The Shipping News

by Annie Proulx (London: Fourth Estate, 1993)

“His earliest sense of self was as a distant figure: there in the foreground was his family; here, at the limit of the far view, was he. Until he was fourteen he cherished the idea that he had been given to the wrong family, that somewhere his real people, saddled with the changeling of the Quoyles, longed for him.”

Winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, The Shipping News tells the story of Quoyle, a newspaper journalist who returns to the old family home in Newfoundland after his unfaithful wife dies in a car accident. Taking his two small daughters and an elderly aunt with him, Quoyle begins his life again, finding unexpected happiness and redemption. Proulx’s striking use of language, evocative settings and quirky humour (Quoyle often thinks in newspaper headlines: Dog Farts Fell Family of Four) turn this tale of tragic characters into an uplifting celebration of family, friendship and people’s potential for change.

Listen to a radio interview with Annie Proulx here.

Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides (London: Bloomsbury, 2002)

“You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there’s it’s only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you’re time-travelling. In this life we grow backwards.”

A big, bold, hilarious saga that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Middlesex follows three generations of the Stephanides family from 1920s Greece to Detroit in the swinging 60s to contemporary Berlin. The narrator of this epic tale is Calliope, whose grandparents’ unusual union meant that she was born a girl but, thanks to a rare genetic mutation, grows into a man – Cal, now 41, is recording his/her life story for science and posterity. Superbly detailed descriptions of people and places make them feel incredibly real and specific, but the themes explored by this imaginative book (race, war, religion, sexuality, gender, the immigrant experience) are universal.

Read an interview with Jeffrey Eugenides by Jonathan Safran Foer here.

Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson (New York: Farrar, Strouss and Giroux, 2004)

“You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

Set in a small town in Iowa in 1956, and taking the form of dairy entries to his young son, Gilead tells the story of Reverend John Ames, a preacher in his 70s who knows he doesn’t have long to live. Ames mixes tales of everyday life, memories, and reflections about God with the history of his father and grandfather, both also preachers, during the American Civil War and WWI. Although slow-paced, this is a powerful book, revealing the old man’s deep religious beliefs and profound love for his family through simple prose and gentle humour.  Deserving winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.



Listen to an excerpt from the audiobook here.

Last Orders

by Graham Swift (London: Picador, 1996)

“I see him scratch his neck and reset his cap. I see him light up a snout, dicky chest or no dicky chest, and breathe out the first drag, bottom lip jutting, then rub his chin with the tip of his thumb, cigarette between his fingers, then run the ball of his thumb across his forehead, and I know I do all those things, without helping it, the same gestures, the same motions.”

Three men, friends since WWII, have gathered in their local pub to carry out the final wishes of Jack Dodds, a London butcher who requested that his ashes be scattered into the sea. Jack’s adopted son Vince drives Ray, Vic and Lenny to the pier at Margate and as they travel, we learn their history. Each chapter, some just a page or two long, is narrated by a different person in the form of an interior monologue but Ray also talks us through the men’s road trip and so becomes the centre of consciousness in the book. Years of friendship and resentments lie behind every comment made and as the book progresses, we learn why none of their wives came along. Winner of the 1996 Booker Prize, Last Orders makes wonderful use of English working-class slang (snouts, daffs, aint) and tells the story of four families through an interwoven series of conversations, shifting between times and tenses, memories and revelations.

Watch a trailer for the film adaptation of Last Orders here.

March

by Geraldine Brooks (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005)

“Her face weary but smiling. I felt the grip of her will like a gaff plunged deep in me: she had been determined to see this day. She would have me back in the boat, she would keep this craft, our family, afloat, together, not matter how damaged my state, or her own, no matter how uncertain the seas.”

Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, March retells Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women from the point of view of the girls' absent father, an abolitionist chaplain whose conscience forces him to leave his family in New England to serve in the American Civil War. Captain March’s journey spans several decades and covers, through flashbacks, time spent in the South before the war and his subsequent courtship of his beloved Marmee, as well as the brutality and injustices he witnesses both on and off the battlefield in 1862. The second part of this historical love story is told by Marmee herself, who nurses March back to health in Washington then brings him home, where he must reconnect with his daughters who have no idea what he has been through. The misunderstandings and sacrifices that characterise the March’s married life are described in affecting detail, and Brooks’ use of contemporary letters and journals as source material lends a sense of real period accuracy.

Click here find out more about American Civil War in literature.