Bonnie Kistler's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I’m not at all a weepy person, but this novel broke my heart in two different places and literally left me sobbing.

Tom Kettle is a retired Dublin detective trying to live a quiet life by the sea when a case from his past rears its horribly ugly face. Poor Tom is slowly descending into dementia and is not only losing parts of his memory but can no longer be sure of what he sees in front of him. Having experienced dementia in my own family, this aspect of the story stirred painful and poignant memories of my own.

What Tom’s meandering mind does finally reveal is that both he and his deceased wife suffered sex abuse while in the care of Catholic orphanages. This is the second heartbreak I experienced––that such brutality could be inflicted upon helpless children by so-called men of God is horrific beyond belief. But Sebastian Barry tells it all with such a deft touch that there’s nothing sensational or exploitative in the story. It’s a slow, almost gentle reveal that it hit me doubly hard when I realized exactly what was going on.

PS: I heartily recommend the audiobook, because the narrator’s Irish accent really transports you to the setting of this amazing novel.

In college, I specialized in the 19th-century English novel, so it was a special pleasure to read about William Harrison Ainsworth, a lesser novelist of the era who hobnobs with the likes of Dickens and Thackeray. It was laugh-out-loud fun to spend time in the literary salons imagined by the author, who has such a delightful gift for satire.

But there are so many other things going on in this sprawling novel—serious questions about British colonialism, the slave trade, and the giant class divides. And underlying all of it are questions of fraud – the actual historical case of a fraudster pretending to be heir to a baronetcy; the literary fraud perpetrated by novelists and other fabulists; and the fraud of hiding one’s own true nature from one’s self. And I couldn’t help seeing a parallel to today’s political climate and the mystery of how the masses can so easily be taken in by a charlatan.

I already knew Zadie Smith to be a brilliant novelist, but now I know she’s a brilliant performer, too! She narrates the audiobook, and not only is her voice wonderfully expressive, but she has an incredible command of so many different accents – Scottish, Jamaican, northern English (upper class and working class), not to mention the Queen’s English. (Are we saying the King’s English now?)

This novel is irresistible to anyone who writes for a living. It’s dishy, often hilarious, and confirms everything we always suspected about the publishing world.

It also tackles the hot-button issue of cultural appropriation in a thoughtful yet highly entertaining way. It sometimes felt like I was watching a train wreck as the narrator careens from one bad decision to another, but it was thoroughly mesmerizing.

In my own writing, I sometimes wrestle with the question of whether I should stray from my own lane and depict an experience that I haven’t personally lived. But I believe in the power of imagination, and I think it’s important to try to put ourselves in others’ shoes – assuming if it can be done with sensitivity and an authentic voice.