Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1994

Feel a bit weird voting for Brautigan when he's been dead more than a decade before publication.

I've only read Pereira Maintains and found that kinda meh - perhaps more engaging if you'd never heard of Pessoa or much about Portugal during the dictatorship.

I have read some Mário de Carvalho - comedic magic realism, for the most part - but not this one.

oops that first sentence was me, obv, not a quote

The Folding Star has one of the more credible gay sex scenes I've read in fiction, i.e. silly and hawt.

a hollinghurst novel with credible gay sex scenes??!?!?!?!? no way!!!!!

j/k

for real he's so fucking good at them tho

everyone who gets nominated for the bad sex writing award should read hollinghurst for a year as a reward

Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

^^ this is one of two books i've read on this list, the other being wind-up bird chronicle, which i ultimately hated, so frog hospital it is. one of the best opening paragraphs of any book i've ever read, tbh

Pereira Maintains is the best Tabucchi

"Wind-Up Bird" is the only one I've read. I guess I liked it well enough to vote for it.

Ooh, welcome back!

I've only read Captain Corelli's Mandolin and the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The former I didn't enjoy at all, the latter I did enjoy but totally get the 'annoying Murakami tropes' thing (it's the only one of his I've read and made me ambivalent about reading more). Trying to work out if the good bits of it are worth a vote, despite the irritating elements.

Wind-Up Bird is the best Murakami novel I've read, though I know he isn't popular on these threads. Short story collection The Elephant Vanishes was maybe better though.

I love Lorrie Moore and couldn't finish Frog Hospital. I may not be mad about her novels.

i voted Murakami over Houellebecq, two problematic faves

xp

Haven't read all of Moore's novels, but I think I agree: short fiction is where she is strongest. That said, I do like whatever Anagrams is supposed to be.

and strangest

Hooray the polls are back! I've only read the banks & the eco & the murakami but at least I haven't read captain corelli's mandolin. It's the only murakami I've read and it didn't do much for me, the eco is mid tier and the banks is very inventive so that I guess.

i guess the crossing is the one after all the pretty horses. in which case I've read that, and the banks, obv, and the murakami (can't remember).

i think insomnia is the one after i gave up on Stephen King (last one i read was named after a woman but can't remember if it was Delores or Rose, and i don't recognise the plot of insomnia)

I am fond of Gaddis, but that's an uneven novel. I like the Lorrie Moore.

2002 me is all Murakami - that book destroyed me. 2021 is all Lorrie Moore. I'll go with that.

wind-up bird didn't stick with me much compared to the few others of his i've read

learning from these threads that i haven't actually read many 90s books, just the murakami and i have a vague memory of reading that lethem but have no memory of what it was like

Have only read the Murakami and McCarthy, the former contains interesting facts about wigs and the latter interesting facts about wolves. I went wigs over wolves but it was a close-run thing.

(turns out i haven't read the murakami, have read another two, but not that one)

Gun with Occasional Music is GREAT and I voted for it. Agree with other Lorrie Moore fans that Frog Hospital isn't the thing of hers to vote for (though I think I liked it.)

quite liked wind-up bird before discovering that every single one of his novels involved a woman who disappeared (and maybe some jazz and probably cats)

enjoyed gun with occasional music but am not comfortable calling it the best of a year

It doesn't have to be the best of the year, it just has to be the best on this list

The operative word is "favourite".

learning from these threads that i haven't actually read many 90s books

Gotta say, since I started doing these there hasn't been a period where I've been as lost trying to find what to include. Dunno if they truly were bad years for lit, if the good stuff just hasn't been canonized yet or if it's just my ignorance.

Also the UK section is like 70% Doctor Who and Judge Dread novels now.

Interested in Kelman and maybe Hollinghurst

The Kelman is good, wd've been my other choice

quite liked wind-up bird before discovering that every single one of his novels involved a woman who disappeared (and maybe some jazz and probably cats)

enjoyed gun with occasional music but am not comfortable calling it the best of a year

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted "Wind-Up Bird"

The only one I've read is the Lethem and I didn't care much for it.

I should say, the Kelman is also really good, but I can't say I remember much about it, just that I thought the dialect was going to be barrier but it was so well-written that I ended up finding the dialect totally transparent.

every single one of his novels involved a woman who disappeared (and maybe some jazz and probably cats)

+ spaghetti. + running

think the running is a later (post-2000) development, "exoticised Western pop culture and geography" is a mainstay throughout

i know but i couldn't resist listing every murakami touchstone

+ fetishisation of random female body parts e.g. earlobes

+ wells

otm

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1995

Pereira maintains is the one I was anticipating in the last thread! Read it earlier this year & loved it, the gradual move away from trivialities is so well controlled (& whether the concerns of the literary mag count among the trivialities is an open q) - I also really enjoyed how the prose style has a superficial similarity to Bernhard but to such different effect