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The Best Books Of 2019 (So Far)
Including the dark protagonists of 'The New Me' and 'Looker'
By 
Reading has been shown to improve brain connection, help us empathise with others and save you from the indignity of playing Candy Crush on the tube. Aspiring to read more is a more worthwhile pursuit than losing weight or being nicer to your parents, and yet, and yet, our bedtime companion is more often than not our phone rather than a scintillating hardback.
2018 was crammed with excellent novels, some of which explored how love can bloom in turbulent political times while others posed uncomfortable questions about the relationship between sex and power. A short story collection from Lauren Groff and a book of essays by Zadie Smith rounded off a bumper year for books.
2019 has already produced similar gems, such as the dark female protagonists in novels such as Looker, Vacuum in the Dark and The New Me, a story about first love from David Nicholls and a love triangle courtesy of Ian McEwan.
Looking forward there's plenty more on the horizon with literary heavyweights Zadie Smith and Margaret Atwood all releasing books this year and the debut novels from journalists Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Jia Tolentino.
reading
Out Of The Woods by Luke Turner
The trend for nature writing fused with personal memoirs is going nowhere thanks to excellent works like Amy Liptrot's The Outrun and Olivia Laing's To The River. Coming with a seal of approval from both these writers, The Quietus co-founder Luke Turner's debut novel opens in the wreckage of a relationship as he comes to terms with being bisexual. Against the backdrop of the Epping Forest, which Turner has grown up in the shadow of, Out Of The Woods achieves that tricky balance of feeling both deeply personal and totally universal.
Slack-Tide by Elanor Dymott
The tides of attraction and repulsion flow through this novel about a woman who starts a relationships with a man she meets online, four years after a late-stage miscarriage ends her marriage. It's filled with vidid sexual details that are intimate in their physicality (“He went down on me with his whole big face”) and like New Yorker short story hit Cat Person, we are left to make our own minds up about how to read these characters, clues buried in their words and actions.
You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian
In December 2017 a New Yorker short story was the unlikely topic of conversation at Christmas parties as Cat Person, a tale of bad sex and crossed wires, went viral. Author Kristen Roupenian follows it with a collection of short stories which stray beyond the boy-meets-girl premise into much darker territory. Whether it is the story of a couple who terrorise a third party and eventually talk him into an unspeakable act, or a children's game of hide and seek which ends in twisted horror, these tales make Roupenian's breakout story look like child's play.
We Cast A Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
The racially divided world in Ruffin's debut novel finds itself disturbingly comparable to our own, and like the best dystopian fiction, he takes an extreme premise then slowly and cleverly reveals how close it is to reality. In the book the narrator fears for his biracial son Nigel's life in a near-future of increasing racial segregation and privatised prisons. In order to afford an operation that will save his son's life by turning him white, he must put his relationships, happiness and better judgement on the line. A racial satire with echoes of Get Out, Ruffin's world is brilliantly drawn and uncomfortably close.
Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James
Jamaican author Marlon James' last novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, was the winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. For his next book he jumps genre to fantasy with the story of a hunter who searches through a mythological Africa to find a lost child. On the way he finds others in search of the same boy, including a giant, a witch and a shape-shifting leopard. Branded an 'African Game of Thrones', James' novel is in fact a more surreal addition to the fantasy genre, steeped in supernatural sightings.
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
Set in an alternative 1980's London in which Britain has lost the Falklands war, the author of iconic British novels such as Saturday and Atonement traverses the muddled morality of Artificial Intelligence in his new book. Two friends enter a love triangle with a synthetic human which they have co-designed the perfect personality. Posing questions about the future of work and what makes us human, Machines Like Me is new and interesting ground for McEwan.
Lanny by Max Porter
Max Porter's debut novel Grief is the thing with the Feathers was a surreal but incredibly moving look at death and what it leaves behind. His second novel uses the same poetic style, telling the story of a mythical village filled with spirits and creatures, once again these serve as a mask for the similarly heavy themes as his last book.
The New Me by Halle Butler
The modern office is increasingly proving a dark setting for fiction, with recent releases such as Ling Ma's Severance painting monotonous and unfulfilling work as a kind of dystopia. Halle Butler's The New Me is the story of Millie, an unkempt and slightly psychopathic temp worker in a design showroom. It's a glimpse into the depressing ephemera of the modern office; from stale doughnuts to shredded documents, as well as showing the barely-veiled resentments that lurk between coworkers.
Looker by Laura Sims
Voyeurism, and more specifically, the way that women look at each other, is dissected in this novel about a woman who watches the picture perfect life of an actress as she passes by her window. Similarly Paula Hawkins’ Girl on the Train or Olivia Sudjic's Sympathy, it shows someone who feels a part of something just by witnessing it, and the book also has hints of Hitchcock's thriller Rear Window.
Vacuum in the Dark by Jen Beagin
The summer seems to have gifted fiction a series of dark female protagonists, with the aforementioned Looker and The New Me, as well as the latest release from Jen Beagin, all revelling in narrators who don't care if you like them. With shades of Ottessa Moshfegh's brilliant and disturbing writing, Vacuum in the Dark is the story of a wayward cleaner and her eccentric clients told in grubby detail.
Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
The debut novel from New York Times profile writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a blistering look at marriage, sex and power, as well as a hilarious and compulsive read. In it Dr Toby Fleishman is newly released from his marriage and browsing the sexual supermarket of a Tinder-like app when his high-achieving wife dumps their children on him, and drops off the face of the earth. The book is unflinching in it's honesty and has a sly twist in it that leaves you dazed by the final pages.
UPCOMING RELEASES: Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (9 July)
Journalist Lisa Taddeo spent eight years in the company of three women (Maggie, Lina and Sloane), combing through their pasts, learning their secrets, understanding their desires and asking what they see when they look in the mirror. As well a stunning and unusual voice, Taddeo conjures their lives so clearly it feels like you know these women intimately by the final pages.
Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls (11 July)
Ten years after Nicholl's One Day became the summer holiday and public transport read of the entire world, the British writer is publishing his fifth novel. Sweet Sorrow is, according to Nicholls, about, "First love and friendship, family and growing-up, the usual stuff", and with the blurb saying that first love, "can only be looked at directly once it has burned out", it seems another tearjerker might be on the cards.
Trick Mirror By Jia Tolentino (8 August)
In her widely shared articles for the New Yorker Jia Tolentino grapples with issues such as sexual assault, the media's attacks on millennials and, naturally, what Toto's Africa sounds like played in an empty mall. In her thought-provoking first collection of work she examines how the American scammer has become an internet hero, and the idea that everything, including our bodies, should be increasingly beautiful and efficient.
The Testaments - Margaret Atwood (10 September)
Atwood's classic 1985 dystopian novel has proved unsettlingly relevant thanks to recent attacks on women's reproductive rights the world over. After a popular and award-winning TV adaptation, Atwood is returning to Offred's story to write a long-awaited sequel. The book she says is inspired by all the questions readers have asked about the inner workings of Gilead and, depressingly, "the world we've been living in".
Grand Union by Zadie Smith (8 October)
Having mastered the novel at 21 (White Teeth), followed it with a few more gems (On Beauty, NW, Swing Time), turned her hand to essays (Changing My Mind, Feel Free), now Zadie Smith is finally getting round to her first short story collection. Focusing on the experience of living in the fraught modern world, Grand Union contains short stories of hers published by the New Yorker, Granta and Paris Review as well as unseen works.
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