Seven Steeples by Sara Baume

This was on the Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of 2022, which had only four works of fiction. It is an unusual choice, but a quite beautiful one. Bell and Sigh are a couple in Ireland who leave the city with their dogs to rent a cottage by the sea and withdraw steadily from their lives, seeking to live in an atmosphere of continuous temporariness. There is a hint of the trauma that led them to leave their lives behind throughout the novel, but it is never spoken of, and eventually, without even thinking about it or meaning to, they start to accumulate things once again, which I think is a metaphor for healing. At the novel’s end, Bell and Sigh climb up the mountain they live on, a hike that they’ve been meaning to get around to for seven years. Looking back at their house there is a revelation of what is underlying their actions the whole time, but each reader will take something different away from it. That is the magic and the brilliance of this haunting, fathomlessly sad book.