Best-Read Man’s 10 Best of 2015

“Purity”

By Jonathan Franzen 

Despite a murder in the novel’s first third that feels like a forced attempt at Dostoyevskian themes, Mr. Franzen proves once again that he is our most vital novelist; there is simply no other writer who wraps his or her arms around such large swaths of contemporary life. Though “Purity” is more globe-trotting than Mr. Franzen’s earlier work, weaving its way through Oakland, Berlin, Bolivia, and the American Southwest, it loses little of the author’s usual emotional intimacy. While tackling themes such as the environment, social media, family bonds, and purity itself, at its heart “Purity” is a novel about a girl looking for her father. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28)

“A Manual for Cleaning Women”

By Lucia Berlin

It is astonishing to think that if you lived in Northern California in the late 1970s, there was a chance that the woman cleaning your house might also be one of America’s best short-story writers. The life of Lucia Berlin (who died in 2004) was riddled with alcoholism, broken marriages, and odd jobs — and so it is with many of her characters. With its working-class milieu and economical writing style, her work stands as a companion to that of Raymond Carver. 

The book is too long by a third — both the brilliant and the mediocre are collected here — but few of the stories will fail to move you, and a handful carry a real wallop. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26)

“Dead Wake”

By Erik Larson

Another propulsive nonfiction book by Mr. Larson, whose historical narratives are more engrossing than most novels. The book chronicles the sinking of the Lusitania from multiple perspectives, including various passengers and crew members and, most compellingly, the German U-boat commander who is stalking them. Mr. Larson’s research is exhilarating — he has an eye for the small details that make characters whole and scenes come alive. But finally it’s his storytelling instincts that keep you coming back for more; he’s the rare historian whose books are so riveting you can’t believe it’s all true. (Crown, $28)

“The Visiting Privilege”

By Joy Williams

A great short-story writer who has always flown just under the radar. The author’s relationship to her characters is often despairing, sometimes even downright misanthropic. Yet Ms. Williams wields a mordant wit that captures the joyful absurdity of human beings, and which is itself a kind of exaltation. As with all great fiction, you will see people you know in its pages, sometimes even yourself. And yet for all the familiarity, the author is full of surprises: Anyone who thinks he knows where a Joy Williams story is going is in for a shock. 

Fifty-six of her stories for 30 bucks? That’s a true embarrassment of riches. (Knopf)

“H Is for Hawk”

By Helen Macdonald

A meditation on death and bereavement that miraculously uses nature-writing as its engine. When Ms. Macdonald’s father dies suddenly on a London street she resolves to tame a young goshawk — the most fearsome and unpredictable of predator birds. Why a goshawk? In the author’s despair she finds the hawk’s temperament mirrors her own, “solitary, self-possessed, free from grief and the hurts of human life.” Slowly her relationship with the hawk draws the author out of herself and her pain. That this all comes off much less corny than it sounds is a testimony to the writer’s considerable talents. Easily the most beloved memoir of the year. (Grove, $26)

“The Harder They Come”

By T.C. Boyle

The narrative bounces back and forth from the 19th century to the present, but still Mr. Boyle’s novel is the most au courant work of the year, covering America’s most pressing preoccupations: gun violence and anti-government sentiment. The genius of Mr. Boyle is that he doesn’t preach — you’re never really sure what side he’s on. In the end, though, there’s no denying the sense of horror and waste. The conclusion seems to be that America’s frontier legacy is both our blessing and our curse, but his writing is so propulsive and entertaining you almost forget to despair. (Ecco, $27.99)

“Between the World and Me”

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

A book that begins “Son,” as a black father addresses his 15-year-old boy on the pride and perils of being a black youth in America. Mr. Coates pulls no punches in his assessment of white America’s progress being “built on looting and violence.” This is a book you may want to argue with as you read it (most of them you will lose), but there’s no arguing with Mr. Coates’s powerful voice, which echoes the work of James Baldwin. The language is visceral but never hectoring, and this memoir secures Mr. Coates’s position as the pre-eminent black voice of his generation. (Spiegel & Grau, $24)

“The Dark Forest”

By Cixin Liu

Mr. Liu’s success is of the most unlikely kind — a science-fiction writer from China who became an international sensation. He is also the lead practitioner of a new genre called “hard” science fiction, where all the speculative scenarios are based on real concepts of quantum physics. The novel’s set-up sounds like a 1950s paperback: Earth prepares for an attack from a civilization that will arrive in four centuries’ time. But Mr. Liu, a software engineer by trade, has a keen sense of political machinations and a talent for schematic but believable character sketches. 

One caveat: “The Dark Forest” is the second in a trilogy, so those interested may want to begin with volume one, last year’s equally good “The Three-Body Problem.” (Tor Books, $25.99)

“Four Novels of the 1950s”

By Ross Macdonald

Another great excavation job by the Library of America, rescuing Macdonald’s reputation as a writer of mere “pulp.” Although the author is, in some ways, the inheritor of the Hammett/Chandler mantle in detective fiction, he also upended the genre. In Macdonald’s mysteries, which are set in affluent postwar Southern California, few punches are thrown, and even fewer shots are fired. The real villain is money and the way it poisons families. His spot-on depictions of 1950s suburbia, and the hole in the heart of the American dream, were a precursor to the work of John Cheever. The gin, the swimming pools, and the seersucker suits are all just a mask for spiritual decay. ($37.50)

“The Story of the Lost Child”

By Elena Ferrante

The fourth and final installment of Ms. Ferrante’s Neapolitan cycle. The books follow two women — the brilliant, inward-looking Elena and her larger-than-life friend Lila — as they try to escape their violent, provincial upbringing in Naples. In this volume, Elena returns to Naples to be with the man she has always loved and tries to renew her friendship with Lila. 

Like the previous three installments, “The Story of the Lost Child” offers little in the way of plot. Instead, Ms. Ferrante offers lifelike portraits of two of the most flawed and fascinating women in contemporary literature, along with a comprehensive look at a country painfully trying to drag itself from cloying tradition into modernity. (Europa Editions, $18)

Kurt Wenzel is the author of the novels “Lit Life,” “Gotham Tragic,” and “Exposure.” He lives in Springs.