Harry’s Books of the Year 2023

Some books resonate. Some books hold you still and plunge you in. Others do all that, and then stay with you, for weeks, months, reminding you that you’re not quite ready to move on, that their book is one to float in your consciousness when you wake up, when you walk to work, when you chop your vegetables. These books will never gather dust in the bank of Harry. The finale of Saramago’s Death at Intervals, the title short story in Tove Ditlevsen’s The Trouble With Happiness, the depth of Claire Keegan’s characters in So Late in the Day, all have magnitudes of staying power. I laughed, I cried, I wept uncontrollably. I loved them all.