Why read The Book of Ebenezer Le Page?

Book cover of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

Book description

An autobiographical novel, written in an intense, exceptional voice, recounts the life of Ebenezer Le Page--born and bred on, and fiercely attached to, the Channel Islands--and his family, friends, feuds, and sorrows

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Topics

The English Channel

Genres

Literary fiction

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Book of Ebenezer Le Page as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tim Pears

Author

I'd never heard of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page until my agent, Victoria, recommended it recently, and I fell under its precious spell.

It purports to be the autobiography of Ebenezer, a now elderly, cranky eccentric on the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Any momentum to the narrative given by the chronology of Ebenezer's life – from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s - is undermined by our narrator's endless digressions, asides, and opinions.

Instead, you enter the novel as if stepping through a door into a different realm of existence. Ebenezer tells us of his…

From Tim's 3 favorite reads in 2023.