4.79 Rating for Don Winslow’s The Border, a top-20 high
Books in the Media: the best of 2019 Whitehead and Evaristo lead the pack
far”, with the author commended for his “clear-eyed calm” and “simple yet heartbreaking” prose. Taddeo’s Three Women, the
real-life stories of three women’s sex lives, was more divisive, with the Literary Review claiming it “turns #MeToo inside out” and the Evening Standard commending Taddeo for “starting a new genre”, yet others found it far-fetched and the TLS claimed the “relatively homogeneous sample presented” meant “there are few fresh revelations”. However, Christina Patterson in the Sunday Times could not have felt more differetly, writ- ing: “This is a book that blazes, glitters and cuts to the heart of who we are. I’m not sure that a book can do much more.” McFarlane’s nature
title Underland was described as “extraordinary” in the Guardian, with the Spectator stating: “This is as deep as topography gets, a materialising of the immaterial.”
Title
1= The Nickel Boys 1= Underland
1= The Lives of Lucian Freud 1= Girl, Woman, Other 1= Three Women 2= The Border
2= On Chapel Sands 2= Me
2= Invisible Women 2= Olive, Again
2= Fleishman is in Trouble 3= Margaret Thatcher, Vol III... 3= Staring at God
3= Ducks, Newburyport 3= The Five
3= Agent Running in the Field 3= The Age of Surveillance... 3= For the Record
TheBookseller.com
In the spotlight
BERNARDINE EVARISTO AND LEFT COLSON WHITEHEAD WOWED THE CRITICS
Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys was the only fiction title to join Girl, Woman, Other at the top
Feaver’s biography of artist Lucien Freud was praised for capturing the subject’s voice through multi- ple quotes, with the Irish Times describing it as “a startling, almost uncanny constant through the book, a ghostly commentary”. Other titles to receive five picks
Author Imprint Colson Whitehead Fleet
Robert McFarlane Hamish Hamilton William Feaver Bloomsbury Bernardine Evaristo
Hamish Hamilton
Lisa Taddeo Bloomsbury Don Winslow HarperCollins Laura Cumming Chatto & Windus Elton John
Macmillan
2= The Man Who Saw Everything Deborah Levy 2= Lanny
Hamish Hamilton
Max Porter Faber & Faber Caroline Criado-Perez Chatto & Windus Elizabeth Strout Viking Taffy Brodesser-Akner Wildfire Charles Moore Allen Lane Simon Heffer Cornerstone Lucy Ellmann Galley Beggar Hallie Rubenhold Doubleday John le Carré Viking Shoshana Zuboff Profile
David Cameron HarperCollins
BIM rating Picks 4.50 4.24 4.14 4.06 4.03 4.79 4.52 4.37 4.22 4.22 4.18 4.18 4.14 4.40 4.40 4.27 4.22 3.91 3.63 2.96
7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
included Robert Harris’ The Second Sleep, fellow Booker-winner The Testaments, Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School and James Meek’s To Calais, in Ordinary Time. Of the 24 books to hit five picks or more, 14 were written by men and 11 by women. Last year, only 15 titles earned five nods, with the split more even along gender lines: seven were by women, and eight by men. In 2018, only one author of colour scored at least five picks—Michelle Obama’s Becoming—but this year both Evaristo and Whitehead racked up seven nods apiece. Children’s books were, as usual,
not exactly abundant among the books of the year picks: Liz Hyder’s Bearmouth and Katherine Rundell’s The Good Thieves were joint top among the kids’ titles, with three picks each.
The Border Don Winslow HarperCollins At 4.79, Don Winslow’s The Border earned the highest star rating of any title in the most-picked top 20. Literary Review declared it “a magnificent achievement”.
Books in the Media is the new reviews curation and aggregation service created by The Bookseller in November 2018. It pulls together book reviews from national newspapers, consumer month- lies, literary journals, and radio and television coverage, along with major awards wins and shortlists, to provide a weighted score out of five.
For the Record David Cameron William Collins Two former prime ministers make the most-picked chart: Margaret Thatcher as subject only, and David Cameron’s memoir. The latter has, unsurpris- ingly, proved divisive among reviewers—though the Evening Standard’s first-time book reviewer, one George Osborne, found it to be “one of the very best” political memoirs.
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