My Favorite Books of 2006: Reader, I Married Him by Michèle Roberts

NOTE: I read a lot of great books in 2006. I also had a baby, which is why I never got around to writing up my favorite books of the year. I trust that these books continue to retain their goodness, though, and I believe that there’s actually an upside to reviewing them so long after reading them: My comments will be brief and incisive, concerning only what remains deeply etched in my memory. Also, these books are available in paperback now, which means big savings for you if you feel compelled to buy any of them.

A couple days before my daughter was due in July 2006, I started reading John Crowley’s Little, Big. It was a book I had been meaning to read forever, and a sweetly weird fantasy epic seemed like it would set the right tone for bringing a child into the world. It’s a fat book, so I figured it would get me through my last few days of pregnancy and a labor of medium duration.

Well, Frances took her time getting born, so, when I actually went to the hospital, I had to pack the next book on the pile. That book was Reader, I Married Him by Michèle Roberts. As it turns out, very little about Frances’s birth went the way I had planned, and this darkly comic tale of romantic suspense, told by a wholly unreliable narrator, was probably better suited to the birth experience I actually had than Crowley’s wistful magic.