Sixteen year old Vladimir Petrovich has a new neighbour at his parents’ country estate – the beautiful and alluring Zinaida. With hormones racing what’s a boy to do but fall hopelessly in love? Love and passion is a tricky and complex business, though, and Vladimir must undergo some character development before he comes to grips with […]
First Love by Ivan Turgenev Read More »
Meet school headmaster Mr. Thomas Gradgrind in his grim Northern mill town, Coketown (based on Preston). His mantra is strictly Utilitarian -‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’ Gradgrind approves of nothing but what is ‘severely workful’. Predictably, this approach to life does not enrich or develop the lives of his daughter
Hard Times by Charles Dickens Read More »
Joseph Conrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad) introduces us to Charles Marlow, an ambitious and adventurous sailor who is employed by an English trading company and sent to an African colony. There he travels up the Congo, visiting the trading stations which barter for ivory with the natives. On his journey he is told about a man named Kurtz whose station is the
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Read More »
Originally published as ‘A La Recherche du Temps Perdu‘ in 1913. In this opening volume of Proust’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust) masterpiece, the narrator seems at first to be launching a fairly traditional life-story. But after the prelude the narrator travels backwards rather than forwards in time, in order to tell the story of a love affair that
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust Read More »
Charlotte Bronte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB) gives us plain young governess Jane Eyre who is not long out the orphanage. Plain, perhaps, but spirited, moral, and fiercely independent of mind. How will she succeed in a world in which the odds are so heavily stacked against her? Employed at the remote Thornfield Hall, Jane has to unravel the secrets of her moody master
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Read More »
The advent of the First World War brought about the end of a whole way of life in the Scottish countryside that had persisted for perhaps a thousand years. With technological change picking up pace as well, the old patterns were swept away. It was a ‘sunset song’ for a harsh yet beautiful existence. In this novel of 1932
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon Read More »
Dostoyevsky’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dostoyevsky and http://www.fyodordostoevsky.com/) novel of 1880 is so profound it’s hard to summarise. The briefest of outlines would be that it concerns the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a corrupt, loutish landowner, and the aftermath for his sons: the passionate Dmitri, the coldly intellectual Ivan, the spiritual Alexey, and the bastard Smerdyakov. The Brothers Karamazov is
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read More »
Shortly after the New Year of 1960, a powerful sports car crashed in the French town of Villeblevin in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants. One was the publisher Michel Gallimard; the other was the writer Albert Camus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus). In Camus’ pocket was an unused train ticket and in the boot of the car his
The Plague by Albert Camus Read More »
Pride and Prejudice (1813) is the best known of the novels of Jane Austen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen). There have been at least six major treatments of the novel on film and television not counting spin-offs such as the 2004 Bollywood ‘Bride and Prejudice’. As entertaining, hilarious and insightful as the story of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is,
Emma by Jane Austen Read More »
