscription prove futile. Now he is on the train galloping towards an unknown destination beset by dread, entrapment, and the driving urgency to escape.

And yet, the strange workings of Fate throw him a lifeline. He meets Hélène, an older Frenchwoman in her 40s, who we learn is also a fugitive although Aliocha has no inkling of this at the time. As this fast and furious, adrenaline-charged novella hurtles towards its conclusion, Aliocha and Hélène will encounter some heart-stopping moments that could thwart their uneasy alliance and derail their journey toward freedom. 

Thundering like a juggernaut, and teeming with nerve-wracking tension, Eastbound soars thanks to Kerangal’s gorgeous, haunting prose with its musical cadences and potent energy.

AFTER RAIN by William Trevor

Tender and exquisite, After Rain is a finely chiseled collection of twelve stories that is truly a joy to savour.  The first, ‘The Piano Tuner’s Wives’, is an achingly poignant, richly layered, and sensitively written story about the passage of time on two marriages – two women married to the same man at different points in his life and the bitterness that engulfs the second wife who is unable to emerge from the shadow of the first; while ‘A Friendship’ is a fine, beautifully rendered tale of female friendship, marriage and an extramarital affair that threatens to ruin both. ‘Child’s Play’ is a subtle story of the breakdown of a marriage and its repercussions seen through the eyes of the children involved; the titular story ‘AFTER RAIN’ is a beautiful, melancholic tale of lost love and finding the strength to heal and carry on. 

Trevor focuses his unflinching lens on parents and children, friends and lovers, widows, husbands and wives as much as he does on petty thieves and confidence tricksters capturing their innermost turmoil beautifully.

In a nutshell…

Barring Trevor, I read the other authors for the first time this year and I’ll be reading more of all four in 2024. I have many Trevor treasures to choose from (might go with The Children of Dynmouth), then there is Celia Dale’s Sheep’s Clothing, Kerangal’s Mend the Living, and Frankau’s The Winged Horse and The Willow Cabin. Looking forward to some good 2024 reading!