Books of the Year 2025 Part 1

TonyInterrupter by Nicola Barker

Nicolas Barker’s fourteenth novel (but her first since 2019) continues to give the impression that she writes exactly what she likes with little care for literary fashion – and, appropriately enough, it is a celebration of non-conformity which begins with the interruption of a jazz concert: “Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?” The interruption is filmed, as is the angry response of band member Sasha who labels the offender as a “small-town TonyInterrupter”, a sobriquet which soon becomes a viral hashtag. Art about authenticity has never been less serious since Wilde as the initial incident ricochets around various band and audience members in a prose style which is deliberately divergent to the point that even the author feels compelled to comment, “This is a dreadful waste of time. It’s silly.” Silly or not, Barker manages to make us care about her characters as we laugh at them.

The Lowlife by Alexander Baron

Alexander Baron’s The Lowlife, originally published in 1963, would have claim to be the rediscovery of the year if not for the fact that it has been rediscovered (more than once) before.  No matter – it well deserves its latest round of enthusiastic readers. Grounded by its incredible sense of place – London, towards the end of the fifties – its irregular protagonist, Harryboy, is the kind of character who might carry any novel, a chancer intent on not taking his chances, averse to settling down or standing still, whose natural instinct to avoid entanglement is unwillingly undermined by a child, the son of new neighbours in the building where he stays. The parents could not be more ordinary, a lonely father and unaffectionate mother.  Apparently proud to be a lowlife, Harry regards himself as such not for his carefree lifestyle but because of a wartime regret he cannot forget. A novel which refuses to die because it feels so alive.

The Fate of Mary Rose by Caroline Blackwood

Another rediscovered novel, though from the more recent 1981 (still over forty years ago!) is Caroline Blackwood’s The Fate of Mary Rose. Blackwood takes the trappings of a crime novel and twists it into something that is both difficult to look at yet impossible to take your eyes off. As is usually the case with this author, everyone is awful, from the narrator, Rowan, a historian with a predilection for using women, to his maniacally protective wife, Cressida, who, following a local murder, refuses to let her daughter (Mary Rose) out of her sight. Rather than her daughter’s safety, her obsession is with the murder itself as she insists Mary Rose memorises all the details and attends the funeral. Rowan meanwhile is aware of his wife’s deteriorating mental state but blind to any responsibility he might bear for it despite spending most of his time in London with his mistress. Most impressively, Blackwood manages a tour de force ending which will leave you gasping.

Dreaming of Dead People by Rosalind Belben

Anything Blackwood can do, Rosalind Belben can do darker. Where we might think we hear the former cackling wickedly in the background, Belben’s laughter is a more uncomfortable experience. Dreaming of Dead People was published two years earlier than The Fate of Mary Rose, the last of four novels she published in the 1970s. Written in six sections (“I visualized the arrangement of these chapters to echo the compartments of a biography”) the  novel reflects on a life at the midway point touching on Belben’s childlessness and her relationship with animals through a character called Lavinia. Belben is what one might refer to as an acquired taste, a moving section relating her relationship with a particular dog sitting alongside an extended essay on masturbation with an electric toothbrush. If that is not variety enough, one chapter is interspersed with middle-English songs. Behind all this, however, is a desire for unflinching truth from a writer who does genuinely seem fearless.

The Story of the Stone by James Kelman

James Kelman has the unusual distinction of being both a strong candidate for the UK’s greatest living writer and without a publisher in his own country. Luckily the small American publisher, PM Press, have stepped in, releasing a new novel, collections of essays and short stories, and a book of interviews in the last few years. This year saw the publication of The Story of the Stone which collects Kelman’s shortest stories, a genre he excels at. It contains 96 pieces ranging from four pages to less than a page (including perhaps his most famous short short story, ‘Acid’, which features as a footnote in Alasdair Gray’s Lanark). They demonstrate Kelman’s range of both style and subject matter for those who continue to think of him as a one-note writer. Anyone who appreciates the craft of writing should not be without this book, or, indeed, all of Kelman’s work.

