The decade in review

In replying to my “realistically pessimistic” prediction that 2010 probably won’t be a great year for books, Kerry (no last name) at Hungry Like the Woolf takes the approach of asking what literary years have been great, since “most years do not produce even one ‘book for the ages,’ even if most years produce plenty of very good books.” I am not at all sure about that afterthought. Most years produce a few books that might possibly repay a rereading. At all events, relying upon the Millions’ jury-deliberated list of the Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far), Kerry nominates 2001 as a very good year.

Below is my list of the decade’s best English-language fiction. If a year’s greatness is measured by the number of excellent titles published then Kerry is surely right: 2001 was the best literary year of the decade. Seven first-rate works of fiction were published—or important works of fiction, at least—although only Richard Russo’s Empire Falls scored a place on my list of the decade’s five best. For my money, though, the most distinguished year of the last ten was 2004 when all four of the year’s most memorable fiction are keepers.

2000
Saul Bellow, Ravelstein
Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Linda Grant, When I Lived in Modern Times
Francine Prose, Blue Angel
Philip Roth, The Human Stain

2001
Malcolm Bradbury, To the Hermitage
Robert Cohen, Inspired Sleep
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Philip Roth, The Dying Animal
Richard Russo, Empire Falls
Tim Winton, Dirt Music

2002
Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
Michael Frayn, Spies
Gary Shteyngart, The Russian Debutante’s Notebook
William Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

2003
Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire
Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal
Steven Millhauser, The King in the Tree

2004
Ha Jin, War Trash
Cynthia Ozick, Heir to the Glimmering World
Colm Toibin, The Master
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

2005
J. M. Coetzee, Slow Man
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Francine Prose, A Changed Man
Zadie Smith, On Beauty
William T. Vollmann, Europe Central

2006
Martin Amis, House of Meetings
William Boyd, Restless
Ken Kalfus, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Claire Messud, The Emperor’s Children
Richard Powers, The Echo Maker

2007
None

2008
Peter Carey, His Illegal Self
Cynthia Ozick, Dictation
Richard Price, Lush Life
Francine Prose, Goldengrove
Marilynne Robinson, Home
Tim Winton, Breath

2009
Zoë Heller, The Believers
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
William Trevor, Love and Summer
Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger

Update: In a feature for the Second Pass on books from the past decade that have been unfairly overlooked, Lisa Peet recommends William Boyd’s Any Human Heart (2002). Although I prefer his four-years-later spy novel Restless, which grew out of the earlier novel, a good case can be made for his 500-page journal of the twentieth century. It is the only book (so far) that I regret leaving off the above list.