Best Fiction Books of 2022
Of all the books I read last year (86!), here are 13 fiction titles I highly recommend.
I'm a bit later than usual in publishing my annual Best Of reading lists. If you read my previous post or follow me on Instagram, you know why: My best friend of 44 years (Cheryl and I considered each other sisters) died on New Year's Eve, early in the morning, of an aggressive form of brain cancer. The past two and a half weeks (not to mention the past 18 months since her diagnosis) have been an exhausting whirlwind.
Despite my grief and all that's happened, I didn't want to forego doing my year-end posts, even if it meant a delay.
Insofar as reading goes, 2022 was a good year. Reading was an escape for me during some tough days. I read 86 books and of those, I have 24 excellent titles -- 13 fiction and 11 nonfiction -- to recommend. It’s a diverse list, both in subject matter and authors, and I think it reflects on the type of reader I strive to be.
Today we'll take a look at my Best Fiction of 2022, presented in alphabetical order with my #1 pick at the end. These represent all of my 5 star reads, some 4 stars, and in what is a rarity for me, my #1 fiction book of the year. I usually can't decide but there's a clear winner this year.
A few notes before we dive into the list:
These represent the best books I read in 2022. They weren't necessarily published in 2022.
My apologies for the images being inconsistent sizes. I can’t figure out how to fix that.
Substack tells me this post will be published but will say “message clipped” at the end. So, to continue reading, simply click that and you should get the rest.
Finally, if you’re inclined to purchase any of the titles listed, consider using the Click Here to Buy link. That’s my personal affiliate link via Bookshop.org which provides me with a small commission for each book purchased.
OK, without further ado…the Best Fiction of 2022 (according to me)!
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield (Picador, 2019)
A mesmerizing, mysterious, exhilarating short story collection with a slight gothic feel about kick-ass women and the twisted oddities that happen to them. Favorites among these nine include "The Great Awake" (sleep becomes personified, leaving people's bodies to wander around the world) and "The Collectibles," which offers a macabre approach to dealing with a breakup. Others in this collection are "Mantis," "Formerly Feral," "Stop Your Women's Ears with Wax" (love that title!), "Granite," "Smack," "Cassandra," and "Salt Slow." Julia Armfield is an author to watch and her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, is one that I really want to get to in 2023. Click here to buy Salt Slow.
2. Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau (Custom House, 2021)
In this coming-of-age novel set in Baltimore in the 1970s, Mary Jane is the 14-year-old daughter of traditional, rigid, straitlaced parents. When Mary Jane gets a babysitting job for the summer, she is welcomed into the Cohns' free-spirited family and into a secret that would horrify her repressed mother: Dr. Cohn, a psychiatrist, is secretly treating a famous rock star, Jimmy, for drug and sex addiction. Even better, Jimmy and his glamorous lover Sheba are both living at the Cohns' home for the summer. A heartwarming, funny read reminiscent of Judy Blume's iconic books, only for grown-ups. Click here to buy Mary Jane.
Cat Brushing by Jane Campbell (Grove Press, 2022)
This debut short story collection is an absolute triumph. Not only do these 13 stories center on the somewhat taboo (in literature and life) theme of older women and their erotic desires, but with this, her first book published AT AGE 80 (!!!!), Jane Campbell exemplifies the writerly axiom that it is never too late to be a published author. Each story has at least one element of surprise, shock, humor, or terror -- and sometimes all of the above. If you want a sample of Campbell's wit, consider her acknowledgement to her family: "I must wholeheartedly thank my four children who have generously accepted the fact that their mother, rather than entering a simple and trouble-free dotage, has rather inappropriately at the age of eighty become the published author of these provocative and transgressive stories." This one should have gotten much more acclaim this year and I hope there are many more stories to come from Jane Campbell. Click here to buy Cat Brushing.
Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo (Penguin, 2013)
(I'm cheating here and borrowing the Bookshop.org description.) Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney, London, for years. A flamboyant, wise-cracking character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father, grandfather--and also secretly gay, lovers with his childhood friend, Morris.
His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away? With an abundance of laugh-out-loud humor and wit, Mr. Loverman explodes cultural myths and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves. Click here to buy Mr Loverman.
5. Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden (Canongate Books, 2021)
(Another cut and paste, this time from Goodreads.) Mrs Death, a Black, working-class woman who shape-shifts and does her work unseen, is exhausted from spending eternity doing her job. Wolf Willeford, a troubled young writer, begins to write her memoirs. Using their desk as a vessel and conduit, Wolf travels across time and place with Mrs Death to witness deaths of past and present and discuss what the future holds for humanity. Inventive, emotional, and brilliantly written, I loved every word of this one. Click here to buy Mrs Death Misses Death.
6. I'm Not Hungry But I Could Eat Stories by Christopher Gonzalez (Santa Fe Writer's Project, 2021)
Before devouring Gonzalez's flash fiction, readers are greeted by a note at the book's beginning. "Every narrator and protagonist in this collection is a bisexual Puerto Rican cub with the exception of one," it says. "In that story, the narrator is gay." These 15 stories (most only a few pages long) are connected by the universal theme of hunger in all its permutations -- hunger for food, for love, for acceptance. Gonzalez's writing is sharp, witty and leaves the reader craving a second helping. Click here to buy I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat.
Admit This to No One by Leslie Pietrzyk (The Unnamed Press, 2021) is a collection of linked stories (love, love, LOVE linked stories!) set in Washington D.C. with the Speaker of the House and the various women in his life as the connecting thread. There's Lexie and Madison, his daughters from various marriages; an ex-wife; and Mary-Grace, a longtime staff member. Pietrzyk's writing is sharp, witty, and timely and I enjoyed this collection immensely. Click here to buy Admit This to No One.
