Mortality

As seems to be the increasingcustom at this time of year I have listed below my top ten books for 2012. There is no method in the madness and they are not in any particuar order. They are simply the books which I enjoyed reading, would happily return to read them again and, perhaps most important of all, would not hesitate to recommend to my friends. The cut off date for 2012 was Christmas Day. Why is this important? Because over the past few days I have read two outstanding books. But more of them later.

Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng.

All is not as it seems in this carefully layered garden set in Malaya just before the invasion by the Japanese. Not for the characters nor the reader. It is poetic and thrilling; a story that continues to haunt you long after the final page is turned.

Bring Up The Bones by Hilary Mantel.

The sequel to the highly successful Wolf Hall, this is a lavish re-take of the ill-fated marriage between Henry VII and Anne Boleyn as seen through the fox-like eyes of Oliver Cromwell.

The Yellow Bird by Kevin Powers

Debut novel from a returned US serviceman attempting to answer the repeated question : What was it like fighting in Iraq? It has been criticised for being over-lyrical (perhaps a result of Powers’ first love, poetry) but I have returned to this book a couple of times after first reading it, and it retains its initial impact.

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“A wit, a charmer, a trouble-maker, and a dear devoted friend … a man of insatiable appetities – for cigarettes, for scotch, for company, for great writing, and, above all, for conversation.”

This is the portrait of Christopher Hitchens as sketched by his close friend, Graydon Carter, in the Forword to Hitchens’ last book, Mortality, It goes part of the way to articulating why the essayist, author and orator, became one of the most popular, if contentious, literary figures of our modern times. And why a lucky few so cherished invitations to one of his legendary dinners “at a table crammed with ambassadors, hacks, political dissidents, university students…when he would rise to give a toast that could go on for a stirring, spellbinding, hysterically funny 20 minutes of poetry and limerick reciting, a call to arms for a cause and joke: ‘How good it is to be us’.”

Mortality is a collection of seven essays Hitchens wrote in the period between he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and his death in December 2011. They are an eloquent, wry, shrewd observation about the process of death and the “inevitable awkwardness in diplomatic relations between Tumortown and it neighbours.”

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Ten best reads of 2012

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens