I find non-fiction more exciting

Could be an age thing...When I was young the drama, the story, the scene of fiction - this to me was the real reality, cutting through the pedestrian precincts of organised logical thought  and reaching to 'the significant heart of everything.' These days I'm jaded with fictional passion and prefer the metallic jolt of hard fact. Fact can explode preconceptions it can brighten my mind with the unexpected, the harsh, the funny, the telling personal truth that paints a thousand images. Don't trust the safety of a title. 'A Cornish Childhood' by A. L. Rowse (1942) will blow your head off. Rowse's passion for the curate 'he could have done anything with me' his magical mystery tour of school French 'le  chat mange le rat' making him feel 'as if I stood upon that peak in Darien and caught a glimpse of the Pacific', his grumps at being expected to 'learn to drive' to help his father's village shop (he gave up riding Neddy the donkey, choosing to walk him and stick his nose in a book); it's funny and often impossible to tell if the humour is intentional,  it's opinionated and arrogant, it's self-contradictory because life's like that, it's always honest unflinching pure and emotive, you could never make this man up.

Right now  non fiction has hit a renaissance. Often the factual is combined with the personal in a way that moves and stimulates. 'Skating to Antartica' by Jenny Diski, 'Negroland' by Margot Jefferson, and 'H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald which I read after CM's excellent review, are all outstanding.If I have to mention one more it's'The Lonely City' by Olivia Laing where the author uses her experiences of loneliness in New York to explore the artistic isolation of Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper.

Meanwhile,where is today's fiction going? In my view close to nowhere. The split between Literary Fiction and Genre Fiction does not help, it leads to piles of tedious blah on both sides of the snob divide.

The one piece of fiction that I have truly enjoyed in the past year is 'Olive Kitteridge' by Elizabeth Strout. Well constructed, loud and quiet, serious and sometimes farcical it's good. Read it.