Books for 2007

I have been asked to publish the list of books I intend to read in 2007 in advance. So far I have a pile of books on my desk that I intend to read (and write about) on the next few months. Here they are in no particular order:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

The Master by Colm Tóibín

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Passion by Jeanette Winterton

The Light of Day by Graham Swift

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Accidental by Ali Smith

The Story of the Night by Colm Tóibín

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

As you can see, the list is quite varied and mainly reflects my personal interest in contemporary literature. Mostly, I will be reading 20th and 21st century books although readers will find the occasional 19th century novels like Jane Eyre.

This list is not intended to be a suggestion - I would never suggest books I haven't read. It is merely some information I was asked to make public by one of you.

Happy 2007 and happy reading!

Looking back: 2006

These are the best books I've read since August this year:

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Hours by Micheal Cunnigham
Enduring Love, Saturday and Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
Howards End by E. M.Forster

Contemporary Reads: Amsterdam

Amsterdam (1998) is the Booker Prize winner by Ian McEwan. A highly enjoyable novel set in contemporary Britain which, like all of the writer's novels I've read to date, is full of twists and doesn't disappoint.

Acclaimed composer Clive Linley and newspaper editor Vernon Hallyday have been friends for years. The novel starts with those two central characters assisting the funeral of their one-time lover Molly.

Molly had other lovers, among them the Foreign Secretary and would-be Prime Minister Julian Garmony a man for whom both Clive and Vernon share great contempt due his reactionary political ideas. Her late husband, George, is also held in contempt by them although in his case it is because he ended up with Molly.

Throughtout the novel, the friendship between Clive and Vernon is put on test several times: Vernon decides to publish pictures of Garmory in drag on his newspaper taken by Molly and sold by George. Vernon morally objects to this and makes his opinion heard by Clive. Secondly, while trying to compose his 'symphony for the millenium' in the Lake District, Vernon witnessed the rape of a woman but is reluctant to go to the police. Clive's paper has been following the rapist's story for months and he is enfuriated by his friend's attitude.

Clive is sacked from his newspaper for publishing Garmory's photos and Garmory's not only does not suffer from it but it away is enhaced. Vernon's symphony is set to open in Amsterdam when both friends reunite there. They end up killing each other by poisoning their drinks.

The brilliant thing about this ending is that it is totally unexpected and, at the same time, all the elements are there throughout the novel to make it the perfect ending.

Other books I have read by the same author: The Cement Garden, Saturday, Atonement, Enduring Love.

Contemporary Reads: Jack Maggs

Jack Maggs (1997) is a novel by Australian author Peter Carey. Set in 1987 London when Australia was a British penal colony where even petty thieves were sent to. Jack Maggs is one of such characters who, after being betrayed and sent to Australia comes back to England. Pretending to be a footman, he moves into Percy Buckle's house in London. His neighbour, novelist and mesmeriser Tobias Oates will soon reveal Magg's secrets and starts writing about him. Jack Magg has come back to London looking for a gentleman called Henry Phipps whom he regards as his son.

This is a worthy homage to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. An exciting historical novel and literary fantasy. Guilt, shame for crimes real or imagined and the two main themes of this masterly book.

Modern Classics: Good Morning, Midnight

Good Morning, Midnight (1939) by Jean Rhys was a book way ahead of its time. Its protagonist Sophia Jansen is an English woman in Paris. The facts that the heavy drinking protagonist is a woman and that the book largely narrates her sexual encounters and loneliness is what makes this book both very unusual for its time and so very relevant to ours.

This probably also accounts for its being overlooked until it was republished in the 1960s. Even today Rhys is better known for her prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea.

Modern Classics: Brave New World

Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley is, like most science-fiction about the society of its day. It presents us with a dytopian vision of civilization where drugs and promiscuity abound and where the public is entertained by feelies - the equivalent to 1930s Hollywood talkies.

