Best fiction books of 2010

The dozen tales in "Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives" feel like old-growth wood, compared with so much of the timber springing up from writing workshops. They plainly depict the importance of resilience in a world determined to undermine it. Brad Watson's characters foul up their lives, as fathers, as sons, but they keep on. Watson writes like he listens a lot. People are often telling their stories, within these stories. The setting is the American South, but too much is made about Watson writing about the South. Like Welty and O'Connor before him, he simply writes — and that's why he gets it right.