Six Picks...20th Century Classics

  • MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf

    One day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a June day in London, is punctuated accurately, impersonally, unfeelingly, by the chimes of Big Ben.  Clarissa is conceived so brilliantly, so thoroughly multi-dimensional, so documented, so of a type, that she is a character for all time.
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  • RAGTIME by E.L.Doctorow

    A method for giving the reader the feel of a historical moment – as distinct from information about it – distinguishes this novel as the first-of-its-genre.  This is an excellent novel that not only makes fiction out of history but also reveals the fictions out of which history is made.  Three families are representative of early 20th century New York, and interwoven are Freud, Jung, Harry K. Thaw, Evelyn Nesbit, Harry Houdini, and Sanford White.
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  • HOUSEKEEPING by Marilynne Robinson

    One should read this novel as  slowly as poetry, and for the same reason:  the language is so precise, so distilled, and so beautiful one does not want to miss any pleasure it might yield.  The protagonist is a quiet, dreamy girl named Ruth who has lost her father in an accident and her mother to suicide.  Ruth tells her own story.  This novel is extraordinary.
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  • THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES by Tom Wolfe

    Tom Wolfe’s first novel hums with energy.  The author thoroughly understands what he writes about in this big, bitter, satiric book about New York City and its denizens. The plot is amazingly complex but in perfect control, and  this is fast paced and explosive.  Wolfe knows how to tell a story.
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  • DISGRACE by J.M.Coetzee

    The title of this novel, set in South Africa,  refers to the fate of David Lurie, a divorced professor whose affair with a student gets him exiled from academia.  He takes refuge on the farm of his daughter, Lucy.  The range of concerns raised in this slender novel is huge, and the novel’s structure makes the lives of Lurie and his daughter suggest a story that is untold but wholly clear.
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  • EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN by Marianne Wiggins

    Marianne Wiggins’s poetic novel about America at the brink of the  Atomic Age, is about Fos, a WWI veteran and a true believer in science and the future of technology.  Hypnotic and powerful, this novel constructs a heartbreaking arc through 20th century American life and belief.
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