The novel is set on 632 years after Henry Ford brought us the first car manufactured solely by mass-production, Model T. The World State is a stable civilization where all citizens are test tube babies who are conditioned since infancy to take a determined place within society. World Controllers are ultimately in charge of this society where citizens are handed out a drug called soma and communal activities (including sex with as many partners as possible) are encouraged and where solitary pursuits have been abolished. All in the name of stability and happiness.

There exist Reservations where the indians live out of any contact with civilization. This among other reference seem evindence that Huxley got at least part of his inspiration in modern-day America, even though the book is largely set in England. One day, non-conformist Bernard takes, Lenina, a girl he is obscenely growing rather fond off - this is a world were monogamy does not even exist as a concept - to a Reservation. There they come across Linda who got lost many years before in a visit with the now World Controller, Mustafa Mond, and her son John (finding herself far from civilization she could not abort the child as any civilized girl would have done). John has a vision of the world he has obtained from reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare (something unthinkable in the World State) and listening to his mother's stories about civilization.

John and Linda are brough back to civilization. Linda dies soon after and after a confrontation with Mustafa, John settles down in the south of England as a hermitage.

Even though this novel is much less shocking now than I imagined should have been when it was first published, it is still a fascinating novel of ideas.

Great Classics: Howards End

Howards End (1910) by E. M. Forster (1910) is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. As such, it has attracted a lot of attention from critics over the years and was made into a successful film in 1992. Some critics and general readers have felt uncomfortable by Forster's perceived elitism. Others have found the plot full of implausible coincidences. So let's start with the plot:

There are two families:

- The Schlegels: Margaret and her younger siblings Helen and Tibby.

- The Wilcoxes: Henry, Ruth and their children Charles and Paul.

The novel starts at the Wilcoxes' country house. Howards End, where Helen is a guest after the two families had met on holiday. Helen writes to her sister Margaret to announce her engagement to Paul. She writes then to explained the engagement has been called off as Paul is to set off for Africa. It is too late as Aunt Juley is already en route to Howards End to attempt to break off the couple to much embarassment.

Sometime later, the Wilcoxes will take an apartment opposite the Schlegels' residency in London. At the time, clerk Leonard Bast comes into the Schlegels' life when Helen accidentally purloins his umbrella at a concert.

Margaret becomes very close to the ill Ruth Wilcox and after the latter's death, she is bequeathed Howards End. However, Henry Wilcox does not carry out her late wife's wishes and does not even tell Margaret.

Years later, Margaret becomes engaged to Henry. Full of good intentions, Helen and Margaret try to help poor Leonard. However, some bad business advice given by Henry will see Leonard leaving his job at an insurance company for a worse paid one at a bank which he ends up losing.

Helen takes Leonard and his wife Jacky to the Wilcoxes' house in Oninton where it transpires that Henry and Jacky had an affair in Cyprus when Ruth was still alive. Margaret forgives this husband and decides to refuse helping Leonard by persuading Henry not to give him a job. Helen, thinking that Henry and not Margaret is behind this decision leaves England for Germany.

A few months later Helen comes back from Germany and Margaret discovers she is pregnant with Leonard's child. When both sisters are staying at Howards End, Leonard shows up, there is an altercation at his dies apparently of heart failure although Charles is condemmed to three years in prison for manslaughter.

Henry, Margaret, Helen and her baby end up living together in Howards End. Henry confesses to Margaret that Ruth had left her the house although this was never taken seriously by him because she had been too ill when she made her decision. He promises to leave the house to Margaret after her death and that Helen's baby must in turn inherit it.

So is the plot full of implausible coincedences? Yes, but I call that the artistic license. Is Forster an elitist? To use a very colloquial expression, so what if he is?

One of the truely important things about this book is the accurate and interesting portrayal Forster makes of the diverging forces at work in Edwardian England, represented by both families: The Wilcoxes are the Empire, capitalism, material progress and the Schlegels are Romantism, equalitarianism, social justice, culture. The abundant coincidences in the novel are the writer's intrument to bring us to the ending of the novel where both forces are finally reconciled.

