Here's a list of books published in 2006 that I found to be worthwhile. I read several more books, but many of them were not published this year. (I also have managed to read aloud a bunch of Harry Potter books yet again, but that's another matter.
) No apologizes for this list being highly eclectic; I invite you to publish your own list as a comment to this one. "Elements of Style": Wendy Wasserstein's posthumously published novel didn't get great reviews, but I enjoyed looking in on the world of post-9/11 big money in New York as written by an outsider and featuring a pediatrician of noble yearnings whose position in this society was as dubious as Wasserstein's herself. In fact, the novel really wasn't as much about that world as about the people who so desperately try to be a part of it -- and often failing.
"Dream Life of Sukhanov": This mesmeric first novel by Olga Grushin took a microcosmic look at the fall of the Soviet Union in the person of a party-hack art critic who rediscovers his avant-garde and religious roots. The novel's intensity is even stronger when you, unlike the characters, know what happens next. "Adverbs": Daniel Handler's related short stories occasionally end ambiguously, but they've stuck in my mind since I read them in June.
They're about love, death and impending disaster in the Bay Area and beyond. "The Chinatown Death-Cloud Peril": First-time author Paul Malmont's inventive thriller pits the pulp-fiction authors of "The Shadow" and "Doc Savage" against the machinations of a Chinese warlord in New York in the 1930s. SF fans will find some of their favorite authors popping up as characters, including one guy who wants to start something big and another with a flair for, uh, reanimation.
"The Keep": Jennifer Egan's double-layered narrative takes us to a castle where a Manhattanite is helping a childhood friend fix things up and to a prison where one of the inmates is presumably writing the story. Oh, and there's a long-buried secret or three. A quick, vibrant and satisfying read for all you metanarrative geeks out there.
"The End of California": Steve Yarbrough's narrative brings a doctor and his family back to his hometown in Mississippi, and the anger he brings out of a rival from his childhood threatens to undo everyone. Yarbrough writes about Mississippi but lives in Fresno, and here he combines the best of both locations, even though the ending is a little pat. "Lost and Found": Carolyn Parkhurst's follow-up to "The Dogs of Babel" takes us inside the heads of several contestants in a reality show called "Lost and Found," including a teen who had just had a baby, her mom, an ex-gay couple and brothers looking for love.
The narrative, which takes us to Egypt, Japan, England and Texas, among other stops, has all the energy and excitement that real reality shows lack, which is why I read instead of watching them. "Three Days to Never": My college roommate, years after we left school, turned me on to the work of Tim Powers, who epic fantasy novels "Declare" and "Last Call" bring the fantastic out of the ordinary. In this book, the death of a great-grandmother sets off a chain of events involving a girl and a dad with an unusual genealogy, a mysterious fraternity, the Mossad, Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin.
Yeah, and time-travel, too. "The Uses of Enchantment": This is probably the best novel I read this year that was published this year. Heidi Julavits wrote this story of a woman whose alleged abduction when she was a teenager has far-reaching effects on her family.
As an adult, she returns for her mother's funeral. In both flashbacks to multiple sources and in contemporary time, we find out, we think, what really happened. "The Ghost at the Table": Suzanne Berne writes of a trio of sisters (why is the idea of three sisters such a literary and theatrical archetype, like two brothers?
), one of whom is dead, their father and Mark Twain. The father, having suffered a stroke, is now visiting the house of one of the sisters, and the third -- neglected in her youth -- returns from the Bay Area to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. "Eifelheim": Michael Flynn's first-encounter SF novel takes place both in the 14th century in a German town visited by intelligent "grasshoppers" from some kind of "ship" and in the present day as a scientist and a historian try to figure out why the town became a no-go zone over time.
This book has a brilliant character -- a priest who gets to know and appreciate the "krenken" visitors even as the plague approaches. "Bye, Bye Black Sheep": I like Ayalet Waldman's mysteries not for their plots but rather for their clever look at contemporary parenting in L.A.
Her detective, a mother of three, works part-time as a PI with an ex-cop; her husband collects comic books and writes screenplays. And she has three kids. In this one, she finds herself driving down Figueroa Street in her Honda Odyssey to hang with hookers.
"The Thirteenth Tale": This may be the only title you've heard of. It was a best-seller. An amateur biographer visits the mansion of a famous writer who has a history of telling lies about herself to journalists.
The writer starts telling her a story -- is it true? Is it the whole truth? Ferral twins, a dilapidated estate and other nasty things hover about.
Here's a list of books published in 2006 that I found to be worthwhile.
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