My Favorite Books of 2021

My Best-Books-Of-2020 list proved pretty popular last year so I’m including a list of the novels and nonfiction books I read in 2021 that made an impact on me. Hope you all find something you enjoy here!

The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross. Funny, creative, inventive novel told in a Borscht-Belt voice about a shtetl in the middle of nowhere Poland that was completely overlooked by the Nazis during World War II and manages to remain hidden and its residents completely unaware of the outside world until the 21st century when its cover is blown. It’s a ridiculous conceit but Gross manages to make it work. It was very entertaining. I loved it.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. Beautiful, breathtaking novel that imagines the life of William Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes, and her family in late 1500s Stratford. It’s a stunning portrait of grief, of a marriage, of what happens when a child dies and how it affects everyone in the family.

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar. That weird blend of novel and memoir known as “autofiction,” this story is about the American-born son of Pakistani immigrants who is taking a long, hard look at the US, mostly its warts, chief among them the vast divide between the citizenry’s self-delusion about the country’s purported beacon-of-light role in the world and the reality: the US is a divided nation peopled by a lot of white Christians who look down their noses at and judge everyone who is not like them. Akhtar has all kinds of characters to draw on to express those thoughts, including his father, who believes in America’s promise; and his mom, who hated her life in America and longed to return to her native country. He also sheds a lot of light on Russia’s 1980s invasion of Afghanistan and how it led to 9–11. Very interesting (albeit a little weird for someone like me, who prefers a clear distinction between fiction and nonfiction).

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. Terrific novel set partly on Vancouver Island, it imagines a Bernie Madoff-like character and the people in his life and orbit. The story focuses largely on two half-siblings: Paul, who has been a lost soul since his dad cheated on his mom with a younger hippie woman and mom moved Paul from Vancouver Island to Toronto; and Vincent, the daughter of Paul’s dad and the hippie mom. The hippie mom disappears when Vincent is 13 and Paul is 16. Vincent becomes a lost soul and so, at 24, when she meets the Bernie-Madoff-like owner of the hotel where she works and he makes her an offer she can’t refuse, she doesn’t refuse. She probably should have refused, but then you wouldn’t be able to read this fascinating novel, which you really should.

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz. This one made a bunch of best-of lists in 2021, for good reason. It is a compulsively readable literary horror story about what happens when Jacob Finch Bonner, a disillusioned creative writing professor who has yet to repeat the success of his early novel, decides to write a new novel using a plot from a student who has since died. That’s safe, right? The student is dead. Nobody will know about the plot because the kid never wrote that novel. Bonner’s stolen-plot novel becomes a whopping success, but the theft catches up to him. The ending of Korelitz’s novel is killer. I had a hard time putting this one down.

Dream Girl by Laura Lippman. Read this one as a companion piece to The Plot. It’s another novel about a washed-up, miserable, once-successful but still very rich novelist who is haunted not by his conscience (a la Jacob Bonner) but by a character from his most successful novel. Of all the novels I have read about homicidal psychopaths (admittedly, not many), it was the most entertaining. I was laughing out loud at the end when, based on the action, I probably should have been horrified.

The Devil & Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Another engrossing novel with a college-campus setting, this one about a 50-something female president of a top tier liberal arts college, Webster, in southwestern Massachusetts. Webster is about to suffer a massive public relations nightmare that hits home for President Naomi Roth in more ways than one, when her college student daughter, Hannah, turns out to be the architect of the campus uprising. Korelitz manages to cover multiple hot button issues: entitlement, political correctness, aging baby-boomer angst, single parenthood, the insanity of college culture in the US, cultural appropriation, white person guilt and rage, and she does it to perfection. Cautionary note: I began reading this a few days before I binge-watched the Sandra Oh Netflix hit, “The Chair.” There was a lot of overlap. I became happily confused about what was happening in each story.

