Classic reads #2
Reviews & recommendations
Continuing our theme of classics, I’ve pulled from my shelves some popular books I loved, and which you might enjoy.
It occurs to me that whether you have experienced or heard of a book very much depends on age, gender, and circumstances at the time of publication.
These are all feminist classics, but I think only the first is well-known enough that everyone will have at least heard of it. Still—I encourage you to read it, if you haven’t already!
These are also solid gift choices for intellectual killjoys, and you can order them smugly from independent bookshops via my affiliate site.
1960s
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
What I enjoyed about this was its righteousness and freshness. It feels fresh, even rereading now, although the story is about a lawyer in 1930s Southern USA who defends a black man accused of raping a white woman. When I was young, this book made me want to name a child after Atticus, the lawyer; reconsidering now, perhaps I’d prefer to name a child after the narrator—a young girl called Scout Finch. Harper Lee wrote it in the late 1950s; a much better guide to anything happening at the time than contemporary historical fiction. Good to read for context and to understand how someone of that time thought about life. The injustice at the heart of the novel and righteousness of its best characters feels contemporary and has much in common with our times than you would think. After reading the novel, you can watch movie with the deeply dreamy Gregory Peck.
1970s
The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
Moons ago, I was thinking about how women and men are made different by lived experience. How living as a woman in a society where the male gaze and rape culture are present can shape how, e.g., cautious one becomes. This thinking led to me writing a novel called Golden Boy. As I began to write that book, I was also reading this one. I went to a small park next to a church in Camden, where I then lived, practically every day, and read. The Women’s Room follows a woman who leaves her husband and enters Harvard in the first year women are able to attend. What I loved about this book is that it doesn’t shy away from the disappointment of finding freedom that is limited. Of meeting emancipation with joy and then realising it’s not as extensive as the emancipation other groups of people have been offered. Of depicting progressive men who consider themselves feminists but still treat women like citizens of a second class. It doesn’t offer neat answers. Perfect reading, I think, for frustrated women in their late 20s or 30s today, and particularly for any contemporary reader who finds out that, within her progressive workplace or equal relationship, there are, actually, deep inequalities. This is not as well known as other important feminist texts however, it’s unmissable if you care or want to know more about feminism, and much more readable than most.
2010s
Patsy by Nicole Dennis Benn
I loved this novel so much. It was sexy and sweaty and fun and sad and lovely and clever and informative. The perspective was so unique in terms of the marketplace and not just because it’s rare to have a female, black, Jamaican, new immigrant protagonist/narrator but because of the detailed and authentic way Nicole writes about class or what I’d rather term ‘lack of money’, and the grind of living somewhere rampantly capitalistic; a place that, whatever it gives, also takes and takes and takes without end.
The Oneworld blurb did a good job of describing all the intriguing interwoven storylines, so here it is: “When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, it’s the culmination of years of yearning to be reunited with Cicely, her oldest friend and secret love, who left home years before for the “land of opportunity.” Patsy’s plans do not include her religious mother or even her young daughter, Tru, both of whom she leaves behind in a bittersweet trail of sadness and relief. But Brooklyn is not at all what Cicely described in her letters, and to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a bathroom attendant, and ironically, as a nanny. Meanwhile, back in Jamaica, Tru struggles with her own questions of identity and sexuality, grappling every day with what it means to be abandoned by a mother who has no intention of returning.”
A chunky book, for those who love hefty pageturners.
2010s
Things to Make and Break by May Lan Tan
Published by a small press and so well loved and respected it was republished by Sceptre. There are few short story collections I really loved, but this is one of them. My tastes are ‘literary but make it readable’. I want to want to turn the page. These stories were delicious and strange but also fun and visual; I couldn’t help dreaming that they were quiet, quirky indie movies. You may have missed this collection if you delved into the world of books after 2020. If you are interesting in writing, reading, or working in literature, it’s unmissable.
“A motorcycle courier finds a cache of nude photos in her boyfriend’s desk. The daughter of East German emigrants encounters her doppelgänger, who has crossed another cultural divide. Twin brothers fall for the same girl. When a stripper receives an enigmatic proposal from a client, she accepts, ignorant of its terms.”
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