Annual Book Guide 2001

From the 120,000 books published this year, we've arranged a retrospective show for discriminating readers.

First, let us recommend a few works that we found particularly captivating. The portraits in some of these novels are so realistic that the I's seem to follow you around the page. In the nonfiction gallery, you'll find titles that will change the way you frame the world. Further back, stroll among noteworthy books in a rich variety of styles.

Even novice collectors on a limited budget can acquire a masterpiece in this landscape of fine literary art. For the price of a single Rothko, you could buy every book here. But speculators in the unpredictable world of modern publishing are advised to pursue additional information on our website, where each of these abstracts is linked to a full review.

Take your time. The covers of this gallery never close.

The Bay of Angels, by Anita Brookner, Random House, $23.95

Brookner's 20th elegant novel perfects an examination of loneliness that threatened to grow monotone in her last few books. The narrator is a compulsively analytical young woman named Zoe, who lives in quaint isolation on the margins of life. When a wealthy, older man falls in love with her widowed mother, Zoe's childhood fairy tales seem to come true. But when he suddenly dies and his affluence evaporates, Zoe finds the circumference of her own life begins to shrink toward the center of her mother's failing health. Brookner's wit glows like a kind of background radiation that charges everything here - even the tragedy. She has never been more compellingly brilliant. (April 19)

True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey, Knopf, $25

In this bracing narrative, Carey gives a voice to Ned Kelly, the outlaw who terrorized Australia in the 1870s. He tried to be good, but a barrage of dispiriting prejudice and harassment finally pushed him too far. Listening to Ned's breathless testimony to his infant daughter, you can't help but hope he'll somehow outrun the English landlords, the army of police, and even the record of history that insists he was hanged in prison at the age of 26. Carey has raised a national legend to the level of international myth. An avalanche of a novel that won this year's Booker Prize. (Jan. 18)

Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger, Atlantic Monthly, $24

Enger's first novel is a rich mixture of adventure, tragedy, and healing. The humble Land family lives in a small Minnesota town in the early 1960s. The father works as a janitor, but he also performs miraculous deeds. When Rubin, the asthmatic narrator, is 11, his strong-willed older brother kills a pair of cruel bullies and runs from the law. Guided only by their father's prayers, the family sets out to find him. Enger has written a novel that's boldly romantic and unabashedly appealing, a collage of legends from sources sacred and profane - from the Old Testament to the Old West, from the Gospels to police dramas. (Sept. 6)

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, By Louise Erdrich, HarperCollins, $26

In this novel of striking variety and imaginative power, Erdrich returns to the Ojibwe natives of North Dakota. Having lost everything, Agnes DeWitt steals the identity of a dead priest and walks into a community ravaged by disease and sapped by clever lumbermen. From the first mass she celebrates, Agnes is tested in body and spirit. For the next 80 years, only wholehearted devotion to the healing effect of forgiveness enables her to survive and bless these desperate people. The history of her life is a startling collection of stories that shift like seasons from tragedy to humor, legend, and mysticism. National Book Award nominee. (April 12)

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26

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