The best fiction of 2006

December 03, 2006|Gail Caldwell

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"The Lay of the Land," by Richard Ford. Frank Bascombe, that inimitable caretaker of pococurante grace, is back -- driving around suburban New Jersey and musing about life and death. It's a novel of such supple ease you feel like putting your feet on the dashboard while he cruises.

"The Road," by Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy ventures into the unthinkable territory of a post-nuclear world where even the weather is dying. His portrait of a man and his son walking into nothingness has a Beckettian spareness that is both elegiac and profound.

"After This," by Alice McDermott. With a stylistic precision reminiscent of Virginia Woolf and a heart entirely her own, McDermott delivers a group portrait of one Irish-American family in the decades after World War II. Her sixth novel is a template for containing faith and sorrow in a story as beautiful as it is finely wrought.

"The Echo Maker," by Richard Powers. The brainy maestro of contemporary literature delivers an Oliver Sacks whodunit on the desolate plains of Nebraska. All this, and a story of the sandhill cranes' migration, too: "The Echo Maker" is a brilliant, passionate novel about memory, perception, and the grandeur of flight.

"The Accidental," by Ali Smith. Scottish writer Smith has delivered a charming and melodic novel about a stranger at the door, but don't let its charm fool you. With its gypsy tramp showing up to be all things to all her hosts, it's also a tautly considered riff on poetry, metaphysics, cinema, and human expectations -- one confident little shooting star against the night sky.

Happy holidays, everybody.