Following are the other finalists Roth beat out for this year’s PEN/Faulkner:

• All Aunt Hagar’s Children, by Edward P. Jones
• The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, by Amy Hempel
• Twilight of the Superheroes, by Deborah Eisenberg
• The Dead Fish Museum, by Charles D’Ambrosio

• The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, by Gordon Dahlquist: This is sexy, literary science fiction. After young Celeste Temple receives a letter from her fiancé, in which he ends their engagement, she sets off on a Victorian adventure that’s sometimes convoluted but is ultimately fun and engaging. She uncovers a secret, bizarre society bent on creating the titular glass books—creations so devious and overpowering that the quest for their possession results in scandalous murders, sexual scandals, and at least one high-speed chase via dirigible. Dahlquist’s imagination is ever so twisted, and his novel is a stylized spin through a unique fantasy world.
• Saturday, by Ian McEwan: I began this novel immediately after putting down a poorly written and unsatisfying vampire story. I still remember being struck by the strength and clarity of McEwan’s prose—a vast improvement after the Dracula tale. Far from such sensational story lines, McEwan’s novel depicts a day in the life of a London neurosurgeon—a day in which his comfortable, complacent life takes an unexpected turn. The result is first-rate contemporary literature.
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel: A memoir presented in the style of a graphic novel, this book is a subtle, provocative, intelligent look back at Bechdel’s adolescence. Author and artist of the syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip, Bechdel is no stranger to tough issues. But her vivid, unflinching depiction of her father’s death (was it suicide? was he gay? was there more to the story?) results in a very compelling, insightful autobiography.
• Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, by James Bradley: This is the amazing account of nine U.S. airmen who were shot down near Iwo Jima in World War II. All but one of the men are captured by the Japanese, and they endure horrific neglect and torture before dying while imprisoned. The lone man who escapes (one George H.W. Bush) eventually becomes President of the United States. It’s a made-for-Hollywood story—that is, until Bradley details the war crimes perpetrated by U.S. forces in that same war. It’s sobering, respectable, and evenhanded—an engrossing read.

• Costa Novel Award: Restless, by William Boyd
• Costa Children’s Book Award: Set in Stone, by Linda Newbery
• Costa Poetry Award: Letter to Patience, by John Haynes
• Costa Biography Award: Keeping Mum, by Brian Thompson

• Newbery Medal: The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron
• Caldecott Medal: Flotsam, by David Wiesner
• Carnegie Medal: Mo Willems (author/illustrator)
• Geisel Medal: Zelda and Ivy: The Runaways, by Laura McGee Kvasnosky
• Sibert Medal: Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon, by Catherine Thimmesh

The ALA’s children’s book awards present the perfect opportunity each year to grab a stack of books for the kids in your life—books that are certain to be winners in their hearts and minds.

This is just my opinion, of course. Naturally, I didn’t read every book published last year. And other book critics would disagree with me. (Many critics hailed the supremacy of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, while I was fairly nonplussed about the fuss.) But The Road has greatness on multiple levels: a story that is under-wrought and overwhelming; pacing and plotting that are perfection; characters that are timeless and yet painfully mortal; and page after page of writing that is so accomplished that it begs to be read again and again. I couldn’t get enough of uncounted passages in The Road, and found myself re-reading entire paragraphs—for the simplicity and power of the dialogue, for certain astounding plot developments, and for the sheer beauty of McCarthy’s voice. This is not a book written for the sake of prettiness. It is a tight, austere, harrowing tale about the death of the world that happens to be gorgeous in its horror and its humanity. Consider the following excerpt:

Beyond a crossroads in that wilderness they began to come upon the possessions of travelers abandoned in the road years ago. Boxes and bags. Everything melted and black. Old plastic suitcases curled shapeless in the heat. Here and there the imprint of things wrested out of the tar by scavengers. A mile on and they began to come upon the dead. Figures half mired in the blacktop, clutching themselves, mouths howling. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Take my hand, he said. I don’t think you should see this.

The Road is the account of a nameless father and son who are making their way down an unnamed road in an unknown country at an unspecified time. Ash covers everything and is carried in every gust of wind. The father pushes a shopping cart filled with their only possessions—dwindling food stores, threadbare clothing, and a gun with two bullets. The sun orbits a dimmed horizon, which appears to be obscured by a nuclear winter. History, animals, and vegetation are dead, as is the vast majority of the human race. The goal of the pair is simply to survive … and to keep heading south along the road to possible warmth. On their journey, we glimpse their struggle (illustrated by ghastly scenes like the one excerpted above), urge their survival, and embrace their tenuous yet tenacious bond as father and son and solitary travelers in a silent but perilous world. When I finished their story, I was stunned by its purity and power. I was amazed by McCarthy’s skill, and at his ability to simultaneously convey such fragile hope among such harsh hopelessness. And then I closed the cover of a book I knew was unlikely to forget.

