There have been few works of contemporary fiction about menopause, and even fewer that are as erotic and funny as Miranda July’s undeniably triumphant All Fours.
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The Best Fiction of 2024
The greatest novels of 2024 were notably unafraid to rewrite the past, lacing shimmering, enriching new narratives through personal and cultural histories. Even better: Many of them made us laugh along the way. Read on for the 15 novels and graphic novels that most impressed, charmed and inspired us this year.
Julie Heffernan’s first graphic novel, Babe in the Woods, is a stunning, mesmeric work of autofiction loosely retelling how she became an artist while following a hike in the Appalachian Mountains with her infant child.
Percival Everett’s visionary and necessary reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, James, is a standout in an era of retellings. Everett matches Mark Twain in voice, tale-spinning talent and humor, while deeply engaging with what Twain failed to acknowledge: the reality of life for enslaved people.
By Yoko Ogawa, Translated by Stephen B. Snyder
Yoko Ogawa’s Mina’s Matchbox is filled with wonder, conveying 12-year-old Tomoko’s enchantment with her extended family during the year she spends with them, from 1972 to 1973.
In Valerie Martin’s captivating Mrs. Gulliver, she lifts the star-crossed dramatics of Romeo and Juliet but eschews tragedy, offering us instead an idyll.
By Hisham Matar
Pulitzer Prize-winner Hisham Matar imbues each scene of this scintillating coming-of-age novel with rich, nostalgic emotion, combining history and fiction as he follows a young Libyan man’s move from Benghazi to London.
Our Evenings is a masterful accomplishment: an intricate vision of the conflict between an open, generous Britain and a clenched, intolerant one from Booker Prize-winner Alan Hollinghurst.
Garth Greenwell’s moving yet unsentimental third novel, Small Rain, follows a poet’s terrifying stay in the ICU, and explores the need for empathy in a fragile world.
A decade after Dinaw Mengestu’s equally exceptional All Our Names, Someone Like Us is the welcome return of a vitally important voice in modern American literature.
By Olga Tokarczuk, Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk looses her deft, dark satirical wit on the rigid patriarchal world of pre-World War I Europe. The result is an enchanting, unsettling bildungsroman like nothing you’ve read before.
Centered on a teen love triangle in a North Dakota community dominated by sugar beet farming, Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red might just be a new American classic.
In Yael van der Wouden’s mesmerizing debut, The Safekeep, Isabel lives a circumscribed life in her dead mother’s house until her brother’s girlfriend comes to stay, alarming Isabel when an obsessive attraction develops between the two.
The Seventh Veil of Salome is another triumph from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a page-turning historical drama with mythic overtones that will please readers of her realistic fiction and her more fantastical work alike.
With thrilling, adventurous sentences, and a profound understanding of the soul, Claire Messud leads readers along the elusive edges of life, where family and national histories entwine.
By Sig Burwash
With the rev of a chain saw, unassuming Drew transforms into the fiery Vera Bushwack in this hilarious, heartbreaking and intimate graphic debut. Vera Bushwack is sure to be a balm for queer readers.
Previous Best Fiction lists
Recent starred fiction
The Bishop’s Villa
By Sacha Naspini, Translated by Clarissa Botsford
The Modern Fairies
By Clare Pollard, Narrated by Kathryn Drysdale