Best fiction books of 2010

If you read one book this year, give one book to your dad, brother, mother, lover, it should be "Parrot & Olivier in America" by Peter Carey. Drawn from the bones of Alexis de Tocqueville's life, Carey spins a marvelous story about two men on a journey into the early United States: Olivier, who grew up in a house traumatized by the French Revolution; and Parrot, a printer's apprentice who is at home in a culture of aliens. Battling one another and America in its chaotic infancy, zigzagging into love, the two are unlikely but riveting companions. They fight, mourn, and sing the body electric of a budding nation.