Literatuurlijst Engels
Hieronder vindt u een overzicht van de boeken waarover leeswijzers verschenen zijn in 2012 en daaronder in 2011. Een link naar een te printen versie vindt u in de kolom hiernaast.
New reader’s guides in 2012
Pat Barker – Regeneration
E12-01. London, Penguin Books 1992, 252 pages
Craiglockart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917: Army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers and officers to make them fit enough to return to the trenches in France. Through the eyes of Rivers the reader discovers about the horrors the men had to suffer during the Great War. All kinds of physical traumas are disclosed in the sessions. Every patient reacts differently on the atrocities they have experienced
One of them is Siegfried Sassoon, a published poet and an officer, who wrote a protest against the unnecessary prolongation of the war. In the hospital Sassoon meets with Wilfred Owen, a young poet.
In a simple, yet powerful style Barker gives an impressive image of the consequences of war. Because “fact and fiction are interwoven in this book”, the story comes across highly authentic.
The great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
E12-02. HarperCollins Publishers, 2010 (originally published in1925), 320 pages
The American Dream is well known to most of us. Yet, we cannot fully understand the virtues and failures of the green mirage without reading The Great Gatsby. The reader experiences firsthand what it is like to be engulfed by events caused by the American spirit of freedom, greed and lust. The mysterious Jay Gatsby is willing to do everything to reconquer his long lost love Daisy Buchanan. Her cousin, Nick Carraway is chosen to play the go-between for the tragic couple. Described as Fitzgerald best work by many, The Great Gatsby has enticed thousands and will continue to do so for many years to come.
Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English
E12-03. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011, 288 pages
Eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku has newly arrived from Ghana. Harri absorbs the many strange elements of his new life in England, with equal fascination for the local gang and the pigeon who visits his balcony. The second best runner in his Year, Harri races through his new life blissfully unaware of the very real threat all around him. When a boy is knifed to death on the high street and the police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own. In doing so, he unwittingly endangers the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to try and keep them safe. A story of innocence and experience, hope and harsh reality, Pigeon English is a spellbinding portrayal of a boy balancing on the edge of manhood and of the forces around him that try to shape the way he falls
Jhumpa Lahiri - The Namesake
E12-04. HarperCollins Publishers, 2004, 304 pages
This novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of an Indian couple that left India to start a new life in America. Their children, born in America, grow up in between the Indian culture of their parents and the American society they live in. While their parents feel closely connected to the family and culture they left behind in India, their children do not feel part of this world. The oldest son is named after his father favourite Russian author Gogol. Not feeling any connection to this name, that is neither American nor Indian, he changes his name when he turns eighteen. Lahiri’s novel is a very enjoyable read that discusses the current theme of what defines ones identity.
David Leavitt – The Indian Clerk
E12-05. Bloomsburry, 2008, 485 pages
Although this novel begins in India the majority of story is set in Cambridge. G.H. Hardy, a brilliant mathematician working out divergent series, discovers that an Indian clerk, a self-professed mathematician almost solved his problem. Together with a collegue he decides to bring this man over to Cambridge to find out if it is really true. While the story progresses the First World War breaks out and this involves other problems than mathematical solutions. The book offers a view of the academic world, the struggle of men with their sexual identity and the age old problem of colonialism. Though mathematics play an important part in the novel those readers who are not interested in this science can be equally intrigued by this fiction about the academic world at the start of the previous century.
William Maxwell - They came like Swallows
E12-06. The Harvill Press 1937, 192 pages
The book is set in 1918 during the great flu pandemic in a small town in Illinois. Eight-year-old Bunny is being bullied by his older brother Robert and their father does not relate to his sons very well. The mother is the centre of the family; life without her is unimaginable. The boys become aware of the terrible disease in their town and the rest of the country. They are restricted to home more and more. When Bunny falls ill, too, disaster comes crashing in. Robert and Bunny are sent away to stay with an aunt and uncle. After returning home it is difficult for everyone to cope with the new situation.
The novel is told through the eyes of the children and the father. It is a thoughtful look at the importance of family life on a smaller scale.
Carson McCullers – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
E12-07. Penguin Books, first published in 1940, 312 pages.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a story about the lives of several poor people in a small industrial town in the South of the United States. John Singer is a deaf-mute and in spite of his disability several people, each with a very different background, regularly visit him and talk to him endlessly. They all consider John Singer their best friend.
The story is also about racial and gender discrimination and how to cope with poverty. The characters all hunt for love and friendship. Discover how each of them struggles to find it.
Carson McCullers was only 23 when she wrote this book. In spite of her young age she succeeded in portraying the characters in a very subtle and true way.
Ian McEwan – Atonement
E12-08. Jonathan Cape, 2001, 371 pages
Briony Tallis, a young girl, watches two figures near a fountain. She is too young to understand what is happening, but she thinks she does. Her interpretation of this event will shape not only her own life but also the lives of those she loves and wants to protect. She will have to atone for her choices and lies while the Second World War is unfolding around her. Atonement spans from 1935 to 1999 and shows how reality can be subjective, how a decision once made cannot be taken back, and how a child's story can have more effect than the horrors of war.
