The Existential Ennui Review of the Year in Books and Comics: The Ten Best Books I Read in 2012

And so, suitably stuffed with turkey and sausages and Christmas pudding and the entire contents of a confectionery selection pack – and consequently suffering with the meat 'n' fruit 'n' chocolate sweats – we reach the final post in the three-part Existential Ennui Review of the Year in Books and Comics – and indeed the final post for the year. And having presented a big long list of the sixty-four books I read this year – a list which, as usual, largely comprised books published well before 2012 (over sixty years before in some cases), and which, incidentally, this year was linked by both The Rap Sheet and The Comics Reporter – it's time to pick my ten favourites from that list.

I've elected to exclude any rereads, for the simple reason that if I hadn't, a third of the top ten would have been taken up by Patricia Highsmith Ripley novels, and I've endeavoured to restrict myself to just one appearance per author – although achieving that wasn't as hard as you might imagine: the only real candidates for two appearances were Donald E. Westlake with his Tucker Coe novel Murder Among Children, and Elmore Leonard with Mr. Majestyk. But there were other books besides those that could have quite easily made the cut in a less competitive year: John D. MacDonald's debut Travis McGee mystery The Deep Blue Goodbye; Anthony Price's fine espionage novel Other Paths to Glory; Brian Garfield's Death Wish; William Goldman's Marathon Man; P. M. Hubbard's A Thirsty Evil; and from 2012 itself, George Pelecanos's stylish '70s crime spree What it Was and Jeremy Duns's third Paul Dark spy thriller, The Moscow Option. And were I to expand the top ten to a top twenty, well: there's numbers eleven to nineteen right there.

As it is, I've cheated anyway: I couldn't separate the two books vying for the number ten spot, so I've made them equal tenth. If you have a problem with that, you could perhaps take a moment to consider that a) the top ten is drawn from a list of books which were published across seven decades, which makes it a fairly meaningless selection anyway (although arguably no more meaningless than other, more traditional "best of the year" lists); and b) it's my blog and ultimately I'll do what the bloody hell I like. So ner.

In ascending order, then, with links to whatever I wrote about them this year, here are the ten (ish) best books I read in 2012. Happy new year.

=10. Restless by William Boyd (2006)
The Human Factor by Graham Greene (1978)
I read a number of books this year over which Kim Philby cast his long shadow – including his autobiography – but these two were the best. Graham Greene's sad and moving portrait of a man who betrays his country for love clearly isn't, as Greene himself was at pains to point out, a roman a clef, but it's hard not to detect traces of Greene's old friend Philby in Maurice Castle's actions, if not his motivations and character. As for Restless, I read that one right after reading Ian McEwan's disappointing Sweet Tooth, in the hope that it would prove a more satisfying spy novel. In the event, it was a more satisfying novel overall, something I'll be exploring in a post in the new year in which I'll be comparing it to its recent BBC TV adaptation.

9. The Big Bounce by Elmore Leonard (1969)
Elmore Leonard's debut crime novel, this meandering, surprising story, peopled with believable yet still idiosyncratic characters and peppered with choice dialogue, set the template for what was to come.

8. The Lovely Horrible Stuff by Eddie Campbell (2012)
I've loved Eddie Campbell's comics since I first came across them in the 1980s; to my mind he's one of the most important creators ever to work in the medium, and The Lovely Horrible Stuff is as good as anything he's done: an extended meditation on the pernicious influence of filthy lucre, drawing on the history of the Pacific island of Yap as well as some very personal, not to mention raw, episodes.

7. A Rough Shoot by Geoffrey Household (1951)
Fast-paced, light, thrilling, a joy to read. Plus: badger ham. Yes: badger ham.

6. This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith (1960)
One of Highsmith's most powerful novels: an intense study of the mad impulses and justifications behind stalking.

5. Commander-1 by Peter George (1965)
An overlooked post-apocalyptic gem, as good as, if not better than, On the Beach and Alas, Babylon. I urge you to seek it out.

4. 361 by Donald E. Westlake (1962)
Westlake's third novel under his own name, and his first crime fiction masterpiece.

3. The Twelve by Justin Cronin (2012)
Beautifully written, epic in scope, and probably the most gripping novel I read all year.

2. Game Without Rules by Michael Gilbert (1968)
Eleven short stories starring devious middle-aged intelligence operatives Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens. Sublime.

1. Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn (1967)
I stated back in May that Towards the End of the Morning was the best book I'd read so far this year, and as 2012 draws to a close, it still is. Follow the links to find out why.

