The perfect novels for your book club in 2020

It's a well-known secret that conversations at book clubs don't always focus on the tome in hand. But what if the book in question was so good and so relevant to the world around us, people couldn't talk about anything else? Here we present novels perfect for 2020 that will challenge and inspire, from decades-old classics to contemporary prize-winners.

Themes: love, sex, generational divides, queer identity

To avoid the book club curse – people not doing the reading and trying to blag it on the day – try the most enjoyable book of 2019. Not only will everyone finish Girl, Woman, Other, they’ll probably do so early. On paper, the Booker-winner sounds like it could be a bit of a slog; a huge cast of characters spanning multiple generations, dealing with complex themes like gender identity and intergenerational conflict. Yet from the first page to the last it is a palpable joy, such is the wit and verve of Evaristo’s prose, her ability to do heavy emotional digging with the deftness of touches. As the narrative breezes through the lives of twelve women – ranging from an elderly matriarch struggling through a family dinner to a young student finding her feet at university – each is brilliantly and believably evoked. So much to enjoy; so much to talk about afterwards.

Themes: PTSD, womanhood, aging and mental health

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Quite a lot of people, it seems. Depending on the book club, to raise Mrs Dalloway as next month's option might well be accused of being anything from trite to pretentious, such is the reputation of Modernist literature’s leading lady. Cast away those presumptions, though, and Woolf’s searing portrayal of crumbling domesticity in the wake of the First World War has the potential to conjure all manner of conversations on matters that still resonate today. There's also the opportunity to bed in with Woolf's famed stream-of-consciousness writing style, which radically changed the literary form we read today, and like only the best books holds new meaning for every age.

Themes: modern marriage, black identity, domesticity 

Not to be confused with Sally Rooney’s Normal People, this realistic novel paints a portrait of a marriage that, 13 years in, is running dry. Evans’ has previously spoken of her ambition ‘to see the everyday in middle-class black lives normalised and humanised’ and in Melissa and Michael’s (‘M&M’) Crystal Palace home, things seem gratingly familiar - until they don’t, and the otherworldly starts to unfold. 

For those who have a soft spot for the traditional novel, Evans has earned comparisons to Dickens and Tolstoy, such is her ability to create a complete and familiar world. Which means that, even if you don't want to talk about relationships, marriage or long-term love, there is the recent history of Barrack Obama's inauguration and the death of Michael Jackson to reconsider as a group.

Themes: memory, loss, rural life, the lost golden age of England

Not for nothing did the much-lauded literary podcast Backlisted make this 1980 Booker-nominee the subject of its first-ever episode. You’d be hard pressed to find a more perfect novella, nor one so strangely overlooked. It’s tells the deceptively simple story of a single, rejuvenating summer spent uncovering a mural in a village church by Tom Birkin, a restoration expert and war veteran escaping London in the wake of a failed marriage. A Month in the Country richly and gently evokes rural English life – both its scenery and cast of eccentric characters – but without ever getting misty-eyed or glib. As a prompt for exploring the topic of  nostalgia and national character in the year we leave the EU, this is just the ticket.

Themes: spiritualism, isolation, motherhood

Francine Toon’s chilling debut found its place on plenty of breathless preview lists before its release in January, but there are better reasons that mere hype to bring a new release to a book club. Pine works deceptively hard. Toon’s elegantly minimalist prose immerses the reader in a remote and tight-knit Highlands community, steeped in silence and superstition. We find it through the lens of 11-year-old Lauren and her struggling, borderline-alcoholic single father, around whom increasingly unsettling things start to happen. Masterfully, Toon never fully clarifies who is tidying their gloomy little house, nor what leaves the scent of ‘something rotten, like meat left in the sun’ - which means there’s all the more to be discussed as a group.

Themes: coming-of-age, grief, the Irish crash

Novels with grand political points to make are all well and good – and indeed, this 2014 novel has plenty to say about the madness of pre-recession Ireland – but what really makes for a good book club discussion is the way characters make you feel. For one who will play with your heart like a rag doll, meet Donal Ryan’s protagonist Johnsey Cunliffe, part of fine literary tradition of big-hearted but not-too-bright giants pitted against a cruel world. Newly orphaned, the young Johnsey struggles with the upkeep his family farm in Ireland while local vultures circle his estate. Grieving, lonely and ill-equipped, his life takes a turn for the better when he befriends a nurse and a fellow local oddball.

The Thing About December is wonderfully sad and devastatingly funny, executed with a lyrical beauty that is often stunning, with clear shades of Flowers For Algernon, Of Mice and Men and Forest Gump among others.

Themes: abuse of power, consent, race

This Nobel Prize-winning novel follows David Lurie, a middle-aged professor in Cape Town who has an affair with a young student. When it ends and she makes a complaint to the university, he is publicly shamed but refuses to apologise. Sound familiar? Coetzee’s slender masterpiece (Disgrace is only 220 pages long) was lauded for its examination of post-apartheid in South Africa in 1999, but is finding fresh relevance in the post-#MeToo era thanks to its protagonist, a powerful, pompous man who is appalled when his own daughter is attacked while being unable – or unwilling – to see his own behaviour in a similar light. Coetzee is at the peak of his powers here, sifting through giant and complex themes with prose as taunt as a drum.

Themes: immigration, identity, the Windrush generation

Immigration looks like it may be the dominant topic of British politics this year, with the government announcing a new ‘point-based’ entry system and the Windrush Generation deportations being carried out against an ongoing outcry. What better time to revisit one the finest works of fiction about the latter, Samuel Selvon’s classic novella The Lonely Londoners. It follows several West Indians who arrive in the capital following the 1948 British Nationality Act, which granted citizenship to those living in Commonwealth countries. A freewheeling and somewhat raucous affair, the book centres on Trinidadian Moses Aloette, a veteran who takes new arrivals to London under his wing and shows them how to survive. Full of sex, scams and adventure, it’s also a quietly touching insight into immigrant life and the sorrow of being far from home.

Themes: marriage, memory, gender

One of the most interesting themes to emerge in literary fiction in recent years has been the playing with perspectives, and narrative expectations, around gender. Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry  (2018) started as a portrait of a famous male writer then played a delicious sleight-of-hand to put its female protagonist centre stage. Fleishman Is In Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (2019), did something similar by keeping the titular character’s wife both unsympathetic and firmly at arm’s length until a virtuoso final third. The precursor to both of these hits was Lauren Groff’s wonderful 2015 novel Fates and Furies, which charts a marriage in two parts: the story of talented but wayward playwright Lance, followed by his beautiful but elusive wife Mathilde. Fans of TV show The Affair (before it became rubbish) will love the differing perspectives on the same relationship. Fans of good writing will love Groff’s mastery of everything, from dialogue and scenery to suspense and delivering an emotional wallop.