The BEST BOOKS of 2017
MORE FICTION
Stay With Me
Ayobami Adebayo (Knopf) Yejide and Akin have been married for four years but, in spite of many visits to fertility doctors and healers, Yejide has not become pregnant. Facing pressure from his family, Akin brings another woman to their house one day and introduces her as his new wife. Furious and hurt, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant.- MD
Goodbye, Vitamin
Rachel Khong (Henry Holt) Thirty-year-old Ruth has moved home to help care for her father, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. As her father, a prominent professor, drifts in and out of lucidity, Ruth takes him through their daily routine the way he did with her when she was small. -MD
The Women in the Castle
Jessica Shattuck (William Morrow) A woman returns to the castle owned by her husband’s ancestors against the backdrop of Germany’s World War II defeat. Her own husband is dead, killed in the failed 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. She’s determined to honor a promise to protect the other widows of the resistance.- MD
Enigma Variations
André Aciman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) No modern writer explores desire quite like Aciman, whose book “Call Me By Your Name” was recently made into an Oscar-buzzy movie starring Armie Hammer. His latest novel reads like a spiritual sequel, charting the loves of a seemingly perpetual bachelor in New York City. It’s a gorgeous read.- CG
Exit West
Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead) The Pakistani writer’s slender novel packs an epic love story into 231 pages, following a young couple in an unnamed Middle East country. After a military insurgence, they end up fleeing via magical doors that take them to Western Europe and eventually America. Hamid poetically writes about the refugee experience. It’s impossible to put it down. -CG and MD
The Idiot
Elif Batuman (Penguin Press) In hindsight, young love feels like a chemically induced nightmare, which Batuman hilariously captures in her new novel about a whipsmart Harvard freshman during the advent of the Internet. Eventually she falls into a lopsided e-mail relationship with a hunky, emotionally unavailable classmate whom millennials would colloquially call “trash.”- CG
Less
Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux) I have a schoolboy crush on this novel and its namesake protagonist: a middleaged, “midlist” writer who finds out his ex-boyfriend gets engaged and accepts a series of writing assignments around the world to run away from heartache. Swoon.- CG
The Changeling
Victor LaVelle (Spiegel & Grau) Witches, supersized goblins and Roosevelt Island — these elements combine to create one of the scariest and strangest fairy tales I’ve ever read. You’ll probably lose some sleep while reading this one.- SC
All Grown Up
Jami Attenberg (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) On paper Andrea Bern has a lot of growing up to do — just about to hit 40, single, no children, unsatisfying career. But if you’re expecting a sad, woe-is-me tale, look elsewhere. There’s too much humor and joy in Andrea’s search for her happiness.- SC
Magpie Murders
Anthony Horowitz (Harper) Love Agatha Christie? You’ll adore this puzzle of a mystery novel, really a novel within a novel. Confused? It’s all right. You won’t be once you open this nod to classical mystery. -SC
The Wonderling
Mira Bartok (Candlewick Press) This enchanting odyssey of Arthur, a shy, one-eared foxling will enthrall kids young and old. A bonus feature? The magical hand-drawn illustrations done by the author.- SC
Anything is Possible
Elizabeth Strout (Random House) “Olive Kitteridge” and “The Burgess Boys” may be Elizabeth Strout’s most famous novels but if you ask me, her best is “My Name is Lucy Barton.” So I was thrilled to get my hands on this sequel of sorts, set in the hometown of Lucy’s childhood after the death of her mother and the publication of her memoir. A small town full of small dramas.- SC