Early Admission by Lacy Crawford. Great read about a 27-year-old Princeton grad who is a college essay/application tutor to wealthy kids of Type A parents in Chicagoland and is having an existential crisis about the direction in which her own life is headed. Crawford has good insight into these kids and their families, and her characterizations are terrific. There were some great plot twists and some predictable ones but overall I had a hard time putting this one down. It’s especially interesting to read as a companion piece to her memoir, Notes on a Silencing.

The Book of Lost Names by Kristen Harmel. When I read this back in January I wrote that it was a compelling, historical fiction/love story set in WWII-occupied France, about a 22-year-old Jewish student who becomes a forger to keep her Polish-born mother alive and rescue her father, who was captured during a Nazi roundup in 1942. But nearly a year later I could barely remember it, so I had to look it up on Amazon, at which point I remembered that at the time I read it, I really had liked it. But clearly it didn’t stay with me.

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline, another historical novel, this one set primarily in 1840s Australia, it provides an intimate, fascinating, and sometimes almost unbearably sad look at victims of colonialism. Unlike The Book of Lost Names, this one has stayed with me. A caveat: parts of it are so depressing you may be tempted to give up, but stick with it: there is redemption.

The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell’Antonia. A nice, light chick-lit romp about what happens when a TV Battle of the Restaurants show comes to small-town Kansas and comes between two estranged sisters and their respective fried chicken emporia. Fun read, not too taxing, and will likely be made into a hit movie starring young Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock types.

The Sweetness of Forgetting by Kristen Harmel. Harmel has carved out a niche as a writer whose chick-lit novels involve Holocaust themes. Seems odd, but she makes it work. This particular story focuses on a newly single mom whose grandma, an Alzheimer’s patient, tells her that she is a Jewish Holocaust survivor. Grandma then provides her granddaughter with a plane ticket and spending money and sends her to Paris to uncover the rest of the mystery. A good, gripping read that I enjoyed at the time, although like The Book of Lost Names, it wasn’t terribly memorable.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. Clever skewering of how non-Asians stereotype Asians. Structured like a screenplay about an Asian-American actor trying to play anything other than Generic Asian Man and Kung Fu Boy.

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donohue. Excellent historical fiction set in a Dublin hospital during the Spanish Flu, it follows a 30-year-old single nurse, Julia, whose brother is a WWI vet with PTSD and whose life changes during the three days over which the novel unfolds.

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalia Harris. A thriller set in the NY publishing industry so it’s full of insider stuff about that life. But the thriller part really sneaks up on you. There’s a Stepford Wives-vibe to this story about Nella, who is in her early 20s and trying to work her way up the ladder at Wagner Publishing, where she’s the only black employee. Along comes Hazel May, another black girl. There’s something off about Hazel May from the beginning, from her hair to her seemingly constantly-changing personality — she “code shifts” without warning, which throws Nella off. The twist here is something I sure couldn’t see coming and I’m guessing most readers won’t. My only criticisms are that it could have been a lot shorter, and I still don’t understand the ending. But it was a fun read nonetheless.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. For the first 90 pages of this book I kept thinking, “Why am I reading this? This is not a fun book.” Whitehead sets out to tell the story of an earnest, sweet, black teen, Elwood, who is sent to a juvenile detention center on trumped-up charges. It’s almost intolerably bleak, but when Elwood is assigned to a new job at the detention center, things pick up. The novel was inspired by the real-life corruption at the Dozier School for Boys in Florida. It’s an eye-opening novel.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Breezy chick lit about four siblings raised by their depressed, alcoholic (but loving) mom after their dad, a famous crooner, goes AWOL to pursue fame and fortune (he succeeds but doesn’t share the fortune). The story goes back and forth between the kids’ dysfunctional upbringing and the present, where they’re all beautiful and successful. This is a name-dropping romp of a read with just enough gravitas to make you feel less guilty about liking something set in such a superficial world.