Other books I have read about this author: A Room With A View.

Contemporary Reads: Austerlitz

Austerlitz is a strange novel. Its strangeness partly derives from its extremely long paragraphs, its pictures and its lack of chapters. But also, from the unnamed narrator about whom the reader will practically know nothing. This narrator will converse with Austerlitz over the years as the meet in different European locations such as Antwerpt, London or Paris.

We are told of Austerlitz's childhood in rural Wales where he was taken and fostered by a church minister and his wife before World War II. And we are also told about his youth and how he became interested in his origins only late in life. An only child of Jewish parents in 1930s Czechoslovakia, Austerlitz was sent to Britain by her mother, Agata, shortly before she was transported to Theresienstadt by the Germans. His father, Maximilian, was a Socialist politician who had settled in Paris. Most of this information Austerlitz obtains from his former neighbour and friend of the family, Vera.

This book is strange, moving and meticulously detailed.

Contemporary Reads: Beyond the Black

Beyond the Black is the most recent novel by British writer Hillary Mantel. Alison is a home counties medium tormented by the men of her youth (now in spirit). Colette becomes her live-in assistant after leaving her husband.

This book intruduces the reader in the world of mediums with an affectionate tone and a dose of black humour. The reader will discover the horrors of Alison's childhood: her mother was a prostitute who doesn't even kno who really fathered her child and her house was always full of disreputable men who abused her daughter. Alison castrated one of the men with a pair of scissors and took off someone's eye with a knitting needle. In adulthood, Alison tries to overcome her past by performing a good deed: sheltering homeless Mart in her garden shed.

After Mart commits suicide in the shed, Colette decides she can no longer live in the same house and work for Alison and, perhaps no quite surprinsingly, moves back with her husband after 7 years of separation.

The novel starts the summer Princess Diana dies and ends in the current climate of terrorism anxiety. I am not sure what Mantel was trying to achieve with the 7 year time span or the inclusion of events such as the death of the princess or September 11 but the novel is a good read.

Contemporary Reads: The Book of Evidence

Freddie Montgomery is the name of the narrator/protagonist of John Banville's novel The Book of Evidence. This book is his confession of the two crimes he committed, or is it. As it is all narrated on the first person in a highly subjective manner we never know how much of his account is real.

Freddie comes across as much remorseless as Albert Camus' Meursault in The Outsider. The first of his two crimes readers might feel inclined to pardon him for: stealing a Dutch painting that had belonged to his family until his mother ('the old bitch') sold it. His second crime, killing the maid who caught it in the act and his lack of repentance for her death make him one of the most despicable characters in literature.

This is a dark grim masterly written novel. It is the first of a trilogy: the other two books are Ghosts and Anthena.

Contemporary Reads: The Cement Garden

I know, this is my third post about an Ian McEwan book in a very short period of time. I promise it will the last for, at least, a few weeks. In my next few posts, I will be discussing The Book of Evidence by John Banville, Beyond the Black by Hilary Mantel, Jack Maggs by Peter Carey and Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald (although not necessarily on that order).

Going back to The Cement Garden, this short novel was the first published by McEwan in 1978. It tells the story of four siblings: Julie, Jack, Susie and Tom and their breavement after both their parents die in short sucession. After their father dies of a heart attack, their mother becomes very ill. She dies in the house and Jack and his sisters decides to bury her in the cellar. They are afraid they'll separated and taken into care.

The children live in the house undisturbed until Julie's boyfriend, Derek, is introduced. He becomes very suspicious about the strage smell coming from the cellar and soon finds out the truth. This is not revealed to the reader until the final chapter. In is also in the chapter than the sexual tension latent from the start between Julie and Jack is resolved when the lie together naked and he penetrates her. Derek, having witnessed the scence goes to the cellar to unbury the cadaver and calls the police.

Very disturbing but masterfully written as always. No wonder the writer used to be called Ian Mcabre early in his career.

