All Time Top Selections (so far)

1. The Rabbit Tetralogy – John Updike: I consider the four books in the Rabbit series the greatest achievement in 20th century literary fiction. Updike’s prose is the best I’ve ever come across (even better than Nabokov), each sentence instilled with a poetic charm. We experience the highs and lows in the life of former high school basketball star then car salesman, Rabbit Angstrom and totally identify with his lot in Midwest America. Each book is written against the backdrop of the decade it is set it. Read the four novels (Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich and my favourite novel of all time, Rabbit at Rest) in sequence, each one written a decade apart beginning in 1960 and each one being better than the last. Once you’ve tasted Updike try also his Beauty of the Lilies, Roger’s Version, Witches of Eastwick, Widows of Eastwick and Early Short Stories. You’ll be amazed at the scintillating prose alone.

2. Underworld – Don Delillo: This is a sprawling masterpiece with a non-linear narrative connecting all the characters with a historically significant baseball. Please endure the first hundred pages which is a long scene at a baseball game which was also a novella in its own right. Once the novel gets going there are references to waste management, the Cuban Missile Crisis and J Edgar Hoover all centering on the protagonist, Nick Shay, over a period spanning 40 years up to the 1990s. Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleeson and Lenny Bruce also put in an appearance. This novel discusses the effect of capitalism on our lives. Not only is the content interesting but the form of the novel is the star as well, a totally original concept of characters joined by a baseball. This is better than Delillo’s other success White Noise.

3. Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe: While millionaire bond trader, Sherman McCoy, is accidentally in the Bronx with his mistress, he apparently strikes a black kid on his hurried exit away from a possible confrontation. The media and politicians push for Sherman’s arrest. This is greedy 1980s New York where stockbrokers are Masters of the Universe but Sherman is in deep trouble. Wolfe keeps you turning the pages at a frenetic pace and even though the ending may have seemed a little bit of an anti-climax (expectations are high though considering the excellence of the rest of the book), this will be one of the best books you’ll read. Don’t pay attention to the flop movie. This novel will entertain and provoke thought. It is still relevant today despite being out of print. So check second-hand bookshops or Amazon for a copy.

4. American Pastoral – Philip Roth: Seymour “the Swede” Levov is a high school sports star who marries an agreeable Catholic Girl and disappears into middle-class mediocrity. That is until his daughter sets off a fatal bomb as a protest against the Vietnam War. This is a story of the sixties and generational differences even down to the varied ways we have sex compared with our parents (yes it wouldn’t be a Roth novel without a mention of sex). However, American Pastoral is also about a deterioration of a life and inability of different generations to speak to one another. American Pastoral beat Delillo’s Underworld for the 1998 Pulitzer prize (a good year for fiction) and is Roth’s best novel. Also some recent worthwhile efforts are Everyman and Indignation.

5. Paul Auster – I’ve read all of Paul Auster’s novels recently and have selected three of his best here. They are Book of Illusions, Brooklyn Follies and Moon Palace. The selections veer away from his postmodern, self-referential novels and stick to a more traditional linear form. I like experimental fiction but Auster, I believe, is as his most satisfying when telling a conventional story. And what a way to tell a story! No one writes like Auster, causing the reader to continue compulsively to find out what happens next. Extremely accessible prose and satisfying endings (lacklustre endings are a bitch I have with most of Auster’s other novels), read these three books for pure entertainment.

6. The Double – Jose Saramago. Saramago is not for everyone. Patience must be shown initially with the long, winding sentences without punctuation or with multiple commas, sentences that take up whole paragraphs. Confusion sets in as to who is speaking. However, once you are accustomed to his style, the rewards are enormous. In this existential novel, a divorced high school teacher rents a movie in which one of the actors looks exactly like himself. Obsessed, he tracks the actor down to discover they are indeed alike down to the scars on their body and birth date. What follows are several twists which leaves the reader wondering who is who, also contemplating the nature of our identity and how easily we are duplicated or replaced. All of Saramago’s novels are interesting, including Death at Intervals where the population stop dying.  A deserved winner of the Nobel Prize.

7. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy. Some classic novels are difficult to relate to but Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is still relevant today. The hypocrisy of the aristocracy and woman’s rights are just some of the themes. Read this for the beautiful pacing and shattering conclusion.

8. Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This novel is about the moral dilemma of Raskalnikov, who kills a hated pawnbroker for her money. By doing so, he solves his financial problems and rids the world of a leech, he thinks. Raskalnikov is also chasing another principle, posing the question, is it alright to commit a crime in pursuit of a higher purpose?

9. The Trial – Franz Kafka. What would happen if you woke one morning to find you’ve been arrested without being told the nature of the crime? This is the existential question protagonist, Joseph K, deals with in The Trial, a novel which could be interpreted as the search for the spiritual in this absurd life. Also worth reading is the novella, Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect.

10. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie. Saleem Sinai is born at the exact time when India becomes independent. All children born in India around this time are endowed with magical powers. By bringing together these children, Rushdie is illustrating the problems that India faced with its new independence. While some consider the writing to be dense, I think Rushdie has created something magical.

11. The Stranger/Outsider – Albert Camus. This classic famously opens with the death of Meursault’s mother and his reaction of indifference. From here, Meursault kills an Arab and is incarcerated as we hear of his passivity, nihilism and apathy to his actions and events in his life. Camus’ first novel is a triumph in existentialism (a term he hated), a meditation on the absurdity of life and how death might be considered the only truth. Read all of Camus’ works for his sharp insights.

12. 1984 – George Orwell. One of two dystopian novels on this list, 1984 discusses the totalitarian regime of the Party with its mind control and total government surveillance. Winston Smith, a civil servant in the Ministry of Truth who alters government records to maintain its propaganda, decides to rebel against the omniscient eye of  Big Brother with dangerous repercussions. An absolute classic on so many levels, this novel will leave you breathless with praise.

13. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley. This other dystopian classic talks about the World State in the year of Our Ford 632, where relationships are discouraged and individuality is quashed. Pleasure drug, soma, is provided for its denizens to keep them mind-numbingly happy as they are split into five castes (the alphas being the brains and the epsilons doing the manual labour) who together have recreational sex and watch feely movies, their one conditioned goal being to do their work and not question anything about the social order. Things get really interesting when Bernard and Lenina bring back two natives from the Savage Reservation which amuse and entertain the citizens of the World State. A comment on the effects of mass production, mass consumption and homogeneity.

14. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides. The protagonist in this story is a hermaphrodite, which Eugenides says is a device used to symbolise the sexual ambiguity during adolescence. This is a Greek-American coming-of-age story in Detroit during the late 20th century. The pacing is exceptional and the ending brought tears to my eyes. Also read the brilliantly enigmatic Virgin Suicides from the same author.

15. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert. Emma Bovary, the poor dear, has adulterous affairs to escape the boredom and banality of provincial life. Like Anna Karenina, another shocking conclusion in this novel which will leave you satisfied if only for its exquisite prose.

16. Breathing Lessons – Anne Tyler. This is the only novel by Anne Tyler to win the Pulitzer and deservingly so. It is a deceptively simple novel about relationships, about the joys and problems of a couple’s marriage in Baltimore as they travel to a funeral. The prose is crisp and the pacing steady, building to several interesting philosophical insights. Tyler’s best novel.

17. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov. I was initially hesitant to read this due to the pedophilia content. However, the twelve-year-old Dolores Haze which Humbert Humbert lusts after is not presented as a victim and the prose is stylistically superior to many novelists, serving as influence for my favourite writer, John Updike. My only qualm is the first hundred pages could have been edited so we could get to the guts of the story.

18. Misery – Stephen King. I don’t read thrillers but this novel attracted me for its comment on the writing process, which I am obviously interested in being an aspiring writer. The novel is also a comment on extreme fanaticism. Beware of the gore!

19. If On A Winter’s Night a Traveller – Italo Calvino. One of my favourite all time books. Daringly original, this is about a person who is reading a book called If On A Winter’s Night a Traveller. A contemplation on the art of writing and reading as well as the relationship between fiction and life.

20. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy. For a compelling rewriting of the American West, read this violent masterpiece. A teenage runaway meets a bunch of scalpers who massacre Indians in the mid-nineteenth century. Judge Holden is the brutal antagonist devoted to murder. The prose is dazzling with every sentence wrought with the burning ferocity of the bloody West. Not for the squeamish.