Christmas Books I
Books of the Year
The best and most overrated books of the year, chosen by some of the Spectator's regular contributors
Anita Brookner
My favourite novel of the year was Murray Bail's Eucalyptus (Harvill, £12.99), a tender and erudite account of an unorthodox courtship. I also liked William Boyd's Armadillo (Hamish Hamilton, £16.99) and Paul Bailey's Kitty and Virgil (Fourth Estate, £15.99), the first as sharp as a knife, the second sincere and thoughtful. An out- sider which received little attention was Jane Hamilton's The Childhood of a Prince (Doubleday, £9.99), an unexpectedly affect- ing story of a late developer. The French bestseller La Maladie de Sachs was a wel- come rebuke to those who gave scant pub- licity to its modest author. Better known names, on the other hand, suffered from too much publicity. Best rewards came from rereading Our Mutual Friend and Madame Bovary. On the agenda: Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, Simenon (again) and Richard Holmes's Coleridge.
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