Full list: [[Books - 2025]] ### Notables **[[Lion]]** ([[Sonya Walger]]) Walger's autofictive novel follows the narrator's relationship with her eccentric father (think Argentinian Royal Tenenbaum). Deserves all of your attention. **[[The Narrow Road to the Deep North]]** ([[Richard Flanagan]]) An immersive, emotional reading experience. My introduction to Richard Flanagan is one of the best novels I’ve read. **[[On the Calculation of Volume I]]** ([[Solvej Balle]]) A conceit that could feel cliche, but feels completely fresh. Balle’s deliberate and concise prose makes you feel like you’re part of the story. **[[East of Eden]]** ([[John Steinbeck]]) Steinbeck makes it seem so easy. Lee is not just one of my favorite characters in literature, but also an aspiration. **[[Decima]]** ([[Eben Venter]]) A beautiful story that moves effortlessly from the mind of a rhinoceros to the global systems engineered to eliminate her. Venter captures something difficult to articulate: that the struggle to exist is shared across all living things. *Decima* deserves a US publisher! **[[Waist Deep]]** ([[Linea Maja Ernst]]) Not going to tell you in what season you should read something, but this is a summer novel. Includes the funniest reference to Tove Ditlevsen in the history of world literature. **[[The Stepdaughter]]** & **[[Great Granny Webster]]** ([[Caroline Blackwood]]) Caroline Blackwood was someone new to me this year. Her life could be a movie, and her writing is smart and darkly funny. I think more people should be reading her. **[[Your Name Here]]** ([[Helen DeWitt]], [[Ilya Gridneff]]) DeWitt and Gridneff push the boundaries of how to tell a story. This was a strange and fun read, that also made me nostalgic for a brief, formative window when the ability to communicate sped up without feeling oppressive. **[[Lili is Crying]]** ([[Hélène Bessette]]) Another author new to me this year. Like *Your Name Here*, the form is like a silent character. **[[On the Edge of Reason]]** [[Miroslav Krleža]] This satire of elite complicity, written in 1938, is about the cost of saying the obvious in a world invested in appearance. Strikingly current. **[[T Singer]]** ([[Dag Solstad]]) Maybe some recency bias (last book I read this year), but including it because it represents everything I loved about reading so many Scandinavian novels this year: wit, tenderness, and the power of narrative distance.