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4. K., by Roberto Calasso (Knopf). The "K" of the title is Kafka. Here I will quote from a review of the book which I did for The Weekly Standard: "Like Joseph Brodsky's essay on W. H. Auden's 'September 1, 1939,' Calasso's study of Kafka is one of those all too rare performances that give literary criticism a reason to exist. Beginning with a sustained immersion in The Castle and touching in its course on much of Kafka's work, K. invites the reader to pay attention, to enter into a state of hyper-awareness that becomes almost intoxicating. …

"One of the greatest benefits of Calasso's book is simply the reminder that we live among rival understandings of the world and our place in it. But do we really need reminding of this? Doesn't any day's news suffice? No, because most of the time that news just glances off us. All sensible people, we think, see things pretty much as we do. But a secularist who reads Calasso's book—and reads Kafka at his instigation—must, if he's honest, come to terms with the incredible notion that this wonderfully adept guide, who seems in so many ways a kindred spirit, is capable of talking rubbish about 'the gods,' and moreover enlists Kafka in his cause. A Christian or a Jew or a Muslim must reflect that this penetrating critic of secularism is also a polytheist, after a fashion, a neopagan (and there are many neopagans in 'secular' Europe)."

5. The Lighthouse, by P. D. James (Knopf). When James' previous Adam Dalgliesh novel, The Murder Room, appeared on this list a couple of years ago, I feared that it might be her last book. So this new novel comes gift-wrapped. Set on an island off the coast of England, it is deliciously and self-consciously stylized in the mode of the classic British mystery, where the action unfolds in a controlled setting with a strictly limited cast of characters, but it is written with a virtuosity that can't be matched in any of the Golden Age greats. Like his creator, the impossibly superior Dalgliesh inspires both admiration and a desire for parody. What's most striking about The Lighthouse is a certain lightness of spirit not so evident in the last several books in the series. There is plenty of darkness, to be sure, pain and loss and unmistakable evil, but nevertheless the balance has shifted.

6. Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B. S. Johnson, by Jonathan Coe (Continuum). If I tell you that B. S. Johnson was an avant-garde British novelist for whom all the usual contrivances of fiction were so much baggage to be tossed overboard, that he accordingly wrote himself into a corner before committing suicide, you would quickly form a vague mental image of the man—just before you turned the page in search of a more congenial subject. But Johnson wasn't as you might imagine, and we are fortunate indeed that the British novelist Jonathan Coe was interested enough to tell his story, so idiosyncratic and at the same time emblematic that not even a genius could have made it up. This is the finest literary biography I have read in the last several years.

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December (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49