The NP99: The best books of the year, vol. 3 (49-25)

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Looking back on the books published in 2017, we’ve compiled a list of 99 of the best, most-talked about – or quite simply our favourite – reads. Why the NP99 and not 100? Because that last spot is reserved for the one we forgot. You’ll think of it soon. In Vol. 1 of our list, we ranked 99 – 75, and in Vol. 2, we ranked 74 – 50. Here is 49 – 25:

49

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The NP99: The best books of the year, vol. 3 (49-25) Back to video

Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman (Harry N. Abrams)

Food is fascinating. Try to remember the last social gathering you partook in that didn’t at one point broach the subject of food. Yet, for all our discussions on the topic, there are still a lot of questions we haven’t considered. Michael Ruhlman’s examination of the grocery store answers all the curiosities we didn’t know we had about the place where we buy most of our sustenance. – Dustin Parkes

48

Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage by Ken McGoogan (Patrick Crean Editions)

The history of the Northwest Passage suffers greatly from the colonial recorders of it; Victorian explorers focused on their own accomplishments for the glory of the British empire at the cost of those whose exploits went unrecorded: the indigenous guides. McGoogan reconsiders the established narrative, giving these early explorers their due and “dragging Arctic discovery into the 21st century.” – Michael Melgaard

47

Turning: A Year in the Water by Jessica J. Lee (Hamish Hamilton)

I didn’t much like swimming or my life when Jessica J. Lee wrote a book about those two things together, but her lyrical debut was enough to sell me on the sport, at least, and maybe mortality as well, water making good metaphor for both: calm in some times, violent in others, but constant, at least, lapping over and wrapping you entirely; inescapable, if nothing else. – Terra Arnone

46

Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta (Scribner)

The idea that disappointment engrosses the modern life is nothing new. Nor is the idea that we might find some semblance of satisfaction – despite the overwhelming and persistent feeling of coming up short – through sex. But what Tom Perrotta accomplishes with these two themes is to introduce technology as a factor in both, and thereby make it a modern retelling of something that seems ancient. To summarize, Mrs. Fletcher is an awful lot like Mrs. Robinson – only she has a smartphone. – Dustin Parkes

45

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead)

This is a novel that demands. It impeaches and implores. It insists that the reader look at people – Muslims, or migrants, Hijabis or unbelievers – as people unto themselves, possessed of agency and quirks and humanity, even as that last is sometimes stripped away by dislocation, violence and fear. – Richard Warnica

44

This Is All a Lie by Thomas Trofimuk (Enfield & Wizenty)

The new novel from Thomas Trofimuk has all the trappings of a postmodern, metafictional experiment (with pages and chapters counting down, intrusive authorial commentary and the like), but at its heart it is a deeply moving examination of love, sex, fidelity, loss and loneliness. Akin, in different ways, to both Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. – Robert J. Wiersema

43

The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben, translated by Jane Billinghurst (Greystone/David Suzuki)

Through research, reason and anecdotes, The Inner Life of Animals leaves readers with an important epiphany: the emotional intelligence we attribute to animals is legitimate. It’s not a projection. Animals in the wild and our domesticated pets are capable of feeling love, shame and a sense of loss. And appreciating an animal’s ability to ascertain the common themes of life only enhances our own. – Dustin Parkes

42

The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron (Doubleday Canada)

A couple of years ago, novelist Claire Cameron was taking a wintry hike along a rugged stretch of the Niagara Escarpment when she chanced on an ancient limestone cave. That was enough to transport her back 40,000 years to the days when Neanderthals inhabited our planet – and to the book that was taking shape in her mind. – Jamie Portman

41

American War by Omar El Akkad (McClelland & Stewart)

If anyone were fit to write a fictional world of war, terror, climactic demise and deadly biological weaponry, it’d make sense for that individual to be Omar El Akkad. He’s observed and recounted tragedy around the globe – from Middle America to urban battlegrounds a few oceans eastward – and written about those experiences extensively; that National Newspaper Award is not the only metal on Omar’s mantle. – Terra Arnone

40

Hunger by Roxane Gay (Harper)

Roxane Gay’s Hunger is about the struggle between one’s relationship with food and with their own body. It’s complicated and personal, offering a rare and honest insight into what it means to be overweight when you see yourself one way, and the world sees you in quite another. – Sadaf Ahsan

39

The Dark and Other Love Stories by Deborah Willis (Hamish Hamilton)

For those who recognized Willis as a bold new voice in Canadian fiction, it comes as a relief that her second collection, The Dark and Other Love Stories, has finally been published after a few delays and more than lives up to the promise of her debut … Still, Willis says she now sees the stories as a reaction to those in her first book, which focused on faded or lost connections. Willis wanted to concentrate on the things that bind people, whether they be romantic partners, one night stands, father and son, or lonely teenage girls at summer camp. – Eric Volmers

