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A Personal Choice Book List | |
| Dubliners James Joyce Joyce seemed to write only masterpieces and this is his first one. The individual stories of the collection are part of an overall design depicting Dublin at the beginning of the century but this is not as important as the quality of the writing in the stories themselves. Contains "The Dead", one of the best short stories ever written. |
| The Assistant Bernard
Malamud Malamud's second novel and perhaps his best. Certainly my favourite. I just love its Jewish speech rhythms, the way he unfolds a story, the chapter endings which make it impossible not to read on. From what I know of it, I find the Jewish experience very close to the Irish (our holocaust was the Famine) - the dominant mother figures, the concern with religion and guilt, the love of fracturing language. His short stories rank with the greatest. |
| At-Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien Amazingly, this was written when Flann O'Brien was in his early 20s. It is a book about a student writing a book whose characters revolt because they are unsatisfied with their conditions. It is an explosion of styles and parodies. He manages to capture better than anybody else the uproarious way people talk in Ireland. He is the best comic writer I know. |
| A Good Man is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor When I heard of this writer first I thought - another Irishman. It turned out to be a woman from Georgia. She writes with immense power and accuracy and wit. Once she was asked, 'Miss O'Connor, why do you write?' She replied: 'Because I'm good at it.' And she is. I take great pleasure in anything she writes - essays on short story in Mystery and Manners - her letters, The Habit of Being, and above all her fiction. |
| Huckleberry Finn Mark
Twain Possibly the nearest thing to The Great American Novel. I loved everything about this book. Its intelligence, its humour, sensitivity, adventure - never knowing what was round the next bend of the river. The way Mark Twain stands morality on its head - Huck feels guilty about behaving in a Christian way to Jim, the escaped slave - is masterly. Also the book shows that most things can be said in the language of a boy with little schooling. |
| Lady with Lapdog and other
stories Anton Chekhov I read some of these stories when I a lot younger and could see little in them. Now I think he is the greatest short story writer of them all. What amazes me is that I cannot see how he does it - his wheels don't show. If I feel that I never want to write another word, I read Chekhov's later stories and come away awed and wanting to make something of my own. |
| Twenty Years A-Growing
Maurice O'Sullivan Translated from the Irish about the growing up of a boy on an island off the West coast of Ireland, this is a joy to read. Something of the innocence of the man comes through - a man who has written one of the world's classic books in any language - when his highest Aspiration is to join the police in Dublin. |
| Collected Short Stories
Michael McLaverty No relation - unfortunately. A writer shamefully neglected outside Ireland, his stories are full of sensuous detail, beautifully crafted with a regard for what words can do. He never overdoes things. His advice to Seamus Heaney was 'Don't have the veins bulging in your biro when you write.' 'The Poteen Maker' was one of the first short stories I ever read. It, along with a few others of his, I return to with undiminished pleasure. |
| The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky This book had such an impact on me when I first read it that I am afraid to read it again in case I would be disappointed. At the time it had everything - -philosophy, emotions, a detective story, characters whom I remember to this day. I have re-read the Grand Inquisitor scene in anthologies and it is still great I must take courage and re-read the whole thing. |
| A Hemingway selection
Dennis Pepper Whoever accused Hemingway of writing 'like an ox talking' must have read like an ox. I agree with Sean O'Faolain who says that 'deep down Hemingway is one of the kindest and most tender of writers'. It is in the short story that he is at his best and for anyone who wants to write in this form Hemingway is a must. |
| Complete Short Stories
Franz Kafka I love Kafka for the unique imaginative world he creates and for his po-faced black humour. To explore in style, to innovate and yet be in complete control of what he is doing is a remarkable achievement. Parables like 'Before the Law' and' A Message from the Emperor' - each a mere page in length - leave you with your mouth hanging open. And that's not to mention what stories like 'In the Penal Colony' and 'Metamorphosis' do to you. |
| The Diviner Brian
Friel Better known as a playwright, Brian Friel wrote these stories earlier in his career. If I was asked to compile an anthology of my favourite stories, several of these would have to be included - -'The Foundry House' and 'The Potato Gatherers' at least. There are other stories, not in this collection, which I would also consider - like the beautifully titled 'Mr Sing My Heart's Delight'. |
| No One Writes to the Colonel
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Some years ago I was given a handful of books with the backs ripped off. Before throwing them away I idly read the first paragraph of this one and the writing was so good I had to read on till I finished the whole thing. 'Who is this writer?' I had to track him down by the title and then read more. Superb stuff. |
| The Rabbit Trilogy - Rabbit
Run, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit Redux
John Updike John Updike takes us from the young manhood of Harry Angstrom to his seedy middle age; from the tragedy of the first book to the comedy of the last. It is spectacular writing at its best. Updike is so good at getting the surface of things accurately that I tend to believe him at other levels. |
| The Cossacks/The Death of
Ivan Ilyich/Happy Ever After Leo Tolstoy 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' is a story that strips the flesh back from the bone. As Tolstoy writes: 'The story of Ivan Ilyich's life was one of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore the most terrible.' Another of the greatest stories ever written. |
| Catholics Brian Moore Not a word too many here, not a word missing. This novella, set in the future, is about a conservative religious revolution. A Vatican troubles-hooter is sent to an island off the Irish coast to bring to heel the monks who have reverted to saying the Latin mass. Sounds dull, but is, in fact, fascinating. The figure of the Abbot is a wonderful creation. |
| December Bride Sam
Hanna Bell This is a bleak, powerful study of two brothers and a woman and their existence on a hill farm in Ulster. Instead of complaining that Sam Hanna Bell wrote just the one novel, this should be appreciated like an only child. |
| Looking back over this list there are only Americans, Irish and Russians on it and very little that is recent. I have lived the last ten years in Scotland where there is some extremely interesting prose being written, notably: |
| 1982 Janine Alasdair
Gray Rich and experimental, the book is the consciousness of a middle-aged man in a hotel somewhere in Scotland. The conservative voice pillories itself and yet at other levels it is sadly human and funny. Gray, also a painter, designs his own books (in Unlikely Stories, Mostly he included a red erratum slip which said 'This slip has been inserted by mistake'). |
| Not, Not While the Giro
Jim Kelman In this, his first collection of stories, Jim Kelman is intent on finding a voice. In the title story it is that of a Glaswegian superfluous man who is concerned with 'perambulations to the broo'. 'Roofsliding' sounds like an anthropologist's treatise and is hilarious. 'Acid', only a half page long, is an upper-cut of a story. |
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