echo 2024: an eventful year for many. Perhaps it was the happy moments that stood out, those that sparked joy. Or maybe the year looks different to you, having endured trials and challenges with seemingly no end in sight.
Within the chaos and whirlwind of the last year, one must take a step back to ease our minds off the worries and stress. As a bunch of writers, it’s no surprise that reading is something we enjoy. To pass the time, to gain knowledge, to dive into entirely new worlds within the confines of the pages we turn.
Out of the many books we devour, there’s bound to be one that captures our attention and hearts the most. Whether it was the style of writing, characters, or the sentiments or lessons the book holds, we take a liking to it. These pages spilling with words leave their mark, and stick with us, lingering in the back of our minds.
Interested in what we read? Here is a compilation of our favourite books we came across this year. Enjoy!
Zhen Li: The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
Would you like to read about foxes? A story wrapped in mystery, set in the wintery world of Manchuria during the last years of the Qing dynasty? If you’re up for such a tale, The Fox Wife is perfect for you.
This book was highly anticipated, at least for me, as I had thoroughly enjoyed Yangsze Choo’s previous two books, The Ghost Bride and The Night Tiger. These books were set in Malaysia, offering great historical portrayals of life in British Malaya. The author originally intended to set Fox Wife here, but upon discovering foxes were not native to this area, she had to shift her gears.
Just like Night Tiger, this story is told from two perspectives. Each offering their own paths of the same tale.
First, we follow our female protagonist, Snow, who embarks on a journey to search for the man responsible for her daughter’s death. On this path, she becomes the caretaker of an old lady, whose family owns a famous Chinese medicine shop, capable of curing any illness, but was struck with a curse where their eldest sons die before they turn twenty-four.
On the other side of the story, we meet Bao, a detective in his sixties, given the case of identifying a girl found dead in snow, whose death is surrounded by the mention of foxes. Specifically, the huxian, foxes who can shapeshift into humans, very attractive ones at that.
From a young age, Bao could determine when a person told a lie or they were indeed telling the truth. This is obviously handy as a detective, so he’s sought out for this case. Yes, the man is a walking lie detector.
In the tangled web of uncovering this young woman’s identity, Bao somehow lands himself into the pursuit of Snow. Strangely enough, he finds that foxes are mentioned a lot while investigating this case. Having been intrigued by them since childhood, Bao has been out of reach, until now.
With Bao hot on her trail to investigate the mysterious occurrences of these deaths, Snow is on some wild adventure of her own. Her plan for revenge and the intense feelings of grief and anger takes Snow to northern China, then Japan and back.
This dual-timeline and narrative was fascinating to read with Bao following Snow’s trail until their paths finally crossed. Their stories intertwine, creating this narrative that ties everything together in the end.
Snow’s perspective was poignant, her grief and anger stemmed from the tragic loss of her child. Her narrative was vivid, painting the perfect scene for readers to visualise. In contrast, Bao’s point of view was in third-person, seemingly intended for readers to view the story from a more objective standpoint.
Reading his chapters, I followed him down the twists and turns of this case. It evolves from uncovering the identity of a girl, to tracking down who this mysterious lady the people he’s questioned are talking about. He’s a widow, a man who seems to carry many regrets and failures, which is likely why he’s determined to figure things out as a detective. To perhaps, now live for himself.
Like I mentioned above, I was brimming with excitement for this book’s release. Infusing folklore, historical fiction and mysteries is just the charm of Yangsze Choo’s story-telling. There’s just some magic that the author leaves in her writing, the words dancing with life on each page. With each line, I was fully immersed into this world, hooked onto the mystery unfolding right before my eyes.
Fox Wife really had me on the edge with its suspense, building with tension as answers that Snow and Bao kept seeking eventually had them meet. Their own secrets add to this tension, making me eager for the truth. I must admit, it took me three days to finish this book as the suspense was truly killing me.
As it’s historical fiction, the author has woven in bits of history, drawing in Japanese and Mongolian elements. The book offers a glimpse of life back in the early 1900s, including the social and cultural dynamics. A powerful lead female character is not new to the author, as her previous books always starred one. In this story, however, I found some of Snow’s inner dialogue to be slightly out of place. For some reason, it sounded a tad immature compared to who I expected her to be. This is just nit-picking, mind you.
This read was still enjoyable, I adore Yangsze Choo’s magic of incorporating humour into the characters’ inner dialogue. It’s witty and charming, and all the beautiful things that drew me into her works in the first place. The folklore and characters felt so real, as if these foxes really coexist with us humans, and are still with us today.
In all, The Fox Wife is a book that kept me the most intrigued this year. It’s about second chances, old loves, and the beauty of piecing together broken pieces when it seems impossible.
