angelayoung's reviews
336 reviews

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

5.0

When William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 I cheered. He was an extraordinary storyteller who believed in the power of the imagination above all else although this, his first, novel very nearly didn't make it. He had a different structure and intention for the book when he submitted it to Faber but a brilliant young editor, Charles Monteith, rescued it from the slush pile, suggested cuts and rewrites and encouraged Golding ... and he, the English teacher who wondered aloud to his wife one night about how a group of boys might behave if left for some time without supervision, rewrote his masterpiece and I doubt it will ever be out of print.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

4.0

A very moving book, and a frightening book about broken promises, betrayal, escape from a murderous regime and retribution, with an uplifting ending that makes me cry every time I think about it.

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

5.0

Absolutely mistressful storytelling. And it made me think about my assumptions about people between whom one set of rules is assumed, when quite another might well be the reality.

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

4.0

Parallel stories ... another favourite form of mine. And so moving and compulsive in its telling. The ending - which of course I won't give away - so disappointed (in the sense of wishing what happened hadn't happened, not in the sense of written badly) a friend of mine that we had an argument about it because he had convinced himself what happened didn't happen. Now that's quite a feat of storytelling ... .

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

5.0

When Jane says to Rochester, 'Do you think, just because I am not pretty, that I have no heart? That I do not or cannot love? That I have no mind?' (I paraphrase but that's the inner sense of what she says to Rochester when she decides to leave Thornfield because she thinks Rochester about to propose to Blanche; and long before the discovery of his first wife imprisoned in the attic) I wept. Because she is - through her pain - determined to express what she feels and who she is, even though that wasn't what governesses usually did, then.
I've found it, here's what she says: 'Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! . . . I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit: just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal, as we are!'
Good for Jane (and, more to the point, for Charlotte).

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

5.0

To set a book in one day (as Joyce did Ulysses) is an intriguing idea. But of course Mrs Dalloway remembers and so the day is elongated, in flashback, but the structure adds tension to the story and this is, to me, the easiest of Woolf's novels to read. But despite its simple and straightforward (for her) prose and construction it is subtle and touching. And after Mrs Dalloway hears about a suicide, an act she seems to be considering herself when she looks through the high window down on to the spikes of the railings below, her return to herself and her loved ones is very moving (particularly in the light of Woolf's own suicide in 1941, sixteen years after the publication of Mrs Dalloway). It's a very touching book about ordinary and extraordinary people.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

5.0

Before Robert Redford, I always thought of Gatsby as dark-haired and there are some who say Fitzgerald intended us to pick up hints in The Great Gatsby that Jay Gatsby was actually black (see here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=153166&sectioncode=26) which suddenly makes the book even more fascinating than it already is. And, like Wuthering Heights, it is narrated by someone who saw it all but who was on the fringes, the edges, of what happened and that telling of the story to the reader adds an intimacy instead of - as you might think - making it less intimate. It's as if a friend said, 'Come over for a drink tonight, I've got a story to tell you.' It makes the story more intriguing and I identified with Nick Carraway just as I'm sure Fitzgerald intended his readers to. But now that I've typed his name I wonder about the resonance with 'carried away' ... ?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

5.0

My favourite scene in this absolutely wonderful book is the scene between Lizzy Bennet and her parents (but really the focus is her father) when Lizzy has refused Mr Collins's proposal. It's from Chapter 22:
'Come here, child,' cried her father as she appeared. 'I have sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?'
Elizabeth replied that it was. 'Very well. And this offer of marriage you have refused?'
'I have, Sir.'
'Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is not it so, Mrs. Bennet?'
'Yes, or I will never see her again.'
'An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.'
Elizabeth could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a beginning; but Mrs. Bennet, who had persuaded herself that her husband regarded the affair as she wished, was excessively disappointed.

And then:
'What do you mean, Mr. Bennet, by talking in this way? You promised me to insist upon her marrying him.'
'My dear,' replied her husband, 'I have two small favours to request. First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the present occasion; and secondly, of my room. I shall be glad to have the library to myself as soon as may be.'

Edith Wharton said, in The Writing of Fiction, 1925, that Jane Austen's Emma was, 'The most perfect example of English fiction in which character shapes events quietly but irresistibly'. I think that's equally true of Lizzy in Pride and Prejudice.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

5.0

I wanted to be as impulsive as Scout and as wise and courageous as Atticus. (I still do.) This is such a perceptive and moving, rage-inducing and thought-provoking novel. It's another of those I would love to have written myself because it's just so very good. The characters don't seem like characters in a novel at all, but real, warm, feeling breathing human beings. I don't know why Harper Lee never wrote another novel, but perhaps she put everything she had into this one and knew she'd never better it?

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

4.0

The things I remember about this book are Anna's struggles with children and with men and with trying to live a fulfilling life. The writing of her novel and her desire to live an examined life and to amount to something and someone, without going mad or at least without becoming terminally exhausted. I think those things are in the book ... if they're not they're certainly what the book prompted me to think about. And I remember being struck by the episodic nature of its structure (its notebooks) and the fact that Anna was writing a novel ... inside this novel.