Other books I have read by this author: Saturday, Atonement, Enduring Love.

Contemporary Reads: Enduring Love

This 1997 novel by Ian McEwan has been remarked as having one of the most beautifully written opening chapters in contemporary literature. Enduring Love opens with a balloning tragic accident in which Oxford professor John Logan dies.

One of the men who tried to save him is science journalist Joe who had been out on a picnic with his partner Clarissa. Later that night at their London flat Joe receives a telephone call from Jed Parry who tells him that he loves him before Joes hangs up.

Soon, it will become apparent that Jed suffers from de Clérembault syndrome or erotomania. Jed starts to stalk Joe and sends him several letters. At first, Joe keeps all this to himself for a couple of days until he decides to confide in Clarissa. Clarissa dismisses Jed as a harmless crank. However, as Joe does some research into de Clémbrault he becomes very worried about his own safety as he learns that people who suffer that condition may appear harmless at the start they always reach a point when they become violent and dangerous. Joe's preocupation is construed by Clarissa as obsession and, as a result, their relationship suffers and she eventually moves into another bedroom.

Joe travels up to Oxford to visit John Logan's widow, Jean. She suspects her husband was having an affair as she found the contents of a picnic in his car. She makes Joe promise that he will talk to the other witnesses to try to find out is there was a woman with John although he himself does not remember seeing her.

Back in London, Joe tries to talk to the police who also dismiss the case as Jed has not at anytime made any threats. Finally, Jed hires someone to kill Joe at a restaurant where he is with Clarissa and her family. Even after this incident the police fails to act appropriately.

Joe is buying a gun for his own protection when he receives a telephone call from Jed who is holding Clarissa hostage at the flat. When Joes gets to the flat he shoots Jed and calls the police.

In the final chapter we learn that John Logan was not having an affair. He had simply given a lift to another professor and his young student lover who were to afraid to come forward as witnesses as they did not want their relationship to be made public.

Enduring Love is a compelling novel. The story is gripping the style - first person narration - draws you in from the first line. This is a joy to read.

Other books I have read by this author: Saturday, Atonement.

Contemporary Reads: Saturday

Ian MacEwan's latest novel Saturday takes place on February 15, 2003. Much like James Joyce's Leopold Bloom in Ulysses or Virgina Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, we follow Henry Perowne's train of thought and actions for a single day.

Unable to sleep neurosurgeon Perowne gets out of bed in the wee hours of Saturday morning. When he sees a plane in flames coming down on Heathrow airport, he fears the worse - a terrorist attack. However, he finds out this is not the case as he catches glimpes of the TV news throughout the day.

On his way to a squash game, he is involved in a minor car accident with three men coming out of a famous strip club. Attacked by their ringleader, Baxter, Perowne suspects this shady character is affected by some rare neurological desease and gives him an impromptu diagnosis and mentions a possible experimental cure for it. This unsettles Baxter, who we learn is bound to mood wings due to his condition, and Perowne manages to flee the scene. He makes his way to the gym through the masses of anti Iraq was protesters in Central London.

After been beaten up on the squash game he goes to visit her demented mother in the home she lives in. He goes home and then out again to his son's Theo's blues band rehearsal in Notting Hill.

When he gets home, his daughter, Daisy - an about-to-be-published poet who lives in Paris - arrives home after many months absence. Soon, the reast of the family: Perowne's father-in-law, the celebrate poet John Grammaticus; his wife Rosalind, the talented lawyer; and his son Theo back from his rehearsal. Only that holding a knife to Rosalind, Baxter, forces his way into the house accompanied by one of his friends, Nigel. He has come to take revenge for his humiliation that morning.

