2024 Gold Medalist Reads
The best books I read this year!
My favorite reads of 2024! These books each earned the rare 10/10 rating, which I reserve for books that meet three criteria: (1) books that contain excellent writing; (2) books that stick with me, whether that be because of the form, prose, or story; and (3) books that make me want to unhesitatingly recommend them to someone else. The books below easily satisfied these three categories and are all beautiful examples of authors operating in top form.
If you haven’t already, check out my 2024 Silver Medalists, which were my favorite runner-up reads of the year.
And now, without further ado, my top 10 gold medalist reads in 2024.
10. Kairos - Jenny Erpenbeck
Historical Fiction, 297 pages
At face value, Kairos is about a relationship between Katharina, a young woman, and a middle-aged married author in East Berlin in the immediate years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dig beneath the surface, however, and it becomes clear that Kairos is also a larger story about the collapse of the GDR and the tumults of German unification. The couple navigates the increasingly unhealthy contours of their romance in similar ways that the state navigates a poisonous relationship with its people. Hans, the older and married man, wants near complete control over Katharina, who, despite copious tears, remains deeply attached and desperately loyal. The meta elements of the book, which only really dawned on me at the end (at which point I had to reread the first chapter), solidifies Erpenbeck’s place in my mind as a master of the craft.
9. Beautiful World, Where Are You - Sally Rooney
Fiction, 352 pages
My favorite type of novel is the one where the characters are on full display but not much really happens otherwise. In my opinion, only the most talented authors are able to pull off a story that doesn’t rely on plot but still keeps readers engaged and connected. Sally Rooney’s talents are featured prominently in this niche area of the literary genre in Beautiful World, Where Are You, a book that was a page-turner because of the singularity and depth that Rooney affords her characters.
Alice, a successful novelist, moves to a small seaside town in Ireland after being released from a Dublin psychiatric ward. Looking for some quiet and a place to recover, she meets Felix, who packs orders in a warehouse setting approximating an Amazon facility. In her spare time Alice writes long, eloquent emails to her best friend from college, Eileen. Eileen works for next to nothing at a literary magazine in Dublin and is increasingly lonely as she approaches her mid-thirties. While Eileen replies to Alice’s emails with eloquent musings of her own, it is clear there is unaddressed tension in their friendship despite their deep love for one another. Increasingly adrift, Eileen relies on a childhood friend and occasional lover, Simon, whose Catholic faith acts as a centering and isolating characteristic. Each of the four protagonists are struggling with something internal, existential, and inter-relational, but I never found any of it annoying or forced. Instead, I was blown away by Rooney’s capacity to write about the ordinary so beautifully and her ability to make me care so much.
8. Brother of the More Famous Jack - Barbara Trapido
Fiction, 256 pages
Brother of the More Famous Jack centers around Katherine, who is an impressionable eighteen-year-old from the suburbs of London when she meets the eccentric Professor Jacob Goldman and his large, rambunctious family. Katherine arrives at the family’s home as the date of a much older friend of the family and leaves besotted with the age appropriate eldest son. She is a guest in their home many more times, becoming an adopted daughter until her heart is broken and she leaves to strike out on her own in Rome. Ten years later, she returns to England having experienced unspeakable tragedy and the obvious maturity that comes with age. Falling back in with the Goldmans, her life expands like it couldn’t before in this wonderful, brash novel of found family. I fear no description that I write accurately describes the uniqueness and freshness of Trapido’s writing. This book was published over forty years ago and yet Trapido’s descriptions of adolescence, doubt, and discovery couldn’t feel more modern.
7. I Love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko
Non-Fiction, Russian Politics/Journalism, 350 pages
Elena Kostyuchenko was a journalist for the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta until it was shut down in 2022 following Kostyuchenko’s reporting in Ukraine. Despite current events and the book’s focus on Russia’s descent into fascism, the title, I Love Russia, isn’t meant to be ironic. Instead, Kostyuchenko’s patriotism is rooted in the ordinary, forgotten people of the country. Each chapter begins with a personal anecdote from the author’s life and then is followed by a piece of reporting outside of Moscow. In one chapter, Kostyuchenko writes about environmental degradation from the mining industry in the northernmost city of Norilsk. In another, Kostyuchenko follows local girls recruited as prostitutes. An early chapter is dedicated to the inhabitants of the obscure villages that dot the railroad tracks from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Later on, Kostyuchenko writes about two weeks spent living in an internat, a state-run facility for people with mental or physical impairments, and the decrepitude and exploitation exhibited towards wards of the state.
