2023's Literary Silver Medalists
Excellent books worthy of a best-of list
I love the best-of lists that come out every December. I’m always interested to see what books people loved, how my opinions compared, and what I should be reading next. These lists, however, are usually limited to books that were published in 2023. While there’s definitely a purpose to capturing the year’s best publishing, I’m also always curious about people’s favorite books that they read this year generally, whether they were published a few months ago or a few years ago.
Today, I’ve compiled the “silver medalists” of my reading year. The only thing these books have in common is that I read them in 2023 and thought they were fantastic. These are the books I debated putting on my forthcoming best of the year list, but, due to space and inevitable hard decisions, didn’t quite make that cut. If, however, the variation of books on all the end-of-year lists shows anything, it’s that everyone has different tastes and preferences. The 10 books below (ordered alphabetically by last name), might very well be a future or current favorite for you. Let me know. I’m always excited to hear about what people love.
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All’s Well - Mona Awad
As a young woman, Miranda had her entire career in front of her as a Shakespearean actress. Miranda played the lead female role in nearly every production in which she performed, including the role of Helen in All’s Well That End’s Well in an Edinburgh staging hailed by critics. But her career quickly ended after a dramatic (literal) fall from the stage while playing Lady Macbeth, causing a severe back injury and chronic pain. Now, Miranda is one of three theater professors at an obscure New England college tasked with putting on the school’s annual Shakespeare production. Her pain has wrecked her marriage and left her nearly catatonic, unable to function other than to get herself to her physical therapy and doctors appointments where she is met by the same disbelieving men over and over again. The only thing keeping her going - and just barely - is this year’s production of All’s Well That Ends Well, which she clings to as a portal to a better time in her life. A mutinous cast (they wanted to do Macbeth!), difficult faculty, and an inability to function without a cocktail of pain medication drives Miranda close to suicide, until a chance encounter with three mysterious men at a local bar offer to fix all her problems in return for “a good show.”
All’s Well is unlike any book I have ever read. The story is told from the perspective of Miranda, who is an unreliable narrator at best. In the very first chapter, Miranda is swallowing random pills from her pockets and then later tops off the drugs with a few drinks. It is up to readers to decide if the magical element that transforms this book and gives it its verve is an act of magical realism that one should accept at face value or just the drug-induced delusion of a very desperate woman. The book is packed to the brim with Shakespearean allusions, and although I wished I knew more Shakespeare so that I could understand them better, it is not necessary to have read the plays in order to enjoy this book. At its core, All’s Well is a spectacularly written book on suffering and desire with a central focus on believing (or not) female pain.
The Hours - Michael Cunningham
The Hours is the story of one day in the lives of three distinct women who are all connected by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The first woman is Virginia Woolf herself, who is starting her work on the novel in a London suburb in 1923 as she grapples with debilitating headaches and a crisis of existence. The second woman is Laura Brown, a housewife in 1949 Los Angeles who is dragged down by the domesticity of watching her son and preparing for her husband’s small birthday party, all the while wishing that she could find some time to read Mrs. Dalloway without being disturbed. The final woman is Clarissa Vaughan, nicknamed Clarissa Dalloway by her acclaimed poet friend Richard, who is dying of AIDS. Clarissa exists in the present-day of when the novel was written, the 1990s, and is preparing to throw a party for Richard to celebrate his receipt of a prestigious literary prize. While each of the three women have important tasks to complete, they are each imbued with a generalized sense of melancholy despite momentary feelings of joy. The three stories alternate throughout the book until the very end, when they each come together in a surprising and poignant manner.
The Hours won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and has since been made into a movie (which I haven’t seen). You can clearly enjoy Cunningham’s craft without prior Mrs. Dalloway knowledge, but I think it’s clear that the foundations of The Hours rests on its connections to Virginia Woolf and her work. The fact that I loved this book as much as I did even without having read Mrs. Dalloway is a testament to its stand-alone strength that rests on the exceptional merits of beautiful, well-crafted writing.