In a scene of high tension, Baxter and his ally keep the whole family hostage in their living room. Baxter makes Daisy take off all her clothes which reveals her pregnancy unbeknown to the family until then. When Baxter discovers that she is a poet by seeing the proof of her books, he makes her read out loud one of her poems. However, she justs recites an old poem her gradfather taught her in her childhood. Baxter is moved by the poem and after a few reprises asks Daisy to get dressed and tells Perowne that he wants to learn more about the cure for his illness. When Baxter and Perowne makes it upstairs to find the information about the cure the doctor bluffed about, Nigel flees the scene leaving the rest of the family alone. Theo runs upstairs and him and Perowne managed to overpower Baxter and throw him down the stairs. This the end of the nightmare.

Later on that evening, Perowne is called to hospital to operate on Baxter. The novel ends early on Sunday morning with Perowne falling asleep in bed with Rosalind.

Like it's predecessor Atonement, this novel is one of great substance which is also immensely readable.

Other books I have read by this author: Atonement.

Untranslated Lit: L'étranger (The Outsider)

The Outsider or The Stanger (according to different translations) is a 1942 novel by French writer Albert Camus.

It is a very short novel written is a very straightforward languange which is probably why I have been able to read it in the original French.

The novel's protagonist/narrator is a pied-noir (an Algerian of European descent) named Meursault. The novel opens with news of his mother's death. While attending her funeral, Mersault shows not sympathy and is incapable of shedding any tears.

Soon after returning from her mother's funeral in the Algerian country side, Mersault starts an affaire with a girl called Marie.

Later on, he will killed an Arab when he gets into an imbroglio to do with Raymond, his friend and neighbour's ex-lover. He is trialled and condemned to death. One of the persecution's arguments for his guilt would be his blatant lack of remorse and the fact that he seemed indifferent during his mother's funeral.

Before his execution, Mersault will manage to argue with the chaplain because he suggested that he should turn to God. The novel ends on the night before his execution.

The Outsider has been classed as an existential novel and as such probably best enjoyed by teenagers than adults. At least, that's the feeling I got while rereading it and remembering how enthusiastically I had felt about it when I first read it aged 15.

Modern Classics: Foe

Foe is a short novel written by South African Nobel prize winner J.M. Coetzee.

Picking up on 18th century English novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, it tells the story of a Susan Barton who became marooned on an island inhabited by a man named Cruso and a former slave that he calles Friday.

Eventually, all three are rescued although Cruso dies onboard before reaching England. Susan will ask author Mr Foe to write her story.

Among Foe's themes are gender and race relations, colonialism, and the problems of narrative. It is, therefore, a must read for anyone serious about literary fiction.

Other books I have read by this author: Youth, Disgrace.

Contemporary Reads: Atonement

This 2001 novel was written by British writer Ian McEwan. Its opening setting is the Tallis family's country house in Surrey on the hottest day of the summer of 1935.

Part One describes the events of that day and how they changed the lives of the three main characters of the book: Briony, Cecilia and Robbie. Briony is the youngest of the Tallis' children. A 13 year old with a fantastic imagination who fancies herself as a writer. Cecilia is her older sister who has come back from Cambridge with a third in English. Robbie is the son of their charlady who, being quite intelligent has had his Grammar school and Cambridge education paid for by Mr Tallis. In fact, he has also just returned from Cambridge although, unlike Cecilia, with a first.

Robbie and Cecilia had somehow fallen for each other. Robbie writes two love notes to her, one of them being quite graphic: "In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt." He gives this note to Briony and asks her to pass it on to Cecilia. Briony, who is upset because the play she had written for that evening had to be cancelled due to her cousins' inability to perform read the note. Shocked, from that moment on she will think of Robbie as a maniac who has to be stopped. This is only confirmed to her when she sees Robbie and Cecilia fucking in the library that evening and wrongly assumes that he was raping her sister. She will confide on her 15 year old cousin Lola.

Later on in the evening Lola's brothers, twins Jackson and Pierrot, go missing. Search parties made up by all the dinner guests, including Cecilia and Briony's brother Leon and his best friend Marshall and Lola, are sent out into the dark summer English night. Lola is raped that night outside while the search is still going on. She is found by Briony who, although she did not see the attacker clearly, falsely accuses Robbie of the violation. As a result Robbie is arrested the following morning when he shows up in the garden having found and brought back the missing twins.