Ryan: The Library At Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Carolyn, blood-drenched and barefoot, walked alone down the two-lane stretch of blacktop that the Americans called Highway 78. Most of the Librarians, Carolyn included, had come to think of this road as the Path of Tacos, so-called in honour of a Mexican joint they snuck out to sometimes. The guacamole, she remembered, is really good. Her stomach rumbled. Oak leaves, reddish-orange and delightfully crunchy, crackled underfoot as she walked. Her breath puffed white in the predawn air. The obsidian knife she had used to murder Detective Miner lay nestled in the small of her back, sharp and secret.
She was smiling.
So goes the opening to Scott Hawkins’s The Library At Mount Char, the most authentically strange book I read this year.
Mount Char’s opening conveys its tone and general vibe far better than I ever could in a single paragraph. From the very first line, the reader understands that the book is, among many things, not going to be gentle. This is a dark tale, one involving murder and betrayal and death. But it’s not without thematic concerns, either. The book is, at its core, a story about family, and is rife with moments of intimacy and connection as well as suffering and pain. It explores the fraught relationships between abusive parents and victimised children, tracing the way household trauma can shape children into people all too similar to their abusers.
It’s also– initially– a very confusing book. As mentioned above, Carolyn– our main character, and one of the most interesting protagonists I’ve read in recent memory– lives in America but is not an American. She and the rest of her family are Librarians, with a capital L. When we first meet her, she’s walking home just after murdering someone. She doesn’t feel particularly bad about the murder.
These are a lot of questions to raise in such a short time, and the book’s opening stretch mainly spends its time unspooling scattered details that allow the reader to slowly piece together the fractured image of who Carolyn is, who her family is, and what the hell is even going on. This process of figuring stuff out may take a reader anywhere between a hundred pages to the entire length of the novel to accomplish. The book is technically a fantasy novel, owing to its many supernatural elements surrounding the titular Library, its Librarians and their inscrutable roles, but is really a mystery at heart. We come into the story far past its starting point, and must work to catch ourselves up using all the scraps of information available to us. A couple people are dead before the novel begins and many, many more will follow throughout its 500-ish pages. Interspersed between the main plot chapters are interludes, which provide snapshots of the childhoods and pasts of several different characters, expanding on motivations and delivering incredibly effective scenes of horror (because this is in part a book about abuse, remember).
If I’m making this book sound relentlessly dour or like a chore, worry not.
Because on top of all of that mystery and intrigue is a healthy layer of humour. The novel is at different times confounding, terrifying, heartbreaking, and exhilarating. It rarely sticks to a single mood for long, and one of Hawkins’ favourite emotions to work with is humour. The author crafts scenes very vividly, and the same strong voice used to deliver moments of stunning violence or inflicted trauma is also used to make you laugh. Mount Char is a book of contrasts, existing in the strange, dreamlike middle ground between emotions, the space where memories meld and ideas collide into fireworks of pure emotion. No one’s life is made only of negative or positive emotions, after all. Most of our memories live in the in-between.
I can’t really sum up in one page of writing what the book is about. It’s a complex creature, one of many different vibes and ideas all fighting for space. It’s a cliche thing to say, but the journey really is more important than the ending here. There is a central mystery, and there is a plot that drives towards a climax, but the stops along the way are far more enjoyable. I felt confused at times and delighted at others. It was not a smooth, frictionless experience but it was certainly never a boring one.
I would recommend it to anyone in the mood for something weird and uncategorisable. If it hits you like it has me, it’s a story you’ll be digesting for a long time. I can’t promise you a good time, but I can confirm that it’ll be an interesting one.
Natasha: Open City by Teju Cole
I discovered Teju Cole — or rather, Teju Cole discovered me — at a moment in time this year when it felt like there was too much noise around and inside of me. I was not able to sit still, much less commit myself to sitting down and reading for a prolonged time with a book. The world felt like it bombarded me with too many questions and not enough answers. Everything was blaring, and I needed to know what was happening constantly. The world was tipped off its axis multiple times and it felt as if I was responsible for figuring out why it was happening, lest I kept my eyes away and put myself in trouble.
I read nothing but articles and consumed videos during that time. There was also school and assignments, all the projects, essays, and presentations. Books quickly became something I simply did not have time for anymore, despite a small part of me wanting to go back to them, because they are and have always been my home. In this restlessness, Teju Cole found me, and with gentle hands, pulled me into his quiet and wandering narratives.
I first discovered Cole through his recent release, Tremor. Almost immediately, I clung onto his words like my life depended on it. Everything settled down in my mind and all around me, the noise slowed down. I read again, and my mind thanked me. Tremor patted me gently on the back, but Open City understood me and met me where I was rather than demanding my full attention all at once.
Open City is a quiet, meditative journey following the protagonist, a Nigerian-German psychiatrist named Julius living in New York City, as he wanders around the city, reflecting on his past, identity, his relationships, and the histories of the places he steps foot in. Through his walks around the city, Julius meditates on issues of race, immigration, and cultural identity. His thoughts jump from place to place, and linger on people and histories enough to brandish it on the readers as well.
