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Sunday, Dec 23, 2012 3:55 PM UTC

What To Read Awards: Maureen Corrigan

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Topics: Books, What To Read Awards,

What To Read Awards: Maureen Corrigan

Maureen Corrigan is the book critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air.”

Maureen’s top 10.

1. “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter
2. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo
3. “The Odds” by Stewart O’Nan
4. “The Brontes” by Juliet Barker
5. “Canada” by Richard Ford
6. “Marmee & Louisa” by Eve LaPlante
7. “Girlchild” by Tupelo Hassman
8. “Elsewhere” by Richard Russo
9. “This Is How You Lose Her” by Junot Diaz
10. “My Husband and My Wives” by Charles Rowan Beye

1. Explain why your No. 1 book was your favorite title of the year: My No. 1 novel of the year is “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter. It leads my list because it’s set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want? (It also features ingenious plotting, an overlay of black comedy and a cosmic sense of the futility of human dreams.)

2. What was the strongest debut book of 2012? I think Tupelo Hassman’s “Girlchild” was pretty terrific. I especially liked the conceit of her wise child female heroine forming her own solitary girl scout troop and making up her own badges. (For instance, the “proficiency badge in puberty.”)

3. What book sits outside your list, but has either been overlooked or deserves more attention? I love mystery fiction so I’d put in a plug for Camilla Lackberg’s (yes, yet another Swede) “The Stonecutter.”

4. Was there one book, either on your list or off your list, fiction or nonfiction, that seems to best encapsulate America in 2012? I think the book that best encapsulates America in 2012 is Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers.” It may be about Mumbai slum dwellers, but, as Boo says in her afterword, the vision it offers of the haves and have-nots living a few paces away from each other is certainly translatable to NYC, D.C., L.A. and most of our other great American cities.

5. What was the single most memorable character from a 2012 book? Honestly, Louisa May Alcott’s mother, Abigail, who is one of the subjects of Eve LaPlante’s dual biography called “Marmee & Louisa,” is someone I knew nothing about and whose activist life and tart, intelligent writing just blew me away.

6. What is the book from 2012, either from your list or not, fiction or nonfiction, that is most likely to join the canon, or still be discussed 20 years from now? I think, maybe, “Canada” by Richard Ford. It has a Gatsby-esque strain running through it and that always is a plus when it comes to literary posterity.

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  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

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