THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 : Laura Jaye Cramer, The Back Page Editor
It’s the end of the year. And the end-of-the-year means end-of-the-year lists.
Let us say this: we love end-of-the-year lists.
So, while we hammer away at our Top 5 Books of 2020, we’re highlighting our small, but mighty staff, and their favorite things they’ve read this year.
Laura Jaye Cramer is the creator of our beloved The Back Page. She is also a voluminous reader who has picked her Top 5 for this tumultuous year.
Back in March a well-meaning, horrible person enthusiastically reminded me, you know Daniel Defoe wrote A Journal of the Plague Year during a pandemic, and Laura, wouldn’t you like to use this time to take on a project like that, too? I absolutely would not, thank you very much—and I didn’t! Not even close! Instead I sat in my one-bedroom apartment for ten straight months switching between deep self-pity and even deeper guilt for constantly feeling weepy about my not-even-that-bad-all-things-considered year. I didn’t write much (certainly not a book). I didn’t make any art. I didn’t do anything creative, really.
We all had such nice plans for 2020, but then the world got
very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,
bad.
And so I switched my brain off! I stopped trying to live my best life. I didn’t try to get in shape or learn a new skill. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything, so I did nothing but sit around and read. And I’m not a total jerk—I’m not going to sit here and pretend like reading is a cure to feeling depressed. But here’s what I will say: I’ve been sad and out of it for a while, but even through that, there were a number of 2020 releases that made me feel less lonely, and less like the world would be stuck in limbo forever.
Verge
Lidia Yuknavitch
Riverhead
How do I put this delicately? Verge, a collection of short stories, is very dark and very weird. In one of its strongest, The Organ Runner, we visit the birthday party of a (child) black market organ harvester, who, minutes after blowing out his birthday candles, lifts up his shirt and “told the others of his kidney operation, delicately fingering the stitches [...] stretching from near his belly button up toward the side of his rib cage.” He’s proud, you see, because that kidney paid for a new icebox. The aunties smile, the other kids clap.
Well, shit, Lidia Yuknavitch, what a picture.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say Verge isn’t for everyone—though I’d argue you’d be hard-pressed to find a reader who could deny it’s beautifully written. This one is for those who aren’t afraid to see people at their worst, trusting Yuknavitch uses this darkness to show the lightness of humanity in comparison.
The Thirty Names of Night
Zeyn Joukhadar
Atria Books
Looking back to the early 2000’s, I never would have imagined major publishers would be keen on stories by queer authors of Arab decent. Neither would the three narrators of The Thirty Names of Night, all queer, all navigating their way through a post-9/11 New York City, all generally feeling as if they had no place in America (or even in their own community).
This book was recommended to me by a friend. Admittedly, neither one of us has much knowledge of New York’s former “Little Syria,” and we both found ourselves putting the book down to do research. What kept us both coming back was how beautifully written each page was. I can’t imagine many other books where it felt like each and every word was both necessary and thoughtful.
My Dark Vanessa
Kate Elizabeth Russell
William Morrow & Co.
I’m not a particularly fast reader, and I very rarely read a book more than once. Yet somehow, I read this book in a day and again a few months later.
It’s been referred to as a variation of Lotita from the young woman’s perspective, and that’s a fair comparison. But more than anything, reading My Dark Vanessa feels like opening up social media during the height of the #MeToo movement, and seeing virtually every woman (and many men) posting the same, sad message. It’s a little less lonely knowing that we aren’t alone in our trauma, and certainly more comforting knowing that we can speak and read openly about it.
That said, like Lolita, I wouldn’t recommend My Dark Vanessa to a friend without a strong trigger warning for grooming, predatory behaviour, and sexual assault.
Luster
Raven Leilani
FSG
When a book is hyped as much as Luster was this year, my inner contrarian rears its head (shocking, I know), and I’ll find any excuse to be picky. Did I think Luster was a perfect book? Not really. Does that matter? Also no. Not as long as said book is funny and entertaining, which this is.
In a nutshell: We follow a young Black woman who finds herself in the middle of a white couple’s open marriage. It’s messy and its characters isolate between likeable and...eh, not so much. More than anything, though, Luster feels like a call-back to the glossy and salacious “women’s literature” (eyeroll) of the mid-200s—this time much more sharp and nuanced.
Having and Being Had
Eula Biss
Riverhead
In 2020, having a “better than the alternative” situation feels a lot like being filthy rich: Myself, my family, and my friends are healthy and can work from home, and I feel like talking about that is like rubbing a new pet pony in someone’s face. It’s uncomfortable to think about how others may be uncomfortable, but that’s exactly what Having and Being Had does perfectly.
And for the record, I think the word “perfect” should be illegal. It’s subjective and stupid—and still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how perfectly Biss described her comfortable middle-class life in comparison to the rest of the United States. Examining privilege has been a theme this year, most often popping up in white people’s awkward acknowledgement of the Black Lives Matter movement (which has given us a chance to see it’s so very rarely done well).
You can purchase all of our BEST BOOKS OF 2020 here.
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Just letting you know.
Laura Jaye Cramer is a writer living in Los Angeles.
