It’s a truism that, with every passing year, time seems to speed up. This was demonstrated to me in stark terms when I realised it’s almost exactly a year!! since I did my last Top 10 post - highlighting the books I most enjoyed during 2016.

I second-guessed myself on posting this one. Not only am I still several years behind on posting the lists, but many of the books that I include on them were actually published a long time previously. I am not - and will never be - a reader or a reviewer of up-to-the-minute releases. There’s just too many books to read, and never enough time! However, if I am forever behind on the pile of books I want to read, then I am sure others are in the same boat. So there may be some books below that you’ve either not come across before, or maybe have heard about and always meant to get round to reading. On that basis, here are:

Fiona’s Top Ten Books of 2017

The Colour Of Magic – Terry Pratchett

The Cows – Dawn O’Porter

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – Susana Clarke

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

Prodigal Summer – Barbara Kingsolver

The Reader On The 6.27 – Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

The Improbability Of Love – Hannah Rothschild

Nina Is Not OK – Shappi Khorsandi

A God In Ruins – Kate Atkinson

The Power – Naomi Alderman

The Colour Of Magic – Terry Pratchett

Who doesn’t know and love Terry Pratchett, hmm? Well - I kind of didn’t. Or at least I assumed I didn’t. I’d always been a bit leery of his books as I had some vague notion of boring fantasy universes (something about elephants and turtles?), nerdy in-jokes, strange characters and ludicrous world-building. Turns out the Discworld novels are all that, and more, and are in fact brilliant. My bad.

The Colour Of Magic is, by many accounts, not the best of the series. However, it is the introduction to the Discworld and many of the characters who will travel through the coming books. Rincewind, the Unseen University, and a wee fud of a suitcase are just waiting to meet you.

Pratchett is, of course, one of the best writers of our time. His books are funny, clever, and prescient. I’m working my way through Discworld one by one, buying each subsequent book a couple of months apart. I should be done by the time I turn 50. Don’t be a big old assumer like I was. Read the book.

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The Cows – Dawn O’Porter

Many people figure that Dawn O’Porter’s books are chicklit. I am here today to tell you: nuh-uh. O’Porter’s skill is in creating realistic characters and drawing you into situations that you can actually imagine yourself in … and then coming in with a side-swipe of a scene that makes your jaw drop. The Cows tells the story of three separate but intersecting women’s lives. The key events that the book revolve around are ludicrous, but they show the importance of owning our own lives and behaviour in the face of events both in and out of our control. Life is sometime spectacularly unfair and bizarre, but what is within our control is how we react.

Some people really hate this book - fair warning. I certainly cringed HARD at some of it. But The Cows also tells stories of strong, flawed, brilliant women living their lives, not just hanging around until some mysteriously rich yet shyly handsome man turns up to ‘save’ them - and we need more of the former, because that’s much more like actual life for many of us.

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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – Susana Clarke

“I like big books and I cannot lie”

If you love a big door-stopper of a book and immersing yourself into an alternative world, then have I got a kilo of story-telling for you. Like Harry Potter for grown-ups, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the tale of two magicians learning, improving, and competing in a world where magic exists but is not all-pervasive; where magical ability is sometimes beneficial but often leads the bearer into complicated and destructive situations.

Susana Clarke creates a beautiful and often ethereal world, engaging all your senses but never taking the reader too far from the dark reality of early 20th-century England. By the time the tale is spiralling into insanity in Venice, anything seems possible. This is a book which bears a second (and third, or fourth) reading.

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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

This was one of those books that seemed to come from nowhere into sudden popularity. When a debut novel is released there is little preconception of what an author is like or the turns their plot is going to take - and it felt like Gail Honeyman had a good play around with her readers. Told from the perspective of a social misfit with a difficult childhood, Eleanor Oliphant’s story is set in a recognisable Glasgow. Many will see themselves reflected to some extent in Eleanor’s confusion about social niceties, and the feeling that everyone else read some manual about adulthood which we have missed out on.

