100 books like Tender is the Night

This book was recommended to me because it was set in Italy–specifically in Milan, where I spent some time years ago. It was interesting to learn about the region during the time of WWII and the tribulations that befallen the city and certain groups of people. In this story, the characters participate in a discreet fight against the force of fascism that took over their city.

Of course, I appreciated this fascinating story of this young man’s role. But what really remained with me was learning how the people worked together in the shadows to fight against evil.

The American novelist Henry Miller who loved France described Giono as "one of if not the greatest writer of the twentieth century." This novel is set in deep Provence and tells the tale of a lone shepherd who dedicates his life to reforesting a desolate valley area at the foothills of the Alps. Over forty years he plants his saplings, right up until his death, by which time the valley has been transformed into a paradise for men, creatures, and plants. The writing is sublime, poetic, and inspirational. This story is as relevant today as it was when written seventy years ago.  A must-read.

In my opinion this is one of the great novels about adolescence. What makes it so special is that it is deliciously French and amoral. The story of a French teenage girl, Cecile, and her father. They are a team. You might almost call them a couple. Cecile accompanies her father everywhere including to casinos and bars. She accepts his mistresses. Matters take a more macabre turn when her father invites one of his ladies to holiday with them in the south of France and Cecile learns that he intends to marry this particular woman. Françoise Sagan was eighteen when she wrote this, her first novel. Within months of its publication she became an overnight sensation. The writing is sexy and chic. Sagan perfectly describes the French Riviera in the mid-fifties and a woman’s role in society back then. It was an instant classic and deserves its place in the… show more.

This novel couldn’t be more different from my other choices. It is set on a high-tech park called Eden-Olympia nestling (malevolently!) in the hills behind Cannes. The story is fantastic in a way that is born of Ballard’s brilliant mind. It is a twenty-first century, stylised thriller, and way ahead of its time. Ballard takes the edgy, seamier side of life on this French Riviera coast with its racism and elitism several imaginative steps too far and delivers a shocking tale. I read this novel when it was first published and it haunted me for years. After two more readngs, it remains as powerful as my first introduction to it. Definitely a novel I wish I had written.

Like Jean Giono, Marcel Pagnol was a true Provençal, born in the town of Aubagne in 1895. The Water of the Hills comprises two novels written as one continuous saga, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs. The characters and storylines are Provençal in every detail. Pagnol’s descriptions of the landscape, the people, and challenges conjure up magnificently this rural corner in the hills above Marseille. The stories are set between the two great wars. Pagnol was as acclaimed as a filmmaker as he was a novelist. His works are elegant, full of humanity and wit. He has an unerring eye for the frailties and unkindnesses in man and how twists of fate and nature play their roles in rectifying the world. 

In 1946 Pagnol became the first filmmaker to be elected to the Académie française. A giant among storytellers.

I enjoyed how this story takes an everyday person that we can all relate to, and with one urge of curiosity, she is easily sucked into a dangerous world of crime and murder.

Throughout her story, she finds herself investigating unseen and unknown by dangerous people. She herself may be unaware of any danger until she dives further into her curiosities. And within it all, there is a slow and natural element of romance.

I appreciate Moreno-Garcia’s characters for their realness and natural way of moving through the story. 

I was drawn to the main character’s reaction to his own paranoia. Anything the man did, even something mundane as pouring a drink, he made himself appear more and more suspicious.

What really sparked my interest, though, were moments when, in conversation with another character, the man believed that underneath the surface of the discussion, the other was trying to imply or deliver a different message. Again, this prompts him to respond or react suspiciously, even to a person who would have no clue. He was making himself crazy all on his own.

It reminded me of the character from Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment. I love Highsmith’s work, especially the great cringe moments in many of her stories, including Strangers on the Train and the Tom Ripley series.

I am a fan of crime noir, and this story is one of the formats that I really appreciate–an investigation by a non-professional. Someone who can do the research and ask the questions behind the scenes without being noticed. He works within the shadows of law enforcement, getting information from both sides of the law. His curiosity leads him to intrigue.

I appreciated the man’s conflict within himself as he got closer to the danger and the temptations presented to him. All while he continues to work underneath the surface to solve a mystery he eventually becomes obsessed with himself. 

Jacob Needleman’s Money and the Meaning of Life is the most influential and inspiring book by far for the development of life planning movement in financial advice.

A masterful storyteller with his own set of characters, Needleman guides us into the mystery of how money works and what money is really about. Going back and forth between money’s practicalities and the deeper longings we all have for freedom, he challenges us to explore what freedom really means in relation to money.

A page-turner of speculative philosophy, I can still remember how gripping the final 20 pages were. In his exploration of money and meaning, Needleman tells the story of life planning, which is the story of each of our aspirations for freedom, and then the path to accomplish them. 

To understand just how, and why, the richest people in the world go to so much trouble to ensure that they don’t have to live by the same tax rules as the rest of us, sociologist Brooke Harrington literally trained as a wealth manager.

In this extraordinary book based on interviews in financial centres all around the world, Harrington details the tools of the trade, and at the same time shares rare insights into the people who wield them, and those who pay them to do so.