Favourite Reads of 2021: The Top Three
While I read many amazing books, there were a few that really, truly, deeply, struck me. In all honesty, I am horrible at ranking and therefore the whole experience was quite difficult. But then with these three, I knew exactly that they had to be at the very top. And with the last one, I also knew that it was the book that struck me most. So without further ado, here is my top three!
3. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything
“I refuse to be nothing…”
In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.
When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.
After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.
She Who Became the Sun had everything I could have possible asked for. There was history, there was capital-D Drama, there was stunning world-building and beautiful character development. I couldn't have adored Zhu more, with that ferocious desire to claim a destiny and future, and with the sly humour of someone who had seen the worst and was surprised the best was also possible. Full of stunning prose and beautiful imagery, She Who Became the Sun quickly became the book of the summer for me!
One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else...
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.
Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...
With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.
Where to start with Nightbitch? It is a riotous novel full of growling, raw meat, bloody fangs and gentle licks. It is a call to arms and meanwhile also feels like a lullaby. I was so utterly gripped by it from the beginning, amazed and slightly scared. It lit something inside me that had been slumbering a little. It is the kind of book I'll hold close to my heart and gift to whoever seems in need of a fire-starter themselves.
Ranking is hard, but it wasn't hard to pick an ultimate favourite, the book that completely blew me away in 2021.
1. The Actual Star by Monica Byrne
The Actual Star takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents —telling three powerful tales a thousand years apart, all of them converging in the same cave in the Belizean jungle.
Braided together are the stories of a pair of teenage twins who ascend the throne of a Maya kingdom; a young American woman on a trip of self-discovery in Belize; and two dangerous charismatics vying for the leadership of a new religion and racing toward a confrontation that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.
The Actual Star is a feast of ideas about where humanity came from, where we are now, and where we’re going—and how, in every age, the same forces that drive us apart also bind us together.
I have been a fan of Monica Byrne's ever since I read The Girl in the Road and I was patiently waiting for a new book to amaze me. And yet I wasn't quite ready for The Actual Star, even though I had followed some of Byrne's hints on Twitter. The Actual Star is many things all at once, harsh but also gentle, sumptuous and yet sparse, chilling and yet blazingly hot. Byrne seemingly effortlessly hops across three timelines to tell us stories of self-discovery, self-knowledge, self-sacrifice, and love and loss. Never before have I read about a future so clearly thought out, so well-described that it feels pre-destined to happen. Not one of the timelines feels extraneous, each weaves together so finely that they become almost inseparable.
I read The Actual Star during a time when my own anxiety was spiraling and nothing felt entirely stable or safe. Byrne's novel gave me a space into which to escape, a space which wasn't necessarily safer but in which loss, hurt, fear, and love also intertwined and formed a grand narrative that helped ground me, that gave me a confidence I was lacking myself. It is quite simply a beautiful novel, a remarkable achievement. I can't wait to re-read The Actual Star in the future and plunge further and further into the intricate web Byrne has spun.
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