While each of the chapters are distinct, placed together, they create a comprehensive portrait of the people that the Russian government either wishes to ignore or actively suppresses, but who populate the country nonetheless. In telling the story of the country through the individual, Kostyuchenko deftly exposes the Kremlin’s corruption and cruelty. For her work, her bravery, and her beautiful writing, Kostyuchenko was poisoned by the state and now lives in exile, forced to leave her country and family behind.
6. Wellness - Nathan Hill
Fiction, 593 pages
As this doorstopper of a book opens, Jack and Elizabeth only know each other from what they’ve observed looking through their windows. They live in a gritty Chicago neighborhood in the early ‘90s — both having left dysfunctional home lives and hoping never to return — in apartments with windows that face each other. One night, Elizabeth is dragged on an awkward date to hear a band play and it is there that she sees Jack, who is photographing the event. The two recognize each other from their windows, feel an instant connection, and leave together. Now, in the early 2010s, the two are married, have a wonderful and difficult ten-year-old son, and are looking to buy a condo in the suburbs that will be their “forever home.” But differences in their visions for the design of the home bring other challenges to the surface of their marriage, mainly the recognition that they have each evolved into different versions of the people they were when they met and fell in love two decades before.
I promise the book is not as depressing as it sounds. Rather, it’s filled with quirky characters, jaw-dropping scenes, and moments when I laughed out loud. It is funny, sad, earnest, hopeful, and all-around a beautiful portrait of a couple adapting to the inevitable passage of time. Tip: this book works particularly well as an audiobook.
5. Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs - Kerry Howley
Non-Fiction/National Security, 227 pages
Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs is a fascinating look at the ever growing American national security apparatus in the post-9/11 era, the burgeoning surveillance state, and the disaffected insiders who leaked information and paid the price. The book is a piece of narrative non-fiction, and yet it reads like no non-fiction that I’ve ever read before. Howley’s writing defies traditional composition. She doesn’t shy away from the passive voice, she uses abstract metaphors, and subtly inserts her own opinions. Despite this, everything about this book works. I was engrossed from page one and am still pondering the central quandary: in our technological age we exist as data about data, ever accessible by the powers that be. Without context, however, and the fuller picture that comes from assessing someone as an individual, the government is prone to make fatal mistakes. How can these mistakes be rectified, if no one is allowed to know about them?
4. The Bee Sting - Paul Murray
Fiction, 656 pages
No reader could feel jealous of the Barneses, a family of four falling into disrepair collectively and individually. The family-run auto shop and car dealership led by Dickie suffered in the post-2008 recession and never quite recovered. Dickie’s own personal mismanagement and repressed secrets certainly don’t help matters. To Imelda, Dickie’s wife, his behavior is infuriating. Imelda grew up in poverty as the daughter of a low-level gangster, desperately craves stability, and is quietly reckoning with her own tragedy from early in life. While their children might not be aware of the depths of Dickie and Imelda’s issues, they certainly notice that something is wrong. Cass, formerly a star student, falls headlong into an all-encompassing, binge-drinking filled friendship with a fellow-classmate as exit certification exams approach. Her sweet younger brother PJ is afraid to tell his parents that his bloody feet have outgrown his shoes and instead finds solace in a friend he meets online who tries to convince PJ to run away. As the story moves between characters and jumps from past to present, a fuller picture emerges of the Barneses in all their tragic ingloriousness.
Coming in at a whopping 656 pages, The Bee Sting requires an investment of one’s time, but it’s well worth it. Murray’s writing is acerbic, witty, and nothing short of masterful. While it’s not always clear where Murray is going, he’s somehow able to tie it all together, linking references he made in the first pages to jaw-dropping, heart-pounding revelations at the end. By the final fifty pages I couldn’t and wouldn’t put the book down, having fully given myself over to the expert craftsmanship that is Murray’s writing, structure, and pacing.