Nonfiction

White Dresses by Mary Pflum Peterson. I didn’t expect to like this one as much as I did but it blew me away. Pflum was in elementary school when she learned that her mom had been a nun before becoming a wife and mother and in junior high when her dad came out of the closet and moved out of the house. Mom was already depressed; learning that her husband is leaving her for another man sends her into a depression that manifests itself in a hoarding habit so serious that by the time Pflum was an adult, the house was literally uninhabitable. Pflum deserves kudos for taking a story about a pathological hoarder and turning it into a sympathetic portrait devoid of sensationalism.

I Am, I Am, I Am: 17 Brushes with Death, by Maggie O’Farrell. Excellent memoir-in-essays about all the times Maggie has come close to being killed (by a person or an illness), or someone she loves has. Some of these may strike readers as being a stretch but the essays about her childhood bout with encephalitis and her daughter’s near-fatal allergies are knock-your-socks-off powerful. As always, O’Farrell’s writing is beautiful.

No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler. Great memoir about navigating the fine line between fighting for change and accepting what you can’t, inspired by Bowler’s experiences living with Stage 4 liver cancer and enduring the less-than-impressive health care system in the US, where, if you’re not rich, careful and connected, you can really be left for dead.

What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen, by Kate Fagan. This one appealed to me because I’m fascinated with athletes, perfectionists, and people with undiagnosed OCD, and Maddy was all three. This is not a feel-good story but it’s a fascinating case study of a young athlete who was so focused on success that she lost the ability to figure out what made her happy. And her friends and family couldn’t help her because they either couldn’t or didn’t want to see what she was doing to herself. It’s a cautionary tale, and a well-written one at that.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City/Being Flynn by Nick Flynn. Excellent memoir by a poet with mother and father who should be enshrined in the Dysfunctional Parents Hall of Fame. This is Flynn’s story about establishing a relationship with his absentee father who is clearly mentally ill and can’t or won’t be helped. It’s a story of resilience and hope and the ways that we survive despite our dysfunctional beginnings. It’s beautifully written and epically sad: Flynn’s father was a failed wannabe writer whose son, against all odds, eclipsed him.

This is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire by Nick Flynn. Another lyrical memoir, this one about Flynn coming terms with his mother’s suicide, his role as a father and husband, and how he can ensure that his daughter will have a different, better childhood than he did. In many ways, it is his legacy to his daughter.

The Art of Misdiagnosis by Gayle Brandeis. This memoir is Brandeis’s effort to come to terms with her mother and with her mother’s suicide. Arlene Brandeis was clearly mentally ill but refused to seek help or be helped. A week after Brandeis gives birth to her third child — her first with her new husband — Arlene kills herself. Brandeis toggles between the past and the present, a structure that builds tension and makes this book impossible to put down.

The Los Angeles Diaries by James Brown. A taut, powerful memoir by another survivor of a dysfunctional childhood, one that included having his mother serve prison time for inexplicably burning down a Hollywood apartment building, an event to which she brought her then five-year-old son to keep her company. Within four years young James was drinking and taking drugs and by his 20s he was a full-blown addict and alcoholic, as well as a successful novelist. He was less successful as a husband and father to three children, but he managed to clean up his act to write this memoir, the first in a trilogy that I definitely want to read.

Notes on a Silencing by Lacey Crawford. Another astonishing memoir, this one by a 45-year-old woman who was raped as a 15-year-old at the prestigious St. Paul’s School, a boarding school in New England that has long been a destination for the children of the wealthy and elite. The school knew what happened and covered it up for years. It’s a horrible, amazing story, and the redemption here is that Crawford has survived to tell it with grace and dignity.

My Mother’s Daughter by Perdita Felicien. Inspiring story of resilience by the world champion hurdler best known for crashing out of what should have been her gold medal race at the 2o04 Olympics. Felicien is one of her mother’s five children, all of whom have different fathers. Her mother is a dogged, driven, determined, immigrant from St. Lucia who didn’t have much of an education but whose fierce love and devotion allowed “Perdeet” to thrive. This is a very intimate and satisfying look at a most unorthodox life.

