0620 | Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov
It is the mark of genius that most of the world doesn’t get what you are trying to do at all. Such is the case with Nabokov’s Pale Fire, a…
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0618 | Rabbit, Run | John Updike
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I was given a copy of Rabbit is Rich by mistake for a birthday present. I’d asked for Pulitzer Prize winning…
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0612 | Portrait of a Lady | Henry James
Many regard Portrait as James’ greatest novel. What they mean by this, of course, is that it’s the easiest to read. Written before James went off on the subordinate clause…
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0611 | Germinal | Emile Zola
Britain has The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. The US has The Jungle. France has Germinal. It falls somewhere between the two in terms of its readability, but it is far, far ahead in…
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0599 | The Woodlanders | Thomas Hardy
Six down and one more to go of Hardy’s from the 1001 Books List. Unbeknown to me at the time, I actually finished it to within an hour of 80…
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0598 | Everything is Illuminated | Jonathan Safran Foer
This is at once one of the funniest and also one of the most tragic novels I’ve experienced in a long time. Safran Foer’s tale of the history of his…
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0591 | Buddenbrooks | Thomas Mann
Now this was a Mann novel I could get into. This masterfully told epic of generations of a German family shows their demise from a close family of business leaders…
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0588 | If on a winter’s night a traveller … | Italo Calvino
I can’t think of many novels that are as memorable as this one for its sheer audacity, its outrageous cheek, and the utter genius with which the writer sets out…
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0587 | The Day of the Triffids | John Wyndham
An even better read than The Midwich Cuckoos, Wyndham’s best-known novel gets off to a great start even if the ending leaves you hoping for a climax which never comes….
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0585 | Ulysses | James Joyce
Notoriously difficult to read, even more notoriously difficult to understand, whatever your opinion about this novel it is not notoriously difficult to appreciate the genius that lies between its covers….
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0580 | Vernon God Little | DBC Pierre
Pierre’s adventure tale of the pursuit of poor little Vern by virtually the entire machine of ‘Merica is a combustive mix of satire and suspense. The pace doesn’t let up….
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0575 | The Feast of the Goat | Mario Vargas Llosa
Powerful and at times gripping, this is not what I’ve come to expect from novels from Latin/South American authors. In fact, this is the very first of the many I’ve…
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0563 | Pierre and Jean | Guy de Maupassant
304 books ago, I reviewed Bel Ami, my first Maupassant novel and, coincidentally, the one he wrote just before this one. Thankfully, although it still deals with the worst of…
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0551 | Billiards at Half Past Nine | Heinrich Böll
This was an interesting novel to pick up a few days after finishing Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass. There are a lot of parallels in the prose of Grass and…
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0543 | The Last Chronicle of Barset | Anthony Trollope
My first Trollope and what a one to start with! An exquisitely constructed Victorian world inhabited by vivid characters and a strong plot to carry them along with. Trollope contrives a…
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0542 | Threepenny Novel | Bertold Brecht
This was a strange one. I had no idea about any of the background to the novel at all, not even the play it’s based on, John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera….
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0541 | The Black Prince | Iris Murdoch
What a great read this was. I can also imagine that Murdoch had immense fun writing it too, because that comes across in the writing for too often to be coincidental….
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0536 | The Cement Garden | Ian McEwan
Leaving aside any controversy about whether McEwan borrowed the plot for this novel from another source, for an author’s first effort, this isn’t half bad at all. Macabre, disturbing and…