Debuts, Die Hards & Dolly Mixtures
Donal O’donoghue on the swings and roundabouts of forecasting the literary year
Rising like Jenga blocks from the bedroom/office floor, the books of 2022 demand attention. These early editions and proofs, tattooed with praise from fellow writers and celebrities, and bright with peacock covers, tease with the promise of unopened pleasures. Yet you learn, year in and out, that trying to predict which will fly and which will fall is nigh impossible. You could tip the heavyweights as safe bets but it seems the old showbiz axiom that you’re only as good as your next novel (unless you’re Elizabeth Strout who knocks it out of the park most every time) holds fast.
So what have we here among the many promising Irish titles (including debut novels from Louise Kennedy and Lucy Caldwell)? Ah, Lessons in Chemistry by debutante Bonnie Garmus (published by Doubleday, due in April). “I am devastated to have finished it, writes a distraught Nigella
Lawson of a novel that opens promisingly at the beginning of the Sixties and the beginning of the life of Elizabeth Zott, child prodigy (and the titular chemist). Here too, Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood (Vintage, March), a collection of some 50 non-fiction essays in five movements, from 2004 to the Age of Covid and Climate Change.
Of all the novels of recent times that I feel I should have read, A Visit From The Good Squad, the Pulitzer Prize-winner by Jennifer Egan, is the one that keeps tickling. Now here comes (April, Corsair), that book’s so-called sibling novel, The Candy House. It opens in 2010 with our hero, tech genius and super successful entrepreneur Bix Bouton, stumbling into a brilliant new idea, and within a decade ‘Own Your Own Unconscious’ is the must-have technology of the masses. A tale of trying to stay human in a world of commerce and commodification, apparently, but I feel that I should first have a visit with the good squad.
Brick Lane is another novel I missed and now its author, Monica Ali, is back with her first novel in a decade, Love Marriage (Virago, February), another tale about modern Britain in all its diversity and sameness. And then there is Run Rose Run (Century, March) from that powerhouse literary pair of James Patterson and Dolly Parton. Patterson is a publishing machine with over 400 million books sold globally. Dolly is, well, Dolly. In recent years, Patterson has collaborated with other famous names, chief among them former US President, Bill Clinton. I interviewed that dynamic duo by email and assume the replies were the real Mccoy. Clinton was smoothly charming, Patterson was like a machine: so yes, probably genuine. As for Run Rose Run’s odds, it could be the literary year’s shining jewel. Or more surely, simply sell by the shedload.