Every New Year’s in Berlin turns into a scene from The Purge, thanks to widely available fireworks, competitive German mentality and a two-day relaxation of legislation that allows every child and adult to attempt to blow up as many street corners as they like. The last two years have been semi-controlled thanks to covid-19—not that you would have noticed in my neighbourhood—but they were back with a vengeance to see out 2022. My poor cat cowered in a little nook I fashioned out of my coat and his favourite toy fish, and at three p.m. on the 31st my local späti guy greeted me with raised eyebrows and told me I was brave to be wandering the streets this close to sunset. Get thee to a bar, or house party. Anyway I still have a fresh new arrival’s delight in Berlin’s NYE and I like to scurry up the street with my heart pounding. 2022 was a very awful year in unforeseen and unanticipated ways, so now I have more appreciation for a growing sense of danger. I like to watch flashes of flame and move in quick scuttles toward safety. I like to see devastation approach and have the opportunity to dodge. Here are some books in which danger lingers around you like a cloud and sometimes—thank you God—does not descend. Of course, often it hits you like a punch. But at least you had a chance to brace.
I spent much of 2022 working on a project I hope to be able to tell you about soon and it meant that I asked everyone I met: what’s the scariest thing you have ever read? In an attempt to top the scariest thing I have ever read (spoiler: I didn’t, and it’s in THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING), I embarked on a great survey of horror fiction, which was how I found Sara Gran’s COME CLOSER. COME CLOSER’s plot is fiendishly simple: Amanda, a professional middle-class woman with a happy life and husband, starts doing strange things. She leaves her boss an obscene note; she starts shoplifting; she rediscovers discarded destructive habits. Puzzled as to her own bad behaviour, she delves into demonology and considers the possibility that she might be possessed. The book considers the possibility she might be possessed. A demon considers the possibility that she might be possessed. This book is a fast, delightful ride, and a lot of the thrill comes from Amanda herself, who secretly enjoys watching her careful life fall apart. There is a scene with a cigarette that I will never forget. This book is a road accident waiting to happen. Like the old cliché, you can’t look away.
(buy @ bookshop)My favourite book that I read last year was, drumroll please, Mario Puzo’s THE GODFATHER. Guys: THE GODFATHER fuckin rules. It is a wild ride in which the event you all probably know about because everyone’s seen that series of movies which I haven’t seen and now probably won’t because having become obsessed with THE GODFATHER means that I’m convinced only my vision could accurately bring it to life, especially compared to that hack Francis Ford Whoever—anyway, that one event kicks off a complex intrigue of family dynamics, politics, revenge, resentment and antics country-wide, hemisphere-wide. I could probably have guessed that before reading the novel itself, but here are some things I couldn’t have guessed: THE GODFATHER is wildly romantic, even in the extremely strange and misogynistic plotline that literally involves a woman with a broken vagina. THE GODFATHER is chock-a-block full of writing that made me cackle in glee, as though your slightly wildcard uncle has leaned over to you at an otherwise boring gathering and said, “Hey, sonny, wanna hear a story?” and then not stopped talking for like eight hours and you are enthralled. THE GODFATHER solved a lifelong problem for me, vis-a-vis the fact that there are not many men in my life and I am always politely baffled as to what men talk about with one another when they are alone. THE GODFATHER handily explains that mostly they talk about organised crime. THE GODFATHER has all the Catholicism, 20th century New York, and Sicilian daze you’d want. When people cross you or your beloved characters, you get to quietly and coolly murder them. What a time.
(buy it @ bookshop, where the new edition has a foreword by FFW)Muriel Spark’s 1974 novella THE ABBESS OF CREWE allegorises the events of Watergate, transforming the setting into a British convent led by the charismatic and dangerous Abbess, once Sister Alexandra. Being a small idiot born some twenty years after Watergate, I was not familiar with many of the details and had to revert to googling which characters aligned with which historical figures once I’d gotten past my enlightening “ah, the Abbess is Nixon” breakthrough. But this book—my first of Spark’s work, though she’s been on my list for years—doesn’t need to be grounded in its historical context to pack a punch. Deeply sinister and written with the clarity and song of a bell, THE ABBESS OF CREWE creates its own little net to trap you within for longer than its slim pile of pages demands. Just don’t blame me if you come out feeling the sexual tension between Nixon and Kissinger.
(buy it @ ebay, where a range of great covers await)THE SEAPLANE ON FINAL APPROACH, Rebecca Rukeyser’s feverish and brilliant debut novel, is the kind of horny that you know is going to end in disaster. Teenage Mira heads to Alaska to spend a summer ostensibly working at Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge and actually developing her theory of Sleaze, with an eye to seducing her cousin. Have I won you over yet? Let me add that Rukeyser’s writing is lovely and hilarious and that Mira herself has a Holden Caulfied-esque charm that shot her high up my list of most beloved heroines. I think this novel didn’t get the attention it deserved because it is one of those slightly old-fashioned things (and something so close to my heart): a novel not of ideas but of Idea; a philosophical tract that also offers keen incision into the hearts of teenage girls, the problem of nostalgia, and what makes a man Sexy (the answer is deeply specific). But it did get enough attention for Phoebe Bridgers to name it one of her favourite novels of 2022. So you know. Run, don’t walk.
(buy @ bookshop)ALSO CONSIDER: Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments which I am halfway through, you will never think about the flâneur in the same way ever again; the frightening truth about desire; if you are interested in that scariest moment in The Once and Future King, it’s in the final book where Mordred is waiting behind the door; the bit in Fellowship where Aragorn and the Hobbits meet and have a long and complicated discussion about whether they can trust each other, beautifully summed up by my favourite book-ish podcast; “DANGER! DANGER!”
OH AND BTW: I meant it about that question. What is the scariest thing you have ever read? Write back and tell me and I’ll blow you a kiss. Thanks.