S. Cooper, Over sea, under stone (1965)
---, Greenwitch (1974)
---, The Grey King (1975)
---, Silver on the Tree (1977)
C.M. Dominguez, House of Paper (2004)
N.K. Jemisin, The fifth season (2016
---, The obelisk Gate (2017)
---, The stone sky (2018)
D. Levy, Swimming home (2012)
S. Maconie, The people's songs (2013)
A. Patchett, Commonwealth (2016)
S. Turton, The seven deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018)
It wasn't competitive. I liked a lot of the fiction I read this month, and I read a lot of fiction. Almost all of it was excellent, though I'd single out the first of the Jemisins, Patchett and Turton. However, they were blown away by Stanley's magisterial history of pop music, by which he really means mid 1950s - late 1990s. It isn't perfect: it doesn't quite manage the complexity of the fragmentation of popular music from the mid 1970s onwards and I don't think he entirely succeeds in telling the story of pop rather than the developments that he is interested in, so very popular aspects are neglected in favour of cooler scenes he likes. He also expressed views I do not always agree with. Nonetheless, it is meticulously researched and presented - and fascinating in the linkages it unearths, even in stories I know well. It's very good on the transitory nature of fashion in pop music and the rapid change in taste. The sections on the 1950s are outstanding, and the chapters on mid-sixties London and Glam are functionally perfect. Throughout it is also beautifully and wittily written. I have a sheaf of quotations that I'll be putting up. The first half is better than the second, but that's true of pop music itself. It is a masterpiece, even if he is wrong about Queen.
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