Year-End Lists

Hillary Kelly: The Best Books of 2021, as published by New York Magazine’s Vulture

[see also 2023]

1. Matrix
   Lauren Groff
2. No One Is Talking About This
   Patricia Lockwood
3. One Friday in April

   A Story of Suicide and Survival
   Donald Antrim
4. Dear Senthuran

   A Black Spirit Memoir
   Akwaeke Emezi
5. Klara and the Sun
   Kazuo Ishiguro
6. Empire of Pain

   The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
   Patrick Radden Keefe
7. I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
   Claire Vaye Watkins
8. All That She Carried

   The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
   Tiya Miles
9. The Copenhagen Trilogy

   Childhood; Youth; Dependency
   Tove Ditlevsen
10. Nightbitch
    Rachel Yoder

Honorable Mentions

• The Fourth Child
  Jessica Winter
• Libertie
  Kaitlyn Greenidge
• Infinite Country
  Patricia Engel
• Detransition, Baby
  Torrey Peters
• The Book of Difficult Fruit

  Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly
  Kate Lebo
• Aftershocks
  Nadia Owusu
• Under a White Sky

  The Nature of the Future
  Elizabeth Kolbert
• In the Quick
  Kate Hope Day
• Hot Stew
  Fiona Mozley
• Fierce Poise

  Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
  Alexander Nemerov
• Painting Time
  Maylis de Kerangal
• Let the Record Show

  A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
  Sarah Schulman
• Second Place
  Rachel Cusk
• Good Behaviour
  Molly Keane
• Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
  Rivka Galchen
• Filthy Animals
  Brandon Taylor
• Intimacies
  Katie Kitamura
• Something New Under the Sun
  Alexandra Kleeman
• Burning Man

  The Trials of D. H. Lawrence
  Frances Wilson
• Harlem Shuffle
  Colson Whitehead
• The Days of Afrekete
  Asali Solomon
• Oh William!
  Elizabeth Strout