Part Two is where we discover that Robbie ended up in gaol. He and Cecilia stayed in touch all those years and were reunited briefly after his release. She has become a nurse and he has been enlisted to go to war in France. On this part we follow Robbie's war experiences.

Part Three focuses on Briony. She has now become a nurse like her sister. She attends her cousin's Lola's wedding with her true raper, Marshall. Thus, we discover that is not just Briony who lied and send an innocent man to gaol but also Lola and Marshall who are now getting wed. After the ceremony, Briony visits her sister and tells her that she will confess to the police and her family about her terrible lie. Robbie is present also at that time. But why did she lie? This is not very clear but we do now know it was not out of jealousy.

In the final part of the novel, London, 1999, we found out that Briony has written what we have been reading so far. Her novel (and McEwan's), that echoes Navokov nd Virginia Woolf, is part of an act of atonement that will be completed once it is published after the death of everyone involved in the story. Everything in the novel is truth except for its ending: both Cecilia and Robbie died in 1940 and, therefore, were never reunited after the war.

Contemporary Reads: A Home at the End of the World

A Home at the End of the World is a novel by American writer Michael Cunningham.

It has four main characters/narrators: Bobby, who lost his oldest brother whom he worshipped when he was a lad and then his parents, and ended up living with his best friend's family as a teenager; Jonathan, Bobby's best friend; Alice, Jonathan's mum; and Clare, Jonathan's New York City extravagant roommate.

Every chapter is narrated in the first person by the character who gives the chapter its name. The novel is divided into 3 parts:

Part I describes both Bobby's and Jonathan's childhood and youth. It also gives us an insight into Alice's anodyne married life and motherhood in Cleveland. It contains the shocking moment of the death of Bobby's brother, Carlton, followed by the deaths of his mum and then his dad. In this first part Bobby and Jonathan's friendship develop and they have their first sexual experiences together.

Part II follows Jonathan's life in New York and introduces his flatmate, Clare. It also describes Jonathan's parents' retirement move to Arizona. About to be left alone in Cleveland, Bobby moves to New York with Jonathan and Clare. Soon, Clare will entice Bobby into bed with her and without never quite becoming an item they start their liaison. This will alienate Jonathan who will realise that he is in love with them both and will move out unannounced. He will reappear months later. Jonathan's dad dies on this part of the novel and it is Clare, Bobby and Jonathan's attendence to his funeral that would be the catalyst for their reunion. On their road trip back to New York, Clare annouces that she is pregnant and it is decided that the three of them will raise up the kid as a family. Clare buys a house in Woodstock and a derelict café, The Home Café, that Bobby and Jonathan will make theirs while she looks after baby Rebecca at home. The three of them finally form a family.

Part III sees the return of Jonathan's lover, Erich, who had appeared briefly on part II before Jonathan decided to dissapear. Erich is now very ill and starts spending his weekends at Woodstock with the rest of the family. Alice gives Ned's ashes to Jonathan. Clare decides to take her daughter and go away leaving the café and the house to Bobby and Jonathan. As Jonathan finally feels at home he decides to scatter Ned's ashes.

This is a very fine novel by a very fine writer. It has been adapted to film but please do not waste your time with it (I did). The movie version is a much lower product.

Other books I've read by the same author: The Hours

Contemporary Reads: Flaubert's Parrot

This book is a novel about a retired British doctor who is an amateur scholar on Gustave Flaubert. In fact, one learns a lot about the author of Madame Bovary by reading it. At times funny, always informed, this novel is a triumph.

The book's author, Julian Barnes, is francophile Englishman many of whose books are set in or inspired by France.

Other books I have read by this author: England, England.

