Best of 2016 – Reading List

We asked some of our contributors and editors to share their favourite stories, poems and essays of the year:

Annelise Berghenti

Everything/anything by the wonderful Ocean Vuong, whose collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds came out this year. This poem, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, is one of my favorites.

If interviews count, then Interview With A Woman Who Recently Had An Abortion, on Jezebel is so important & honest & brave, and it’s by Jia Tolentino, whose work is never less than excellent.

And Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, which I think counts a book of short stories?, because I loved it more than anything else I read this year, and I think about it every day.

Dylan Brennan

On any given day a ‘best of’ list will differ depending on mood. This one will do well enough.

Of course, there are many stand-out pieces to choose from but here are three free little online crackers that I particularly connected with, and may have slipped under the radar somewhat.

Looking for Water by Tim MacGabhann for Fallow Media — Mexico City, where I currently live, is a sweaty, needy and aggressive beast, laced with charm and horror. MacGabhann stands up to it.

Clearly Marked Ghosts by Francisco Cantú for Territory — A text for these times, indirectly brought to my attention by a Valeria Luiselli tweet. Immigrants looking for water in the Arizona desert, a cartography of regret and the need to commemorate.

On Art & Apocalypse by Doireann Ní Ghríofa for gorse — Art and apocalypse, two of my three favourite themes. Genuinely thought-provoking, the right mixture of serenity and regret in the face of our doom.

Laura Cassidy

Rob Doyle’s No Man’s Land, Sarah Griffin’s Phantom Flo and Jenny Duffy’s The Virgin Toilet.

Rachel Coventry

My “Best of 2016″ is this poem DO YOU WANT TO DIP THE RAT by Dorothea Lasky. It appeared in The White Review. I read a lot of great stuff this year but this one really stood out to me.

Ruth Gilligan 

I am always telling myself I should read more non-fiction. So it seems fitting that my two favourite short pieces of 2016 were essays. As it happens, they were both by Irish writers, and both published on Granta.com, though I must insist this has far more to do with coincidence than laziness (I am lazy in many ways; spending hours on literary sites is not one of them).

My first pick (and I know I won’t be alone in this) is Sinead Gleeson’s sublime Blue Hills and Chalk Bones. What begins as an essay about a childhood battle with a dodgy left hip, effortlessly evolves into an exploration of bodily autonomy, friendship, feminism and faith. Gleeson is renowned for her unfailing championing of Irish writers, but this essay announced her as a literary talent in her own right. Word on the street is there’s more to come. We wait impatiently.

My second pick is Colin Barrett’s response to the heavily-publicised Hawe family deaths, He Had His Reasons. I remember watching from London as the Hawe case unfolded across the Irish media, and feeling deeply uncomfortable with the coverage, but I remember not quite being able to articulate why. Such articulation is the beauty of the perfect essay. Barrett calmly yet meticulously unpacks the gender politics, mental-health stereotypes, problematic religiosity and culture of silence which this horrendous story – and above all, the public’s reaction thereto – exemplified. I already knew Barrett had a talent for the made-up stuff. Turns out his non-fiction is just as mesmerizing.

Claire Hennessy

I loved the very brave Courtney Smyth’s writing about being ‘told to wait a week before killing myself’, the always-fierce Roe McDermott on rape culture, the mighty Sinéad Gleeson on a childhood trip to Lourdes, the witty Sara Benincasa on being a ‘real’ artist, the heartbreaking Sarah Hepola on alcohol and sex, and - bias alert! - the supremely-talented Eimear Ryan on camogie.

Dearbhaile Houston

Karate Chop by Danish writer Dorthe Nors (Pushkin Press, translated by Martin Aitkin) is a story I’ve been going back to since reading it earlier this year. Nors’ writing is almost dangerously astute and I think this story captures this overall quality particularly well. This is Nors’ first collection translated into English so I’m looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.

It’s very hard to pick my favourite story from Oisín Fagan’s absolute stormer of a collection Hostages (New Island) without feeling disloyal to the rest but ‘Costellos’ is the one.

I also loved Eimear Walshe’s essay 'masc role models log: aug 2016’ (Having a Kiki: Queer Desire and Public Space, edited by Emma Haugh, Paper Visual Art Journal). It is beautifully and intelligently written.

Roisin Kelly

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Letter to the Northern Lights (Academy of American Poets).

Kathryn Maris, How to be Dream Girl Not a Doormat About the “Ex” (POETRY).

Elizabeth Spires, Glass-Bottom Boat (POETRY).

Siobhán Mannion

Thanksgiving in Mongolia by Ariel Levy.

I read this essay online when it was first published in 2013, and again this year, while slowly making my way through a year’s worth of The New Yorker from a birthday gift subscription.  

It details Levy’s brief, traumatic experience of motherhood, and had lost none of its power on the second read.

‘Emma Donoghue on how she wrote the screenplay for ‘Room’’

At the beginning of the year, I went to see Room, Lenny Abrahamson’s intelligent, moving, brilliantly acted film based on Emma Donoghue’s novel.  

It would have been so easy to make a mess of the book’s adaptation, and I was curious to know how the screenplay came into being.  

This article in The Guardian gives us Donoghue’s take on the process - and it will be interesting to see her theatre adaptation on The Abbey stage next summer.

