A very personal guide to the best novels ever written, and why they
matter
As the annual flood of published novels grows ever greater, it's a hard
a job to keep up, let alone sort the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately,
literary sleuth and academic John Sutherland is on hand to do precisely
that. In the course of more than 500 wittily informative pieces he gives
us his own very personal take on the most rewarding, most remarkable,
and, on occasion, most shamelessly enjoyable works of fiction ever
written--the perfect reading list for the would-be literary expert. His
taste is impressively eclectic. An appreciation of Apuleius's The
Golden Ass--arguably the first-ever novel--is followed by a
consideration of Ian Fleming's Goldfinger. The Handmaid's Tale is
followed by Hangover Square, Jane Eyre by Jaws. There are imposing
Victorian novels, entertaining contemporary thrillers, and everything in
between, from dystopian works to romance. The flavor of each is
brilliantly evoked and its relative merits or demerits assessed. At the
same time, John Sutherland shows how the work fits into a broader
context--whether that of the author's life or of other books from the
same genre or period. And he offers endless snippets of intriguing
information: did you know, for example, that the Nazis banned Bambi or
that William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying on an upturned wheelbarrow;
that Voltaire completed Candide in three days, or that Anna Sewell was
paid £20 for Black Beauty? Encyclopedic and entertaining by turns,
this is a wonderful dip-in book, whose opinions will inform and on
occasion, no doubt, infuriate. It is also effectively a history of the
novel in 500 or so bite-sized pieces.