Contemporary Reads: On Beauty

On Beauty is the latest novel by Zadie Smith. After the disappointing The Autograph Man, it has been great to read something at least as good as her first novel White Teeth. In On Beauty Zadie Smith takes on the Campus novel genre and, inspired by EM Forster and Nabokov, tells the story of two feuding academic families.

This book has laugh out moments but also raises some serious points about love, friendship, families, art, race, politics. It is rich in dialogue and Smith has a very good ear for teenage speak from both sides of the Atlantic.

For me the most exciting thing about Zadie Smith is not the fact that she's written at least two seriously good books but that her literay career has only just begun. I look forward to future books by this accomplished writer.

Other books I have read by this author: White Teeth and The Autograph Man.

Contemporary Reads: The Hours

The Hours is a novel by America author Micheal Cunningham. The book picks up on Virginia Woolf's best-known novel Mrs Dalloway. It fictionalises a day in the life of the modernist writer when she starts writing Mrs Dalloway and intertwines this narrative with a day in the lives of two other women: Clarissa Vaughan who is organising a party for a dying friend in 1990s Manhattan and Laura Brown who is getting ready for her husband's birthday in 1940s Los Angeles.

Cunningham moves enfortlessly between the decades in this imaginative and exquisite novel. It is an absolutely must read for those familiar with Virgina Woolf's fiction. However, I am sure that it can be enjoyed even by those who are not.

The book has been made into a film starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. But despite the great cast I would still prefer the book and actually found the movie disappointing.

Contemporary Reads: A Boy's Own Story

Edmund White's novel, A Boy's Own Story, is the account of a gay teenager growing up in America during the 1950s. This Bildungsroman holds that being homosexual is merely about whom we fall in love with. The protagonist/narrator wants above all to love and be loved by a man. And yet he wants to be heterosexual. Although, I grew up in the 1980s and 90s I can utterly sympathise with his struggle as am sure can any other gay readers.

Is this then a book to be solely enjoyed by homosexual readers? Nonsense, this book can be read by people who enjoy The Catcher in the Rye.

Modern Classics: If On A Winter's Night a Traveller

Italian author Italo Calvino's masterpiece is a novel about novels. Or rather, a novel about reading novels. In spite of its apparent complexity shown, for instance, on the alternation between first and second person narrative, the book has a fairly simple structure: the odd chapters concern the novel's reader and the even ones are the first chapters of ten different novels the reader is reading.

I will not explain this further as I do not want to spoil it for readers out there. All I will say is Reader, if you are seeking a book that combines intellect and imagination, please read this.

Contemporary Reads: The Bloody Chamber

This is a book of fairy tale-inspired stories by author Angela Carter (1940-1992). Make no mistake, this is not a children's book and you will find no fairies in it either. What you will find, though, are werewolves, vampires, erlkings and other beasts. You will also find extremely corageous women, fragile grannies and blind benefactors.

Angela Carter was a writer with a fantastic imagination and her death a great loss for English literature. I recommend you read Helen Simpson's introduction of the book. Please click here.

Other books I have read from this author: The Infernal Machines of Dr Hoffman and Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales.

Great Classics: Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller is a delightful novella by Henry James. Its protagonist is a flirtatious American girl in Europe who is courted by a savvy man called Winterbourne. This tragedy can be read back to back in one sitting but take your time reading it to best appreciate James's beautiful prose.

Modern Classics: Lolita

This wonderful novel by Russian author Vladimir Nabokov deals with the obsession Humbert Humbert develops for a 12 year old girl called Lolita. Apart from Nabokov's unique grasp on style - amazingly, English was his second languange - I was totally fascinated by the story.

The story is one of obsession and possession. HH possesses a young vulnerable lass. His obsession has no limits and will take the protagonist/narrator to transgressions beyond what is legally and morally acceptable in modern Western civilization.

This is a book that pushes many a boundary and one finds oneself enjoying the dark humour and the rich narrative style in spite of its troublesome subject matter. Lolita is a masterpiece and I thoroughly recommend it to everyone.