Three books

Some end of year recommendations that prove writers are still producing the kind of books that make it all worthwhile.

I just received “a drive through 2025” email¹ from one of the 6.3 billion car parking apps I’ve had to sign up to here in the UK, so I know it is surely the season for round-ups.

And here’s mine.

Because I haven’t yet managed to read all the books, I thought I’d concentrate instead on just three² that I found interesting. And since I spend quite a bit of time on this website (and elsewhere³) moaning about the state of publishing - I thought I’d also try and highlight books that prove that the modern novel is actually in pretty robust shape and that publishers of all varieties are still capable of putting out the good stuff.

So, in no particular order, three books that should give anyone who loves literature reason to hope:

Jesus Christ Kinski by Benjamin Myers

I’ve admired Benjamin Myers’ writing for a long time - and that just makes me all the more impressed by how hard he’s recently started pushing.

Myers has been on a red hot streak ever since the publication of Cuddy.

That novel rightfully scooped up the Goldsmith’s Prize and there are all kinds of reasons to think it’s a finely crafted book - but the things I actually most responded to when I read it were its warmth, humanity and open-heart.

I love the opposite about Jesus Christ Kinski.

Give or take few thoughtful and more amiable interludes in which Myers reflects on his own life, this book is nasty. Horrible! It is an assault. It is an affront to decency. It is Klaus Kinski, right there on the page.

And Klaus Kinski, the mesmerising star of magnificent films like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre The Wrath Of God (as well as endless drek) was an arsehole. He was violent, abusive, ego-maniacal - and also just-plain-maniacal.

Myers focusses on one of this fool’s professional nadirs; a one-man performance Kinski gave in 1971 about Jesus Christ, one of the few people in history with an even worse messiah complex than his own. As you might suppose the show was a colossal mess (which was captured on film, should you feel the need), - an ugly experience in which Kinski told his audience what he really thought - and what he really thought turned out to be seven shades of batshit crazy. With some fascism thrown in.

We get to experience all this from deep inside Kinski’s pounding skull - and oh boy. It’s something. It takes real daring to take on such a subject and real talent to carry it off. There’s nothing else quite like this.

Luckily.

Wendy Erskine - The Benefactors

I thought this year’s Booker long and shortlists looked pretty good - but they’d have been even better if they’d included Wendy Erskine’s superb debut novel.

The Benefactors is a brave attempt to give voice to an entire community dealing with the fallout from a sexual assault. Anyone who has read Erskine’s short stories will already know how good she is at capturing voices - but the array of different viewpoints, accents and ideas she presents here takes her talent to another level. This polyphonic spree never feels like a gimmick either. Rather, it’s a generous attempt to empathise (not necessarily sympathise) with all the novel’s characters, in spite of their faults.It’s complicated, challenging, funny, and sad. Heck it should have been included on every prize list going this year… The fact that it didn’t only makes it more important that as many people as possible go out and read it and appreciate its power and humanity.

Chris Kraus - The Four Spent The Day Together

This is a weird, disjointed, unsettling book, combining fictionalised stories of Chris Kraus’ childhood, her rise to fame and concomitant ritualistic mauling on social media, her partner’s alcoholism and drug dependence - and then a real murder in rural Minnesota.

This last strand details the last day of a guy called Brandon in a town where opioids have rushed into the void left by deindustrialisation, no one has much to do except get into trouble and the idea of hope feels like a cruel joke.

Kraus lived nearby and became obsessed with the place, the people and the misery of their lives - which she lays out in stark detail.

Kraus doesn’t seek to endorse or forgive, but she does help us to understand the nihilism that caused this tragedy. It’s an uncomfortable journey to a very dark place - culminating with the evil banality of the text messages the killers sent each other on Brandon’s last day, which Kraus has included without comment as final chapter to the book.

Yes, it’s the fascination of the abomination, but it also feels like a necessary insight into the mess in America. It’s maybe too messy to be considered any kind of masterpiece - but it is a book for our times.

A bit extra…

Okay. Three wasn’t enough!

I also want to give a special mention to Tom Cox’s Everything Will Swallow You - which is charming, unusual, and good-natured. Especially since there’s such cruel irony in the fact that a book so gentle should have had such a difficult and painful journey to publication. Tom Cox, like many others, was thrown into a horrible kind of limbo during the collapse of his publisher, Unbound. But while the demise of that disgraceful company says some things about the publishing industry, the scammers there don’t tell the whole story. Because: here is the book, our in the world, published by Swift Press. This relatively new publisher has been doing an admirable job of making up for other publishers’ failures. They have put out numerous titles that might not have seen the light of day that have proved their worth not only by selling and winning awards, but by changing and influencing important national conversations. Kudos to their founder, Mark Richards.

I also want to put in a word for The Frog In the Throat by Markus Werner, translated by Michael Hofmann. This didn’t make my initial list because strictly speaking, it isn’t a new book. But the NYRB translation by the always excellent Hofmann is something to with which to contend: a fierce, strange, brutal novel; sometimes hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking; always fiery. The plot involves conversations with dead men, cows and angry Swiss parishioners - but no summary can do it justice. Trust me on this one and find out for yourself…

Hey! Thanks for reading all the way down here. Modesty dictated that I didn’t list any Galley Beggar books in this list. But both my vanity and my love for them also make me want to insist that you must read Waterblack by Alex Pheby and Telenovela by Gonzalo Garcia; respectively a genre-upending fantasy masterpiece and the historical novel you need to read to understand what’s happening to us right now.

I also didn’t want to major on Andrew Gallix’s Loren Ipsum, since my delight at actually being - in a suitably roundabout way - featured in the story renders me unable to comment on it with any objectivity. But I’d love you to get hold of a copy of that too.

Okay! That’s enough for 2025. Now I’m going to go and read the new Philip Pullman.

I’ll be back soon with some more Links, Tips and Suggestions too.

Fondly,

Sam

PS If you’re an avid Across The Pond listener, you’ll have realised that quite a few of these books were featured on the podcast I co-host with Lori Feathers - which is why I came to read them. I also came to appreciate them all the more after speaking to their authors. You can find conversations with Chris Kraus, Michael Hofmann, Wendy Irskine, Tom Cox and Benjamin Myers (although this last conversation is about a different book) by plunging into our archive. There are many other fine writers in there too.

1. I actually have no idea what is going on with this email. Below is a screenshor of the message they sent. I’m confused enough that I’m verging on the edge of interest. But I still regret opening it. And that it ever happened. And that this is the world we’re in. Is this why human’s harnessed fire and learned to speak? Really?

2. Spoiler: I won’t be able to keep it down to just three.

3. Okay, everywhere.