From Scenes Like These by Gordon Williams

From Scenes Like These is another novel to have been rediscovered more than once and bears the distinction of having been shortlisted for the first Booker Prize in 1969. Unfortunately, its author Gordon Williams refused to stick to literary fiction, cowriting the Hazell books with Terry Venables when both football and crime fiction were much less fashionable. This, however, is a wonderful novel, exposing the harshness of both urban and rural life in 1950s Scotland. It also touches on contemporary concerns, however, as its central character, school-leaver fifteen-year-old Dunky Logan, wrestles with what it means to be a man. Its portrayal of misogynistic attitudes among the farm workers still has the power to shock, more so as we may fear they are not so outdated as we hope. Though not without the occasional moment of hope, it is a bleak work with little the way of redemption, A Catcher in the Rye for those who cannot afford therapy.

The Lowlife

Alexander Baron’s 1963 novel, The Lowlife, already had a history of being rediscovered before its inclusion in Faber Editions, an imprint which specialises in neglected classics, and John Williams estimation of him as a writer “among the finest, most underrated, of the postwar period” is one shared by many others, but anything that brings this novel to wider attention is to be applauded. London writers, native or not, have praised its capture of the city at a key moment, suspended between the post-war fifties and the approaching liberation of the sixties, but readers from further afield should not be put off: one need not be born to the ringing of the Bow bells to appreciate Baron’s sense of place.

The ’lowlife’ of the title is Harryboy Boas, a man who lives by betting, mainly on greyhounds, accepting the ups and downs which come with such an uncertain income. His sister, Debbie, and her husband, Gus, despair of Harryboy ever settling down, advising him to buy property he can rent out with his winnings:

“You may ask, why doesn’t Gus put up the capital to start me in a business? He has. Several times. Every time I gambled it away.”

The only other relationship he has is with a woman called Marcia who “charges twenty pounds for a short time.” Once married, she spent her time having affairs until she decided to make a business out of it. Unlike Harryboy, she has a plan to retire at forty, “buying houses and letting rooms”. Harry has no interest in romance:

“…I only feel relaxed with a whore. With the others, you never know what they are after. I am a free man.”

Her husband represents a world she has left behind, a place for the weak and inadequate, as is demonstrated when he meets Marcia in a restaurant and asks her to go back to him (“He was the kind who had been brought up to keep it civilized”). The Deaners – Vic, Evelyn and their son, Gregory – who move into the same building as Harry, are also from that world. It is Gregory who befriends a reluctant Harryboy whose natural instinct to avoid others is overridden by the child’s insistence, and perhaps also by sympathy for the absence of a loving mother – witnessing Gregory in her presence (being told to put all his toys away or they will begiven to the children’s hospital) he notices:

“His lips were clamped together, and his eyes had gone empty.”

Harryboy also makes the mistake of inviting Vic and Evelyn out to supper one night – “I may be economical here, you know, but up West I live.” This impression of wealth will later cause Harryboy problems, but rather than originating simply from a need to show off (as well as convince himself his lifestyle is a choice), there is also a sense he wants to treat others well. When Evelyn asks him about entertaining Gregory:

“I heard myself saying, ‘I don’t mind.’”

Similarly, when he meets Vic at the library, recognising “a hunger in his eyes for someone to talk to”-

“I spoke to discourage him. I didn’t want him falling on my neck.”

Yet moments later, he is repeating the invitation – “Words come out of my mouth. Where do they come from?” Harryboy is naturally kind but works hard to restrain those feelings. He describes his parents as “full of real charity, which means goodness and a cheerful heart.” But perhaps the most significant event in his past is the French woman, Nicole, he left behind in Paris just as war was declared:

“What could I have done? Did I know she was pregnant when I left her?”

Nicole, like Harryboy is Jewish, and every so often he thinks about his child and what might have happened. It is this that lies at the heart of his relationship with Gregory – in fact at one point he will claim to be his father. It is also in abandoning Nicole that he feels himself to be a lowlife, deserving of no better than leaving his life to chance, as he did with hers.

The Lowlife well deserves it perpetual rediscovery. It is not only London that feels present and alive but the characters too, and the relationship between Harryboy and Gregory in particular is finely drawn. Readers can only be rewarded each time it is returned to print.