BookWag's (Nearly!) Overlooked Reads of 2023
Dear Wags,
While you’re still dreaming of sugarplums and gift receipts, book critics are deep into the new titles of 2024, peering ahead on your behalf. The workplace hazards are real: Paper cuts, eyestrain, and the real possibility of being crushed under a pile of review copies. Still, we read on, hoping that a disappointing novel will be followed by next year’s big prize contender.
Our lives run on different tracks depending on the outlets we work for: Books out this week. Books out this month. Books out this season. Books of various genres. Let us not forget books your fickle editor loves. Sometimes, I write about the same title more than once. And sometimes, I overlook the same title more than once.
For this end-of-year BookWag, I present titles I nearly missed in 2023. There are more I could list, but even sins of omission must fit the confession booth’s deadline. As an act of repentance, I’m buying copies of each of these worthies for the holiday break.
The good news is that there’s still time to purchase these volumes for Christmas at a local independent bookseller (most of them will wrap your gifts, too). That makes this list a win–win-win: For my reading, their commerce, and your giving. Enjoy!
Yours Ever,
BKP
None of the Above by Travis Alabanza
Alabanza, the author of Gender, appends the subtitle Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary to their new book. This memoir is structured around seven phrases used to describe the author at different points of life, which tell us much about preconceived notions and how difficult it is to fall outside a crudely reductive mainstream. It’s a funny, serious, and important book.
The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk
I do love a good subtitle. Blackhawk’s Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History should be a required course for all Americans. Already a bestseller, this Yale professor’s look at the indigenous experience should take its place next to Howard Zinn’s A Peoples History of The United States of America when it comes radical reconsiderations of our past. Anybody unsettled by his account probably should be.
The Faraway World by Patricia Engel
If Engel’s Infinite Country was the knockout novel about Colombia, her new short-story collection delivers gentler taps about migrants, the United States, and the Latin American diaspora. You’ll meet con artists, grief-stricken survivors, and lovers separated by borders, all trying to find a balance between old lives and success in a new land. Each of these tales involves people locked in dilemmas, trying to access something impossible —that faraway world just beyond reach.
The Deadline by Jill Lepore
Any woman who has dreamed of writing for the New Yorker has probably fantasized about being Jill Lepore. Her remarkable, incisive style reveals that sharp thinking is the engine behind all good writing. Lepore dives into politics, literature, culture, and looming historical figures (Robert L. Ripley and Mary Shelley, among them). She never panders to a subject or patronizes the reader. I devoured this book.
North Woods by Daniel Mason
I’ll admit it, I initially skipped Mason’s book because I was reviewing Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds, which is also about the early American colonial period. Circle back to any book that draws comparisons to David Mitchell and Edgar Allan Poe. Mason’s tale begins with young lovers who flee a Puritan colony for a wilderness cabin that winds up hosting many generations of fascinating human and non-human characters.
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue
How could I overlook a novel so many other reviewers found delightful? Humbuggery, I guess. My bad! Millennial booksellers Rachel and James aren’t supposed to have a relationship. She’s in love with her professor, and he’s gay. When they are discovered entwined in the stockroom by that professor, things get complicated. O’Donoghue elevates a simple romance plot with delightful character development.
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
I was so busy with Dust Child by Nguyen Phan Que Mai that I nearly missed Pin’s story of about a trio of Vietnamese siblings after the last U.S. troops left Saigon in 1975. When they suddenly lose their parents and younger siblings, Anh, Minh, and Thanh become increasingly unmoored. They make their way to London, where they struggle to build new lives.
Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar
Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, novelist, and academic. He’s also the proud son of Guatemalan immigrants. In Our Migrant Souls, he investigates what it truly means to be Latino, a member of that fast growing but amorphously defined identity category. Along the way, he reckons with both his personal history and broader notions of community.
Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo
Ellen and William Craft, an enslaved married couple, escaped 1,000 miles to freedom in 1848 with the light-skinned Ellen disguised as a white man and William posing as his slave. When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, they fled to the United Kingdom, where they became renowned abolitionists, and then returned to the South during Reconstruction. It makes for an inspiring real-life adventure story.
Y/N by Esther Yi
In 2024, I resolve to pay more attention books from Astra House. Yi’s debut novel features an unnamed female narrator who lives in Berlin. She heads to Korea when she becomes obsessed with Moon—a K-Pop singer in a boyband called Y/N. Soon, she devotes herself to writing Y/N fanfiction, and the realities of her life blur with those of the reader’s. How strange, immersive, and irresistible.