It is a novel that is heavy on introspection, something I have always been very drawn to and something that I needed very much during that time. It was like a heavy blanket draped over my mind, a warm hand guiding me along to different places and showing me just how interconnected history is, a way of telling me that everything will be alright. History perseveres, we persevere despite anything and everything.
As I began to make my way through the book, I realised that Open City wasn’t asking me to search for answers inside of it. Instead, it was delivering me a lesson in sitting with questions, letting them breathe, and to accept that some things may never be resolved. It taught me how to be alright with that, especially at a time where I needed so many answers to so many different things. Julius’s reflections on identity, memory, and history echoed in me, and through his own meditations, I was also given permission to wander on my own inside my mind. I was allowed to think and to ask without begging for answers, to know that it is enough just to sit with things and let it unfold, or not unfold.
Open City is a book that lingers, not because of what happens, but rather what it makes you feel long after you are done with it. The overlap of the past and the present is a constant reminder, every place you go to and step foot into is a palimpsest of past histories, and our identities are very much shaped by where we come from as by where we are. In a world with too many questions and not enough answers, I believe Teju Cole has the exact remedy to that.
Trishta: Russian Roulette by Anthony Horowitz
When your business is death, the only death you should never consider is your own.
It can be said that I enjoy a good tragedy.
My taste in literary preference always lay most prominently with the genres of the unknown– the knife-edge thrill of a mystery, the fevered pitch of suspense leading up to a crescendo… splashed with a tinge of the esoteric, eerie or inexplicable. I want to be haunted. I want there to remain a sliver of a crack with every shut book. Just enough for that imagined world to burrow into my mind like a parasitic worm and live on through every vicarious breath I took, until it too becomes a familiar part shelved away amidst synapses of memory.
And so I play favourites with my bookshelves. Some pages are more worn than others. Some books more creased.
Ask me to pick, and I cannot.
I can, however, nominate one of my favourite rereads from this year– the tenth installation in Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series. It’s a relic from childhood, a traversed and well-loved path that plucks on all the right strings for a satisfying read. I have thoroughly loved every book in that series, but only one properly haunts me and that is the Russian Roulette.
Upon first glance, the general premise of a fourteen-year old recruited for the MI6 may seem underwhelming – which, fair enough, as it competes with the excessive myriad of adventure and spy books marketed towards a younger audience. Yet Horowitz’s masterfully written tension and clever action scenes are absolutely satiated with the bittersweet reality of what that actually entails for the protagonist.
Horowitz does not shy back from the ugly, gruesome parts. The trauma, the slow undoing… neither ignoring the injustice nor casualties, blending and blurring the lines between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, brutally stripping away the illusion of choice until what remains is nothing but agonizingly human. It’s a bold move. You step into the head of a child spy. You step into the head of a killer. You acclimatise. You see yourself as both and neither at the same time. And, in the end, you wonder where the line actually is.
Cut to Russian Roulette.
Whilst the majority of the series follows the perspective of Alex Rider, the tenth book is vastly different. It is set pre-series, with a glance into another character entirely– Yassen Gregorovich, contract killer and assassin. Yet he is not characterized shallowly as a villainous, antagonistic force. It is with raw hidden depth and sheer history that Horowitz builds him to be a perfect foil, making him utterly memorable.
Horowitz opens up Yassen’s backstory in an interesting way in Russian Roulette. By revealing his own weakness and inability to let go of his past. A journal, chronicling every step of the way that led to him becoming a cold-blooded contract killer. It’s a poignant, heart-wrenching, and surprisingly emotional book that does not hold back and packs quite a painful punch chapter by chapter. Every second drives in the point of his and Alex’s situations– parallel paths of incredible suffering and extremes that are as inescapable from the other from the very start. Trapped in different ways, on opposite sides of the glass, and chasing the same ghosts.
It forces you to agonize over the realization that there were many ways the story could have ended, and yet strangely enough, internalize its inevitability. Yassen is the same age as Alex when he loses his world too. But it’s precisely how clinically and gradually he’s stripped of everything that is stunningly excruciating. He’s given small glimpses of hope, a way out, only to have that taken away again and again. There’s a certain scene that’s reprised at the start and end of his arc that has really stuck with me for years. It’s this:
One bullet. Five empty chambers.
Click.
Five bullets. One empty chamber.
Click.
Two games of Russian Roulette. The first is forced, the other of his own volition. And so he chooses to seal his fate.
Horowitz gambled to empathise one of his most complex characters to his audience, and it paid off. The book is exceptional at balancing both intricate themes and gray areas that many novels often struggle to expand upon. I adore the style in which he writes, incorporating tension and beautifully written action scenes without ever forgetting the undercurrent of humanity– be it triumph, joy, grief, callousness, rage or all the shades in between. And I think about the question it raises.
What makes us choose evil?
All that sadness. All that anger. It is the smoke that gets into your eyes. If you do not blow it away, how can you hope to see?
Written By: Zhen Li, Ryan, Natasha and Trishta
Edited By: Ryan
