5 of my favourites: Fiction Books

I am going to be doing a series of blogs called 5 of my favourites, films, documentaries, food, music, beauty products etc. and I’m starting this week with books.

Quite a lot of years ago I decided I wanted to be the sort of person you could call “well read” I always loved stories and reading but I wanted to read things that were generally acknowledged to be “good books”. I’m talking your Pulitzer Prize winners, your 1984’s, your Jane Eyre’s- classics and modern classics all that sort of thing. It might sound pretentious but I didn’t set out to do it so I could slavishly copy other peoples’ opinions but because I am nosy! If other people are talking about something I want in and I want to form my own opinions on the matter. I felt like readers of these books all had a big secret and I WAS OUT OF THE LOOP! So I am now at the point where I think, ok, I am a pretty well read person. Sometimes I’ve read books and totally agreed with the general feeling of the world at large and sometimes I have strongly disagreed (yeah I’m thinking of you, Ulysses, you giant tome of nonsense, you) but here are 5 books that I absolutely love.

1.    Extremely loud and incredibly close/ Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

Oh this is a bit of a cheat because It is 2 books but I have my reasons- Jonathan Safran Foer had written two books by the time he was 24 and they are both astonishing. If you see me staring off into space it may well be because I am trying to decide which of these is the better book and I never can. I first read a snippet from Extremely Loud back in 2006 when Penguin had released a series of extract books from some of their best loved novels as some sort of centenary celebration and I had never heard writing like it. I became obsessed with his writing straight away and both of these books have remained fighting for the number one spot ever since. His characters are so idiosyncratic, so instantly beguiling that you fall in love with them by the end of the first page: faster than any characters I have ever come across. Foer’s books ask you to live through some very deep issues from the Dresden bombings to the Holocaust, to the attacks on the world trade centre and yet somehow they keep you laughing and hopeful. They have two terrible films made in their names- Everything Is Illuminated directed by Liev Schreiber is a valiant attempt, I suppose, although misses the entire sub plot, which though impossible to capture on film is my favourite part of the novel and the film also, unnecessarily changes the ending. Give that one a go after you’ve read the book because it does have some great performances in it but please, I literally beg of you, avoid the film of Extremely Loud at all costs. No cinematic adaptation has ever caused this much rage in me, and I’m willing to bet any living soul!!!!! Although Oscar nominated it was universally paned by the critics. It made a unique and powerful story seem trite and unoriginal! HOW???? Please don’t see this film and perhaps send director Stephen Daldry an angry note in the post, or some dog poo; I will leave it up to you!

2.   Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

My mum first got me to read this when I was 12! For people who know what happens in Tess then that will probably be quite surprising but I say good call mum! It made such a huge impression and felt so totally not old fashioned and remote that I think this is probably why I have never feared classics as being something I wouldn’t be interested in. I have from then loved classic literature and always felt that it could almost be more relevant to me because they were saying things first. It is so much harder to be original now but in the early years of novels everything was fresh and pertinent! Anyway I very recently re-read Tess and it was even better as an adult, more intriguing, more captivating, more unsettling and so up for debate. I spent the whole book going over and over evidence trying to determine what I think Hardy was getting at (I don’t want to give any spoilers away so apologies if this is frustratingly enigmatic). Fun fact: I might be distantly related to Thomas Hardy on both my birth and married side of my family! 

3.   Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

I read Middlesex in March 2014 I had heard about it for years and years but I never picked it up.  The Virgin suicides, also by Eugenides, is one of my favourite films and the best novel to screen adaptation I have ever known, so I thought, hey why not give this legendary book a whirl. I loved it! I absolutely love family sagas. I just love hearing how generation after generation fit together and realising that we are all standing on the shoulders of the people who came before us. This book does it so well. It basically traces the story of a defective gene, believe it or not, and although it is written in a first person narrative the protagonist slips seamlessly almost magically into the minds of all the characters. Tracing her grandparents, parents and her own journey. Ostensibly it is about a boy born with the outward appearance of being a girl and raised as such to the age of 14 but it is so much more than that. It is about life and identity and fear and taboos and family and so many things that it needs nearly 600 pages to get it across! 

4.   War and Peace By Leo Tolstoy

So I was on tour a few years ago now and I have never read so much in my life, I was on fire and so I thought lets tackle what to many people is the most daunting novel ever written. I was nervous so I planned to take it slow. I thought I’d give myself a full 6 weeks to read its many, many pages and little by little I would get through it… I probably wouldn’t enjoy it but at least I could cross it off my literary bucket list. I finished it in two and a half weeks and loved every minute. How does Tolstoy know how it feels to be a 12 year old girl infatuated for the first time and equally what it would be like to be an aging spinster or a valiant hero, or an elderly man on his death bed? I was honestly grateful for its length (that’s what she said) because it was the size of it (that’s what she said) that meant I could learn such fine detail about all the characters thoughts and emotions. It’s the closest I will ever come to understanding what a battlefield is like, or what it feels like to have to flee your home. It was an excersize in empathy to read it. I can not get overstate how simple and readable it is. Do not be daunted, make sure you get a very recent translation, that will make all the difference and go on that greatest of literary journeys.  Side note I bet this is the first literary review to contain the phrase “that’s what she said” TWICE!

5.   The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath

 I very nearly gave this 5^th spot to Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance (think Indian Les Miserables and you’re getting there! Please read! It’s perfection) but I realised that so many of my favourite authors are women and yet no one on the list was female, so I have popped The Bell Jar on here to rectify that!  I read this last year and it challenged the shadowy idea I had that Silvia Plath was nothing more than a morose, suicidal poet and made her seem a real, sweet and funny girl. Now, I know it isn't autobiographical but never have the author’s own thoughts, feelings and story come through the page to me so clearly. The main thing I felt was that I really liked her. I wanted to be her friend. I have battled depression since my teen years and it was so touching to read somebody else’s struggle and to read the consuming effect it has on all that potential, all that innocence. It is a lovely, very short book that is well deserving of its fame, not just because Plath died so soon after it was published but because it’s beautiful in it’s own right.

I’d love to hear what books have met with your expectations and which books have fallen short! Also, I always try to read books people recommend to me so let me know your top choices!