True Blood: The Vampire in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (Corgi, 1960) and Justin Cronin's The Passage and The Twelve (Orion, 2010/2012)

Thus far in this series of posts on paperbacks, the books under discussion – if my incoherent keyboard-clattering claptrap could be characterised as such – have all been of a crime or spy bent: Edward S. Aarons's Assignment to Disaster; Richard Stark's The Green Eagle Score; Elmore Leonard's The Big Bounce. To mix things up a bit, then, I thought we could look at some science fiction and fantasy paperbacks next, beginning with this:

A 1960 British Corgi paperback printing of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. This is actually the second Corgi edition (Corgi #SS854), following the 1956 first printing (Corgi #T197, which in turn followed the 1954 US Fawcett Gold Medal original), which sported a different treatment and illustration on the cover – a head-and-shoulders illustration of the novel's protagonist, Robert Neville, the last man alive, set against a staked vampire in a barren landscape (presumably an interpretation of the book's burning vampire pit). Corgi were evidently happier with the artwork on the 1960 edition, however – which depicts Neville looming over his staked wife, Virginia – as for their next edition, in 1962 (Corgi #SS1213), they went with this:

Now, on first inspection, that appears to be the same painting as on the previous edition. Look closer, however – click on the picture to zoom in – and you can see that the artwork has either been painted over, or painted afresh. The brush marks are smoother; the areas of contrast on Virginia not so stark; and the underpainting is less visible, in particular on the hillock, where in the previous version, the pink "ground" can be clearly seen.

To be honest, I'm not sure which one I prefer; they both have their merits, as does the type treatment on both covers. Frankly, early Corgi editions of I Am Legend are so scarce – certainly moreso than Gold Medal editions, and those are pretty uncommon as it is – I may well keep them both.

I'd already seen two of the three movie adaptations of I Am Legend – the Charlton Heston classic The Omega Man (1971) and the eponymous 2007 Will Smith version (which I watched as a slightly unfestive pre-Christmas treat that year, and rather enjoyed) – before reading the book, but neither of those films really captures the essence of the novel. For one thing, in the book, the cause of mankind's downfall is unequivocally vampirism, not mutants or whatever the hell those creatures in the I Am Legend movie are; Matheson's interpretation of it, sure, but explicitly named as such. For another, the way the vampires verbally taunt Neville – barricaded in his brownstone – especially his neighbour, Ben Cortman, brings an added layer of cruelty and torture to proceedings. And where both adaptations pull back from the brink of outright nihilism, Matheson doesn't blink: the horror and despair is unrelenting, with every glimmer of hope quickly extinguished, right down to the final twist in the tale, which upends both ours and Neville's perception of his plight.

One thing Matheson does in I Am Legend is strive to establish a scientific background for vampirism – and it just so happens I've recently finished reading another novel which attempts a similar thing:

Justin Cronin's splendidly sprawling epic The Twelve (Orion, 2012) – which, I think, is the best "new" book I've read this year – the sequel to this:

The Passage (Orion, 2010). Obviously there are differences between Cronin and Matheson, not least being that the former's magnum opus is by this point well over a thousand pages long and still only two-thirds done, whereas the latter's novel barely troubles 150 pages. Even so, they both offer explanations for the vampire – except that they approach their explanations from different directions. In I Am Legend, Neville tries to determine the scientific basis of each symptom of the, on the surface, seemingly supernatural disease of vampirism – living death, fear of garlic, etc. – in order to arrive at a cure. But in The Passage and The Twelve, right from the outset Cronin painstakingly establishes the scientific basis for each vampiric manifestation – from an encounter with Amazonian vampire bats and consequent US military experimentation to, in The Twelve, the appearance of "familiars" – and builds a supernatural mythology from there. Interestingly, this sense of opposites meeting in the middle extends even to the root cause: in I Am Legend it's bacteriological, while in The Passage and The Twelve it's viral.

Anyway: onwards. And next, two paperback editions of a key work of dystopian science fiction, featuring an introduction by Kingsley Amis...

2010: A Review of the Year in Books and Comics; 6. The 10 Best Books I Read This Year

Final post of the year, and what better way to round off 2010 than with a Top 10 Chart of the Best Books I Read This Year. As with almost all of these year-end posts I've been doing, however, and as the Bloody Great List of the books I read in 2010 – from whence this Top 10 is culled – demonstrated, few of the books I ploughed through over the past twelve months were particularly new. Consequently, this chart, which amongst its entries boasts just two books published in 2010, is utterly arbitrary and ultimately useless in gauging anything about the year just ended other than my reading habits. Then again, ain't that Existential Ennui all over?

Getting the list down to ten was a struggle. I initially assembled a Top 20, but while there were certainly some good books in the lower orders of that longer chart, they weren't quite as outstanding as the ones further up the list, and so made the whole thing seem slightly pedestrian. But once I'd determined to prune it, deciding what to keep and what to lose became increasingly difficult. I was stuck at thirteen for a while, then twelve, and then really dithered at eleven. Honourable mentions must therefore go to Belinda Bauer's Blacklands, to fine efforts by Gavin Lyall and Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos, to Dan Clowes's Wilson and Darwyn Cooke's Parker: The Outfit, and to more than a few Richard Stark novels, including The Man with the Getaway Face, The Score and especially The Split.