Lisa Moore – February
E12-09. Vintage, 2011, 305 pages
Helen O’Mara is a 56-year-old widow, mother of four children and grandmother of two grandchildren. Her husband died 25 years ago, when the oil rig on which he worked, sunk in a storm. At first sight she seems to lead a normal and happy life. She does what she has to do but in her mind she goes back to what happened on the oil rig all the time. One day her son, John, calls her and asks for help after he has unwillingly made a girlfriend pregnant. This request causes a change in Helen’s life for the better.
Although this is a story about the grief for a lost husband, it is also a story about how to, step by step, learn to lead a good new life where the past remains part of.
Philip Roth – Everyman
E12-10 Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House, 2006, 182 pages
Roth’s Everyman is a successful commercial artist with a New York ad agency, he is the father of two sons from a first marriage who despise him and a daughter form a second marriage who adores him. He is the beloved brother of a good man whose physical well-being comes to arouse his bitter envy, and he is the lonely ex-husband of three different women with whom he’s made a mess of marriage. In the end he is a man who has become what he does not want to be.
Everyman is a touchingly intimate yet universal story about a man coping with mortality – a story about loss, regret and stoicism that won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2007.
Karen Russell - St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
E12-11. London, Vintage, 2008, 246 pages
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is Karen Russell’s debut collection of short stories. The book consists of ten stories, each with its own wonderful and weird characters and places. Russell describes two brothers, looking for the ghost of their sister using the exoskeleton of a giant crab as a boat; the difficult journey of a Minotaur and his family on the trail out West; and, in the title story, a group of girls raised by wolfs who need to be re-civilized by a group of nuns. These are just some of the imaginative creations of Russell, put together in a collection of magical realistic stories which all share the theme of the disillusionment that comes with growing up. As the Guardian puts it, “Karen Russell does not disappoint with these arcane, magical tales of adolescent transformation, (…) wonderfully confident and refreshing.
Zadie Smith – White Teeth
E12-12. Penguin Books, 2001, 542 pages
White Teeth is the story of two old friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqball. They met during World War II and remained friends until the change of the Millennium. Contrary to their wives and children both Archie and Samad kept on living in the past. Especially Samad glorified his home country and the way he was brought up. He even sent his eldest son, by one minute, back to Bengali in order to become a true Muslim, yet his son is influenced by modern science and is now more British than the British. At the same time his other son, the youngest by one minute, is becoming more radical than his father has ever been. Zadie describes brilliantly and full of wit the clash between generations and religions. Ultimately leading to a very surprising end where all parties meet without knowing it from one another.
White Teeth is the winner of the 2000 Whitbread first novel award.
Reader's guides published in 2011
Aravind Adiga – The White Tiger
E11-01 Atlantis Books, 2008, 321 pages.
The White Tiger is set in contemporary India. It is the story of a man’s quest for freedom. The main character Balram Halwai is a servant, philosopher, entrepreneur and murderer. In a series of letters to the Chinese premier he tells the story of how he came to be a success in life. The White Tiger was the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008. The jury stated that “it is a book that shocked and entertained in equal measure”.
Sebastian Barry – The Secret Scripture
E11-02 Faber and Faber, 2008, 312 pages
Roseanne McNulty is an Irish woman who has been a patient in a mental hospital for most of her adult life. She decides to write her life story. She is nearly a hundred years old. Roseanne’s story is interwoven with that of Dr Grene. Dr Grene is the hospital’s psychiatrist who has to assess the patients to decide whether they can be put back into the community. Both Roseanne and Dr Grene are trying to make sense of the past. The subjective nature of memory is a major theme of this beautifully written novel.
Jonathan Coe – The terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim
E11-13 Viking, an imprint of Penguin, 2010, 399 pages
Maxwell Sim joins a competition for selling toothbrushes. His mission is to bring Guest Toothbrushes to the Shetland Isles. Maxwell is on sick leave from his job at the local supermarket so Maxwell decides to take up the offer of driving through Great Britain. This will be a journey that will alter his life completely. Instead of going straight on to Aberdeen to catch the ferry he makes a couple of detours to visit old acquaintances and friends. They didn’t turn out to be social calls however. During his trip he discovers some very dark secrets about his family. He falls in love with the voice of his SatNav system and is found by the Scottish police naked and almost frozen to death in his Prius near Aviemore. Nevertheless Maxwell survives. Jonathan Coe wrote a hilarious book about serious topics.
J.M. Coetzee - Life & Times of Michael K
E11-03 London, Secker & Warburg 1983, 184 pages
Michael K is born with a hare lip and because of this disfigurement he has an unhappy childhood. Due to a civil war life has become uncertain and when his mother asks him to take her back to her native grounds they start a long journey full of hazard. On the way his mother dies and Michael finds a quiet place where he spreads out her ashes. Here he wants to live a peaceful life but in times of war that appears not possible.
Time and again people try to take advantage of him. In spite of all this he is capable of keeping his dignity and making his own choices. Michael is a character you will not easily forget.
