Book Review of 2001

In a year of sombre actuality, readers often preferred a hitch-hike to Planet Fantasy. Douglas Adams died in May, mourned universally, but JK Rowling flourished mightily and JRR Tolkien rode again. By the close of 2001, the big screen had spread eccentric visions hatched by isolated British authors – a single parent in Edinburgh, a machine-hating medievalist in Oxford – around the globe. Rowling's sales passed 125 million, and Tolkien outperforms most bestsellers even in an ordinary year.

In the wake of the Potter cult, children's writing now commands more cash, and more respect, than ever. Jacqueline Wilson shifts 50,000 copies a week; Terry Pratchett's comic romps top the charts every few months; and, this year, Philip Pullman became a serious contender for the Booker (for The Amber Spyglass) without the batting of a single literary eyelid. Yet teachers lament the swelling ranks of PlayStation-hogging, text-messaging, Net-surfing children. Perhaps those that read, read more; but a rising number don't, at all.

Fans of Pullman or Rowling soon learn that experience complicates the quest to pursue Good and vanquish Evil. On 11 September, moral life simplified for a short while; then normal, ambiguous service resumed. The publishing trade reacted fast, with books both laudable and lousy. Sober explanations (Fred Halliday's Two Hours that Shook the World) lined up with shoddy quickies (stand up, Yvonne Ridley). Most heartening were the signs of a renewed curiosity about the wider world: Ahmed Rashid's definitive work on the Taliban, reissued by Pan Books.

Events left the narcissism of the celebrity memoir looking tawdrier than ever. Over-familiar faces such as Victoria Beckham, Robbie Williams, Anne Robinson and Frank Skinner picked up fat cheques for thin books, abetted by serial deals with spendthrift newspapers. Tighter finances will bring some order back into this grotesquely inflated market.

The celebrity tomes that truly enthused readers – by George Best, or by Pamela Stephenson, on husband Billy Connolly – dealt in an affecting, adult way with non-showbiz emotions. The sales achievements of Jamie, Nigella, Ainsley and Delia proved that food remains the new sex. All these hungry stars stole money and attention from other forms of non-fiction. In a lacklustre year for biography, the best titles largely came from senior pros indifferent to fashion: Roy Jenkins on Churchill, Elaine Feinstein on Ted Hughes, Antonia Fraser on Marie Antoinette.

On the other side of the spy game, Stella Rimington delivered a dreary, over-hyped report on her tenure at MI5. Westminster politics bred pomposity and pedantry as usual – even James Naughtie dozed through his book about the Blair-Brown rift, The Rivals. History did a palpably better job, with strong new works from the ubiquitous Simon Schama, Roy Porter, David Cannadine and Niall Ferguson – all former students of Sir John Plumb, who died this year.

Popular science, once the darling of pundits and publishers, chugged along. Even Stephen Hawking failed to set the galaxy alight with The Universe in a Nutshell. In fact, a sort of intellectual deadlock grips serious non-fiction as a whole. Timid publishers either play too safe or chase after gimmicks. It was nice enough to see reprinted essays from Martin Amis, Peter Ackroyd, Will Self and Clive James, though fresh thoughts from this august bunch would have been more welcome. But poetry performed well, with impressive work from Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Jo Shapcott and Sean O'Brien, a comeback from Wendy Cope, and a blazing new arrival: Pascale Petit.

And so to fiction, where the gaggle of Chick Lit titles began to languish on the shelf. The genre's cannier stars (such as Jane Green) are moving fast into thirty-something-and-beyond terrain. Meanwhile, two leading lads – Tony Par- sons with One for my Baby; Nick Hornby with How to be Good – sold by the vanload. Coincidentally, the laddish theme of male sexual melancholy inspired a new novel – Half a Life – by VS Naipaul, in 2001 the first British winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature since William Golding. The Booker went to Peter Carey's resurrection of the mythical outlaw of Oz, True History of the Kelly Gang. Ned Kelly fought off a fierce challenge from Ian McEwan's Atonement – a commercial as well as critical triumph.

The year's most moving fiction also had a wartime setting: Helen Dunmore's bleakly lyrical saga of Leningrad, The Siege. David Mitchell (shortlisted for the Booker, and a tremendous prospect) imagined a half-fantastic, gangster-ridden Tokyo in number9dream. And a low-intensity conflict of insult and outrage filled the streets of New York in Salman Rushdie's Fury.

The literary year ended with a fine old comedy, and a hideous tragedy. Self-important Jonathan Franzen declined to dirty his hands with Oprah Winfrey's cash after she offered him a slot on her TV book club – but cruel Brit critics treated his magnum opus, The Corrections, as a glorified soap-opera anyway. Then, two weeks ago, East Anglia's German master – WG Sebald – died in a car crash.

Five years back, Max Sebald's The Emigrants announced to the world that this modest, deadpan emigré scholar from Norwich had created a fresh and mesmerising way to remember the accursed history of the 20th century. This autumn, his new book Austerlitz confirmed Sebald's singular and precious gifts. Now his irreplaceable voice is silenced forever. Sometimes, it isn't hard to grasp why Tolkien so detested the machinery of modern life.