Seldom have we had so much time to read as we have had in 2020. But though many entered lockdown with high hopes of making a dent in the “to be read” pile, how many of us succeeded in polishing off Mr Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle? The reality is that it’s been difficult to find the quiet and peace of mind. If you now feel ready to catch up on some of 2020’s best reading, we strongly recommend you start with these 15 books.

Mayflies follows 20-year-old narrator James and his best friend, Tully Dawson, as they spend a debauched weekend at a festival in Manchester in 1986, then catches up with them 30-odd years later, as Tully wrestles with his own mortality. It is a moving testimony to youth, music and, most of all, the power of male friendship, a topic that is particularly dear to MR PORTER.

We met Mr Charles Yu in January to talk about his fine novel, which, archly utilising a screenplay format, follows Willis Wu, an actor stuck in the role of Generic Asian Man. Then, in October, Interior Chinatown won the National Book award. What can we say, but we called it?

In an investigation that is as compelling as the secrets it uncovers, Venezuelan author Ms Ariana Neumann seeks out the truth about her father, a Jewish survivor of Nazi Germany. Told through fragments and reminiscences, yet never losing a sense of driving curiosity, it’s a story as finely wrought as a Swiss watch.

Sweet, Furby-like creatures that watch you as you go about your business. Anonymous “dwellers” who lurk inside them, connected via internet link, doing the watching. What could possibly go wrong? This slim novel is not only a squeamish delight, but a timely fable for a year that’s been largely conducted on Zoom.

It won the Booker Prize, so you know it’s good, but let us emphasise just how good. Mr Douglas Stuart’s portrait of a young, sensitive Glaswegian boy and his steadily declining alcoholic mother is full of horror and heart, with characters whom you despair about, root for, but are never asked to judge.

Through a series of vignettes set in Sofia, Bulgaria, Mr Garth Greenwell tells the story of an American intellectual searching for fulfilment through literature, romance and a series of sado-masochistic gay hook-ups. Whether in gentle or violent mode, Cleanness is never less than devastatingly beautiful.

A collection of fascinating essays on the natural world from the author of H Is For Hawk, Vesper Flights collects material from the past decade and arranges it, as the introduction states, like a 19th century cabinet of curiosities. The title of essay number 11, Sex, Death, Mushrooms, says it all, really.

This is the escapism we needed in 2020, a dispatch from American Vogue’s most flamboyant ex-staffer. And, thank goodness, Mr André Leon Talley does not hold back. Cocaine for dessert at the Halston House! Poison pen letters from Yves Saint Laurent! A barrel of delicious gossip and a moving memoir, this was the fashion book to read this year.

Ms Jenny Offill’s fragmentary novella is a perfect match for the fidgety, low-level anxiety of 2020. And anxiety is the subject of Weather, a story about a university librarian who gets a job researching an ecological podcast. Ms Offill’s dark humour and skewering observations could hardly be more beautiful or more timely.

Jesse McCarthy, a young, gay, black Jehovah’s Witness from the West Midlands, moves to London after being “disfellowshipped” by his community and falls into sex work. Mr Paul Mendez’s semi-autobiographical debut is an unflinching but joyful exploration of race, power and queerness in contemporary Britain, set against a soundtrack of soul, post-punk and early 2000s R&B.

Having anticipated Covid-19 with her 2014 novel Station Eleven, which chronicled the aftermath of a global pandemic, Ms Emily St John Mandel uses The Glass Hotel to explore the complacency of an earlier era through the unravelling of a Ponzi scheme. Come for the pointed allegory and revel in its virtuosic construction.

Boy Parts is the story of the beautiful, heartless and gloriously messy Irina, an art photographer from Newcastle who specialises in humiliating and torturing her male subjects. She is an unforgettable narrator, bristling with caustic wit and dripping with scorn, and this debut author makes unravelling her (terrible) secrets a rollercoaster ride. 

This comic caper from the National Book Award-winning novelist opens as Sportcoat, the drunken deacon of a church in the projects of 1970s Brooklyn, shoots the local drug dealer seemingly for no reason. From here, Mr James McBride zooms in and out to write a love letter to this time, place and multicultural community, centred around a careening, pan-generational mystery.

Set in an impoverished Mexican village, Hurricane Season whirls around the murder of the local “witch”, who, it turns out, may not be quite what she seems. Inspired by research into real-life crimes, Ms Fernanda Melchor’s novel hums with dark humour and plays out like the stormy weather of its title.

In the mid-1930s, a Yorkshireman named Mr Maurice Wilson made a solo attempt to reach the summit of Everest, despite lacking expertise, equipment or approval. This book is his story, but also what lies behind it – a masculinity that emerged from WWI wounded and traumatised, with a need to reassert itself by any means.