Going There by Katie Couric. Delightful if somewhat disingenuous memoir by the former Today Show co-host who occupied the chair next to Bryant Gumbel and then Matt Lauer before leaving NBC in 2006 for what she hoped would be a breakthrough job hosting the CBS nightly news and doing occasional spots on 60 Minutes, but which turned out to be a fail. Her inspiration for her career was her dad, a suburban Virginia PR exec who abandoned his first love, journalism, because it didn’t pay enough to support his stay-at-home-wife and four kids, of whom Katie was the youngest. That inspiration-connection makes for a nice through line, and Couric hits all the high and low points of her career, name-dropping all the way. The weakness here, perhaps befitting someone known for being perky, is that Couric glosses over details that seem to cry for more introspection, among them that she discovered at some point that her mother was Jewish, that her family tree is drooping with racists (including a KKK Grand Wizard) and that unwittingly or not, she wasn’t exactly innocent when it came to supporting the sexism in the NBC newsroom — she refers to the crude jokes she made at a roast for Matt Lauer back before he became a pariah. As she points out, such jokes were acceptable at the time — but she avoids acknowledging that not everyone would make them, and she doesn’t examine the part of her personality that made her think it was okay to do so, especially at someone else’s expense (in this case, colleague Ann Curry). In pretty much every anecdote, Couric is the heroine, the wronged one, the one with all the best intentions who can’t be faulted if the men around her and who promoted her are/were pigs. I don’t doubt that, but something about the way she presents her story made me want to shake her and say, “Are you kidding me? Do you really think you can shrug off your big mistakes with a one-sentence, superficial mea culpa?”

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu. Beautifully written memoir about what it’s like to grow up rootless because one parent abandons you when you are two and the other dies when you are 13, leaving you and your younger sister with a stepmother, half-siblings, and no place to call home. Owusu’s dad was a Ghanian diplomat with the UN, her mom an Armenian-American from Boston. Owusu was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and grew up there, in Ethiopia, Rome, and England. Sometimes the story veers a bit too close to self-pity but that’s understandable. Her loneliness is painful to experience firsthand. It must have been intolerable to have lived it.

Everything is Fine by Vince Granata. A memoir by the oldest of four children from a wealthy suburb of New Haven, Conn. Mom and Dad met as docs at Yale-New Haven Hospital in the late 1970s and had Vince and then, four years later, triplets: two boys and a girl. The younger triplet boy, Tim, developed mental illness as a teen and was misdiagnosed in college as having a major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder before finally being diagnosed with schizophrenia. The story begins the day Tim, in the grips of psychosis, brutally murders his mother. Granata has penned a guilt-ridden cautionary tale about a devastating, poorly understood and poorly treated mental illness and what happens when a loving, supportive, educated and privileged family is so overwhelmed and in denial that the illness destroys everyone. Granata is a really good writer but I think he was too close to the story to explore every angle. Nonetheless, it’s a heartbreaking read.

Brat: An 80s Story, by Andrew McCarthy. This one is made for fans of 80s brat pack and John Hughes movies. Who knew how miserable and out of place heartthrob Andrew McCarthy felt about being famous, even though he loved all the amazing acting opportunities that came his way? I didn’t, and this book was eye-opening in multiple ways, not the least of which are that McCarthy is a good writer and as much as I had a crush on him when I was in my early 20s I can happily go to my grave without meeting and befriending him (and I’m sure the feeling would be mutual, if he knew I existed).

Sunshine Girl by Julianna Margulies. Another memoir by a Hollywood success story, this one a wonderfully easy-to-read book by the star of ER and The Good Wife. I was shocked to learn how dysfunctional her upbringing was; she and her two older sisters were basically feral children left to raise themselves after their parents split up and their mother gained custody. Dad was a whoppingly successful ad executive (among his successes: writing the Plop Plop Fizz Fizz jingle for Alka Seltzer) and Mom was a frustrated creative type who was impulsive, disorganized, irresponsible, and narcissistic and had a string of live-in boyfriends whose needs she often put above those of her children. Dad seemed to be the far more responsible parent but for whatever reason he didn’t take his kids in. And yet the message here is that Margulies had the resilience to make something of her life, and readers (or at least this one) are left with the sense that she loves her mother and that her mother loved her.

Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner. Zauner, better known to people much younger than I as the musician “Japanese Breakfast,” was raised by a mother who was at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Margulies’ mom. Mrs. Zauner, a Korean immigrant who met and married Michelle’s dad when he was selling cars to military workers in Korea, came to the US speaking almost no English and put her life on hold to raise Michelle, which is to say, she basically smothered her. That was fine when Michelle was a kid but by the time she reached high school she began to resent the attention with a vengeance. Michelle heads across the country for college and is planning to stay there, but when she is 25 her mother is diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and Michelle heads back to Oregon to care for her. This is a mother-daughter love story, one that includes a lot of mouthwatering descriptions of the Korean food Michelle grew up eating.

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country in the World by Sarah Smarsh. Interesting memoir that includes more reporting than the typical, intimate dysfunctional family memoir that I tend to read for fun. Smarsh grew up in Kansas, the latest in a long line of kids born to teenage mothers. Her maternal grandmother was married four times (or maybe six) by age 24 and had Sarah’s mother at age 16. Sarah’s mother gave birth at 17. There’s a lot of drinking and drugging in her family, a lot of farmers and minimum wage workers who work hard but can’t get ahead, largely because they lack education and also because of where they live. It was interesting to read about her family but my main takeaway was, “Man, I’m glad that’s not my family,” followed by “What a mess the US is. Keep it up and Trump could win in 2024.”

Hurt Girl by Erika Schickel. Memoir by the daughter of famed Time Magazine movie critic Richard Schickel and novelist Julia Whedon. Schickel grew up in Gossip Girl territory on the Upper East Side of NYC. Her parents were driven and career-focused and self-absorbed and this is basically Erika’s story of how she came close to damaging her family the way her parents did her. I, a fan of the dysfunctional family memoir (in case you could not tell) found it fascinating.

Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Tiny little book about how the gifted writer navigated her shock and grief when her dad, back home in Nigeria, died unexpectedly early in the pandemic and she could not get home to be with her family. It resonated strongly with me.

Young Adult novels

Some Other Now by Sarah Everett, who apparently lives or lived in Edmonton, but if that’s the case, she is/was a well-kept secret in the kid-lit community. Whatever, this is a terrific romance/roman a clef about 17-year-old Jessi, who is trying to figure out where she belongs. Her mom is depressed and dad is a workaholic so she spends all her time with her best friend, Rowan, a boy whose mother, Mel becomes like a mother to her. But it all goes sideways when Jessi starts dating Rowan’s big brother, Luke. Everett does a great job sustaining the mystery of what went wrong in Jessi’s relationships and the result is a genuine page-turner.

When You Least Expect it, by actual easy-to-find Edmonton author Lorna Schultz Nicholson, this one is about Holly, a 17-year-old rower who gets cut from the Canadian national team, forcing her to spend the summer not training and competing in Europe, but in outpost Ontario with her newly pregnant mother and mom’s annoying new partner and his two kids. Things begin looking up when Holly meets a rowing coach in need of someone to fill his boat. Between secret training sessions, a restaurant job, and a budding romance, Holly’s summer improves dramatically, as does her outlook on life.

Picture Books

Oliver Bounces Back by Alison Hughes, illustrated by Charlene Chua. Adorable story about Oliver’s very bad day, as reported by his classmates and teacher. In fact, it’s a cleverly disguised cautionary tale about resilience, as Oliver figures out all by his lonesome that he can have a few bad experiences and still bounce back.

Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark became the Ocean’s Most Fearless Scientist, by Jess Keating, illustrated by Mara Álvarez Miguéns. Terrific picture book biography about woman born in the early 20th century who takes a childhood passion for sharks and turns it into a groundbreaking career. Informative and fun at the same time.