AARP’s Best Books of 2022

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man by Paul Newman

KNOPF

Never a particularly ardent fan of the late acting legend (and salad dressing purveyor), I didn’t expect to be so absorbed in this posthumous memoir/biography, which was cowritten with David Rosenthal. Based in large part on Newman’s own writings, it’s stunningly revealing, full of expressions of self-doubt, regret and uncertainty from a man many view as an icon of cool masculinity. The actor’s goal, he wrote, was to “leave some kind of record that sets things straight, pokes holes in the mythology that’s sprung up around me.” (Read our seven takeaways from the book.)

The Lemon by S.E. Boyd

This tart tale, the creation of three writers — journalists Kevin Alexander and Joe Keohane and editor Alessandra Lusardi — is packed with dark humor and hilariously self-centered characters out to make a buck and find their 15 minutes of fame. Their paths cross after celebrity chef John Doe, a troubled Anthony Bourdain-like traveling foodie, dies in a particularly embarrassing way that needs to be covered up to protect his brand. It’s a grim premise, but the story manages to be wryly funny and totally entertaining.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

GROVE PRESS

Stuart, author of the Booker Prize–winning Shuggie Bain, sets his latest heartbreaking and poignant novel in depressed 1980s Glasgow, amid deep tensions between Protestant and Catholic residents. Sensitive Mungo, a Protestant teenager mostly unattended by his unstable mother, develops a relationship with the kindly James, who is Catholic — a dangerous situation when Mungo’s hotheaded brother Hamish is a violent gang leader. This is juxtaposed with Mungo’s disastrous, mother-approved fishing trip with a pair of men that adds to the novel’s building tension.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

A thick novel by the author of The Poisonwood Bible (among many great works), this story (inspired by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, hence the title) centers on a young man growing up in Appalachia with a drug-abusing mother. Friends and family pitch in periodically and help Demon, but he’s a tragic character who faces endless challenges, including substandard schools, abuse, addiction and neglect. Kingsolver infuses his heartrending story with a bit of humor, while offering an absorbing deep dive into the lives of people mired in rural poverty.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

SCRIBNER

This is a mind-bending, fantastic novel that begins with a tech mogul, Bix Bouton, who develops a new technology called “Own Your Unconscious” that allows users to access any memory from their pasts, as well as share them with others. Egan, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, weaves in a host of intriguing characters (including a few, such as Bix, who appeared in Goon Squad) and jumps to and from different time periods to create a colorful, layered story about, at least in part, the elusiveness of authenticity in a world that feels increasingly virtual.

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry

Yes, we’ve got another National Book Award winner on this list, this one in the nonfiction category, by a professor of African American studies at Princeton, who details her travels through the American Deep South (a region and culture “made at a crossroads between the lust for cotton and the theft of Indigenous land,” she notes). Raised in Alabama, Perry is returning home, in a sense, to look at the South and its history of racial division with fresh eyes and a thoughtful perspective to help understand the nation as a whole.

More 2022 Books of Note

Finding Me by Viola Davis: A best-selling memoir by the actress, who offers a raw, frank look at her life, from growing up in poverty in Rhode Island, to finding success on stage and beyond. The audiobook version, read by Davis, has also received great praise.

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty: Winner of this year’s National Book Award, Gunty’s debut novel is about residents of a low-income housing complex in a down-and-out town in Indiana during a hot week in July. The award judges called it “beautiful, biting, darkly comic, and provocative.”

We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland by Fintan O’Toole: O’Toole, a masterful essayist, incorporates stories from his own life, including growing up in working-class Dublin, to explore the larger story of his homeland with sensitivity and insight. It won the 2021 An Post Irish Book Award; judges described it as “an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand modern Ireland.”

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus: A charming, funny debut novel, this bestseller is about Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in 1960s California who becomes the host of a cooking show and ends up teaching viewers about far more than how to bake a cake. An Apple TV+ adaptation starring Brie Larson is in the works.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng: By the best-selling novelist of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere, Ng’s bestseller focuses on a 12-year-old named Bird who lives with his father in a dystopian America where the dictatorial leadership has eliminated all dissent and banned books deemed unpatriotic. 

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson: I loved this absorbing novel about two adult siblings, Byron and Benny, who learn incredible secrets about their mother’s past after she passes away. The book is being adapted into a Hulu series.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn: This witty, lighthearted thriller features a kick-butt group of women in their 60s who work as elite assassins. (“We don’t murder on our days off any more than a thoracic surgeon will cut your rib cage open for kicks,” one character notes. “We have standards.”)

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff: The Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer — for her book about a literary giant’s wife, Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) — probes the life of the American revolutionary, born three centuries ago this year.