The Best Books of 2019, According to O, The Oprah Magazine

It’s no surprise that Oprah’s first pick for her revamped book club, “The Water Dancer,” made the list. She says it’s one of the best books she’s ever read. It’s in her top five of all time! In his first novel, Ta-Nehisi Coates, known for his National Book Award-winning memoir “Between the World and Me,” and his powerful collection of essays “We Were Eight Years in Power,” conjures up an enthralling story that soars with suspense, tragedy, and fantasy, all the while grounded by the love of family.

The story of two siblings navigating the disintegration of their family and the loss of their beloved childhood home, the novel feels at once like a modern fairytale of childhood endurance — there’s even a wicked stepmother — and a Victorian work of familial greed and the cruelty of circumstance. But for all the drama behind it, the story is primarily a touching one, about the beautiful relationship between a brother and sister as they navigate the journey to, and through, adulthood.

Nonfiction isn’t Oprah’s usual wheelhouse, which makes the the selection of Benjamin Dreyer’s book stand out in this sea of fiction picks. “Brimming with wit and revelatory wisdom, this style manual–cum–linguistic jubilee from Random House’s copy chief (a frequent corrector of the president’s grammar on Twitter) entertains as it enlightens,” according to Oprah’s end-of-year write-up.

“The Need” made the longlist for the National Book Award this year. “In an ingenious, edgy speculative fiction that finds the monstrous in the notion of domestic tranquillity, Phillips leads us into a fraught daymare in which a young mother’s anxiety — exacerbated by insomnia and her husband’s absence — serves as a parable for all that keeps us up at night,” says the write-up in “O, The Oprah Magazine.”

Many tough choices face the titular Patsy: She decides to leave Jamaica, her daughter, and her husband looking for a better life in America and her first love, Cicely. While she boldly holds the reins of her life, it doesn’t stay on course, and she’s left trying to navigate through her desired dreams and harsher reality. A bold exploration of immigration and motherhood.

The latest from Nell Zink (“Mislaid”) is definitely the quietest hit on this list. “Pynchon meets the Pixies in this riotous, rocking novel set in Manhattan and D.C. in the early ’90s and the gentrifying decades that follow. … Zink’s pop culture references — and caustic social commentary — sparkle in a hipster valentine to a milieu that still shapes us,” according to the write-up in “O, The Oprah Magazine.”

This is a story of a family on the brink of falling apart as they traverse a nation at war with its own values. It’s the story of a woman who wants to document the experiences of children who fled war and violence, only to be kept in cages. It’s an unflinching reflection of our world as it is, even as it employs fiction’s ability to transport and entertain.

You’re bound to find one of your all-time favorite short stories in Zadie Smith’s collection spanning several genres. “Grand Union” is “exacting in its technique, jazzy in its improvisations, as it roams among drag queens, murderous soldiers, Greenwich Village puppeteers, and Hollywood icons fleeing the chaos of 9/11,” says “O, The Oprah Magazine.”

Sally Rooney has a way of writing so concisely and so sharply about love and social status and neuroses that you feel, at times, as though she’s cut you open, and you’re staring at your own innards on the page. Two preternaturally intelligent Irish teenagers are brought together by an almost magnetic fascination with one another, only to be driven apart by everything from high school hierarchies to emotional and physical trauma.

“Red at the Bone” jumps around in one family’s generational timeline to reveal a complicated story about race, class, sexual orientation, and more, in the simple and lyrical prose Woodson masterfully wields. “This deceptively slim novel pulses with yearning—for more, for better, for love, and for the chance to write our own stories,” according to the write-up in “O, The Oprah Magazine.”

A great end-of-year read for anyone who survives winters by dreaming of spring. “For those needing a reminder to stop and smell the roses: Look no further than Kane’s wholly palate-cleansing fourth book, about a middle-aged gardener still living with her father who embarks on a Homeric quest to revive friendships that need a little tender loving care,” write the editors at Oprah’s publication.

“Olive, Again” by Elizabeth Strout is the sequel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning work, “Olive Kitteridge,” and another of Oprah’s Book Club picks from the past year. Everyone’s favorite curmudgeonly character continues to keep it real and relatable in this follow-up. “I love [Olive] because she’s so 100% authentically herself,” Winfrey said on “CBS This Morning.”