I’m not an expert on very much. Certainly not the biggest questions of all, such as are we really here, and if not, what’s this all about? But I’ve always enjoyed books that touch upon these questions and find a way to connect them to our everyday reality (I find them easier than actual philosophy). If I am well placed to curate this list, that’s why. I hope it reminds you how we all grapple with these same universal questions. How we all share our doubts and face the same fears. How we’re all whittled away by the same relentless flow of time.
I wrote
Little Ghosts: My sister's name was Layla. I know who killed her. She told me.
The idea that when a loved one dies they watch over us, wishing to end our pain, is a powerful one. And for a novelist it’s a rich seam to mine. And yet The Lovely Bones did it so well, that few have tried to follow where it leads.
Although it moves in a very different direction, my own book clearly owes a debt of inspiration to Alice Seebold and I couldn’t not make it first on my list.
The internationally bestselling novel that inspired the acclaimed film directed by Peter Jackson.
With an introduction by Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles.
My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
In heaven, Susie Salmon can have whatever she wishes for - except what she most wants, which is to be back with the people she loved on earth. In the wake of her murder, Susie watches as her happy suburban family is torn apart by grief; as her friends grow up, fall in…
A young man takes a job as an English teacher on a Greek island, and is quickly drawn into a bewildering mystery involving the island mythological roots, and an impossibly beautiful woman who seems to want him as much as he wants her.
This mix proved irresistible to me when I read it as a young man, teaching English abroad. The novel ultimately weaves a web of psychological intrigue so powerful there can be no answer to the riddles it sets. Which is perhaps why the ending blurs reality so that I still don’t really know the why for what happens.
It’s a credit to the strength of Fowle’s characters that I’d still pick this as my favourite ever read. If I had to pick just one.
The Magus is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching assignment on a remote Greek island. There his friendship with a local millionaire evolves into a deadly game, one in which reality and fantasy are deliberately manipulated, and Nicholas must fight for his sanity and his very survival.
When I read this it felt like a seagoing version of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and it was touch and go which to include in this list. But if you’re like me, and love the sea, there’s no real choice.
In this epic novel we’re shown how the Danish port town of Marstal – and people who call it home – evolve over the course of a century. The novel brilliantly captures the pull that the sea has over the town’s inhabitants, and their struggle to keep what makes them human when faced with its power and scale.
There’s a fantastical element too, just a touch here and there, which somehow matches how most of us experience the unexplainable.
In 1848 a motley crew of Danish sailors sets sail from the small island town of Marstal to fight the Germans. Not all of them return - and those who do will never be the same. Among them is the daredevil Laurids Madsen, who promptly escapes again into the anonymity of the high seas.
Spanning four generations, two world wars and a hundred years, We, The Drowned is an epic tale of adventure, ruthlessness and passion.
A rare case where the film is as powerful as the book, or even more so.
At first glance Fight Club is about a friendship between two men who are angry with a world that values consumerism over all else. They decide to fight back, inciting an underground cult where the oppressed literally beat the humanity back into each other.
At second glance one of those men seems to exist only in the imagination of the other – so, I’m not sure. It’s deeply twisted, yet deserves its place in infamy. They say the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club. Yet years later, here we still are, doing just that.
Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.
OK, so this one goes a bit further than blurring reality, to feature a man with a rare genetic disease that means the stages of his life are lived in a seemingly random order.
It doesn’t obey the laws of physics, but according to the rules of storytelling, it's astonishingly effective at provoking a powerful emotional response from readers. The final meeting of the doomed couple, which she must wait years to reach, and which comes long after his earlier death, is one of the most emotional passages I’ve ever read.
As a whole the book teaches us that every moment is transitory, that they all come to an end, and that they, like us, will all pass away someday.
Now a series on HBO starring Rose Leslie and Theo James!
The iconic time travel love story and mega-bestselling first novel from Audrey Niffenegger is "a soaring celebration of the victory of love over time" (Chicago Tribune).
Henry DeTamble is a dashing, adventurous librarian who is at the mercy of his random time time-traveling abilities. Clare Abshire is an artist whose life moves through a natural sequential course. This is the celebrated and timeless tale of their love. Henry and Clare's passionate affair is built and endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap…
Following the murder of his older sister, and the police’s failure to help, ten-year-old Gale sets out to catch her killer. The twist – she’s there to help him. In Little Ghosts the reader is invited to choose between two competing realities. Either Gale is so overwhelmed by grief that he’s imagining a reality that can’t be true. Or he really is seeing his sister’s ghost.
Either way, the stakes are high. Gale must find a way to uncover the truth before the killer strikes again. The blend of emotional drama, and fast-paced narrative make this a novel that resonates long after the final page.
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
