My five favourite books of the year so far

Featuring a collection of short stories, and the family saga that should have won the Booker...

While we’re not quite half way through the year just yet, what I am half-way through is my 2024 GoodReads challenge to read 100 books by the year’s end. Yesterday I started my 50th - Frankenstein for anyone who’s interested. I thought I’d celebrate this literary milestone by taking a look back at my favourite books of the year so far (and by that I mean those I’ve read - rather than those that have been published - this year).

1. Sandwich by

   Catherine Newman

It will surprise absolutely no-one that Sandwich tops my list of my favourite reads of the year so far (though the four that follow are in no particular order). I’ve been wanging on about this book for months now, and will no doubt be doing until the end of the year (at least). Set in a Cape Cod summer house (which should be a genre in and of itself) Sandwich is about the complexities of families, about an imperfect marriage and its ebbs and flows over the course of several decades, and about how loving people is an exquisite kind of torture. It’s a perfect, perfect book. I’ve read it twice already this year, and I still cannot stop thinking (and talking) about it.

2. If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

A masterfully told love story charged with passion, racial injustice and heartbreak. It tells the story of 19-year-old Tish, pregnant by her partner Fonny, who’s in prison, falsely accused of rape. It’s only the second Baldwin I’ve read, but the power of his prose is unlike any other author’s. An easy five stars from me.

3. The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

Sharp and sinister, The Lost Daughter is about a woman who goes on holiday with a suitcase full of books, and everything that unfolds thereafter. While a week under the Italian sun might seem like an unlikely setting for a dark, psychological tale of familial abuse, Elena Ferrante delivers just that. Filled with a sense of foreboding, if you love Natalia Ginzburg or Daphne Du Maurier, you’ll love this. A deeply unsettling portrayal of motherhood, I couldn’t put it down.

4. Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

If, like me, you think you’re not a fan of the short story, Jhumpa Lahiri’s spellbinding writing will make you think again. Roman Stories is an evocative collection of tales set in Rome that are imbued with a sense of melancholy and loss. They are a quiet, acutely observed series of moving, poignant reflections on feelings of estrangement, exile, and the aftermath of discrimination. Despite the somewhat gritty nature of the book, I have since been trying to convince my boyfriend to move back to the place of his birth, thus far, to no avail.

5. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

While I’ve not read the winner of last year’s Booker Prize - the book that was also written by a white, male, Irish author called Paul - and so can’t really be the judge of which book should have taken the crown, I am willing to die on the hill that Prophet Song simply cannot be better than The Bee Sting. I read the latter of the two - all 642 pages of it - in 33 hours, and while I don’t recommend giving yourself such a short space of time in which to read it, I do recommend inhaling it in a sweeping, intoxicating binge. An epic, almost cinematic story about an Irish family on the brink of implosion, I tore through it. Murray’s command of characters is exquisite, the plot is masterfully multi-layered, and Aunt Rose and her ability to see into the future gave me the fricking chills. And the ending! The ending! It was Shakespearean in its beauty

What have been your favourite reads of the year so far? Do let me know in the comments below.