It’s that time of year again, and after posting the 2009 meme yesterday, I’m back today with Kirsty’s Official Top 10 Books of 2009. For those who are on the Palimpsest forum, this list is already up there, and I reserve the right to edit this should something come along in the next two weeks that blows any of these out of the metaphorical water. But, onwards!

1. The Yellow Wallpaper and Selected Writing (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) – An unjustly underrated writer – at least she is in Britain – from the turn of the century. Virago’s edition (with intro by Maggie O’Farrell) collects her finest short stories plus selections from her autobiography. Sometimes she’s funny, sometimes she’s angry, sometimes she is heart-tuggingly sad. I heart her.
2. Someone at a Distance (Dorothy Whipple) – Kirsty’s First Persephone Book. Gorgeous as a novel and gorgeous as an object. A simple story about a marriage falling apart told with such emotion and humanity that it made me shout out loud at the characters.
3. Perfect Happiness (Penelope Lively) – Like Dorothy Whipple, Lively takes a domestic situation – this time the death of a husband – and describes the fallout with such clarity that I shed real tears.
4. The Nether World (George Gissing) – 1889 novel set in the slums of London. Occasionally Dickensian in his characterization but with more fury at the conditions of the poor.
5. Prince Rupert’s Teardrop (Lisa Glass) – Took a few pages to get my head around, but is ultimately a disturbing story about possible murder and definite mental illness. Didn’t know which way was up by the end, but in a good way.
6. The Centre of the Bed (Joan Bakewell) – Joan’s autobiography is as much women’s social history as it is her personal story. I want her to adopt me as a grandchild.
7. Wise Children (Angela Carter) – She makes the ludicrous oddly believeable.
8. The Little Stranger (Sarah Waters) – Not half as bad as some reviewers have made out. She’s a great storyteller, the characters were fully-rounded, and there was a twist in the last chapter that made me think differently about the whole novel.
9. The First Person and Other Stories (Ali Smith) – I read this collection at the beginning of the year, and I can still remember most of the stories with clarity – this is a good sign. Her best collection yet, I think.
10. Women Who Did (ed. Angelique Richardson) – short stories by men and women at the end of the 19thC and beginning of the 20thC centred around women’s rights and feminism. Some stories pro-feminism, some decidedly anti-. A cracking collection.