2004: The Year in International Books

Courtesy National Commission on Terrorist Attacks

The most important book of 2004 had it all: a transfixing plot; a probing exploration of tragedy, folly, deceit and redemption; and the electrifying aura of controversy.

The only thing The 9/11 Commission Report lacked was a sexy title. As if it needed one.

For a government inquiry that marshaled 2.5 million pages of documents, 1,200 interviews and 160 witnesses in 19 days of hearings, the 567-page tome is a genuine page-turner. Couched in the brisk prose of an airport novel (see: Crichton, Grisham), the report soberly relates the facts behind the most horrific attack on U.S. ground post-Pearl Harbour: how 19 hijackers commandeered four American passenger planes; how U.S. intelligence was caught completely unawares; the history of al-Qaeda; and the details of the Bush administration’s immediate counter-offensive. In spite of its stated neutrality, the record is written with a heavy heart. It’s the absence of sentimentality that makes The 9/11 Commission Report more crushing than the cavalcade of manipulative network features that were trotted out immediately after the tragedy.

If any book captures the welter of human emotion following 9/11, it’s Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel In the Shadow of No Towers. A collage of comic styles – with shrewd references to everything from The Katzenjammer Kids to Little Nemo to Spiegelman’s own Holocaust allegory Maus (1986) – the book is a bold reckoning of the existential panic and specious politicking that followed the downing of Manhattan’s iconic skyscrapers. It’s as angst-ridden and potent an example of 9/11 literature as you’re likely to find.

Spiegelman minces no thought bubbles when it comes to George W. Bush, but his treatment seems positively restrained compared to Nicholson Baker. In Baker’s audacious novel Checkpoint, two friends debate the merits, and logistics, of murdering the sitting president. Released in the months preceding the U.S. election, Baker’s slender but pointed missive had the rare privilege of being maligned by both sides of the political divide: by the right for its appalling, patently unpatriotic premise, and by the left for its specious logic.

Things were a lot more favourable for former prez Bill Clinton. Six years removed from Zippergate and his unceremonious impeachment, Clinton was once again making young girls (and disenchanted Democrats) blush. Many liberals felt he could have recaptured the presidency this year, if only he’d run. Instead, Slick Willy exploited the American public’s short memory to publish My Life, a memoir the size of a toaster oven. To generate maximum buzz – and ensure the unlikelihood of bad reviews prior to My Life’s official publication date – Knopf made sure book critics weren’t afforded advance copies. Newspaper commentators who weighed in on Clinton’s smoothly prevaricating tome the day after its release simply hadn’t read it. By the time serious reviewers had a chance to finish it and file their critiques, My Life had become the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever, selling 1.2 million copies in a mere two weeks.

Publishing Bill Clinton’s memoirs is money in the bank. But who could have prophesied worldwide fervour for a book on grammar? Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the new bible for punctuation freaks, was without a doubt the most unlikely success of the year. Released in Britain late 2003 and in North America this past April, Eats, Shoots and Leaves has sold more than two million copies internationally and was a number 1 bestseller in the U.S. despite its uncompromising use of British spelling.

Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus know all too well the exhilaration of a runaway bestseller. In 2001, they co-authored The Nanny Diaries, a scabrous tell-all about Manhattan au pairs working on Park Avenue. Before it was even published, Miramax had bought the movie rights for $500,000. When it was finally released in bookstores, it moved nearly two million copies. Anticipating another chorus of cash registers, venerable publisher Random House offered McLaughlin and Kraus a $3-million US advance for a fiction follow-up. When the manuscript for Citizen Girl was dropped off this February, the editors took one nonplussed glance at the allegedly poor draft and said, “Pass.” They also recanted the $3-million jackpot. Forced to shop the book around, McLaughlin and Kraus found a sympathetic ear in Atria Books (owned by Simon and Schuster), who gave them a comparatively trifling $200,000. Atria’s decision to publish Citizen Girl could be seen as charitable; reviews have been anything but.

Critical chatter is at its most lively around Booker time. Resisting the temptation to glorify the year’s most ambitious fiction escapade – namely, David Mitchell’s genre-defying Cloud Atlas – the committee for Britain’s top literary prize feted stalwart Alan Hollinghurst for his keen tragicomedy The Line of Beauty. Meanwhile, the ordinarily staid Nobel committee awarded the prize for literature to Austrian scribe Elfriede Jelinek. A venerable force in European letters, Jelinek is best known for her novel The Piano Teacher, a harsh tale of sadomasochism that was turned into an equally harsh motion picture. Jelinek, known for her vociferous criticism of neo-Nazi strains in Austrian society, did not attend the award ceremony, citing a social phobia that prevents her from mingling in big crowds – which seems as good a reason as any to not have to hang out with windy publishing types.

Speaking of clever dodges, publisher New American Library announced this year that it would not reissue Sisters, a salacious “historical romance” written in 1981 by Lynne Cheney, the wife of vice-president Dick Cheney. The reason: the Second Lady balked. She felt the novel – which contains passages with prostitution, rape and lesbian lust – wasn’t her “best work.” We could see how that would contradict her numbing conservative image. Curious readers shouldn’t feel thwarted: there’s always eBay.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.