desert island reads
DESERT ISLAND
with Bridget Whelan Each issue a guest writer recommends up to ten books that they have read, reread and would willingly read again. I’m kicking this series off because it was my idea…
READS
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll I got it the Christmas I was seven and as soon as I finished I turned back to the beginning – the adventures in the looking glass are far superior to those in Wonderland, by the way. I, Claudius by Robert Graves I was 16 and working as a trainee reporter when I went into a bookshop with my first week’s wages. Staff assured me that, although it looked very high minded, I shouldn’t worry, it was really a Roman soap opera. They were right....in a good way. The next week I was back for Claudius the God. The Color Purple by Alice Walker The plot is clunky. Things that shouldn’t happen do happen and I wouldn’t change one word of it – page one made me cry. Proof that a great writer can do anything. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving Owen is one of the most memorable characters in contemporary literature. Short – the size of an eight year old when fully grown – intelligent and charismatic, he kills the narrator’s mother with an ill timed baseball and claims to know the date of his death.
The Men Who Built Britain: A History of the Irish Navvy by Ultan Cowley A superb example of social history that is also a very good read. Rich in photographs, original material and humour, it describes the gaiety of the Irish dance halls and the desperate loneliness of men far from home. Carrying the Elephant by Michael Rosen This poetic memoir is written with Rosen’s characteristic simplicity about the death of his 18-year-old son. It doesn’t have to be heroic couplets to stir the soul. Down by the River by Edna O’Brien I could have chosen almost any of Edna O’Brien’s 20+ books. She’s a novelist who selects words with the careful authority of a poet. This one stands out, however, for a half page of spare prose. It is a description of a brutal sexual attack that is so vivid it hurts to read it, but there isn’t one word that is gratuitous, offensive or sexually explicit. Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg Published long before the present craze for Nordic who-dun-it’s (of which I am a big fan) this novel combines complex characters and a compelling plot with Greenland/ Danish politics and a lot of snow. There’s also a glacier as an added bonus L’Assommoir by Emile Zola Zola is an extraordinary writer whose subject was poverty and deprivation and what it does to people. This is a masterpiece among the many he wrote. It’s my favourite because even when Gervase loses everything, even when it’s her own fault, Zola remains half in love with her.
the sunflower edition ~ 17