Joanna Di Mattia is a bookseller at Readings Carlton.

I made an early declaration this year that Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos would be the best novel I’d read in 2023, and as the year now comes to a close, that declaration still stands. For me, no other book has touched it – I love its emotional and psychological complexity, and the way it recreates the last days of life in a divided Germany so vividly and sensually. I think about it all the time.

That said, there were many other highlights in my reading year, including Anne Berest’s elegant and compelling autobiographical novel The Postcard, and Madelaine Lucas’s gorgeous, mature debut, Thirst for Salt. Both books have lingered. Lillian Fishman's Acts of Service and Alyssa Songsiridej's Little Rabbit were bold and challenging explorations of women’s desire. Rose Tremain's latest, Absolutely & Forever, was engaging from first to last and surprised me by becoming not quite the book I was expecting; Anne Enright's The Wren, The Wren had a similar effect. Both books have such a masterful command of voice – their characters lift right off the page.

I also really loved discovering the work of Jo Ann Beard (thanks Alison!) through her moving novella Cheri and assorted non-fiction pieces in The Collected  Works of Jo Ann Beard. Such smart, artful and precise prose. She deserves to be read more widely.

Every year involves re-reading, and this year I began revisiting the work of D.H. Lawrence for the first time in over 20 years, partly as research for my own writing, starting with The Rainbow, Women in Love, and his novella The Fox. It’s proving a rich and rewarding project that I’m looking forward to continuing in the new year.

And finally, Rebecca May Johnson’s Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen, remains one of the best things I laid my eyes on in 2023. A personal and cultural memoir that deromanticizes what happens in the kitchen, it’s also a radical treatise on the meaning of pleasure, giving and receiving it. It’s brilliant and provocative and has made me reconsider everything that is happening with my body and mind when I stir my pasta sauce!