0525 | Less Than Zero | Bret Easton Ellis
Written when he was just 21, Easton Ellis, made quite an impression on the literary scene with this tale of the morally impoverished youth of wealthy Los Angeles. In it, he…
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0524 | The Colour | Rose Tremain
This was removed from the first edition of the 1001 Books list and it’s not hard to see why. Although Tremain can write a decent yarn, there’s nothing here that…
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0523 | Titus Groan | Mervyn Peake
I had no idea that the world of Gormenghast existed. Quite how I managed to get to my age without ever hearing about it seems a literary crime. It, and…
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0522 | The Bridge on the Drina | Ivo Andrić
This is a masterful portrayal of Balkan history which, for anyone not familiar with it or, like me, familiar but confused, is a great way to gain more understanding. The…
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0521 | The Midwich Cuckoos | John Wyndham
This is a truly original bit of sci-fi which, although not terribly well written, has a great plot and, as all good sci-fi must, continues to raise relevant questions for…
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0520 | The Adventures of Caleb Williams | William Godwin
Godwin’s tale of the persecution of the poor by the rich is a socialist polemic that is a product of the influence of the French Revolution on English society. It’s…
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0519 | No Laughing Matter | Angus Wilson
You know you’re in the presence of literary genius when there are large parts of a novel you feel out of your depth in. I felt like I fell into…
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0518 | The Female Quixote | Charlotte Lennox
For its time, this is a pretty readable and engaging bit of writing that isn’t overlong and makes clever use of wry humour as it takes a dig at romance…
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0517 | The Collector | John Fowles
With this creepy tale of captivity, Fowles slinked onto the literary scene in the early 1960s. It’s one of the strongest debut novels you’re likely to read and also one…
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0516 | The Adventures of Roderick Random | Tobias Smollett
Having read Peregrine Pickle, the novel Smollett wrote after this one, three years ago, I kind of realised that, like with Henderson and Herzog, I’d read these the wrong way…
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0515 | Henderson the Rain King | Saul Bellow
Boy this took ages to read. Just couldn’t really get into it until the last 100 pages or so. Couldn’t really place my finger on why, but I think it…
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0514 | The Graduate | Charles Webb
This is even more fun to read than the famous film that is lifted almost entirely from the written dialogue. It’s deceptively short and, as it consists almost entirely of dialogue,…
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0513 | Troubles | J. G. Farrell
This last book in the series completes my reading of Farrell’s Empire trilogy. I wish I’d read them in order. I actually read them back to front. Troubles is a perfect…
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0512 | Clarissa | Samuel Richardson
Well, after finishing U.S.A. at 1,300 pages or so, what better way to follow it up than to write a review of a novel that’s even bigger? What surprised me…
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0511 | U.S.A. | John Dos Passos
My what a splendid book this is. Vast in its scope and magnanimous in its treatment of the varied strata that made up a nation coming to terms with the…
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0510 | The Third Policeman | Flann O’Brien
This starts off as normal as you like and then suddenly, like Alice down the rabbit hole while taking LSD, takes you on a mind-bending and, at times, literarily taxing…
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0509 | Tipping the Velvet | Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters can spin a yarn. She can conjour up a world. She can keep you entertained. But what she absolutely can’t do is create realistic characters or convince me that…
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0508 | A Visit from the Goon Squad | Jennifer Egan
This was not at all what I expected from the title. In fact, even having finished it, I really have no clue as to why it is called this at…