The Oxford Times literary editor Jaine Blackman gives her favourite reads of the past year

The Goldfinch, American novelist Donna Tartt’s first new novel in 11 years, was on my Christmas list last year and ensured very little got done over the festive/new year break.

I was gripped by the epic tale of Theo Decker from its literally explosive beginning until the bitter-sweet ending.

The deserving winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014, The Goldfinch was a return to top form for Tartt.

I had loved her debut novel, the clever inverted detective story The Secret History but found her second The Little Friend largely forgettable.

I had one niggle the whole way through on how Theo, the narrator, could remember his life in such detail.

That was finally addressed and answered towards the end.

Apart from that, I just sat back and got swept along in the powerful odyssey through present-day America, full of vivid characters and emotions.

The Casual Vacancy by Harry Potter author JK Rowling was published in 2012 but I finally managed to sit down with it in January.

It had received mixed reactions on publication, probably down to the fact that her first book for adults is a world away from the young wizard and his pals.

I have never been a Potter fan, my children never taking to the tales, but I really enjoyed The Casual Vacancy.

It tackles a range of social issues, including rape, racism, drug use, domestic and child abuse, self-harm and suicide.

It is darkly comic, following the machinations of a local election following the death of a popular parish councillor.

The Mapp and Lucia books by EF Benson also deal with village politics, albeit those of upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige.

There are six novels in the series, written between 1920 and 1939.

Comic and knowing, they are a delightful glimpse into another world, one of elegant irony and much left unsaid but glaringly obvious (there are two clearly gay characters which must have been rather risqué back in the day).

You may have caught a television adaption which was due to be shown earlier this week. If it was half as good as the books, I’m sure it was excellent!

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, who visited Oxford in September to talk at the Sheldonian Theatre, was long listed for the Booker Prize and provided another cracking read.

Follow-ing the twists and turns of teenage runaway Holly’s life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland’s Atlantic coast, it seamless and believably blends reality and otherworldliness.

If you just accept the visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses from the laws of nature, you’ll be rewarded with another epic story from the author of Cloud Atlas.

I found the end, with its depiction of a chilling near future particularly powerful.

Doctor Sleep by American horror supremo Stephen King would not be my first, second or any choice for bedtime reading.

But it was a book club choice so I dutifly, albeit reluctantly, gave it a go.

And I enjoyed it.

Oxford Mail:

The novel follows what happens to Danny Torrance, the understandably traumatised child from The Shining, one of King’s previous novels which was made in to a film starring Jack Nicholson.

Danny takes up his father’s legacy of anger and alcoholism but eventually decides to give up drinking. His psychic “shining” abilities, suppressed by his drinking, re-emerge and allow him to provide comfort to dying patients in the hospice he works in.

It also brings him in contact with the True Knot a group of quasi-immortals who wander across America (disguised as pensioners in motorhomes!) and feed on “steam”, a psychic essence produced by people dying in pain.

The characters were well drawn and despite my squeamishness at some of the more graphic scenes — I’m never going to find descriptions of children in pain appealing — it kept me reading and I wanted to know what happened in the end.

The Children Act by Ian McEwan, another visiting author who gave a talk at the Sheldonian this year, is a slim but thought-provoking novel.

It opens with Fiona Maye, a leading high court judge presiding over cases in the family court, being hit by a marital bombshell. At the same time she is called on to try an urgent case: for religious reasons, Adam, a 17-year-old boy, is refusing medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout Jehovah’s Witness parents share his wishes.

It raises a host of moral and emotional questions as it deals with issues including religion, fidelity and ageing.