The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020

Reading fiction in 2020 was an act of resisting or turning our attention away from the disasters playing out around us in order to engage in a calm, creative act. And the best fiction of the year offered many paths to greater understanding and meaningful escape. Whether in the tumultuous halls of power in Tudor England with The Mirror & the Light, a storm-ridden mansion in A Children's Bible or a haunted Japan with Where the Wild Ladies Are, readers could find joyful, thrilling distractions, models of resilience and empathy and challenges that somehow made us feel more bearable.

Here are the best fiction books of 2020.

10. Breasts and eggs, Mieko Kawakami

In her first novel, published in English, Japanese author Mieko Kawakami follows three women and their relationship to their changing bodies. There is 30-year-old Natsu, her older sister Makiko and Makiko's daughter Midoriko. The first half of Breasts and Eggs, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, is about Makiko's quest to plan a breast augmentation procedure, and Midoriko's recent refusal to speak to her. Their interactions are conveyed through Natsu's dry voice in scenes full of blunt and witty dialogue. Kawakami then pushes the story forward, picks up again 10 years later, and focuses on Natsu because she's single but contemplating motherhood. While Natsu was measured and judgmental in telling the story of her sister's obsession with perfecting her image, she is now insecure and confused by her own fears about aging. In describing these fears, Kawakami takes a poignant look at the expectations the world and herself place on women.

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9. Where the Wild Ladies Are, Aoko Matsuda

In Where the Wild Ladies Are, Japanese author Aoko Matsuda guides readers through supernatural events and introduces alien characters as if they were completely ordinary. That understated and witty touch is what makes this collection of short stories, translated into English by Polly Barton, so special. Matsuda updates traditional Japanese ghost stories for the contemporary era, gives freedom of choice to previously voiceless female characters, and playfully breaks gender roles and stereotypes that are still so widespread in Japanese culture. Matsuda is a translator herself and knows how to play with language and give her storytellers memorable quirks. While each chapter is its own short story, some are interrelated. The result is a new form of traditional storytelling as part of a broader narrative of women and power.

8. Deacon King Kong, James McBride

It's September 1969 when Sportcoat, the grumpy old deacon of a church in the Causeway Houses project in Brooklyn, shoots local drug dealer Deems in the face. The whole neighborhood is buzzing with news: Sportcoat pulled a .38 out of his pocket and blew the ear of the boy he used to be a baseball coach. Why on earth would he do such a thing? Even the deacon himself doesn't seem to know. National Book Award-winning author James McBride reveals the answer in this tale of comedy and compassion, which pays loving attention to a wide range of characters. McBride describes their world in tightly packed, rhythmic specificities, fixated on the community's rich local history and the voices that live in it.

7. A Burning, Megha Majumdar

After witnessing a terrorist attack, Jivan, a poor Muslim woman living in the slums of Kolkata, criticizes her government's response to the tragic event on Facebook. It is an action with dire consequences, as she has been taken into custody and accused of helping the attackers. In her beautifully plotted debut novel, Megha Majumdar writes with absorbing urgency while describing Jivan's situation. In addition to Jivan, Majumdar introduces two main perspectives: the protagonist's former gym teacher, PT Sir, who has ties to the right-wing political party seeking to seal her fate, and Lovely, an outcast with dreams of being an actor and the only person . who can prove the innocence of Jivan. By moving between their three voices, Majumdar reveals the intersections of their ambitions and fears, which merge in a nerve-racking investigation into corruption, class and tragedy.

6. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg

The eleven stories that make up deLaura van den Berg, beautiful and daring collection contain a cast of contemplative women navigating situations that are strange, sad and disturbing. Among them are the "mourning freelancer" who brings in additional income by posing as the dead, the woman unknowingly drugged by her husband with a narcotic seltzer, and the daughter who accompanies her ailing mother on a bittersweet final journey through Italy. The characters in these stories are each disconnected in different ways, but they all quietly grapple with life's biggest questions - the meaning of loneliness and loss, the endurance of love. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is short fiction at its best: van den Berg captures the most cruel trauma on one page and then delivers a healing dose of humor on the next.

5. Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar

Every now and then we are presented with a novel that combines deep intelligence, painstaking prose and something profound about the state of our world. In Homeland Elegies, Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar gives readers exactly that in the story of a man very similar to him, who shares his name and, like Akhtar, was born of Pakistani immigrants in the American Midwest. From the first chapters where the fictional Ayad's father treated Donald Trump for a heart condition in the 1990s, it is clear that we are in a world that is recognizable, but not necessarily real. That's all part of Akhtar's point: his project uses fiction as a filter to tell an essential story about a man facing the turmoil of American life after 9/11 and his family's struggles. to define oneself. It's a delicate balancing act between what is real and what may not be, but in Akhtar's brilliant book, the complexities of the American Dream have never been more naked.

4. A Children's Bible, Lydia Millet

On a vacation like no other, a group of families share a summer house by the lake where parents care little about what their children are up to. When a catastrophic storm rages through the house, the adults choose to ignore the chaos and instead go to the liquor cabinet so that the kids find safety themselves. In the sleek and propulsive novel, teenage Evie recounts the group's struggles amid apocalyptic levels of devastation. Her thoughts on the burgeoning natural disaster include the dual personalities of a sulking teen, sick of her parents, and a youth forced to grow up too quickly. Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet's novel, which was a National Book Award finalist, is both an adventure tale reminiscent of the classics and a cautionary tale of a grim future, told through the eyes of a generation far too comfortable with a catastrophe.

3. The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel

Few novels this year have been as eagerly awaited as The Mirror & The Light, the close of British author's Hilary Mantel blockbuster Wolf Hall trilogy. Mantel's evocation of Tudor England and her ear for political drama were as compelling as ever, and the book climbed to the top of bestseller lists in the US and UK. In 900 richly detailed pages, The Mirror & The Light describes the downfall of Thomas Cromwell, consigliere of King Henry VIII and ruler of the Reformation. It is historical fiction, but dazzlingly literary in its ambitions and dramatic in the cut and force of its dialogue. Mantels Cromwell is a character for all ages - rugged yet introspective, with a mind as sharp as an ax. Her Henry, meanwhile, is a poignant reminder that self-pitying men with oversized egos held power long before the present.

2. Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart

Douglas Stuart's critically acclaimed debut novel draws heavily on his upbringing in Glasgow in the 1980s, where Hugh 'Shuggie' Bain, like Stuart, grows up with an alcoholic mother and is confronted by a culture of homophobia that has left him with feeling gives an outcast. His father and two older siblings have left home long before he can. Set against the backdrop of a city neglected by the government and falling into decline, Shuggie and Agnes struggle for control of their lives, often being swept up in the waves of her addiction. While the setting is bleak, riddled with descriptions of silent indignities - Agnes' nighttime phone calls to her ex-husband's taxi company, dragging mugs filled with day-old beer - the guiding light of the novel is the boy's enduring love for his mother . Stuart writes beautifully observed inner lives for both characters, capturing Shuggie's devotion to his sometimes vibrant and glamorous mother and the pain that comes from watching her turn into a hateful, unpredictable stranger through drinking. The novel, a National Book Award finalist and Booker Prize winner, is a hit.

1. The VanishingHalf, Brit Bennett

Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half resides just outside the realm of realism, in that space where a touch of fantasy serves to underline the strangeness of reality. In her second novel, Bennett finds the small black town of Mallard, La. Out, where the residents are proud of their fair skin, and the identical twins Stella and Desiree Vignes growing up in the 1950s are all too aware of racist violence and oppression. So it feels almost inevitable when the girls run off together in search of better opportunities - and soon Stella makes the decision, easy at first and more difficult over time, to go white. Suddenly she is gone, leaving a devastated Desiree behind. Bennett weaves a layered and satisfying story that shifts through the time and perspectives of multiple characters to trace the impact of a single decision on Stella, her family, and the next generation. An eloquent new entry into the literature on that most vital subject, identity, The Vanishing Half is the novel of the year.