The Bone Clocks rolls up many novels in a glorious Katamari Damacy ball of a book (the multi-century epic battle between factions of immortal psychics totally out-Dan Browns Dan Brown and yes, you will love it). As you might expect from a David Mitchell novel, it’s big, ambitious, and pretty. But it’s very much the story of one woman: Holly Sykes. Her tiny human life is the thread that holds the various stories of The Bone Clocks together, and ultimately it is what gives the book a deep sense of meaning, and its lasting joys and sorrows.
I’m a sucker for a book for that shows me a world I recognize from my adolescence. Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter does that and more. It’s hard to get that kind of rural/suburban poverty right, to delineate the ugliness without parodying it, to capture the humanity of the characters without denying the extent of their folly. But Hunter does right by them — Baby Girl and Perry, the two fierce, frustrating, and mesmerizing “ugly girls” of the title, along with an alcoholic mother, a prison guard, and a stalker. Even at its darkest and most grotesque, Ugly Girls has an open heart and an empathetic soul.
I might be a little biased, since Saeed Jones and I have matching tattoos, but Prelude to a Bruise is one of the most astonishing poetry collections I’ve ever read. But, no, it’s not just me: these poems are tightly constructed, scary-beautiful, and lyrically brilliant, driven by a raw and devastating emotional power. He awes me.
Finally, I fell hard when I read an advance copy of Get in Trouble, a story collection by Kelly Link. In every other sense, I’m way late to the Kelly Link party, given that everyone has been telling me for years how amazing her stories are — utterly addictive, finely wrought concoctions of fantasy and science fiction and literary realism and horror and young adult and old adult. I made up for lost time and quickly read Magic for Beginners, another number one stunner.
More from A Year in Reading 2014
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles
The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews
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