Joining the rest of the world, here's a personal take on the best (and worst) books of 2005. With one exception (the first), they are listed in alphabetical order.
The Best:
Saturday, Ian McEwan — When I was required to pick one and only one book for my Blogcritics selection for book of the year, this was it. If you're talking about books for general consumption, this work walks away with best of the year. Although I'm not a huge fan of novels, I still concur with my initial description of this book as a masterpiece. Although the basic storyline is a Saturday in the life of a London neurosurgeon that goes horribly wrong, the vulnerability of post-9/11 life and the debate over the still-on-the-horizon Iraq war provide a separate undercurrent of tension.
Accelerando, Charles Stross — Rick Kleffel of the Agony Column perhaps best summarized this book, saying it is "the kind of science fiction that kicks sand in your face and pounds the living shit out of your brain." Accelerando was far and away the most innovative SF work of the year as it looks at the human race and society as we confront the singularity. This is a collection of previously published novelettes presented for the first time in unified form in book format. It is, however, for those with a taste for SF and probably doesn't have broad enough interest to be book of the year.
My Friend Leonard, James Frey — Were it not for Joan Didion, this would have been memoir of the year. Although not as strong as its predecessor, A Million Little Pieces, Frey's stream of consciousness writing again makes you feel what he's going through as he struggles to resume normal life after years of drug and alcohol addiction and abuse.
The Great Mortality, John Kelly — History for those who don't like to read history. Kelly accomplishes the near-impossible: making reading about the "Black Death" entertaining and relevant.
The Society of Others, William Nicholson — A close runner up in the general fiction category. The novel is a Kafkaesque, existential tale of the ordeals of a young unnamed Brit unexpectedly alone in an unnamed totalitarian society in eastern Europe. The book is not only a journey of self-awareness and self-discovery, it looks at those involved in and caught in the middle of the politics and political movements of terrorism and counter-terrorism. While the book at times requires extreme suspension of belief (although one wonders if it is not, in part, satirical) and the ending is puzzling, its strengths are far greater than its weaknesses,
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
Tim, Maybe you're the best one to answer your own question: "Why does it seem that if a `literary star' writes science fiction, even bad science fiction, the `pundits' hail it?" -- because you yourself are the pundit who is hailing Cloud Atlas, and there's a whole, whole WHOLE lot more science fiction (not bad, just hard to read; I'm looking at you, Sonmi-451) in that book than in the Ishiguro book, and there's no science whatsoever to the Roth book. Just because a book is a dystopia doesn't mean it's science fiction.
Ishiguro has a scientific theme, but no real science in the plot.
Sorry you didn't like it. I found it very emotionally gripping, and a powerfully subtle statement on class and exploitation.