In: A Graphic Novel

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A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies (Houghton Mifflin) – The joys and unexpected traumas of family life (as well as, one suspects, heaping helpings of autofiction) (and an idiotic title, hardly a rarity on this list - see #s 9, 7, & 2)(capped off with a truly eye-scratchingly hideous cover design) fill this touching and eloquent novel. The Trees by Percival Everett (Graywolf Press) – Underneath its unprepossessing exterior (Graywolf avoided giving it a hideous cover by giving it not cover at all, just the book’s title on a piece of blank paper, like a manufacturer’s label stamped on a crate of pomegranates), this is a weirdly wry novel about race and perception that took me a couple of reads to appreciate - which is much appreciated in this era of tweets-as-manuscripts.

I’ve always been fascinated by how combinations of letters and words can change the mechanics of a conversation, and turn it from one completely different thing into another. When that’s happened to me, on the rare occasions, and I’ve been transported into this other person’s world … the book was an attempt to describe that feeling.” He doesn’t want people to feel they have to connect with him, McPhail hastens to explain. “I know I’ve written a book about deep connections, but I’m still the guy from a little town in the north of England where no one discusses their feelings.” So how much is he prepared to tell me about those transformative conversations that made such an impact on him? “Um ...” he pretends to consider answering this. “Nothing at all!”Starts as a charming romantic comedy and turns into something tender and affecting about our need for connection. I loved this one. ‘ David Nicholls Medusa’s Ankles by AS Byatt (Knopf) – The first of the short story collections on our list (and also the first of depressingly many examples of hideous American cover design, alas) is this powerful collection by the author of Possession and The Children’s Book, here emphasizing her surprising ability to craft subversive fantasy. This is a daunting bar for an interviewer, so I am quietly relieved when McPhail is not only so approachable as to be wearing pyjamas at 3.30pm, but seems to respond to my sweeping questions – about relationships under capitalism, the dehumanising effect of tech; the impediments to intimacy in (as In’s blurb puts it) “our isolated times” – with good-natured alarm.

Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone by John Edgar Wideman (stories) (Scribner) – The last of our short story collections this year (and the last laughably hideous American cover on our list, thank Crom and Mitra) is also the best, the latest work from the great John Edgar Wideman, whose prose has never been wiser or more searing. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (Harper) – If readers are willing to overlook yet another hideous American cover, they’ll find in Louise Erdrich’s latest novel - set in and around a small bookstore as it goes through the cursed year 2020 - as eloquent and at times stunningly accurate an example of so-called “COVID fiction” as they’re ever likely to read. A curious, funny and deeply human story about growing up in adulthood. Asks all the questions, and makes a case for real connection in a world full of podcasts and plant-based milk. * Emmy the Great * The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (Viking) – This big, completely captivating novel by Ruth Ozeki features a boy who hears a vast, wild symphony of voices from the world around him and seeks only to make sense of it all; at first it seems whimsical, but it carries more heft and wonder than anything this author has ever written.This is a miraculous book. Very funny, very sad and very beautiful - all at the same time, somehow. * Joe Dunthorne * He hadn’t. “I knew exactly where it was, the whole time,” says McPhail now, from his Edinburgh flat. “I just wanted to join in. And then I said,” he winces: “‘That’d be 10 quid these days!’ These days! Like I know anything about coffee prices through the ages!”

Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love.

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A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.