38

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy (Random House)

The Rules Do Not Apply is a very physical read; you will laugh, you will cry, you will want to break things, and then you will cry again. Her memoir picks up a month after she leaves for a reporting trip in Mongolia, suddenly no longer pregnant, her marriage falling apart. It feels painfully human as she catalogues her ex-wife’s alcoholism and her own adultery, longing for a time when things were far easier and, well, happier. – Sadaf Ahsan

37

Uncertain Weights and Measures by Jocelyn Parr (Goose Lane)

Nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, Parr’s debut novel is a love story set against the backdrop of the early years of the Soviet Union, when the dream of a better world came up against the reality of an increasingly authoritarian regime. – Michael Melgaard

36

American Fire: Love, Arson, and Fire in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse (Liveright)
Hesse’s journalistic reconstruction of a series of arsons that terrorized the citizens of rural Accomack County, Virginia for months veers away from a simple true-crime story to a larger socio-political portrait of the community and a stranger-than-fiction love story. Longform journalism at its best. – Robert J. Wiersema

35

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)

The Pulitzer Prize winner for The Sympathizer (2015) returns with a collection of stories spanning the decades since the Vietnam War, from the conflict in Saigon to conflicted new lives in California. – Paul Taunton

34

Bad Endings by Carleigh Baker (Anvil Press)

A finalists for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Bad Endings is a collection of tales where things end badly, but more with a wince – and realization. It’s a debut that has made readers look forward to more short stories, a perennially undervalued form. – Paul Taunton

33

Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez (Arsenal Pulp)

With Scarborough, artist and writer Catherine Hernandez tells a story never told and often considered not worth telling. The novel follows the interconnected stories of three marginalized children from low-income families living in the Kingston/Galloway area as they begin to understand what it means to live on the fringes. While it might tackle a laundry list of messages, it strikes deep, shining a spotlight on the cultural subtext Scarborough was built on. – Sadaf Ahsan

32

The Longest Year by David Grenier, translated by Pablo Strauss (House of Anansi)

Sprawling, time-warped, and a translation to boot, Grenier’s book is pure genre-bending genius. An ambitious story told deftly with great care, the author’s century-straddling story demonstrates an incredible feat of written restraint, tightening up Grenier’s big tale to make it bingeworthy. – Terra Arnone

31

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul (Doubleday Canada)

Ever opinionated and with words to spare, Scaachi Koul goes even longer form with her hilarious debut collection of essays, meditating on growing up on the internet as a South Asian woman in western culture. Tackling everything from race and gender to body image and family, Koul comes off far more motivating and inspiring than her title (and brand) might suggest. – Sadaf Ahsan

30

The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill (HarperCollins)

A magical rendering of love and loss, triumph and despair, the magic of art and the art of magic, The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a powerful, singular work. And you’ll never look at clowns the same way again. – Robert J. Wiersema

29

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer (HarperCollins)

Science-fiction writing often gets away with using tropes that other genres can’t, simply because it’s setting up a grand allegory or there’s some sequence of parables that depends on easily understood metaphors. Borne, the story of a scavenger named Rachel who finds and raises an all-consuming bioengineered being, doesn’t condescend to its readers, instead it offers a fresh plot with rich images and symbolism. But above all else, it’s a good old fashioned suspenseful read about survival. – Dustin Parkes

28

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (Doubleday)

Part history, part mystery, Grann’s investigation of the murders on the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s is a stunning work of narrative nonfiction, drawing together disparate strands and new information to shed light on a largely forgotten American tragedy. – Robert J. Wiersema

27

The Doll’s Alphabet by Camilla Grudova (Coach House)

Over the course of The Doll’s Alphabet, Grudova isn’t merely creating a collection of stories. Read as a whole, one feels swept into an entire universe. The Doll’s Alphabet is a singular collection from a unique talent, stories with the force of dreams, a reading experience from which you may never awaken. – Robert J. Wiersema

26

The Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (House of Anansi)

A finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, this collection of stories, poems and songs from a major Indigenous voice, is a singular demonstration of the different ways an idea can manifest. Reviewers have often not quite known where to begin, and then just kept going and going. – Paul Taunton

25

I Hear She’s a Real Bitch by Jen Agg (Doubleday Canada)

As one of the most polarizing figures in the Canadian food industry, Jen Agg knows she has a reputation. And in I Hear She’s A Real Bitch, that fact may be how she pulls you in, but in recounting how she got to where she is as a successful restaurateur with an exacting work ethic and as impressive a palate, she writes a personal and motivating memoir. However you feel about her, Agg proves she’s a force to be reckoned with (and aspire to). – Sadaf Ahsan