As mentioned, the current landscape for mainstream fiction is a blasted chaparral of posturing, preening, scolding, censoring, gaslighting, and “auto fiction,” and the reasons for this are fairly obvious. Works of fiction are almost entirely chosen and green-lit for non-literary reasons: the authors' sex, the authors' lies or delusions about their sex, the authors' position on the war in Ukraine, the authors' dating life past and present, and most of all, most overwhelmingly of all, the authors' social media postings. This has flooded the fiction market with works that share a whole suite of characteristics: 1) they aren't in any small measure fiction – they're “auto-fiction,” a term created to describe autobiography when it's written by boring narcissists, 2) they aren't formed in anything beyond a nominal sense – no plots, no sub-plots, no narrative arcs, certainly no character development, since the characters are self-inserts for the authors, who are, obviously, already perfect and so in no need of development (unless, I don't know, maybe you're a bigot?), and 3) they're more or less openly contemptuous of fiction itself – after all, fiction isn't them, so how important could it possibly be? Fortunately, even in this storm of institutional corruption, there are bright spots! These were the best of them:

10 The Dissident by Paul Goldberg (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Goldberg's delicious extended riff on both stereotypical thrillers and (if there is such a thing) stereotypical Cold War Russian fiction is pitch-perfect in almost everything it attempts, highlighting this author's deadpan wit and banishing any remaining doubts about his status as a novelist.

9 The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead Books)

Deadpan wit is also on display in this terrific novel buy Nunez, even though it flirts with a good many of the qualities that would make it a disaster in less skilled hands: a prominent character who's more or less a self-insert, a casual approach to plotting that borders on indifference, and a decided lack of conclusions. Nunez manages to assemble all these weaknesses into a strong book.

8 Wellness by Nathan Hill (Knopf)

A natural worry arising from a prior novel as universally celebrated as Hill's The Nix is that success will have spoiled the author in some way. Will he become precious and prolix? Will he sink into boring preoccupations? Will he, as has happened a few times in recent years, simply walk away from writing? Happily, Nix seems to have decided to write another fantastic book, every bit as multi-layered and entertaining as his previous one.

7 Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (Harper)

This intimate novel full of domestic drama and revealed family secrets is so finely observed and so glowingly humane that it pulls the reader directly into the world of flawed, compelling characters and sweeps along to a series of resolutions that are genuinely moving … all of which lodges it firmly on this list while simultaneously making it seem like something from Alpha Centauri when compared with the misfires on the Worst Fiction list this year.

6 Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter (Ecco)

The action of Leichter's novel springs from a disarmingly simple incident: an urban, apartment-dwelling couple discovers a lovely terrace to their apartment, a space – and an idea – that had never been part of their space before. But through a deft series of subtle elaborations, Leichter steadily expands the story into something that's both strange and oddly affecting. Some novels just stick in the memory longer and more persistently than others, and this is the foremost example this year.

5 Western Alliances by Wilton Barnhardt (St. Martin's)

As with the Nathan Hill follow-up, so too with this novel by Barnhardt, whose Lookaway, Lookaway was memorably wonderful: the worry arises the author of such a book would have nothing more to offer the reading world (they might still write for the rest of their lives, mind you – major literary awards are routinely given to septuagenarian writers whose debut back in 1870 was the only good thing they ever wrote). But no: this sharp and funny family drama is every bit as good as Barnhardt's previous.

4 Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown)

This novel of two young girls falling in love with each other in a bleak 19th century boarding school is likewise comparatively simple in its bare bones, but once again Donoghue creates an amazingly resonant story of longing and conformity.

3 Mobility by Lydia Kiesling (Crooked Media Reads)

Works of contemporary fiction can't usually be suspected of being deep or knowing (there's only so much that can be worked into a tweet, after all), but Kiesling's story of Bunny Glenn rise and fall and rise not only feels convincingly droll but also refreshingly multifaceted.

2 Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane (Harper)

The grimmest and most scathing novel on the list this year is Lehane's heartfelt and merciless excavation of the death of a world. The world is the working-class Irish neighborhood of South Boston, and although in these pages Lehane does his customary superb job of creating believable characters, the most shattering part of this unforgettable novel is its portrayal of a living community.

1 The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

In 2023 the prestigious Booker Prize was awarded to a book that very obviously wasn't the best one on the short list – a pattern that's held for the last five or six years and that's certainly true for the snub delivered to this amazingly ample and involving novel from Murray, the best novel of the year.