3. Goodbye, Vitamin - Rachel Khong
Fiction, 194
Goodbye, Vitamin takes place over the course of one year as Ruth, a college-dropout turned sonograph technician who has recently broken up with her fiancé, returns home to the Los Angeles area to help her mother care for her father. While her father is still in the early stages of his Alzheimers, his memory and cognitive ability has lapsed enough for the university chair of his department to tell him he is not allowed to keep teaching, leaving him largely rudderless and at home. Ruth is greeted by a different version of her father each day, which prompts her to reflect on his parenting, his misdeeds, and the fabric of her family.
As a child, her father kept a journal filled with little entries about Ruth’s day, such as questions she asked or things that she did, and pages of this journal begin appearing around the house. The structure of the book is similar to this journal. Instead of chapters, the book is divided by near-daily entries where Ruth describes her days, her healing, and her mourning. Just as Ruth’s father once recorded Ruth’s childlike discovery of the world, Ruth performs a similar function for her dad as his self-sufficiency declines and he returns to a childlike state.
And yet, despite the tragedy, this book is beautiful. It is funny. It is kind. It is nuanced. It is creative. It is innovative in form and structure. It’s a book that moved me and that I knew, as soon as I finished, would stay with me for a long time.
2. James - Percival Everett
Fiction, 305 pages
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an almost universally known story within America: Jim and Huck board a raft and ride the Mississippi River towards a nebulous idea of freedom after Jim hears that he is about to be sold and Huck learns his abusive father is back in town. James tells this iconic story from the perspective of “Jim,” a diminutive given to him by his enslavers that diminishes James’ intellect and humanity. Many of the adventures in Twain’s book remain within the pages of Everett’s, but this time they are recounted by a man who chooses to travel south instead of north with hopes of returning to free his wife and daughter, highlighting the agency and cunning required to survive in the antebellum era. While I think general knowledge of Huck Finn is helpful, I don’t think it is necessary to have read the book to appreciate James and Everett’s talent. The singularity of the story of James in and of itself allows James to stand firmly on its own. This book won the 2024 National Book Award and I’m confident it will also win the Pulitzer Prize in May.
1. The End of Days - Jenny Erpenbeck
Fiction, 238 pages
Born in East Germany, Jenny Erpenbeck draws upon the influence of the country’s tumultuous 20th century in her writing. The End of Days tracks this history in five parts, following the same protagonist and the different paths her life could have taken in each. In the first section, which takes place in the Hapsburg Empire in the early twentieth-century, the daughter of a Jewish mother and gentile father with an ancestry marred by pogroms dies as a baby. In the next chapter, this same girl survives and moves with her family to Vienna where they suffer through World War I until her life ends in her late-teens. In the third chapter, she lives through the war and moves to Russia as a dedicated communist with her husband just in time for Stalin’s first purge. In the fourth, she waits out the Second World War in Russia while the rest of the members of her family are murdered by Nazis. And in the last, most moving chapter, her son looks for a present to bring his mother from Vienna and brushes unknowingly against family heirlooms looted by Austrian citizens and now left to the anonymous ether.
Not only is The End of Days a structurally ingenious way to view the 20th century in Germany, but it is also an incredibly moving story of the impermanence and unpredictability of life itself. So much of life is left to chance, which is deftly illustrated in a fascinating scene in the third chapter when the arbitrary shuffling of the protagonist’s file from the desk of one Soviet official to another results in a death sentence in one version of her life and an illustrious career in the other. When I finished the final pages of this book I had to immediately re-read and then re-read aloud in order to savor how absolutely beautiful and profound they were.
If you want to give me a true holiday present, consider spreading the word about The Book House Blog by sharing this newsletter with anyone you know who might enjoy! If you haven’t already, you can subscribe for free to receive new posts, including monthly round-ups, publishing previews, and curated reading guides.
Want to see past months’ round ups? You can find those here.
Also, make sure to check out my 2024 Silver Medalist reads.
Curious about last year’s Top 10? Check out those books here.
I also loved The Bee Sting! I had to put it down, read another book, and then come back to it…just to give my brain a rest!