Joan Didion is at her best in The Year of Magical Thinking, an unusual memoir in which she applies her uniquely acute observation skills to her own grief in the wake of the deaths of her husband and daughter. What makes this book different than her others is the the raw emotion that courses through her spare prose. Although her usual reserve is apparent, she invites the reader far closer to her point of view than she has ever done before.

A friend asked if she could borrow this book when I was finished, but—halfway through it—I had to admit that I wasn’t going to be able to part with my copy, even if it were only to be for a few weeks.

I believe this is an essential read for everyone’s bookshelf.

I’ve had The Accidental sitting on my desk for the past couple months. I put it there after finishing it, with the intention of reviewing Ali Smith’s remarkable novel. But this tale of a family on holiday in the English countryside is so distinct, enigmatic, and powerful that it has kept me guessing and wondering since its end—the way only certain books resonate within you and, unlike most novels on bookstore shelves, ask to be remembered.

The Accidental centers around a mysterious conceit: A woman unknown to an upper-middle-class family arrives at their vacation home one day; she exerts an unseen-and-inexplicable influence on each family member; she stays with them for days and leaves them all changed in unbelievable ways. “Unbelievable” is a good word for describing The Accidental. Smith’s writing is deep, clean, and beautiful. The story’s impact is simple yet lasting. But the central pillar of the novel—that a stranger would be welcomed as a largely unquestioned and ongoing guest in a family’s home—is unbelievable. The woman isn’t magic. She isn’t an expert at mind control. She’s merely a displaced woman named Amber. Or is she? In Smith’s hands, the implausibility surrounding Amber’s new place in this fictional household actually becomes a thematic mirror in the final quarter of the novel—with subtle, satisfying brilliance.

Amber’s arrival—pregnant with so many consequences—reminds me of the arrival of the ghostly, strange title character in Toni Morrison’s stunning classic, Beloved (perhaps the best book of the last 25 years). The comparisons don’t end there. Like Beloved, Amber establishes and maintains a spooky hold over the inhabitants of the story. Like Morrison’s, Smith’s prose is vibrant and nearly perfect, imbuing her characters with so much depth and life. The character of Beloved, however, is more otherworldly than Amber, and Morrison’s novel is rooted in the horrors of slavery rather than the dysfunctions of a particular well-off English family.

Beloved makes a weightier, more refined read—and is certainly a singular literary experience. However, The Accidental is still worthy of the comparison. It begs to be savored and remembered, and time will show us where it stands among the giants of contemporary literature.

Set in 1940s wartime London, The Night Watch is the quietly engaging story of four survivors of the Blitz, whose paths cross at key junctures in their lives. “It’s a dark novel of blacked-out streets and bomb shelters,” author Sarah Waters says in an interview on Meet The Author. “It’s about people’s relatively quiet but intense emotional journeys.”

The Night Watch story moves backward in time through three sections, set first in 1947, then 1944, then 1941. The reverse structure of the novel allows Waters to leave important questions about her characters hanging—at least for a time. Once the reader understands that answers unfold through action in retrospect, as opposed to narrative asides, the novel becomes a kind of sophisticated psychological puzzle. The effect is so enjoyable that I shared the response of a few other reviewers: Once I finished, I wanted to start over again to discover how all of the pieces fit together.

“The moment you’ve finished the last beautiful paragraph, you have to turn immediately back to page one,” says children’s author Jacqueline Wilson in the Guardian Unlimited. “Two readings of a 440-page novel should last you for a very happy week.”

Waters already has quite a following based on three previous novels she has described as “lesbian Victorian romps.” With Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet, and Affinity, she also racked up an impressive list of literary awards. In addition, both Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet were made into BBC miniseries that are worth a spot on your Netflix list (if you have such a thing).

Even though Waters is mining new historical territory with The Night Watch, she hasn’t left behind her interest in lesbian—and gay—characters. Like her earlier work, it chronicles stories and characters that haven’t previously been committed to print, and does so with a quality and literary style that ensures her work an audience outside of any single niche.

If you haven’t yet discovered Sarah Waters, you are in for a treat. And if you have? Enjoy The Night Watch.

Sy Montgomery is crazy about animals. She’s stalked man-eating tigers in India, cavorted with legendary pink dolphins in the Amazon, and been emotionally restored by the touch of giant spiders. That’s just the tip of the fauna-packed iceberg floating through Montgomery’s incredible life. But in The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood, this naturalist and animal lover introduces us not to some exotic, sought-after species but to her very own 750-pound pet pig. It’s the warm, winning biography of a hog. It will make you laugh out loud, relish the pets in your life, and get a pig-sized lump in your throat. (Finishing it in an airport terminal two days ago, I had to choke back tears to preserve my considerable masculinity in the eyes of my fellow travelers.)

Montgomery and her husband, author Howard Mansfield, adopted a small, sick runt of a pig at a time in their lives when loss and grief were bearing down on them. Montgomery’s beloved father was dying of cancer. Writing what was to become Walking with the Great Apes, she was struggling with writer’s block. And they were also facing the loss of their cherished home. Despite these struggles, the couple rescued a diseased piglet, named him Christopher Hogwood (after the symphony conductor), and nursed him back to health. However, Chris was not ever destined to be dinner. Mansfield is Jewish and Montgomery is vegetarian, so this lucky pig—one among tens of millions—was forever spared the supper table.

What’s for dinner? Not this “other white meat”! Instead, Chris lives for dinner. He gulps and gorges and gobbles his way through this book. He grows from a runt into a 14-year-old, 750-pound porcine celebrity (of sorts). While he’s grunting and noshing, he’s also a blessing and best friend to Montgomery and the herd of humans who come to adore him. Montgomery relates with wry wit and unabashed glee the gargantuan personality of her giant pal. Her writing is warm and approachable. She describes Christopher as others might relate a fond family member. In the end, she not only gives to readers the story of the life and times of Christopher Hogwood—a pig who changes lives and captures the minds of his entire community—but she opens up her own life and heart in these pages.

And Sy Montgomery has a big, beautiful heart. It beats in her words, pulses in the scenes she presents, and infuses this small book with a grand, invigorating, inspiring sense of life. Consider only one of her encounters with Chris. After unwittingly feeding Mr. Hogwood a bucket of tomato sauce (which, she discovers, is too acidic for pigs), she finds him lying on his side on the barn floor, incredibly ill. He is bloated. He won’t eat. He can’t get up. So Montgomery drops all other concerns and becomes an instant nurse, spending days ministering to her pig. She even curls up behind him and spoons him on the straw-strewn floor of the freezing barn. Her husband covers her with a blanket, and she spends the night with her (comparatively) tiny arms around her massive pet.

This scene epitomizes The Good Good Pig. With care and in one beautifully presented moment after another, Sy Montgomery embraces her pig, her friends, and her readers. I finished this book with the sense that I’d not only been privileged to glimpse the unusual, oversized, and sometimes outlandish life of someone who happened to be a hog, but that I was able to appreciate his story more because it was seen and remembered through the eyes of a truly remarkable person. Not since Babe’s Farmer Hoggett has there been such a champion of all things porcine. And in the spirit of Babe, this book will leave you wanting to say, “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

It’s said that fiction mirrors life. Here are two stories—Anansi Boys, a fiction by Neil Gaiman, and Rocket Boys, a nonfiction by Homer H. Hickam, Jr.—in which a single pivotal decision propels life in a far different direction than ever imagined and carries with it far-reaching consequences. Not only do these two tales commence in similar fashion, but they finish with a flourish in like fashion, too. They are satisfying and well-told, intricate and humorous.

Neil Gaiman took the plain cloth of an ancient African folktale—Anansi the Spider, who by trickery acquired all the tales of the world—and finely embroidered upon it to produce a fantasy of cosmic proportions. The result is Anansi Boys, a lighthearted well-written jaunt with twists, turns, and at least four interwoven plots. Take one dull, uninspired, earnest, hardworking young man, Fat Charlie, add to him a single impulsive action, and watch the sequence of events unfold and overlap in flaming Technicolor. He unwillingly meets challenges and interesting characters—some gracious and accommodating and others cold and ruthless. Indeed, a villain provides one of the highlights of this book, with his distinctive quirks and rather gruesome habit of butchering the mother tongue.

It is especially great fun to read to read Neil Gaiman’s observant sidetracks. He drops them in one paragraph at a time and then carries on with savoir faire. These snippets are easy to miss but, like nuggets of gold, priceless. This one, for example, is characteristic of his writing style and sly humor:

It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it’s true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discover each other in the same unlike teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It’s not even coincidence. It’s just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.

Rocket Boys, by contrast, although it reads a bit like science fiction, is all autobiography interwoven with science and technology, and a little more serious when contrasted with the improbable humor of Anansi Boys.

Homer H. Hickam, Jr., then a small-town teenager, writes in retrospect of building rockets from the first embryo stages to winning the National Science Fair in Indianapolis three years later. Raised in the shadow of the coal-mining industry in West Virginia, where life was hard and money scarce, he and his five friends worked together to build a rocket that not only would fly but would have a basis in scientific and mathematical theory. From algebra—where the author displayed moderate incompetence—to trigonometry, calculus, differential equations, and beyond, these six young men fired the whole town with their enthusiasm, and eventually all attended college.

Hickam’s self-deprecating humor is always evident in Rocket Boys—from his fights with his brother to his success, or lack thereof, with the opposite sex. What shines, however, is his persistence to learn about the science of rocketry. The book is a beacon for anyone who dares to try something new and different. The tale bears reflection—and not all is fun and games.

Both authors, Neil Gaiman and Homer Hickam, display an ease with pen to paper and a talent for imbedding their characters in impossible situations, and again extracting them from the same situations. For those who like their tales well-spiced with humor, quirky characters, and multiple storylines, these two books make fine reading and the pace never slows.

The quote in this review is from Anansi Boys.