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.

Man and Boy

by Tony Parsons (London: HarperCollins, 1999)

“I loved my wife and I loved our son. Together, the two of them made my world make sense. My life without them was unimaginable. I knew I was a lucky man. But I couldn’t help it, I just couldn’t help it – lately I found myself wondering when I had stopped being young.”

Harry Silver’s marriage ends just before his thirtieth birthday: his unhappy wife Gina leaves London for Japan and he is left to look after their four-year-old son Pat. Also finding himself suddenly unemployed, Harry must quickly get used to being a single parent and in doing so, becomes closer to his son and his own father that he has ever been before. But tragedy soon strikes at the heart of his family, and when Gina finally comes back for Pat, Harry has to make the hardest decision of his life. With its reflections on old-fashioned nuclear families and the guilt that comes with failing to provide your own children with that same stability, Man and Boy is a touching piece of domestic fiction, dealing with the complicated relationships that form after any divorce in an often amusing way.

Read an online interview with the author 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.

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett (New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2009)

“I am afraid I have told too little. Not just that life was so much worse for many black women working in the homes in Mississippi, but also that there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I had the ink or the time to portray.”

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel looks at the relationships between white women and their African-American maids in early 1960s Mississippi. The story is narrated in turn by Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young university graduate who has returned to her hometown to find a job as a  journalist; Aibileen Clark, a maid and nanny employed by one of Skeeter’s good friends; and Minny Jackson, Aibileen’s best friend who keeps losing jobs as a maid because of her sass. All three women must work to complete interviews for a secret book about the lives of “the help” and their role within the  families that employ them as the atmosphere of dangerous racial intolerance in Jackson heats up around them. Stockett uses plenty of convincing Southern vernacular (Law, sho’ nuff, y’all) to convey a strong sense of time and place, and the tone of this piece of historical fiction remains optimistic despite its serious themes.

Visit Kathryn Stockett’s official website here.