Too often, I find that novelists force the endings of their books in ways that aren’t true to their characters, the stories, or their settings. Often, they do so to provide the Hollywood ending that many readers crave. That always leaves me cold. I love novels whose characters are complex, human, and believable and interact with their setting and the story in ways that do not stretch credulity. This is how I try to approach my own writing and was foremost in my mind as I set out to write my own book.
While John Le Carre wrote many fine books, with some unforgettable classics at his peak, this novel was a revelation.
In this short book, he captures the character of the wonderfully crusty, dissatisfied Leamas, the interdependence of love and betrayal, the frustration and interminable waiting of spying, and the moral bankruptcy essential to pursuing higher objectives.
But for me, the perfect ending, devastating and true to both the character and the Cold War Berlin setting, makes this book memorable.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston.
The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carre's career worldwide
In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse-a desk job-Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered…
I couldn’t make a list like this without including Graham Greene. His introspective art of writing has shaped my own approach to fiction. This book is a brilliant portrait of Scobie, a security officer in West Africa during World War II.
A deeply religious Catholic with simple tastes, Scobie struggles with guilt toward all in his melancholy orbit: his wife Louise, whose hopes to climb the social ladder have been dashed by Scobie’s simplicity and integrity; his mistress Helen; his faithful servant Ali.
The book ends beautifully, with Scobie making the only choice consistent with his quirky beliefs and sensitivities. I could easily have added his The Power and the Glory, but I didn’t want to make this a Graham Greene list.
“Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork..."
Graham Greene's masterpiece, The Heart of the Matter, tells the story of a good man enmeshed in love, intrigue, and evil in a West African coastal town. Scobie is bound by strict integrity to his role as assistant police commissioner and by severe responsibility to his wife, Louise, for whom he cares with a fatal pity.
When Scobie falls in love with the young widow Helen, he finds vital passion again yielding to pity, integrity giving way to deceit and dishonor—a vortex…
There’s so much to love in this book. Desai’s characters come to life, as does Kalimpong's setting on the Himalayan foothills. You can feel the frustrations and humiliations of Sai, her grandfather, their cook, and his son Biju in New York City as the cruelty and callousness of life crush them.
As the book lurched toward its painful conclusion, I desperately warned the characters to avoid a catastrophe, but alas, to no avail. This is one of the best books I have ever read.
The Inheritance of Loss is Kiran Desai's extraordinary Man Booker Prize winning novel.
High in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time.
The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by his past. His orphan granddaughter has fallen in love with her handsome tutor, despite their different backgrounds and ideals. The cook's heart is with his son, who is working in a New York restaurant, mingling with an underclass from all over the globe as he seeks somewhere to call home.
How can one not love this book? The sensitivity with which Steinbeck renders his lead characters, broody, sensitive George, and childlike, powerful Lenny, is unparalleled. The reader can’t help but love them and feel their pain as their dreams inevitably slip away from their grasp.
The only fitting ending for this masterpiece is Steinbeck’s heartrending ending, foreshadowed throughout the book. It will leave you in tears, but make you a better person in the process.
Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.
Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.
Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie have nothing in the world except…
Okay, this brilliant book doesn’t quite fit with the others. But I had to include it because; 1) I couldn’t write this list without including a Canadian book; and 2) it’s one of my favourite books. Richler’s Barney is every bit as compelling a tragic character as the others I mention here, but he’s written with Richler’s sly, caustic wit.
He’s the lovable rogue who fritters away all three of his wives, including love-of-his-life Miriam, while being accused of killing his best friend. Amidst Richler’s sly critique of the modern world, we witness Barney’s slow descent into dementia and desolation. The ending, however, fits this sardonic novel like a glove and left me with a big smile on my face.
Before his brain began to shrink, Barney Panofsky clung to two cher-ished beliefs. Life was absurd, and nobody ever truly understood any-body else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is 'a wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a pen-chant for violence and probably a murderer'. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting and plagiarising, as his memory plays tricks on him - and on the reader. Ebullient and perverse, he has seen off 3…
My book explores the life and singular worldview of Crazy Eddie, a brilliant, highly educated homeless man who panhandles in front of a downtown bank in a coastal town. Eddie is a local enigma. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to life on the streets?
A dizzying ride between past and present, the novel unravels these mysteries just as Eddie has decided to return to society after two decades on the streets with the help of Jane, a woman whose intelligence and integrity rival his own. Will he succeed, or is it too late? In Graham Greene's tradition, my book is a book about love, betrayal, and life’s heavenly music.
Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…
From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?