Miranda July reads Janet Frame

One of my favourite things on the internet is The New Yorker Fiction Podcast, where once a month an author who has been published in the magazine chooses a story from its archives.  

Prizes by the New Zealand writer Janet Frame was chosen by Miranda July, who does a beautiful job of the reading, and has a lot to say about creativity and the writing life in the discussion that follows.  

Listen in to discover how the profound significance of a literary prize in Frame’s own life cannot be overstated, and to hear a wonderful piece of short fiction.

(I also love July’s own story Roy Spivey, as read by David Sedaris - and I’m slipping this one into brackets so as to appear to have adhered to the three-choice limit…)

Katie McDermott

It’s hard to narrow down but these are three that stood out to me over the year, great characters and concepts. 'Being Born’ by Oisín Fagan in Hostages. An extract is available in the Irish Times. Also delightful is 'How to learn Irish in 17 steps’ by Roisin O'Donnell in Wild Quiet.'The Abominable Child’s Tale’ by Carol Emshwiller in Women Destroy Fantasy.

Andrew Meehan

This is going to seem like sucking up–it isn’t–but the best short piece I read this year was Eimear Ryan’s The Fear of Winning in Winter Papers 2.

Inside-out writing of the very best kind.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa

I have been spoiled with wonderful reading this year, online, in books and in literary journals alike. One story that remained with me appeared in the Irish issue of Granta - Idioglossia by Banshee editor Eimear Ryan. It’s an unsettling story, weird and creepy, and I loved how it seems to swerve and spin the reader round and round. The perfect length to read in your lunch break. I also loved Deirdre Sullivan’s Needlework, a novel that is just as sharp and precise as its title suggests.

Kerrie O’Brien

I thought this essay was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read about the role alcohol plays in sex.

Ceremonial by Eduardo C. Corral is achingly raw and beautiful.

And I highly recommend any short story in Vertigo by Joanna Walsh – it’s so searingly good that I can’t pick a favourite.

James O’Leary

So much of the poetry I read comes from literary journals, so I’m happy to be able to provide links to three poems that particularly stuck with me—in large part because of the specificity of their point of view. These poems invited me into their worlds.

Warning by Alvy Carragher (Bare Hands Poetry issue 22).

Gin by Sarah Byrne (Poetry Ireland Review issue 119).

Lies I’ve Told A Toddler Lately by Jackie Gorman (Tales From The Forest issue 3).

Eimear Ryan

Kevin Barry’s ‘The Raingod’s Green, Dark as Passion’ in Granta: New Irish Writing – ‘The city is self-important but not in an egotistical way.’ KB just gets Cork. A delight from start to finish.

Sally Rooney’s tough, funny & profound story ‘Mr Salary’ in the same issue had me whetting my appetite for her novel, Conversations With Friends, due in summer 2017.

Sarah Maria Griffin’s ‘One Bad Tooth’ in Winter Papers, Vol 2 – a gorgeously written piece on pain, rock stars and self-determination.

Jan Carson’s ‘Settling’ from The Glass Shore – Sinéad Gleeson’s second anthology of Irish women writers in as many years – is sad, witty & warm. You can read it online at The Irish Times.

Lucy Sweeney Byrne

The books from the last year that immediately come to mind (which I guess is a good enough indicator of their lasting effect) are, for me, The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride and You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine: A Novel by Alexandra Kleeman. Both of these books capture, in one way or another, a sense of how it feels to be alive in the world right now. That’s pretty much exactly what I’m looking for when I read - an experience of startling or unsettling recognition. And beauty, of course, and enough skill in the execution for me not to notice the execution. I’ve mostly been reading poetry though, and a book this year which I’ve gotten a lot from is Ben Lerner’s No Art: Poems. This is a collection of his three existing volumes and some new poems thrown in. Of course, not every single one can speak to you (it’s not like he’s Louis MacNeice or something), but some are truly affecting, and unnerving, and elegant. Some make you pause and look up from the page. I didn’t read his A Hatred of Poetry because I found the premise baseless (I guess I’m living in a bubble), but I hear it was an interesting read. Lastly, for short stories and poetry combined, The Paris Review released a gorgeous collection of some of their best American writing entitled The Unprofessionals edited by Lorin Stein. Lerner’s in there again, and a load of other desperately talented yanks. This book’s a great dipper - some truly perfect stories.

Catherine Talbot

2016 was a fine year for re-issues. All Through The Night: Night Poems and Lullabies, edited by Marie Heaney is a generous collection featuring Paul Muldoon’s Cradle Song for Asher. This is a beautifully rendered poem, originally published in Moy Sand and Gravel in 2002.  Which in turn leads me to mention Paul Muldoon’s Selected Poems 1968-2014, Faber and Faber, featuring many of his well know poems and in particular The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants.

I was struck also by Anne Carson’s Float (Penguin/Random House), a set of chapbooks of poems. The order in which you read them is a purely personal choice. Carson says that ‘Reading can be freefall’. There is a deeply liberating feeling in creating your own order and structure. Any of the above would make interesting Christmas presents.

Tom Vowler

Grace by Sophie Mackintosh.

Anhedonia, Here I Come by Colin Barrett.

Eating Snake by Rebecca Kemp.