Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2002

Fingersmith for me - some really great twists in that one, and that description of where the Thames begins. Adapted to the screen by Park Chan-wook, who I saw state that "Britain for me is just the place where Sarah Waters lives now".

I read the Stewart Home. One of the few books I bunged across the room.

I loved Middlesex, though in my mind it's very much a 90s text. The Scar was where Mieville lost me.

these are getting scarily modern, i remember these being talked about when they were new.

(but haven't read any of them)

no, wait, Altered Carbon. ugly, misongynist and violent book. gave my copy away.

The Little Friend, is that the one with the snake preachers?

another strike out, but i've avoided several of these on purpose

Iliac Crest is very very good, though it was only translated to English a couple of years ago (by an old acquaintance of mine from college, in fact!)

The Little Friend, is that the one with the snake preachers?

Yep. Rather a slog. Light is the only other one I've read, I might have enjoyed it more without the frivolously deployed dickhead serial killer character.

The Days Of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

The only other I've read is '69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess by Stewart Home' and it's ok in a read it today take it back to Oxfam tomorrow sorta way. Really thought it would've been a late 90s product.

I always wanted to try getting into Stewart Home as he's an important related figure to a lot of stuff I love, but there's a macho aggressiveness to his work that really puts me off.

Wu Ming is also Luther Blissett, right?

69 (geddit?) Things is page after page of aggressive, graphic sex and conversations about Lacan. Forever. I'm sure it had a point but I never found it. The staff in my local Oxfam would have been appalled.

The Days Of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

― xyzzzz__,

Wu Ming is also Luther Blissett, right?

yep, give or take one dude.

yeah I felt a bit suss even just typing out that Stewart Home title but I tend to try to include anything billed as postmodern or experimental fiction

Kafka it is

(The only one I read)

Well, I vaguely remember reading the Eggers.

Days of abandonment >>>> (i haven’t read a single other book on this list)

Days of abandonment >>>> (i haven’t read a single other book on this list)

The only two I've read are "Everything is Illuminated" and "Snow", so this is "Snow" pretty easily for me. Shout-out to Gary Shteyngart's debut "Russian Debutante's Handbook" which was enjoyably amusing.

These last two polls have led me to realise I always get Jonathans Franzen and Safran Foer mixed up (perhaps unsurprisingly as I've read nothing by either of them).

Ferrante and McKillip are awesome, but I haven't read either of these books. Only one here I have read is Kafka On The Shore: also the title of a song that became legendary, the sole single (backed w instrumental version) of a girl who then disappeared. Fun w the 00s Uncut/Mojo-type idolatry, then a 15-year-old boy flees something with a Dad-line penumbra, deep into the boondocks, finds a big sister figure, whom he fucks in a moonlight flight, not settling for her handjobs, finds the Kafka chick, who turns out to be his mom, so he fucks her too. By this point, I'm rooting for the Dad-like penumbra to squash him. I won't spoil the ending though. Is Murukami always like this?

Cats, jazz, spaghetti, characters who art writers or editors, weird sex shit

Yep, that’s him

Are, not art

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Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2003