Books of the Year 2025: Part Four

We’re racing towards the end of the year although I spent several weeks of 2025’s last quarter going nowhere very much thanks to plantar fasciitis. Several absorbing novels kept me going, beginning with one which grew out of a social media post during the pandemic.

Damian Barr’s The Two Roberts is about Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, working class Scottish artists who met on their first day at the Glasgow School of Art in 1933, falling in love at a time when homosexuality was illegal. Bobby, as MacBryde was known, is the extrovert whose open gestures of affection make the buttoned-up Robert nervous. When Robert wins a travelling scholarship, Bobby’s second place is so close he’s also awarded a grant. Their adventure begins in Paris, then Italy before it’s cut short by the impending war but not before laying the foundations of a life together that will see them feted by rich patrons, poverty stricken and homeless, their work bought by New York’s MOMA, then sinking into obscurity, all the time loving each other, fighting, drinking and working ceaselessly. Barr’s gorgeous, immersive love story introduced me to two artists whose work in their heyday was compared to Braque and Picasso.

October’s second favourite was Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Pick a Colour set over a day in a nail salon run by Ning who, in another life, was a boxer. Everyone’s called Susan at Ning’s salon: it saves on nametags and avoids confusing the customers to whom they all look the same, anyway. Regulars and walk-ins are skilfully persuaded into extras, share their unhappiness and problems, offer unsolicited advice, unaware of the scathing, often funny back and forth between Ning’s team conducted in their own language offering their views on these entitled clients who notice next to nothing about the women who are performing intimate services for them, and care less. I’d been keen to read this one having enjoyed Thammavongsa’s Giller-Prize-winning short story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, one of 2020’s standouts, and it didn’t disappoint.

Four excellent November reads rounded off the year beginning with one from a Booker Prize International shortlisted author I’d not come across before. Set in the seventeenth century, Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child is narrated by the titular child moulded by an impoverished noblewoman charged with witchcraft. Christenze lives in a friend’s household, helping with the birth of Anne’s many children, none of whom survive more than a few days. When Anne’s hope turns to a bitterness, she points a finger at Christenze who flees before accusations are voiced but finds herself under suspicion again. Evidence is gathered and paid for, torture administered, confessions extracted, convictions declared and cruel punishment handed down. As you might expect from a poet, Ravn’s writing is arrestingly vivid. Kudos to Martin Aitken for his expert translation.

Set during in Italy’s Years of Lead, marked by atrocities and violent clashes between the extreme Left and Right, Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book follows Nicholas who has fled London for Venice. After a chance encounter with costume and set designer, Danilo Donati, he finds himself working first on Fellini’s Casanova, then Pasolini’s Salò, a reimagining of De Sade’s The 120 days of Sodom played out against the backdrop of the eponymous republic where Mussolini was installed by the Nazis. When Casanova resumes, Danilo and Nicholas return to Rome where the delight of finishing the film is interrupted by news of Pasolini’s brutal murder. There’s a convenient confession, but no one really believes the confessor. The blurb uses the word ‘noirish’ presumably for the mystery of what’s brought Nicholas to Italy but this is much more a beautifully executed novel of ideas wrapped up in an homage to Italian cinema which sounds a loud warning about our own times.

Gish Jen’s difficult-to-categorise Bad Bad Girl is the story of her mother’s life: a novelisation, leaning very much towards memoir. Born to a privileged family in 1924, Jen’s mother was the first child of a progressive father prescient enough to encourage her ambition to study in America where she meets her Chinese husband. She gives birth first to a son, then to Lillian who eventually chooses to go by her nickname Gish, followed by three more children. Lillian forges ahead with little support, her friends shocked by her treatment at home not least the violence dished out by her mother, but only to Lillian. Jen’s achingly poignant book is a moving depiction of a dysfunctional relationship which has grown out of an equally difficult one.

My last book of 2025 was a surprise hit for me. Aja Gabel’s Lightbreakers follows Noah, who’s been invited to take part in what is essentially a time travel experiment funded by a billionaire, and his wife, Maya, stalled in her art and needing a direction, who accompanies him out into the Texan desert. Together for eight years, they’ve reached a stage where a decision must be made about having children, complicated by the loss of Noah’s daughter with his ex-wife and the grief that split them apart. Once inducted into the Janus Project, it’s clear that Noah’s to be the subject rather than involved in its design, a human lab rat to be ‘folded’ into time. I enjoyed this touching, immersive novel which poses questions about our versions of the past and the danger of not letting go while making the timely point that the desire of the ultra-rich to play God is a pernicious one.

And if I had to choose one? Impossible, as ever, but Seascraper, Woman in Blue and A Room Above a Shop are all in the frame.

That’s it for 2025’s books of the year. Thanks to all who stayed the course and for those who’d like to catch up, the first three parts are here, here and here.

Time to look forward to 2026’s treats…