LAR’s The Best Books of the Year

2017 was an incredible year for new books, so we asked our staff to share a few of their favorites. Here are the highlights of what our editors read over the last 356 days.

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio). One of the stand-out essay collections of 2017, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us seamlessly blends together Abdurraqib’s accounts of punk and alternative music, hopelessness on the current political climate, and questions about race and religion. Part memoir, part music journalism, part prose poem, this collection strikes all the right chords (cliche, maybe, but true) on what is happening right now in America. —Alyse Bensel, Reviews Editor

Zinzi Clemmons, What We Lose (Viking). 2017 was a great year for debuts and one of my favorites was Zinzi Clemmons’ first novel, What We Lose. Clemmons manages to cover hard-hitting themes such as love, grief, identity, diaspora, race, and family (to name a few) within a small amount of pages which I never wanted to end. Her frank prose weaves fragmented vignettes spanning generations and continents into a central narrative that deals with the legacy of South African apartheid as well as the universal experience of reconstructing identity after immense loss. Clemmons shines a bright light on the ways in which we grapple with otherness within our country and within ourselves, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for her. —Riley Mang, Editor-at-Large

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West (Riverhead). When Hamid’s fourth novel came out in March the timing could not have been more apt. A refugee story with just the right amount of magical realism, Exit West follows a young couple as they attempt to escape the turmoil of their unnamed city in the Middle East. They hear rumors of doors that will take them somewhere safe, but when Nadia and Saeed uncover the first and find themselves at a makeshift refugee camp in Turkey they quickly learn they are not alone. As the pair moves from settlement to settlement, their relationship is taxed and grows in a way that Hamid handles consistently with heartbreaking honesty, accuracy, and poise. Exit West is A beautiful story of human survival and a necessary portrait of the world’s current state. —Keaton Maddox, Managing Editor

Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (Vintage). With laugh-out-loud humor and keep-tissues-handy candor, Irby digs into her poor and unconventional childhood, black women and mental health, dating, body image, reality TV, her bitchy stray cat, and other awkward truths. This is how an essay collection is done, with a narrative arc that is subtle but so satisfying. —Ann Beman, Nonfiction Editor

Jillian Weise, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex (Soft Skill Press). This updated edition of Weise’s debut poetry collection, with a new introduction by the author, raises essential questions about the conversation surrounding disability that are just as important today. Addressing disability and sexuality, these poems interrogate agency and who controls oftentimes ableist narratives about othered bodies. The Amputee’s Guide to Sex continues to be engaging as Weise challenges harmful and silencing societal norms. —Alyse Bensel

Kelly J. Ford, Cottonmouths (Skyhorse Publishing). Ford’s novel features a lesbian protagonist, yet sexuality is only one facet of her strongly drawn character. Emily suffers from unrequited love, from betrayal, and from a longing for meaning and acceptance. Her struggles, as well as those of her family and community, are universal struggles set in a brutal reality where choices are scarce. Read this debut novel for its ability to go beneath the surface, striking impressive depths of character and setting. —Ann Beman

Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf). Another favorite first of mine was Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, a debut short story collection throughout which elements of horror, sci-fi, and “SVU” haunt the pages. Machado’s originality in form and imagination grounded me in places I didn’t know literature could go, corners both familiar and mysterious, through themes of queerness, craft, and alienation. A National Book Award finalist and growing sensation, I look forward to returning to these stories for years to come. —Riley Mang

Jon McGregor, Reservoir 13 (Catapult). Reservoir 13 is not a suspense-driven mystery, as its synopsis might lead you to believe. Instead, the author gorgeously renders an exploration of time and change in a modern-day village near England’s Peak District. It’s brilliant in its multiple character studies, in its attentions to the ecology surrounding the Derbyshire village, and in its deft interweaving of the two. In The New Yorker, reviewer James Woods says it best: “The beauty of Reservoir 13 is in fact rhythmic, musical, ceaselessly contrapuntal.” Underline ceaselessly contrapuntal. —Ann Beman, Nonfiction Editor