One of the year’s most gripping works focused on a family glued to the TV. Oxygen Mask (Faber) charts a boy’s panicked thoughts as the pandemic and George Floyd’s death dominate the news, while his ill father coughs and coughs “like something in him is breaking up and breaking down at the same time”. American YA writer Jason Reynolds lets his stream of consciousness unspool over three long sentences and 384 pages, while artist Jason Griffin shows blotches, bricks, buildings, masked faces and scenes of incarceration and apocalypse. It’s a brilliant collaborative effort: you can inhale it at speed or linger over every startling page.
This year also saw two great full-length debuts from writers who had previously excelled with shorter work. In Alison (Serpent’s Tail), Lizzy Stewart uses a mix of sketches and prose to relay the life of a woman who falls for a self-regarding painter before finding her own way as an artist. Like her affecting debut collection It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be, this is about friendship, possibility and the passing of time. It is a vivid and lyrical work, but there’s sharpness and anger here too, as well as real emotional clout.
