100 Books Like My Cousin Rachel

I was moved and delighted by this highly original novel, which blends murder-mystery with heartfelt philosophical explorations into animal rights, mysticism, existential anxiety, and our own humanity.

Narrator-protagonist Janina, a woman who translates Blake, studies horoscopes and feels a deep connection to the animals around her; she tells the story of what happens one winter when a series of men in her Polish village are murdered by a culprit yet to be found.

I adored this book’s intelligence and blending of tragedy and humor. Its narrative combines a compelling plot with a distinctive first-person voice and deeply thoughtful reflections about the beauty, cruelty, and wonder of life.

There’s a driving intensity to this book's narrative and atmosphere, which remains as compelling and fresh today as when I first read it years ago. Part of its power derives from Eugenides’ use of first-person plural narration through the collective voice of a group of neighborhood boys still haunted, years later in adulthood, by the untimely deaths of five adolescent sisters in 1970s suburban Michigan.

Part-detectives, part-elegists, they piece together their memories of not only the girls but of a particular place and time now vanished. I’m always struck by the book’s deft melding of pathos and humor and by the way that what is essentially a personal suburban tragedy gradually begins to speak to a wider malaise that calls into question the American dream itself.

The atmosphere and voice created by Robinson in this timeless and widely beloved novel, which is potent in a way that’s difficult to quantify, has endured in my memory since I first read it as a teenager. In prose rich with imagery and allusion, narrator Ruth tells the story of how she and her sister, Lucille—orphaned after their mother’s suicide—came to be cared for by their aunt, Sylvie, an eccentric drifter, who moves into their rural Idaho home and alters the tenor of their lives.

This is written with the precision of poetry, containing such sentences as, “When she had been married a little while, she concluded that love was half a longing of a kind that possession did nothing to mitigate.” A novel to re-read and savor.

I find the very word “novella” delicious. Edith Wharton is one of my favorite writers, and this book is near the top of my deliciousness list. How can you resist a book with a killer first line like this: “I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.”

The setting is so important here, too: a bitter Massachusetts winter that reflects the tale’s somber mood. Unlike the characters in Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, the characters here are not of the upper class, but in both books the characters share the internal crisis of whether to honor the moral constraints of their times or follow their aching hearts.

As a writer I admit that I’m beguiled by Cornwall as a literary setting for high romance and adventure, yet it’s important to me to remember that ordinary people live and work there. 

I was impressed by In Her Wake because it manages to encompass both extremes. Its overarching gothic narrative about a stolen child is used by the author to examine the extraordinary experience of some very humble, loving people whose lives have been put into suspension by tragedy. It’s incredibly moving and truthful.

This novel has everything in it that I love about Cornwall – the life and work of its artists, an incredible sense of the scenery and atmosphere, and the limpid light cast over its beauty. 

It’s also an absorbing story about the price that may have to be paid for following your star. Successful artist Rachel Kelly values creativity and self-expression, but all too often she places these above the happiness of her partner and children. Is she right or is she wrong? 

I often write about the Second World War, particularly the roles of women in it. Cornwall is another love, my father being Cornish.

The landscape and the culture have made a huge impression on me and when I read Coming Home I thought, yes, this novel was written for me.

It’s the coming-of-age story of Judith Dunbar. When still a young girl her mother leaves her with an elderly relative near Penzance in order to join Judith’s father in Singapore. After this relative dies Judith has to fend for herself, but is increasingly drawn into the orbit of the charismatic Carey-Lewis family of Nancherrow House. Through her relationship with them she experiences passionate love and betrayal as the storms of war are gathering on the horizon.

This novel completely absorbed me. 

Zennor is a tiny village perched on the cliffs of Cornwall’s rugged north shore and battered by Atlantic storms. I’ve often visited it, have run my hand over the legendary mermaid chair in its little church and walked the cliff path, which Virginia Woolf reported doing once at night, a dangerous event that inspired Dunmore’s novel. 

Zennor in Darkness is based on a true story. D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda settled in a remote cottage on the cliffs during the First World War. They were regarded with suspicion because Frieda was German and the couple kept an irregular lifestyle – were they in fact enemy spies?  Their story is tenderly told through the eyes of a young local artist, Clare Coyne.

Dunmore writes beautifully, with lucidity and a suspenseful air.

Susan Howatch walked away from her career as a highly successful novelist some years ago, but she’s well worth a read. Penmarric is the name of another Cornish mansion that is the fixed point in a swirling family saga. She took as her template the lives of the Plantagenet King Henry II and his powerful wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, plus their warring sons, with the house Penmarric standing in for the throne they fought over. You don’t need to know medieval history to enjoy the yarn.

Divided into five sections, each is narrated by a different family member. The action kicks off in 1890 with Mark Castallack clapping eyes on his complicated, older, future wife, Janna, in a churchyard. His mother, Maud, has directed her whole life towards regaining possession of the family estate, left to her cousin Giles instead of her because of primogeniture, and Maud was the wrong… show more.

Ninety-year-old Marvellous is a river goddess, her whole being is immersed in a Cornish creek, she lives in a caravan beside the water and loves a swim.

Marvellous lives on in my imagination. Nature is an organic part of the novel, time and seasons move with the tide; the reader knows it is spring because the ransoms (wild garlic) are out. I love rivers, they wind their way into my own writing, West Looe River is often my muse as a poet. 

I met Sarah Winman when I stumbled upon her book signing at my local bookshop. I only had enough money to buy Marvellous Ways or shoes to wear to an awards ceremony that evening. I realized no one would notice my old shoes so I bought the book and loved every page.