I loved the searching honesty yet lightness of touch of Rupert Thomson's family memoir This Party's Got to Stop (Granta Books, £16.99). I was knocked out by Joanne Limburg's The Woman Who Thought Too Much (Atlantic Books, £14.99). To call it a memoir about OCD doesn't begin to describe its humour, sweetness and intellectual and verbal brilliance. I also admired Joshua Ferris's second novel, The Unnamed (Viking, £12.99), for its willingness to take risks, be entirely different from his bestselling first novel, and play around with form and expectations (mine). But my real book of the year - if only because I'd give anything to have written it - is David Flusfeder's A Film by Spencer Ludwig (Fourth Estate, £11.99). Funny, surprising, awkward, beautiful - and like all the best fiction, very hard to sum up or categorise. It's a very strange world where you can write a book like that and not win prizes.

Previous book: Chris Mullin

Next book: John Pilger

Back to list