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Hi friends,
Welcome back for another round of my highly subjective Best Books of 2023 bracket! Today, we have six titles facing off for the honor of making it to the top three, which makes this the semifinals already! Here’s where we stand so far:
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All right, it’s a gloomy day in Brooklyn; let’s talk about some books.
ROUND TWO:
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin vs. Homie by Danez Smith
I so wish I didn’t have to put these two head to head because they are truly in leagues of their own, but so it goes. When I think of comparing these two books, I think of scope: Homie, though completely wonderful, simply feels small in comparison to the sprawling saga that is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. What I love about Homie is how it does so much emotionally with such a small space, as a testament to all the people and places the poet loves, but we don’t necessarily get to know those people as closely as we do when we follow their lives for decades like we do in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. At their core, both books are centered around friendship, which is why this feels slightly unfair because a novel is a completely different vehicle for exploring the nuances of that friendship and, in this case, the worlds that are created as a result. While I loved feeling like a witness to Danez Smith’s highly personal world, I felt fully inside not only Sam and Sadie’s real lives, but also each of the worlds they created in their games. This expansiveness is why I’m moving Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow forward, though it’s with a heavy heart that I leave Homie behind.
Happy Place by Emily Henry vs. Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Something I’ve learned about myself and my media consumption habits lately is that fundamentally, I am not a hater but a liker. I like to enjoy things, and I am fairly easily pleased! Unless I am specifically approaching something with skepticism, I’m more than happy to turn the critical thinking part of my brain off for the sake of entertainment. Some books are better suited for this than others—in my initial read of Happy Place, I was perfectly happy to be along for the ride. I love stories that feature big friend groups, particularly ones in the same phase of life as me, so I was content to overlook the fact that the secondary characters often fell a little flat. I also love rooting for a good romance, especially when we’re more concerned with the characters’ chemistry than the fact that it’s completely insane to (spoiler) abandon a neurosurgery degree that you’re hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for to become a…potter? Details, details! Suspend disbelief for love! I still had a great time with Happy Place, but as many of my more critical friends were quick to point out, there are definitely some holes.
Yellowface, on the other hand, is meant to be insane. Yellowface is written from the perspective of a hater and a grasper and an all-around kind of terrible person, and there’s something so delicious about being inside her head and watching from behind your fingers as she continues to make shocking decisions. As a commentary on race and privilege in the publishing industry, Yellowface ultimately also has more to say in general than an unconcerned-with-reality rom-com. I have more I want to say about Yellowface still, which is why I’m officially moving it forward to the finals.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel vs. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This one is TOUGH. The hard thing about this bracket is that a book like Sea of Tranquility would have easily beat out so many others on this list, but against Never Let Me Go it’s a lot less of a wash. These two are similar in genre, and both stayed on my mind for a long time after reading, though for different reasons. As a time-travel story, I spent days puzzling through the events of Sea of Tranquility and how each action seemed perfectly placed to affect not just the story, but also our understanding of time, space, and free will. It presented a fascinating intellectual question that, in its narrative execution, could also be appreciated as a masterful work of literature. It’s still one of my favorite books of the year, but its impact isn’t quite on the scale of Never Let Me Go.
The way that Never Let Me Go continues to take up space in my brain can only be described as a haunting. For a sci-fi/speculative fiction novel, it’s eerie how easily the reader finds themselves settling into daily life at Hailsham, how normalized and almost comfortable it is as a setting in which we’re happy to ignore the many, many red flags about the world beyond. And though a world in which (spoilers!!!) clone children are raised and groomed for the sole purpose of donating their organs does still feel far-fetched (for now), their treatment by society is all too familiar: othered, subhuman, and ultimately disposable. One of the most terrifying parts is realizing how easily we might agree with this thinking had we not spent the whole book watching these characters grow up, and yet the central question of whether or not the children have a soul is still not one I feel fully prepared to answer by the end of the book. It’s a question I’m not sure I’ll ever have a definitive answer for, but one I know I’ll be pondering for a very long time.
There you have it, my top three finalists! Come back tomorrow to see how the final three rank and check out a brief list of honorable mentions for books that I loved in 2023 but which didn’t make the bracket.
Thanks for reading, chat more soon!
❤ Catherine
Catherine Thoms 