The Faraway World - Patricia Engel
Patricia Engel is the author of Infinite Country, which was one of my favorite books of 2021. Like Infinite Country, which was set in Colombia and followed one family’s splintered immigration journey to the United States, the stories in The Faraway World all center around community, identity, and, in many, the complex motivations behind immigration. Each story is set in either Colombia, Cuba, or New York. In one, a taxi driver finds salvation by driving a woman to a different church every day for a year to support her quest in receiving a divine blessing to move to the United States. In another, a girlfriend unknowingly shepherds kilos of cocaine for her boyfriend between drop sites in Miami until they are caught and her boyfriend flees to Colombia. In one of my favorites, a woman works as a maid in New York for a family from her hometown, and struggles with the distinction the now affluent family has placed between their two lives. Every story in the collection is written with compassion and clarity, bringing to life under-examined corners of the world and the people that inhabit them. I think that Patricia Engel is an excellent storyteller, which is highlighted by her ability to create so many unique complex characters who all share common hopes, values, and struggles.
Paul - Daisy Lafarge
When 21-year-old Frances is picked up at a McDonalds parking lot in the French Pyrenees, she expects to be driven to an organic farm where she will work for a week in exchange for room and board. The excursion has been recommended to her as a type of restorative therapy, which Frances, an English graduate student, needs after being broken up with by her boss and dismissed from her role as a research assistant in Paris. The first farm she visits is less of a farm and more of a large home with a garden, run by 44-year-old Paul, an enigmatic yet washed-up anthropologist who named his home after a stint doing work in Tahiti. Although Frances is originally disappointed that she is the only guest, she is quickly enveloped in the farm’s surrounding community and the charisma of Paul. It becomes clear early on that Paul is interested in Frances, calling her his “goddess,” and Frances, unsure of her sense of self, is drawn deeper into his orbit. Daisy Lafarge’s pacing is immaculate, moving in lockstep with the development of Frances’ understanding of the true nature of Paul and his manipulative behavior. The book is a master-study in power dynamics and unbalanced relationships, which was beautifully reflected in the experience of Frances.
Roman Stories - Jhumpa Lahiri
If you want to feel like an underachiever in the best possible way, read Jhumpa Lahiri’s newer works. Jhumpa Lahiri, a fellow Barnard alumna, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for her debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Although she now teaches at Barnard, she spent many years living in Rome and learning Italian, which is the language in which she wrote Roman Stories, her first short story collection since 2008. To top it off, Lahiri translated her own work from Italian into English for the average reader’s benefit. Rome is at the heart of this collection, and is sometimes as much a character as the people who populate the stories. In one story in particular, “The Steps,” Lahiri tracks the lives of those who use a public stairway to get to their neighborhoods, creating a metaphor for the changing demographics, cultures, and traditions of the ancient city. Truly, everything that Lahiri writes is worth reading, and Roman Stories is no different.
Dinosaurs - Lydia Millet
Dinosaurs is an incredible book about protagonist Gil, who walks from New York to Phoenix after a failed romantic relationship. There is probably enough material for an entire tome on this journey, but as a sign of Lydia Millet’s talent, the walk is only written about in passing. Instead, the book’s heft comes from a dissection of Gil’s relationships with those around him, most prominently the family of four that live next door in a large glass house. Without shades or blinds, Gil has a front row seat to watch Ardis, Ted, and their two kids Tom and Clem. Slowly at first and then quickly later on, Gil becomes a type of uncle to Tom and a wonderful friend to Ardis and Ted. He volunteers at a local battered women’s shelter and discovers a fascination for bird watching. This is a beautiful and perfectly crafted story of found family, love, and connection. Out of the solitary journey west, Millet expertly sets the stage to ask larger questions about the role of the individual amidst larger societal issues and constraints.
The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka
In The Buddha in the Attic, Otsuka utilizes the collective voice of women brought from Japan to San Francisco at the end of the 19th century to tell a larger story about immigration and assimilation. Told in eight parts, the book starts with the women on a ship coming to the United States, filled with hope, fear, and excitement. It then moves on to their initial reactions upon arrival, when they discover that much of what they had been sold about America was fluff that won’t apply to them. Readers watch as these women work hard in a range of labor-based professions, have children, raise children, attempt to forge their own American identities, but then are eventually sent to internment camps during the Second World War. It is incredible how much Otsuka is able to fit into just 129 pages. And yet, the narrative never feels rushed or sparse. Each sentence is expertly crafted to advance the larger picture of these women’s lives within a country dependent on their labor, yet resentful of their presence. It is a story relevant for our times, beautifully written, and creatively told.
