Long Immersive Reads
“Keep your quarantine reading time well occupied”
With so many of us stuck in doors for at least three or four weeks I thought I might make some to-read suggestions.
I’ll start right in at the deep end with multi-volume literary works. These are less plot driven more immersive reading.
There are, of course, a plethora of Science Fiction and Fantasy series along with Historical Fiction and Family Saga genre offerings. These tend to be, on the whole, episodic and highly plotted with lots of cliff-hangers. The books I’m recommending here are more like long soaks in a warm bath than repeated sessions in a sauna followed by plunges into an icy pool.
Anyway, if you suddenly now have a lot of idle hours on your hands getting stuck into the following will certainly go a long way to fill them.
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, 7 volumes.
Might as well start with the ur-series of novels for that immersive qualification.
Reading Proust is generally perceived a difficult uphill slog and suspected being done for the purposes of showing off. That’s not really entirely true; the novels are one of seminal works of literary Modernism, are not difficult prose -wise (like Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake for instance) and you will find many passages that resonate with your own experience in unexpected ways.
It is, however, not a quick read. There is a famous quip reputability by either Anatole France or Paul Valery that goes something like, “Life is too short and Proust is too long.” At seven volumes it’s a long-term commitment. Which is sort of the point of these recommendations.
I read these in the C K Scott Moncrieff translations, titled In Remembrance of Things Past. The newer 1995 translation is generally thought to be an improvement and given the subtle nuanced quality of the prose, an important consideration.
As a matter of course you should at least read the first novel, The Way by Swann’s (Moncrieff’s Swann’s Way) and then decide whether to carry on.
Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, 4 volumes.
Basically, the ups and downs of the friendship of two Italian women from their meeting as six-year-old schoolgirls in a Naples slum over many decades to the wilful disappearance of one of them. It’s narrated by Elena, who is relating the story so that, in a sense, her friend Lila doesn’t succeed in disappearing.
It is, to be sure, so much more than the brief synopsis above. The novels are a prismatic view of post-war Italy, with an emphasis on the situation of women in that time frame. They are also novels about the gaining of knowledge. This is especially evident in the first novel, My Brilliant Friend, where as the girls grow and their consciousness of the world slowly expands outward from the immediate neighbourhood the complexity of the story grows. It is the mark of Ferrante’s great skill as a writer that the prose, in subtly nuanced ways, changes with them.
In the relatively short time from the 2012 publication of the first novel they have acquired, deservedly, classic status.
And as an aside, I’ve had it from someone who has read them in both the original Italian and the English versions that the translation is spot on.
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books by Carlos Ruiz Zafon , 4 volumes
The Hispanophone world has penchant for Magic-Realism; think Allende, Borges, Fuentes, Marquez and so on, and Zafon fits right in there.
The books in this series are set in Barcelona. If you’ve visited there and spent any time in the older parts of that city, you’ll well believe the magic part of that genre. Odd little shops seem appear and disappear, retracing your steps will often result in ending up in unexpected places.
These novels are about literature and politics. It helps if you fairly conversant with Spanish writing and history but there’s still lots to enjoy if you are not. The books are atmospheric and the plots are somewhat convoluted and it’s best just to immerse yourself and go with the flow.
First book is In the Shadow of the Wind.
Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, 4 volumes
This isn’t really a series in the strictest sense. The first three books tell the same story from three different points of view and the fourth is a sort of Proustian look back at the events in the previous.
Lawrence Durrell (brother of the better-known Gerald) has set all four mostly in the eponymous Alexandria, Egypt. The time frame is 1930s and 40s. Part of the enjoyment to had in these is a sense of exotic -lost- worldism. While I find them a bit hard to describe succinctly, I would say that, for me, both Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence and John Fowles’ The Magus resonate.
First book is Justine. There is a relatively recent edition of this but the following three would prove to be hard to source, you’d be better off getting the readily available bind-up of all four.
My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard, 6 volumes
Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St Aubyn, 5 volumes
A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, 12 volumes
The three listed above fall into lightly fictionalized auto-biographical category.
And in the case of Knausgaard’s My Struggle, not even lightly. He is one of the authors whose work defines ‘faction’ or ‘auto-fiction’ genre, that is work that might otherwise be considered non-fiction is presented as fiction. His books revel in the soul baring (or some might say, narcissistic) minutiae of his life. Strangely compelling reading none the less.
First volume is A Death in the Family.
St Aubyns’ novels are therapy by fiction. His alter ego, Melrose, goes through the same horrific events, bad life choices and failures as does the author. It also funny, in an Evelyn Waugh taking the piss out of the upper-class sort of way. Ultimately, they are life affirming.
First book is Never Mind.
At twelve volumes, A Dance to the Music of Time is for those in it for the really long haul. Anthony Powell’s’ series of novels, with a time span from 1921 to 1970, chronicle a Britain of a certain class and it’s intersection with a more bohemian world. There is a comparison that can made with Proust but one might say they lack In Search of Lost Time’s overriding aesthetic philosophy of self-discovery. Read them for an immersion into Powell’s world of Eton and Oxford education, Mayfair and Belgravia, war time Military Intelligence, publishing, the great and the good and so forth.
First book, A Question of Upbringing.
The Gilead novels by Marilynne Robinson, 3 volumes, 4th volume due September 2020
These are in the way of an honourable mention as they are not a series. Like Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet they are interrelated, set in the same locale and covering the same time frame.
They are also multi-award-winning novels whose author was interviewed by Barack Obama while he was still President.
All three so far published are set in the fictional 1950s town of Gilead, Iowa. The first Gilead is in the form of a long letter the Rev. John Avery, in the belief that he hasn’t much time left, has written to his young son.
The second, Home, is a prodigal son story involving Robert Boughton, the retired Presbyterian minister and John Avery’s best friend, and his estranged son Jack.
Third is Lila, the story of John Avery’s young wife. The fourth, titled Jack, will be the story Robert Broughton’s son.
You can read these in any order.
The common thread through all are existential crises of faith as experienced by the individual characters or those around them. Robinson’s Calvinism makes that a natural but having said that, her books are by no means proselytizing polemics or didactic. The other commonality shared is an examination of race in America and legacy of slavery.
Her first novel, Housekeeping, is a much different sort of effort . I would highly recommend reading that as well.
Any of the above should keep your quarantine reading time well occupied. Next time I’ll suggest some novellas and shorter novels that are definitely up-beat and life-affirming.