Bewilderment by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton & Company, 2021)
This gorgeously written novel is the story of Theo, an astrobiologist and recent widower, struggling to raise his sensitive and quirky 9-year son. The two escape into the natural world as a coping strategy in a world that seemingly can't handle Robin. When Robin is on the verge of being expelled from school, an experimental neurofeedback technique holds the potential to help him by connecting to his mother. A stunning book about father and son relationships, grief, neurodiversity, and nature. Click here to buy Bewilderment.
9. The Days of Afrekete by Asali Solomon (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).
Set in Philadelphia (woohoo! yes, yes, yes!) and influenced by Mrs. Dalloway, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison's Sula, Liselle Belmont is pre-occupied while preparing for a dinner party. Her husband, Winn, has just lost his campaign for state representative (the party is to thank his supporters) and may be under an FBI investigation. Liselle is also remembering Serena Octave (what a great name!), whom she had an intense relationship with when they were both students at Bryn Mawr in the '90s. I really liked this short novel which alternates in time and is about love and class (Liselle is a Black woman from West Philadelphia; Winn, a lawyer, comes from a wealthy white family in Connecticut). Click here to buy The Days of Afrekete.
10. Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (Random House, 2022)
Joan, a 36-year-old attending ICU physician in New York City, is perfectly content with her life. She’s passionate about her work, enjoys her colleagues, lives in a sparsely furnished apartment without a television (she’s never seen Seinfeld, for example), and has a distant relationship with her family, particularly her mother and wealthy brother, Fang. After their father dies, Joan travels to China for a weekend; upon returning to work, however, the hospital administration feels that she hasn’t taken enough leave or vacation time. They mandate a six-week leave, during which time a mysterious virus is discovered in Wuhan. COVID is ideal for an introvert like Joan, yet terrible because of her dedication to her medical career.
Joan’s perspective on the world is quirky and refreshing. She’s befuddled by societal norms and isn’t interested in conforming to her family’s or society’s expectations, which is ultimately one of the novel’s themes. Everyone in Joan’s life feels that something needs correcting — and that she is “less than” or missing out on something because of their perceived deficit — but Joan is unapologetically herself and more than okay.
Weike Wang’s writing is sharp, witty and often humorous. Catherine Ho, a narrator who I recently discovered (she was among the narrators of To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara), is wonderful. This works well on audio. Click here to buy Joan is Okay.
11. Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson (Avid Reader Press/Simon and Schuster, 2022)
A quirky, unputdownable short novel about fate and coincidence that I read in just a few hours. Our unnamed narrator, a writer, runs into an old college acquaintance, Jeff Cook, in an airport where they’re booked on the same flight to Frankfurt, Germany. When their plane is delayed, Jeff invites his former classmate to the first-class lounge to catch up over a drink.
Jeff proceeds to completely dominate the conversation between the two, telling his friend an elaborate story about giving a drowning stranger CPR on a California beach 20 years earlier. Oh, and he’s never told anyone about this before. Turns out, the narrator was “there at the beginning,” according to Jeff. Kinda, sorta. Annnnnnd we’re off!
I loved everything about this. Couldn’t stop reading and stayed up way too late doing so. If this title sounds familiar, it was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2022. Click here to buy Mouth to Mouth.
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (Doubleday, 2022)
To Paradise is comprised of three separate but interconnected “books,” or sections (this will make sense when you read it), each set in New York City over the span of 200 years and featuring the same characters throughout the two centuries. The first “book” takes place in 1893 during an alternate version of America where arranged same-sex marriages are the norm and the country has been divided into territories (e.g., Free States, the Colonies, the West).We meet these same characters again in 1993 during the AIDS epidemic ravaging New York City. (The latter half of this second “book” is, quite frankly, a slog and feels disjointed from the otherwise engrossing narrative and captivating writing.) Yanagihara regains her literary footing in the third “book.” In 2093, life in New York City is chillingly dystopian, impacted by climate change (people wear cooling suits), the multiple pandemics (multiple!) that have ravaged the populace during the previous five decades, and references to the country being controlled by Beijing. Despite the issues with the second portion (skip over the boring parts, as I did), this is a stellar, chunky novel with big, broad overarching themes. Click here to buy To Paradise.
And my #1 favorite book of 2022 is...
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (Penguin, 2022)
My Goodreads review for this is all superlatives: “Astonishing. All the stars and then some for this novel. Damn, Celeste Ng can write. Incredible book. Am freaking speechless and there's a good chance this will be my favorite book of 2022.” And indeed, it is. I loved this story about 12-year-old Bird, who lives a quiet, careful existence with his protective father, a former linguistics professor demoted to shelving books in the university library. They don’t speak about the reasons for Bird’s mother’s disappearance three years prior, but Bird knows it has something to do with an obscure poem she wrote, the unstable American economy, and the ever-present anti-Asian vitriol and frequent physical attacks. When Bird receives a mysterious letter from her, he’s determined to figure out the clues she left to her whereabouts.
This dystopian society is frighteningly close to our current world. For a decade, American life has been governed by laws written to preserve "American culture" in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic. Sound familiar?
Our Missing Hearts is about the power of words, of librarians, of the government, of resistance, of motherhood and family, of art, and of justice. Celeste Ng is one of my favorite writers and this, her third novel, is absolutely flawless, triumphant, and a must-read. Click here to buy Our Missing Hearts.
I’ll have my nonfiction recommendations for you soon. In the meantime, let me know your thoughts on these 13 titles. Have you read any of these books? Which ones will you be adding to your 2023 reading list? What was your favorite fiction book of 2022?
Wonderful book reviews. All of these books sound so interesting.
I loved Our Missing Hearts as well. Celeste Ng is a treasure. It was one of my favorites but my number one book for 2022 was Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro.