The most unputdownable fiction books to read, and explore in 2020
2019 was a tumultuous year for most, at least that is what everyone has been saying. However, now that it’s gone, let us start the new year on a positive note. And what better way to do that, than drowning yourself in new books? Books feed the soul. Books transport you to various worlds, without you having to leave your home. Books are the ultimate therapy for people, who are looking to break the monotony of their daily lives.
The past year gave us a couple of unputdownable works of fiction, each of which is gems in their own rights. We have compiled a list of the 8 best fiction books you can read in 2020, which will blow your mind.
8 Best Fiction Books To Read In 2020
1. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
The Topeka School is one of the best fiction books of all time. This work of fiction revolves around a talented student who is his high school debate champion with psychologist parents, yet he was a misfit among his peers. It is a perfect example of toxic masculinity and it’s presence in our society. The protagonist, Adam Gordon is an exceptionally smart individual who changes his colors like a chameleon. His tendency to manipulate his competitors to respond to his well of ideas all at once shows the lack of civil discourse in our society, currently.
You can get it here.
2. Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
Awarded with the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature, Olga Tokarczuk is one of the most celebrated authors out there. Her sheer brilliance is reflected in this book which has Janina, a 60-year old Polish woman who is an ardent animal lover. With hunting being very popular in her village, it drives her over the edge thinking about the number of animals who will be killed. So, when a string of murders occurs in her village, she is convinced that it is somehow related to the animal killings. With Janina getting involved in the police investigations, Tokarczuk deftly raises questions regarding whose voices are more important above others.
You can get it here.
3. Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li
Where Reasons End is the heartbreaking story of Yiyun Li’s most challenging period of her life when she lost her son to suicide. The story revolves around the narrator who visits her 16-year old deceased son, Nikolai, in a world somewhere between life and death. What follows is a story of facing the grief of losing her son, and finally accepting it and moving on. It is the perfect example of a moving story between a parent and her child, how death is something you have to be okay with. No matter how much it breaks you.
You can get it here.
4. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Like Colson Whitehead’s previous novel, The Underground Railroad, he goes through another journey through the painful history of slavery, with this being set in the Jim Crow era. The Nickel Boys center around Turner and Elwood who are sentenced to a cruel Florida reformatory. In case you didn’t know, the novel is based on the true stories of the brutal abuse at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Along with their friends, Elwood and Turner try to navigate through the harsh truth regarding what they will face in the country, once they come of age as black men, in the 1960s.
You can get it here.
5. The Testaments, Margaret Atwood
The Testaments is set 34 years after the events of her iconic novel, The Handmaid’s Tales, where she returns to the world of the Republic of Gilead, to write more about other oppressive practices. Unlike The Handmaid’s Tales, this novel sees the rise and fall of Gilead through the eyes of three women. Daisy, a cheerful and vivacious teenager residing in Canada who starts to protest against the horrible society, existing in the south of her hometown. Agnes Jemima is surviving in Gilead and is learning the ropes of about the duties she will have to fulfill as a privileged but constricted wife. Finally, Aunt Lydia, one of the dangerous leaders of Gilead is building a more complex relationship with the existing regime. This leads to an exciting continuation of Atwood’s concept of dystopia, with her suggesting that authoritarianism is always hiding around the corner.
You can get it here.
6. Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli
Hauntingly resembling the ongoing political situation in America, when it comes to immigrants, Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive centers around a family of four- parents and their two children. The story focuses on their lives and how they deal with the scary situation of their friend’s daughters being detained at the border. Starkly similar to the woes of immigrants currently battling the draconian rules in the country, this novel hits the nail right on the head, and you can’t help but feel helpless at their plight.
You can get it here.
7. The Need, Helen Phillips
This novel has a classic storyline: a woman whose husband is traveling hears an intruder in her home, grabs her children and hides in fear. But, what makes Helen Phillps’s novel different from every psychological thriller out there is how the whole story plays out. The novel’s protagonist Molly, comes across a known face who shakes her reality and makes her question her own life. While reading this, you will realize that you do not need to be a parent to understand the anxiety and fear she feels, while protecting her children all alone.
You can get it here.
8. Trust Exercise, Susan Choi
National Book Award winner, Susan Choi crafts a tale of an intense romance between two students of a performing arts high school, who are also judged, watched, and influenced by their peers and their drama teacher, an incredibly contentious man. Writing this story with realism serving as it’s the foundation, Trust Exercise perfectly captures the sexual adolescent life of a group of teenagers. Furthermore, with a sudden shift in perspective in the middle of the story, Choi smartly shows the truth about power and who ultimately gets to wield it.
You can get it here.
No matter which genre of books you prefer reading, these novels will take you on a journey like no other. Read these fiction books in 2020 and be prepared to feel a hundred different feelings at once, and isn’t that precisely the kind of books we as bookworms like to read?
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