THE BEST READS OF 1996

Books that somehow made me want to put
everything else on hold and read

Novels
1. Alias Grace / Margaret Atwood
2. About Schmidt / Louis Begley
3. Reading in the Dark / Seamus Deane
4. A Spell of Winter / Helen Dunmore
5. The Blue Flower / Penelope Fitzgerald
6. Never Far From Nowhere / Andrea Levy
7. Fall On Your Knees / Ann-Marie MacDonald
8. Fugitive Pieces / Anne Michaels
9. The Moor’s Last Sigh / Salman Rushdie
10. The Story of the Night / Colm Tóibín

Stories
1. The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant / Mavis Gallant
2. Selected Stories / Alice Munro
3. After Rain / William Trevor

Poetry
1. The Spirit Level / Seamus Heaney
2. The Thing in the Gap-stone Stile / Alice Oswald

Nonfiction
1. Angela’s Ashes / Frank McCourt
2. Henry James: The Young Master (Random House, 1996) / Sheldon M. Novick
3. Bad Land: An American Romance / Jonathan Raban