7 best fiction books of 2021: From ‘Girl A’ to ‘Detransition Baby’

Best: Overall

Rating: 10/10

Martha is approaching 40, blessed with talent but undercut by a brain that sabotages her, and has done since her late teens. Her devoted husband, Patrick, has left her, she couldn’t get pregnant even as her beloved sister keeps falling pregnant, her family is largely mad, and she has periodic waves of sadness that threaten to topple her. It sounds like a truly awful misery read, yet it’s the funniest book of the year, with the most recognisable characters.

Mason, a New Zealander journalist and writer of non-fiction, has written a debut novel of such spark that you’re aware, right from the first pages, that you’re reading something very special. Martha is a tremendous creation (as is her sweary sister Ingrid, endlessly furious at falling pregnant) and Mason gifted with one-liners of laser precision. It all feels wonderfully real, damaged goods and all, and most clever of all, Mason never lets the reader in on Martha’s diagnosis to avoid the illness becoming the star. Martha is the star, and how she learns how to live with other people is a compelling, kind, and very funny story.

Best: Crime novel

Rating: 9/10

Dean’s debut won “best pageturner” in our round-up of the best book club reads. This is a crime thriller with crossover appeal, one for readers who can’t cope with the genre’s grislier reaches.

Lexie Grace is a lawyer – but growing up, she was “Girl A”, the girl who escaped from a house of horrors overseen by her violent father and passive mother. When her mother dies, Lexie is appointed executor of the will and must divide up the house among her siblings, each of whom have responded to their appalling childhoods in different ways.

This is a compelling “what next?” concept that builds on tragic events covered in the press in recent years and imagines how the young adults involved might respond to both their upbringing, and the public’s fascination with them.

Best: Surprising novel

Rating: 9/10

To expand on what makes Harris’s debut a surprise would, er, ruin the surprise, but the idea of something not being quite right is laid from the first page.

Young publishing hopeful Nella is an assistant at a prestigious New York publishing firm, clinging on to be made editor. As the lone black employee in a very white, middle-class team, Nella is limited to dealing with books featuring black characters, however badly written, and is subject to the tone-deaf attitudes of her colleagues. When another black girl, glamorous, put-together Hazel, joins the team as another assistant, Nella is convinced she’s found an ally, but things are about to get even more complicated.

This novel more than stands alone, but also makes for thoughtful reading in the wake of how the British publishing industry closed ranks around the author Kate Clanchy after she falsely accused readers of making up racist quotes in her book, and laid into three writers of colour who had noted Clanchy’s wrongdoing. “The Other Black Girl” may be set in New York, but it’s based in a global truth.

Best: Comedy fiction

Rating: 9/10

If we quietly forget about the dire 2016 Gilmore Girls reboot, we can celebrate Heiny’s tender second novel as the spiritual successor to that show’s fast-talking small town comedy. Episodes spread across 17-years are packed with eccentric characters with inner lives that run far deeper than our narrator, schoolteacher Jane, may see at first.

Jane is new to Boyne City, and after locking herself out of her new home, meets Duncan, a woodworker and locksmith, and, as she later discovers as their night together falls into bed and a long relationship, also its supreme swordsman. There’s no small-town snobbery, as Jane is wholly invested in her new home and becomes a crucial part of its social fabric, but sardonic observations and character-driven incident bring plentiful laughs to these years in Jane’s life, and provide balance to challenges and tragedies that inevitably dot her life.

This is a book with a gentle message running through it, to appreciate what you have, treasure the small things, and take people as they are. It’s a message worth knowing at any time, but especially this year.

Best: Sex novel

Rating: 9/10

Until now, Buchanan has focused on memoir, comment, and advice columns. But with Insatiable her distinctive non-fiction voice melts away and heralds the arrival of a novelist with a very different, equally assured voice – and an alluring and extremely filthy one at that.

Violet is living the classic 20-something story: broke, broken-hearted and in a job she loathes. When charismatic Lottie offers her a role in her start-up, Violet can’t believe her luck – and even more so when she meets Lottie’s husband and business partner, Simon, who she fancies as much as Lottie. Their business relationship soon becomes sexual, and Violet becomes a valued third at their sex parties, and in their wider lives. But their new understanding isn’t as stable as Violet hopes, and the chaos of her life and desires soon collides.

Endlessly entertaining, this is a shrewd commentary on ambition and young womanhood that also reads as a rollicking page-turner. You may blush. You will certainly love it.

Best: Comedy of manners

Rating: 9/10

In a year that has seen a shameful amount of non-fiction and journalism monstering the trans community, Peters’ Woman’s Prize-nominated novel reframes trans lives as they truly are, as boring and messy as everyone else’s.

After being attacked in the street, Ames has de-transitioned from “Amy” much to the upset of his cynical ex-partner, Reese, who is now self-destructively sleeping with married men. Ames hoped to simplify things by living as a man without society’s transphobic gaze, but he longs to be with Reese and achieve their shared dream of having a child together. When his lover Katrina becomes surprisingly pregnant by him, Ames wonders if the three of them might be able to co-parent. Gloriously witty, absorbing, and moving.

Best: Inspiring novel

Rating: 9/10

Winner of our “best uplifting book” title in our round-up of the best positive books, this enchanting story has quite enough salt in the sugar to keep any cloying sentimentality at bay. Cronin’s remarkable debut details the relationship between two female in-patients, one teenage, one elderly, and the friendship that builds between them as they take part in their hospital’s art therapy class.

Put any thoughts of Pollyanna aside, as Lenni, a 17-year-old terminal cancer patient, and Margot, 83, on the next ward over, approach their friendship as equals. When they start an art project to tell the story of their combined 100 years on Earth, they come to appreciate new, funny, and tragic things about their lives.