The Best Books of 2014

From Hermoine Lee's elegant writing on Penelope Fitzgerald's life, to a glorious compendium of Inge Feltrinelli's photography, there have been countless must-buy books this year. AnOther invited New York-based books and arts journalist Anna Heyward to select her 2014 favourites...

BEST BIOGRAPHY

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, Hermione Lee
As a writer, Penelope Fitzgerald has always been slightly enigmatic. Having lived a life that seemed like it was harder than it should have been (three children, alcoholic husband, poverty that included brief homelessness, a houseboat that sank) she published her first novel at 58, and didn’t gain real recognition until she was 80. But the books she left behind are sharp and stunning, and Hermione Lee’s biography of is a gorgeous study in Fitzgerald’s English sensibility.
Standout points: Though an excellent accompaniment to Fitzgerald’s works, Lee’s writing is a pleasure in its own right.

BEST FICTION

Dept. of Speculation, by Jenny Offill
A spare, sad, and funny reflection on the balance of motherhood and the rest of life. Told in scraps and fragments, reflecting the absence of luxurious contemplative space in the narrator’s life, Dept. of Speculation tells a story from the inside a marriage, and new motherhood, without any of the wholesome joy that one is supposed to feel about such subjects. This is Offill’s second book, it’s written with elegance and humor, and it’s a beautiful reflection on the subtle ways that adult life can disappoint.
Standout points: This book is deceptively short. You’ll be through it in a couple of hours, though the emotional information it contains is vast.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante
This book is the final installment in Ferrante’s now-famous Neopolitan trilogy, which began with My Brilliant Friend. I now count this series as some of my favourite books of all time. Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, this book continues the story of Elena’s life in relation to how it diverged from Lila’s, and in this volume the scale of the story becomes epic, with its pursuit of the same (large) group of characters from the Neapolitan neighborhood we have followed since childhood.
Standout points: Great examination of female friendship, set against the violence of coming of age and leading an ordinary domestic life that we have come to associate with Ferrante’s work.

BEST ILLUSTRATION

Hansel & Gretel, Neil Gaiman and Lorenzo Mattotti
‘This all happened a long time ago, in your grandmother’s time, or in her grandfather’s. Back then, we all lived on the edge of the great forest.’ The eerie guile of the opening sentence should serve as a red flag that the reader is not about to enter into a whitewashed version of the familiar story, but one in which the medieval horror is preserved. Beautifully illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti, and in a luxurious deluxe edition.

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY

Mit Fotos die welt eroben, Inge Feltrinelli [Conquer the World with Photos]
Sadly, my favourite photobook of the year wasn’t published in English. The German edition, published by Steidl, shows the author in a striped bathing suit, holding up a fish she caught with Ernest Hemingway. The German beauty Inge Feltrinelli, started out as social photographer, taking pictures of Greta garbo, Nadine Gordimer, Picasso and JFL. She later became head of the Italian publishing house Feltrinelli, and this book is an incredible documentary collection of pictures of artists of the 20th century. It doesn’t matter that you won’t be able to read it, the images are enough.
Standout points: It’s a summing up of an amazing life (she’s about eighty-five now). She herself is stylish and well-dressed, the pictures of her in action are like proto-street style picture.

BEST COOKBOOK

My Portugal, by George Mendes

A lovely, Iberian holiday, adapted by the New York chef. George Mendes runs the Portugal-inspired restaurant Aldea; for this book he drove through Portugal, eating his way along. Portugal has somehow stayed consistently beneath the culinary radar, as French, Italian and Spanish cuisines alternate with Ottolenghis and Thomas Kellers. This book has a nice balance of simple complex, familiar and exotic—there are bound to be things in here you haven’t tried.
Standout points: The recipes are interspersed with stories about his family, and the places he’s travelling through.

BEST FASHION

Charles James: Beyond Fashion, edited by Harold Koda and Jan Reeder
Published to accompany the exhibition at the Met, this book is a showcase of a master of couture, and also the story of James’s life. James was without formal training, and his virtuosity as a dressmaker was at odds with the turbulence of his mind and temper, perhaps one of the reasons he never made it in the halls of fame that his protégés and admirers did (for example, Cristobal Balenciaga and Christian Dior). Focussing on the evening dresses he produced in the mid-twentieth century, the show of his dresses is a proto-Kawakubo study in the padding and sculpting of the female form.
Standout point: The book is also a fantastic showcase of Cecil Beaton’s photography, Beaton having been a schoolmate of James’s.

Words by Anna Heyward