The Book Lady’s Best of 2011: Genre Busters

2011 at 5am     Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky

If you had told me when I started this blog three and a half years ago that not only would I be reading and enjoying books that play with genre but reading enough of them to merit their own year-end list, I’d never have believed you. Say what you will about the term “genre bending” –I know it rankles some in the industry almost as much as the now universally reviled “unputdownable”–it’s the best one a literary reader like me, who has just begun to explore genre fiction, can find.

  Moondogs by Alexander Yates (Doubleday) I called this one back in April, and I’m sticking by my story. This was, without question, the most enjoyable reading experience of my whole year. Yates’s debut novel (which is blissfully void of that unpleasant First Novel Smell) is smart, playful, and really just a hell of a lot of fun. Yates skillfully juggles multiple points of view and a deliriously non-linear narrative, and he pulls off the very special—and very important—trick of making readers feel like they are always in on the joke.His characters are larger than life and unforgettable, and if Moondogs is just the start, then HOO BOY are we in for a treat.

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan (Knopf) Set up as the journal of Jacob Marlowe, the world’s last living werewolf, this book is gritty, profane, gorgeous, and filthy hot. And I do mean filthy. If your sensibilities are at all delicate or easily offended, this is probably not the book for you. But if you’re up for philosophy, fucking, and a transformative literary adventure, you don’t want to miss this one. Incredible right up to the very last page, it bears the unmistakable scent of sequel set-up, but I’m prepared to forgive Duncan (and then some) if the presumed follow-up bears even half the rock-your-world potential found here. Jacob Marlowe is the first werewolf I’ve loved, and he may well be the last.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman (Viking) Okay, you absolutely need to read the first in Grossman’s trilogy, The Magicians, in order to appreciate this one, but believe me, it’s worth it. Middle-of-trilogy books often fall victim to middle child syndrome, but that’s not the case here. In The Magician King, Grossman solves the pacing problems he had in the first book, addresses the deeper thematic questions more directly, and continues a terrific story that is also, very explicitly, a love letter to the fantasy writers who shaped him. You know how magical it is when you sit in a class and can see the professor’s passion for the subject on his face? Yeah. This is the book version of that. If you’ve enjoyed your time in Narnia, Hogwarts, or any number of other magical places, you won’t regret your trip to Lev Grossman’s Brakebills.

Colson Whitehead’s Zone One also belongs on this list, but I read it so recently that I’m still in that phase where I’m so staggered by how great it was that I can’t be coherent about it just yet.

 

Related posts:

1. The Book Lady’s Best of 2010: Genre Busters
2. The Book Lady’s Best of 2011: Best of the Rest
3. The Book Lady’s Best of 2011: Literary Fiction
4. The Book Lady’s Best of 2011: Nonfiction
5. The Book Lady’s Best of 2011: Memoir & Biography