Peter S. Beagle's Best Literature Picks of 2007

Maybe it's because I read too many mysteries, wishing I could write one, but one of the most impressive novels I read last year was Mistress of the Art of Death, by Ariana Franklin, which I think is a pseudonym for the British writer Diana Norman. It's set in the twelfth century: the detective is a woman whom we'd call a forensic physician today, raised and trained in Salerno, and summoned to England to solve the torture-murders of four children in Cambridge, which is being - of course - blamed on the local Jewish community. It's a truly scary book, and sometimes gorgeously funny in the damnedest places - and it includes perhaps the best sketch of Henry II (my favorite English king) that I've ever read. I don't know anything about Ariana Franklin, or whoever the hell she is, but right now I'll read anything with her name on it.

The best book of poetry I've come across has to be Colleen J. McElroy's Sleeping with the Moon, published by the University of Illinois Press. There's nothing academic about it; it's not one of those books written solely for the admiration of other English Department types. The poems have entirely to do with human hungers, human journeys and memories, human love, and a wit aged like 1948 Armagnac. It's one of those rare books that remind me of why I read poetry in the first place.