Two of the most rewarding reads of the year were wrapped up in one book: Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (Hamish Hamilton), a novel in two sections published to be read in either order. As his feckless protagonists exclaim: “What the hell else are we going to do but become great novelists?” Howard Jacobson’s unnerving dystopia J (Jonathan Cape) combined a satire of contemporary culture with a nightmarish investigation into anti-semitism and Alan Warner honed his singular talent in Their Lips Talk of Mischief (Faber), a black comedy of books and booze on the dole in Thatcher’s Britain. Back in the UK, Will Self’s psychiatrist anti-hero Zack Busner had another outing in Shark (Viking), the second volume in what is shaping up to be an extraordinary trilogy about modernism, medicine and the madnesses of the 20th century. Two giants of American fiction returned to their long-running literary projects, with Marilynne Robinson’s Lila (Virago) giving an outsider’s perspective on the events of Gilead and Home, and Richard Ford offering up new tales about the now ageing Frank Bascombe in Let Me Be Frank With You (Bloomsbury). Elsewhere, Norwegian confessional novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard delved into the psychodramas of his childhood in Boyhood Island (Vintage), the third volume of his epic series Rachel Cusk’s novelist narrator mediated other people’s stories in Outline (Faber), which playfully probed the boundaries between life and art Colm Toíbín drew on the loss of his father at a young age for a stunning portrait of familial grief in 1960s Ireland, Nora Webster (Viking) and Peter Carey threaded a story of Australian political intrigue in the 70s with present-day internet hackers in Amnesia (Faber). Customary celebrations greeted the publication of a new Haruki Murakami, while Sarah Waters’s The Paying Guests (Virago) was both a subtle inquiry into shifting class and gender relations after the first world war and an operatic crime thriller. Ian McEwan investigated the niceties of moral and legal judgment in The Children Act (Jonathan Cape), while in The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Cape) Martin Amis made grim comedy out of the Holocaust – though neither troubled the Man Booker judges. It seemed in 2014 as though almost every high-profile novelist had a book out (Stephen King had two).

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