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
To an outsider, Seymour “the Swede” Levov is the epitome of the American dream. As a Jewish child born in Newark, New Jersey at the end of the 1920s, he represents a successful example of generational improvement strived for by immigrant communities. His grandparents were poor immigrants, his father started a glove factory as a Jewish businessman, and he, the Swede, is the first to be considered a true American. He is an exceptional athlete, good-looking, and an upstanding citizen. He serves in the Marines at the end of the Second World War, but a combination of his athletic talents and the cessation of fighting place him on an exhibition baseball team to raise troop morale. He returns home, buys acres of land, and commits his one act of rebellion by marrying a Catholic, who happened to be a former Miss New Jersey, before taking over the family glove business and expanding it around the world.
His fortune is shattered with the 1967 Newark riots and the onset of the Vietnam War, which deeply shakes and then radicalizes his teenage daughter Merry. The idealized world that the Swede inhabited is no longer sustainable in an era of change and social unrest, which becomes immediately clear when Merry sets off a bomb in their town’s general store, killing one person. Merry’s disappearance sends the Swede into a downward spiral, where he tries to figure out what could have possibly led Merry to commit this act of violence and what he could have done to prevent it.
This is my first novel by Philip Roth, a prolific author who had three books listed as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize before he finally and deservedly won the official award for American Pastoral in 1998. This book will without a doubt stick with me. The characters, themes, and writing all came together to create something exquisite and fully deserving of a prize meant to highlight exceptional American literature.
Dear Committee Members - Julie Schumacher
Professor Jason Fitger is a middle-aged novelist and English professor at a mid-tier college in the midwest in 2009. As the budget for the English department gets slashed in favor of more profitable subjects (see: the economics department renovation that leaves the English department encased in a layer of toxic construction dust), Professor Fitger is forced to teach more classes to more mediocre students. As a result, he is also asked to write an alarming amount of letters of recommendation, which Professor Fitger takes on as his solemn duty to academia. Dear Committee Members is told through these letters for everyone from graduate thesis advisees, departmental administrators, and students who have not even taken his class. Unable to confine himself to the typical standards of such a letter, Professor Fitger uses the opportunity to expound upon the sorry state of the university, the job market, his personal life, his career as a novelist, and his opinions of the institutions that he is writing to.
On the surface, the premise of this book sounds a bit bland. In reality, it is uproariously funny. Laugh out loud funny. I went back to re-read certain letters that made me guffaw in public. Schumacher has created something incredibly smart and well-crafted; somehow fitting a larger story about the state of academia in a recession era economy into a series of unimportant yet hilarious letters of recommendation.
Olive, Again - Elizabeth Strout
How often does a sequel live up to expectations? Olive, Again, the follow-up to Elizabeth Strout’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning collection of linked short stories, Olive Kitteridge, not only lives up to expectations but meets its predecessor eye-to-eye. Because Olive Kitteridge was a collection of linked stories, it was not hard for Strout to pick up where she left off over ten years later. Using the same format, Olive, Again continues to tell the story of Olive and the shifting nature of Crosby, Maine. Each story paints a fuller picture of the area’s inhabitants in isolation and in connection to the larger community.
Olive remains one of my favorite characters in all of literature, not just for the qualities that Strout creates in her — brash and opinionated with an extradorinaiy capacity for empathy — but also for the fact that she exists at all. It is so rare to read a book about such a wonderfully complex and nuanced woman, let alone one in the latter stages of her life. Olive, Again places an emphasis on Olive’s aging, following her through nearly twenty years of life and the joys and sorrows that accompany entering one’s twilight. Please read this book. Please read Olive Kitteridge. Read everything Elizabeth Strout has written. You won’t regret it.
Looking for a last-minute gift? Don’t know what kind of books the person will like? Bookshop.org allows you to buy gift cards for the readers in your life. All of the books written about above are available on my 2023 Literary Silver Medalists Bookshop Page, or you can click on the title of the book itself to be routed to the shop. Every book I’ve ever recommended, sorted by post, is also available on the general shop page.
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Want to see past months’ round ups? You can find those here.
Want to check out the best runners up from 2022? Check them out below.