Kate Grenville - The Secret River
E11-09 Canongate 2006, 348 pages
The story is set in the early nineteenth century. William Thornhill is transported to the penal colony of New South Wales for stealing a load of timber. His wife Sal decides to accompany him. Within a few years he is pardoned and Thornhill and his growing family settle on the banks of the Hawkesbury River. Thornhill soon realizes that his piece of land is inhabited by ind igenous people. Hostility between settlers and Aborigines gradually escalates.
Kate Grenville’s novel depicts the settlement of convicts in Australia and the impact of intolerance on human relationships.
Susan Hill - Strange meeting
E11-10 Penguin Books Ltd, New edition 1973, 192 pages
John Hilliard, a young subaltern returning to the Western Front after a brief period of sick leave back in England, finds his battalion tragically altered. His commanding officer finds escape in alcohol, there is a new adjutant and even Hilliard's batman has been killed. But there is David Barton. As yet untouched and unsullied by war, radiating charm and common sense, forever writing long letters to his family. Theirs is a strange meeting and a strange relationship: the coming together of opposites in the summer lull before the inevitable storm
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
E11-04 Vintage international edition, 1993, 245 pages
Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall devoted his whole life to the service of Lord Darlington and he is proud of it. He adored his employer and had a very high opinion of him. During a trip to Cornwall he reflects about his career and his feelings towards Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall. He gets one last opportunity to show his true feelings for her. Is he capable of doing that? The Remains of the Day is a novel about dignity and perfection and how it affects a human being.
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
E11-11 Faber and Faber, New edition, 2006, 276 pages
In one of the most acclaimed and strange novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly
skewered version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.
Sadie Jones – The Outcast
E11-14 Vintage Books, London, 2008, 441 pages
1946 Gilbert Aldridge was demobbed and Lewis and his mother went up to London to meet his father. It wasn’t quite what Lewis expected. He didn’t know his father because Gilbert was drafted when Lewis was only a little boy, but Lewis had some sort of an idea what a perfect father would be like. This is the first of many disappointments eventually leading to Lewis’ imprisonment for arsin. This historical novel about a post war England in which people were unable to deal with their feelings takes us further than that. It is also a novel about the development of character not only of adults but above all of adolescents in an era in which post traumatic stress and borderline syndrome still had to be invented.
Joseph O’Neill - Netherland
E11-05 London, Fourth Estate 2008, 340 pages
Hans van den Broek, his wife Rachel and their son Jake lead a happy life in New York. The terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre changes all. His wife and son leave for London. The marriage suffers from this separation. Hans has to find out how to live a life on his own. He is very lonely and longs for friendship, which he finds in Chuck Ramkissoon and in cricket. Find out how sports, in this case the game of cricket, can change a person’s life.
Tatiana de Rosnay - Sarah's Key
E11- 12 Saint Martin's Press Inc., 2007, 294 pages
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old Jewish girl, is arrested by the French police in the middle of the night, along with her mother and father. Desperate to protect her younger brother, she locks him in a cupboard and promises to come back for him as soon as she can.Paris, May 2002: Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked to write about the 60th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv'--the infamous day in 1942 when French police rounded up thousands of Jewish men, women and children, in order to send them to concentration camps. Sarah's Key is the poignant story of two families, forever linked and haunted by one of the darkest days in France's past.
Vikram Seth - An Equal Music
E11-06 London, Orion Books Ltd 1999, 484 pages
Michael Holme is a violinist in the Maggiore Quartet. He discovers a long lost piece of music, composed by Beethoven. He played this piece in his studies together with his friend Julia McNicholl. After a long time during which they didn’t meet Michael and Julia come together. They go to Vienna and Venice and re-live their lives. They have a turbulent love affair. Julia, however, decides to end all this and return to her husband and son. Michael is left alone with all his troubles: no love, no violin, no quartet. This novel is about music and love and the quest for happiness.
Colm Tóibín - Brooklyn
E11-07 London, Penguin Books 2010, 252 pages
Eilis leads a simple life in an Irish town. She is a shop girl and follows bookkeeping lessons in the evening. She has a sister, Rose, who is Eilis’
role model. One day Father Flood, a Roman Catholic priest, comes over from America. He talks about the prospect for young people in the New World and Eilis is urged to emigrate. We find her back in Brooklyn where she works in a department store. She meets a handsome Italian boy, Tony, whom she marries. Then all of a sudden she is summoned back to Ireland.
Alan Warner - Morvern Callar
E11-08 London, Vintage 1996, 229 pages
Morvern discovers the body of her boyfriend. He has committed suicide. She doesn’t report this, however, because nobody will miss Him. He is all alone, has no parents and no other relatives. When it becomes summer in the small Scottish village Morvern has to get rid of the body. Together with her friend, Lanna, they go on holiday to Spain. It is here that Morvern escapes the everyday routine by going to another village and leaving everything, including Lanna, behind her.
Later in the book she returns to this village and continues to visit the disco with the strobe. In the dark she has the most wonderfull time of her life and gets pregnant.