Anyway, here's the Top 10. I've reviewed a lot of these books before, so in those cases I've kept further comments to a minimum and provided a link back to the original review, should you wish to read my ramblings. All that's left to do before we get stuck in is to wish you a merry new year, and see you in the alarmingly science fiction-sounding 2011.

10. Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake
This being a Top 10, I've had to limit my Westlake selections to one novel written under his real name and one written as Richard Stark. This own-brand excursion is the second in his comedic series starring luckless thief John Dortmunder; it's a charming, breezy affair that culminates in an increasingly ridiculous – in a good way – bit of business centring on efforts to hide a mobile bank. Go here for a longer review.

9. Ending Up by Kingsley Amis
A brilliant novel about the bitterness of old age which I had ruined for me when I happened to listen to part of a talk by Amis's most recent biographer Zachary Leader in which Leader divulges the ending of the book. Bastard. But I did discover that Amis made eight pages of notes for the novel, beginning with a list of forty-five ways of being annoying. Hopefully one of those simply states, "Zachary Leader". There's no plot to speak of, merely a sequence of short chapters detailing the minor slights, petty squabbles and general intolerance betwixt a cast of old folk living out their latter years in a country cottage. That ending, by the way, is a supreme act of character vandalism.

8. The ACME Novelty Library #20: Lint by Chris Ware
I think I said pretty much all I had to say about this one in this review. A remarkable graphic novel.

7. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Not much more to add to this one either.

6. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd
Or indeed this.

5. The Passage by Justin Cronin
Easily the most epic novel I read this year, The Passage is a brilliantly realised piece of horror fantasy. The descriptive passages may be a bit flowery in places, but the force of the narrative is undeniable, and Cronin's attempts to offer a scientific explanation for vampirism lends the story a certain plausibility. Partial review here.

4. Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
Review here.

3. Chinaman's Chance by Ross Thomas
Review here.

2. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
I'm still planning on posting something on le Carre's Karla Trilogy once I've read the third book, Smiley's People. But I'll be astonished if that novel manages to top this bruised, elegiac, reflective, mournful masterpiece.

1. Point Blank (The Hunter) by Richard Stark
Donald Westlake's first novel under the Stark moniker may not be as elegantly written or exquisitely layered as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, nor its characterization and dialogue as beautifully crafted as that of Chinaman's Chance. But in terms of its importance, both to my reading this year, and to fiction in general, it can't be beat. The blunt, stripped back prose style; the cunning formal complexity; the depiction of an illegal, underground, yet strangely professional America where men steal to finance their individual versions of the American Dream: these are just some of the things that make it special. And at its heart, the thief among thieves: Parker, that weird, taciturn, detached yet utterly compelling creation. Simply the best.

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Books and Comics, Part 1

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Book and Comics, Part 2

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Books and Comics, Part 3 

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Books and Comics, Part 4

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Books and Comics, Part 5

New Arrival: The Passage by Justin Cronin

Muchos gracias to Book Glutton for the heads-up on this one, my copy of which turned up over the weekend:














It's the UK hardback first edition of Justin Cronin's The Passage, published by Orion, ooh, just over a week ago. This is the first printing as well as the first edition (it's already up to a second printing), signed by the author:














I'm already over 130 pages into it, and it's utterly absorbing. I guess it's closest in content to Stephen King's The Stand (possibly my favourite book of all time): it's a near-future end-of-the-world, good-versus-evil tale, with added vampires. I'm only in the opening stages at the moment, which focus on a young girl, Amy, who seems destined to save the world somehow, as well as on military experiments on death row inmates aimed at extending life and eradicating disease, which is where the vampire angle comes in. Cronin writes in a really pleasing, uncomplicated style, reminiscent of King but without King's occasional folksiness. He does use King's trick of foreshadowing events, which helps drive the narrative, and he's got King's knack (or rather prime King's knack; less so these days) for brilliantly drawn characters.

Aside from The Stand, something else it's reminding me of is Matt Wagner's epic Grendel comics, which also weaved vampires into an end-of-the-world scenario. I don't know if Cronin has read the Grendel cycle, but he does know his comic books by the looks of it: at one point in The Passage a death row inmate being transported by the military to be experimented on notices one of the soldiers reading comics, and asks if one of the characters is Aquaman. He's then given a few comics to read: X-Men, and League of Vengeance. That second title isn't a real one: The Passage is set around ten years hence, in an America where there have been further terrorist attacks and where, globally, the war on terror has engulfed Pakistan, Iran and others. In which context, Cronin's re-naming of Justice League of America (the actual comic where Aquaman appears today) as League of Vengeance makes sense. A little inside joke for comics fans there...?