Eleanor Oliphant won the Costa Debut Novel Award in 2017, and has been nominated for several others. It’s not hard to see why - it scratches an itch you didn’t know you had.

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Prodigal Summer – Barbara Kingsolver

I don’t think there’s a Kingsolver novel that I have read and not enjoyed, so this was always likely to make my list. Prodigal Summer is one of her ecologically-focused novels, in a similar vein to Flight Behaviour. I loved the characters in Prodigal Summer, particularly Deanna who lives a solitary life in a cabin high in the Appalachians.

Kingsolver creates pictures of the America I would love to visit. Beautiful and nature-tethered, and populated by inhabitants with wonderfully complicated lives, it’s a wonderful counterpoint to the burning reality of 2020.

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The Reader On The 6.27 – Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

I already wrote a full review about The Reader On The 6.27, so you can read that if you want to know more. But in summary this slim novel belies the richness of the tale within. Beginning with a commuter who reads to his fellow passengers each morning (remember commuting? Good times) and weaving through an old folk’s home and ending in shopping centre toilets, it’s unexpected and refreshing from first page to last.

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The Improbability Of Love – Hannah Rothschild

The idea of an inanimate object - a painting - being the golden thread throughout a novel was brought into the mainstream with 2019’s film The Goldfinch, based on the 2013 book of the same name. Published in 2015, The Improbability Of Love takes the same idea, but the finished product is a livelier and more insouciant take on the theme.

Annie is a struggling chef who is freshly out of a long-term relationship and has her alcoholic mother living with her. On impulse she buys a painting in a junk shop, which turns out to be worth a considerable amount of money. The narration jumps around different characters, including from an auction house, and each of them is quickly absorbing. Engaging, funny, and an insight into the fine art auction business, The Improbability Of Love is likely to be different to anything else you’ve read recently.

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Nina Is Not OK – Shappi Khorsandi

A fiction novel by a comedian evinces thoughts of lighthearted amusement. If that’s what you’re here for, keep on scrolling. Nina is 17, her dad died several years ago, and she likes a drink. The story takes us through her difficult family relationships. her increasing struggle to stay on top of her education, and a traumatic event during a night of particularly heavy drinking. Despite such bleak material, Nina Is Not OK is still remarkably funny - you can hear Khorsandi’s voice in many of the conversations. It’s also a tale of surviving horrid circumstances, and finding a new way to not just survive but thrive.

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A God In Ruins – Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson calls this novel a ‘companion piece’ to the earlier Life After Life, rather than a sequel. For anyone who read the latter, you’ll remember the kaleidoscopic splinters of potential alternative paths that life can take, and will understand why you could never truly have a sequel to it!

A God In Ruins follows Teddy, the younger brother of the Todd family from the earlier novel. An airman in WWII, and a husband, father, friend and grandfather, Teddy faces into many challenges with guilelessness and charm.

Atkinson’s books are reliably gorgeous, and epically clever. Another one of those that makes me go “this is why I’ll never be a writer” because I could never rise to those heights. Instead, I’m just so glad I get to read and enjoy novels such as hers.

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The Power – Naomi Alderman

What if the world’s women suddenly began to acquire a physical capability which gave them the upper hand in physical one-on-ones? That is the scenario presented in The Power. Starting with teenage girls, and spreading across all ages, women develop the ability to deliver a varying strength of electric shock. The book poses a variety of interesting questions - ecological (what disaster or historical pollution could have caused this?), equality (how does the balance of power shift when women gain a physical advantage?) and political (how do the priorities of the ruling parties shift when they are weighted in favour of the feminine? What is the feminine?)

What I like about The Power is that it doesn’t go for the easy answer. There’s no simplistic “women in charge = peace and love” and in fact tends towards “power corrupts”. But the exploration of potential scenarios is disconcerting and exhilarating, and while the final pages may disappoint some, it’s a novel that stayed with me long after I finished reading.

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