This year brought forth another crop of terrific books about the D, as we Detroiters refer to our beloved, beleaguered hometown. Here are four of the year’s very best:
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
When the debut novel The Turner House was published last summer, I wrote a foam-at-the-mouth review because I was smitten by Angela Flournoy’s assured portrait of a sprawling Detroit family’s struggle to deal with their rotting home-place on the city’s rotting east side. The titular house was the family’s “mascot” and “coat of arms,” but as the 2008 recession bears down, it’s empty and worth about one-tenth of what’s owed on it. Through this ingenious lens, Flournoy examines the inner lives of Francis and Viola Flournoy, up from Arkansas, and their rumbustious brood of 13 children –– and, in the bargain, she explores such big topics as the Great Migration and Detroit’s racial divide, as well as the small dramas that take place inside the city’s casinos, pawn shops, and living rooms. It’s a bewitching blend of the grand and the intimate.
I was delighted when The Turner House was named a finalist for this year’s National Book Award for fiction. Though the novel didn’t win, the nomination surely enlarged its pool of readers who, like me, are waiting impatiently to see what the gifted Angela Flournoy comes up with next.
Scrapper by Matt Bell
Matt Bell’s second novel, Scrapper, gets its hands dirty wrestling with Detroit’s abundant wreckage, both material and human. It does this by taking us into the dark and dangerous world of a freelance metal scrapper named Kelly, who works the city’s gutted core, known here as “the zone.” There, one day, he makes a horrific discovery: a naked 12-year-old boy handcuffed to a bed in the sound-proofed basement of an abandoned house. The shock of this discovery complicates Kelly’s life, sends the novel soaring, and breaks the reader’s heart. Working the high wire without a net, Matt Bell has dared to take us into a netherworld rarely visited in even the best books about Detroit.
Once in a Great City by David Maraniss
David Maraniss, a Detroit native, prolific author, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, came out this year with a joyride of a non-fiction book called Once In a Great City: A Detroit Story. Rather than trying to dissect the many sources of his hometown’s misery, Maraniss goes in the opposite direction: he gives us a Technicolor snapshot of the city at its giddy peak, from late 1962 to early 1964, when the long decline was set in motion but most Detroiters were too busy making money and having fun to notice. The book gives us a compelling cast of characters, from the famous to the obscure, including Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy, Henry Ford II, Berry Gordy, Walter Reuther, an infamous prostitute, a beat cop, and a kid playing hooky. As Maraniss writes in his introduction:
It was a time of uncommon possibility and freedom when Detroit created wondrous and lasting things. But life can be luminescent when it is most vulnerable. There was a precarious balance during those crucial months between composition and decomposition, what the world gained and what a great city lost. Even then, some part of Detroit was dying, and that is where the story begins.
How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass by Aaron Foley
Last but not least — and just in time for Christmas — the Cleveland-based independent press Belt Publishing has come out with that rarest oxymoron: a smart how-to book. This one’s author, Aaron Foley, is a Detroit native and current resident who seems to know everything about the city — its history, language, food, fashions, architecture, music, politics, news media, neighborhoods, literature, social customs, and racial minefields — and he has a knack for imparting his vast knowledge in humorous, insightful, helpful prose. The kicker on the cover was enough to make me love the book before I read the first page. Detroit, it announces, is not the new Brooklyn! Having done six years in Brooklyn, my first thought was: Hallelujah.
How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass could not have existed even a few years ago, because it was inspired by and is addressed to the very recent influx of transplants, many of them young and white and creative, who have been drawn to Detroit by the prevailing narrative that the place is cheap, supportive, wide-open, and on the rebound. Foley opens the book with a list of rules for new arrivals, including this cold-eyed satirical stinger:
The fifth rule applies to all you transplants from New York City and other places that are really expensive: please do not consider moving to Detroit part of a deep, soul-touching experience that will wash clean the sins of your past and renew your spiritual energy to live in your new purpose. This ain’t fucking Eat, Pray, Love, OK? You likely moved here because you either wanted to further your career or you got priced out of where you were.
As this quote illustrates, Foley’s mission is both to inform and to amuse, and he does a knockout job of both. Among the many subjects he tackles are how to drive in Detroit, how to be white in Detroit, how to be black in Detroit, how to make peace with the suburbs, how to do business in Detroit, and how to renovate a Detroit house without being a jackass. He remarks that only new arrivals wear the popular DETROIT -vs- EVERYBODY T-shirts, which carried a personal sting because I grew up in Detroit, in both the city and the suburbs, and I’m wearing one of the T-shirts as I write these words. (It was a gift from a nephew who recently visited the city — honest!) Frankly, I like the us-against-the-world sentiment. To each his own, I say.
At the heart of this book is Foley’s position as a native Detroiter — that is, as someone who is stubbornly proud of his troubled hometown, and weary of the clichés and half-baked myths that continue to cling to the place like the smoke gushing from the stacks at Ford’s River Rouge factory. As he wrote in last year’s superb A Detroit Anthology, edited by Anna Clark, Foley is tired of Detroit being “the butt of jokes and the target of pity.” So his noble mission in this new book is to wipe away the jokes and the pity, the clichés and myths, so people can start to see Detroit for what it truly is. The picture Foley paints isn’t always pretty, but it’s always real. All readers — native Detroiters and new arrivals, citizens of America and residents of outer Mongolia — should thank him for telling it like it is. Isn’t that what all books are supposed to do?
