Switching it up a bit from the usual best-of fare, Book Marks assembled a list of 10 of the best fiction books that were reviewed in 2023. The list includes books that were reviewed by over 150 publications — from the London Review of Books to The New York Times.
For starters, below are five of Book Marks’ best reviewed fiction of 2023:
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The Fraud by Zadie Smith
“A Dickensian delight…That the entire tapestry flows so seamlessly across decades, weaving in shared intimacies, massive crowd scenes and dusty literary gossip, is a testament to Smith’s craft … There is, in fact, nothing musty or ‘historical’ about Touchet’s arch voice or the timeless parade of literary and political folly that animates the novel.”
— Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times
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Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
“Crook Manifesto is a dazzling treatise, a glorious and intricate anatomy of the heist, the con and the slow game…Here he uses the crime novel as a lens to investigate the mechanics of a singular neighborhood at a particular tipping point in time. He has it right: the music, the energy, the painful calculus of loss.”
— Walter Mosley, The New York Times Book Review
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Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
“Whooshingly enjoyable… A witty literary thriller about the collision between eco-idealism and staggering wealth…Catton taps into a feeling very much of our moment.”
— John Powers, NPR
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The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
“Murray shows off his formidable range, immersing us in worlds so distinct and textured that they seem to blot one another out — subjectivity and how its wonderful thickness can lead people astray being one of this author’s preoccupations.”
— Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
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I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore
“Moore shows that grief and ghosts can be written about persuasively, and wittily, without turning a novel into a horror story…A triumph of tone and, ultimately, of the imagination. For Moore, death doesn’t necessarily mark the end of a story.”
— Abhrajyoti Chakraborty, The Guardian
For a full list, visit Book Marks.
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Source : The Best Reviewed Fiction of 2023
