My last book of 2023 was Megan Nolan’s well-received second novel, Ordinary Human Failings. It started strongly and I found myself intrigued to see what would happen when Tom, a young and ambitious news journalist sent to cover the tragic and suspicious death of a child, met Carmel, the mother of the young girl accused of the crime. The early chapters are especially good, focusing on Carmel’s terrible alienation, her background in Ireland, and the sad (yet all too common) circumstances that led her to London. If only Nolan’s lens had kept its focus on Carmel and Tom. Instead, other characters come into view, notably Richie, Carmel’s broken down brother, and John, her father, and somehow the carefully built tension is lost and the overall spell gets broken. There’s some very good writing here, and I suspect Nolan may have great novels ahead of her, but Ordinary Human Failings was ultimately a disappointment.

Brian lives alone in a small, rented flat. He has a dead-end job. He has no contact with his family, no romantic relationships, and avoids all unnecessary interactions with colleagues. The closest thing he has to friends is the small group of film aficionados he meets on his nightly visits to the British Film Institute. His unhappy childhood has left him fearful, anxious, and determined to eliminate the risks and uncertainties of daily life. He knows how difficult that is but the occasional intrusion of unpleasant surprises (the local launderette closes without warning) and accidents (he is hospitalized after being hit by a car) make him all the more determined to try. The guiding principles of his life are Keep watch. Stick to routine. Guard against surprise.

Film is not just Brian’s passion. It’s his way of understanding the world and interacting with it. It affirms and tempers his solitude, and channels him to worlds of experience and feeling otherwise inaccessible. The months turn into years. Brian retires, and little changes in his routines, but the final page sees an anonymous act of kindness. Is it the start of something new?

Brian is an unusual and unusually affecting novel. Depictions of solitude can be patronizing, but Jeremy Cooper avoids that pitfall with a characterization that is generous, kind, and ultimately moving.

Susie Steiner, the author of the Manon Bradshaw trilogy that I just finished reading, died in 2022. Her plots may ostensibly have been all about dying (sometimes in the most gruesome and pathetic of circumstances), but her real preoccupations were really about the difficulties of living. How hard it is to grow old, how painful it can be to raise children, how frustrating work can be, and how tough marriages and families are. Her ability to write about such things without preaching and without talking down to readers, and to do it all in such an entertaining and empathetic way, is the heart of Steiner’s appeal.

The final book in the series, Remain Silent, was my least favorite. The flipping between past and present and the multiple perspectives were discordant and fractured my attention. In some way that I cannot pinpoint it all felt rushed and less cared for than its predecessors. That’s not to say I disliked the book, just that I felt disappointed after the highs of the previous two.