More from A Year in Reading 2015
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
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Truman by David McCullough
The best books I’ve read all year have, for the most part, been translations: The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi, Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge, Independent People by Halldor Laxness, and The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki. And one non-translation–George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I just can’t narrow it down to one. Oh, I almost forgot–A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis.
The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
The best books I read this year were the Europa translations of Elena Ferrantes novels, Rock Island Line by David Rhodes, and The Armies by Evelio Rosero.
Best novel “rediscovered” this year was A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry.
Happy holidays to the Millions contributors, and look forward to reading you in 2010!
American Rust by Philipp Meyer and The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno
Not done with it yet, but Margaret Atwood’s Payback is turning out to be the most interesting book I’ve read this year. The historical, literary, anthropological, sociological, and psychological analysis of debt in essentially every meaning of the word is thought-provoking and ingenious.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell was a close second.
I am new to this blog but yet would like to post my read novels and books which I completed in the year 2009….The latest being John Grisham’s Ford County, I am happy to have ended with a thrilling short story collection…I am not a passionate reader but now with my most of the time getting consumed up on net, i prefer reading ebooks directly online from store like A1Books and purchase physical books rarely. But reading blogs like these has really aroused an interest. I hope to read more of them in the coming year 2010.
Cheers to readers!!!
Machine by Peter Adolphsen
Militant Modernism by Owen Hatherly
Impotent by Matthew Roberson
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
But The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters deserves a special mention.
The best new book I read this year was either “lowboy” by John Wray or “Chronic City” by Jonathan Lethem.
The best book I read this year was hands down Amy Hempel’s Collected Stories. I haven’t gotten to too many new releases yet but Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor was also a great treat.
The best “new” books (new to me, at least) that I read this year include:
Mariette in Ecstasy — Ron Hansen
The Transit of Venus — Shirley Hazzard
In the Skin of a Lion — Michael Ondaatje
Also, this was the year of James Salter. Why did it take me so long to discover his work? Dusk, Last Night, Light Years, and A Sport and a Pasttime — enthralling books, every one.
Tender Is The Night.
hear, hear, Chad!
Blame by Michelle Huneven. I’m checking out the rest of her work pronto.
Call it Sleep by Henry Roth, definitely the most beautiful novel I’ve read in a long time and one that more people should know about.
Mike, I remember in the 60s when Call it Sleep got rediscovered. Time for another rediscovery.
I want to list my best books but I am away and my book list is in my computer at home. My poor memory frustrates me, maybe this thread will still be going in a few days. Elegance of the Hedgehog, The Housekeeper and the Professor, early Coetzee (Waiting for the Barbarians and Life and Times of Michael K), rereading Natalia Ginzburg, went on an immigrant short story journey (binge)–Ha Jin, David Bezmozgis, Jumpa Lahiri, Andrei Codrescu, Isaac Rosenfeld and others.
– “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates.
– “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami
– “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
– “The Master and the Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov
– “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy
– “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
“Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen was the best page turner I read this year.
I alos discovered “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith and thought it was a lovely book.
But my favorite that I read this year, and one that had a great impact on me, was “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson.
Ugh, it’s impossible to pick just one book in a year in which I discovered Roberto Bolaño, Richard Yates and Hans Fallada.
Best books I read this year
Kurt Vonnegut – “Slaughterhouse V”
George R.R. Martin – “Game of Thrones”
Stephen Fry – “Moab is my Washpot”
“Everything Matters!” by Ron Currie, Jr. Followed closely by “The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet” by Reif Larsen.
I concur on the Henry Roth book, Call It Sleep. I read this in the early 80’s. It is a truly beautiful book. Another book I read about the same time–equally stunning and unforgettable–is Harriette Arnow’s masterpiece The Dollmaker. The Dollmaker is on a list that looks very intriguing–along with one of my favorites of the year (as well as being one of the best books I’ve ever read) Enchi’s The Waiting Years. The list is 500 Great Books by Women. Others included are Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Olive Schreiner’s Story of an African Farm. Those four alone are pretty high-calibre books. I’m sure the rest are just as wonderful.
“The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery.
Favorite book was “The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and also, “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. Both were so good, I wanted to leave parties to go home and read!
The best books I read all year:
— By Night in Chile, para Bolano
— Death in Spring, Rodoreda
— Les Fiancailles de M. Hire, par Simenon
— Henderson the Rain King, by Bellow (a name which should always be capitalized)
— The Kingdom of This World, by Carpentier
Best books I read all year:
two fiction works come to mind:
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
AND Jose Saramago’s Death with Interruptions.
Nonfiction: Richard Wolffe’s book Renegade on the Obama campaign;
Ted Kennedy’s memoir
Javier Marias, Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear
W.G. Sebald, Vertigo
Cesar Aira, Ghosts
Vic Glover, Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Max Geert, Europa
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Homer, The Odyssey (Fagles translation)
Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius
Oops, that’s more than one.
One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurtson
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay, a Canadian writer. Won the ScotiaBank Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary award. I’ve also read her novels A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs. Elizabeth Hay ranks right up there with Alice Munro. Gave a copy of LNOA to a friend for Christmas–she thought the writing was first-rate.
Forgive me everyone. I am starting Best of 2010 because I just finished the most brilliant amazing enthralling book: The Humans who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We survived by Clive Finlayson. I am reeling.
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Peace by Gene Wolfe
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Best Re-Read: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Two standouts in 2009 — The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden.