Right from an early age, I have always been interested in the fallibility of the human condition, being particularly conscious of my own faults. People who are too good to be true are of little interest, except that I want to know their faults or their secrets. I have found myself drawn to complex characters, those who have good and bad characteristics, and some of the novels and movies that I have enjoyed most feature such characters. In my career as a lawyer, I have met all kinds of people who have made bad decisions or suffered misfortune, and it has always been a pleasure trying to help them.
I have always loved the central premise of the book, that a human being might never age, and yet a portrait of him ages as the years go by.
I love the way that Wilde used elegant and lyrical prose, always boosted by a flamboyant irony, in describing the dissolute life of an aesthete while putting it in the context of a philosophical pursuit of beauty and art. Dorian Gray himself is a deeply flawed moral character, and that is key to the success of the novel.
'A triumph of execution ... one of the best narratives of the "double life" of a Victorian gentleman' Peter Ackroyd
Oscar Wilde's alluring novel of decadence and sin was a succes de scandale on publication. It follows Dorian Gray who, enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his depravity. This definitive edition includes a selection of…
When I first read this book, I was somewhat mystified by what the fuss was all about. All I could see was a story of a group of dissolute and disillusioned expats living a pointless life of pettiness and drinking. However, as I separately learned more about Hemingway and his writing style, I was drawn back to the book, and on subsequent readings, I was able to discern more in the characters and the plot than was apparent in my first reading.
The protagonist Jake Barnes, impotent because his penis appears to have been shot off as a result of a wound in World War I, is further emotionally damaged, possibly with PTSD from his war experiences and with a cynicism and sadness that engage the reader’s attention.
Jake Barnes is a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée Lady Brett Ashley. Jake is an expatriate American journalist living in Paris, while Brett is a twice-divorced Englishwoman with bobbed hair and numerous love affairs, and embodies the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. The novel is a roman à clef: the characters are based on real people in Hemingway's circle, and the action is based on real events, particularly Hemingway's life in Paris in the 1920s and a trip to Spain in 1925 for the Pamplona festival and fishing in the…
Never Ready is a story about the complexity of friendship and belonging, their fluidity and inherent loss.
As she curates her life, Henri discovers the mysterious strength of her families, the one she was born into, and the one she finds—but no one is ever really ready for goodbye.
This was one of the few books I read during my teens that seemed to describe accurately the angst of growing up in a world where no one teaches you how to be an adult, and you learn simply to cope and, possibly and with luck, thrive after a series of bad personal experiences.
The protagonist in it is born with a club foot (which most equate to Maugham's stutter or, more likely, his closeted homosexuality), which makes him always an outsider yet also a keen observer of others. I have always thought this to be one of the best and most influential books I have ever read.
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
"It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham," wrote Gore Vidal. "He was always so entirely there."
Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom. This classic bildungsroman tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns…
I remain astonished at how Nabokov could write a novel with such an objectionable premise (in essence, of an adult man sexually attracted to a 12 year old girl) and yet write it in a talented and compelling way such that I as a reader felt involved and even sympathetic to Humbert.
On re-reading the book, I am impressed by the author's ability to write about a forbidden sexual relationship without dwelling on the erotic. Humbert is witty, intelligent, and self-aware. He is damaged in everyone’s judgment and unaware of the effect of his actions on others.
'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.'
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants.
Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all…
To Do Justice is the first book in the White Winter Trilogy. The other books are To Love Kindness and To Walk Humbly. The Trilogy follows the same set of characters through eight tumultuous years in their lives and in the history of the world. To Do Justice starts…
As the author no doubt intended, right from the first page, I took a dislike to the protagonist (he makes his weekly visit to a prostitute). It emerges that David is, in fact, a sexual obsessive, and it is not long before he is forced to leave his university professorship after aggressively pursuing and bedding one of his students.
I was surprised, therefore, when the story took off in a different direction and ended up as a graphic and sad portrayal of the predicament of white families in South Africa recently coming to terms with black rule. The portrait that emerges is a bleak one that includes violence, dislocation, theft, and (I thought this a nice circular touch back to the MeToo opening chapters) the rape of David's daughter by a young black man. I found the book disturbing as well as compelling.
From the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018.
"Compulsively readable... A novel that not only works its spell but makes it impossible for us to lay it aside once we've finished reading it." -The New Yorker
At fifty-two, Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire, but lacking in passion. When an affair with a student leaves him jobless, shunned by friends, and ridiculed by his ex-wife, he retreats to his daughter Lucy's smallholding. David's visit becomes an…
My book describes the unwise relationship between Nick, a law professor at a London university, and Adrienne, one of his female students who is 15 years younger than him. Despite her claim that Nick has harassed Adrienne, the pair remain in contact and eventually travel to Spain together to try to track down further information regarding a suggestion that Nick's grandfather might have had a fight with Ernest Hemingway in Spain in the 1920s.
In due course, the pair learn much about each other and the Hemingway connection, and the portrait of Hemingway that emerges is an unflattering one that emphasizes his well-known toxic male characteristics of misogyny, aggressiveness, competitiveness, and fondness for large quantities of alcohol.
Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.
From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…
Ophelia, a professor of Dante, is stricken when she discovers that her husband Andy has been cheating on her with a winsome colleague. What follows is Ophelia’s figurative descent into hell as she obsessively tracks her subjects, performs surveillance in her beat-up Volvo, and moves into the property next door…
