The Best Book I Read Last Year // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 1

Welcome to the first post of the 30-Day Book Challenge, in which I write about a different book or series every day for thirty days. The prompt for Day 1 of the challenge is "Best book you read last year", for which I have chosen Anita Brookner's novel Providence.

This first daily challenge struck me as especially appropriate for this time of year, as 2019 has just finished and prompted us all to look back on our years in review, especially in terms of the media we've consumed (thanks, Spotify, for those yearly wrap ups). 

I was actually asked about my favourite book I read last year over the winter holiday, to which I gave a different answer to the one I'm giving now. The reason for this is that I was struggling to choose between two books I read last year: Look at Me and Providence, both by Anita Brookner. Brookner is hands-down my favourite author I discovered last year, but choosing between the two of her novels I read in 2019 was (appropriately) a challenge. 

Both Providence and Look at Me are beautiful books, featuring what I'm led to believe are classic Brookner tropes: lonely, single, and introspective women living out thoughtful and painfully-solitary lives in the city of London. Neither book is necessarily what one would call a "happy" read, but what stuck with me about Brookner's writing was the range and depth of emotion depicted. There are moments of everyday triumph, hope, and even romance among the many melancholy ones. If her protagonists are generally reserved, this only makes their feelings come across as that much more poignant to the reader.

Providence, Brookner's second novel, follows Kitty Maule, an academic who has been in unrequited love with her coworker Maurice Bishop for some years before the start of the book. Things look promising when she gets an opportunity to travel with Maurice to France on a research trip... but should Kitty risk getting her hopes up?

As I said, I struggled to choose between Providence and Look at Me when picking my favourite book of the year. The reason I eventually went with the former is that, when looking back at the novels, it was Brookner's depiction of Kitty's interior life that stuck with me. 

Kitty is a woman trapped inside herself. She is agonisingly reserved, having a deep desire to be 'totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful', which she knows she can never achieve. She knows many kinds of pain: of loneliness, of loss, of seeing the person you want with someone else. But her internal restraint prevents her from letting these emotions out, from reaching a point where she might be able to recover from her pain and begin to move forwards.

Providence is not an easy book, for all that Brookner's writing itself is flowing and a pleasure to read. What Providence is is a beautiful depiction of a rich emotional life, the life of a person who constantly aches for more than she is given. It is for that reason that I have chosen it as the best book I read last year.