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Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

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Revolutionary Road

The crumbling of an American Dream

Frank and April Wheeler seemingly have it all: good looks, cute kids, a respectable job, a white picket fence house in Connecticut. Cracks are starting to emerge, though. Is this really the life they wanted? Whatever happened to their youthful dreams? A drastic plan emerges, but what exactly are they fleeing from? Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates is an enduring American classic dealing with marriage, expectations and dreams. As relevant today, as it was in 1961 and a very good read.

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The Sense of an Ending

Finely chiseled masterpiece

As I’ve just discovered, it’s never too late to read the brilliant The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, Booker Prize Winner from 2011. This is a marvel of a novel about interpreting the past, suppressing memories and coming of age, which deserves to join the rank of classics. It’s a book that will make you question your own past and wonder how differently others might perceive it.

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Maurice by E.M. Forster

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Maurice

The love that dares to speak its name

The opening decades of the 21st century have witnessed an amazing boomtime in the world of Young Adult literature. All of life is here in its messy complexity, ripe for exploration and taboo-busting, and with a stroke of genius, Faber & Faber have introduced a classic into the mix, in the form of a YA-friendly edition of Maurice by E. M. Forster. The original text is presented in an illustrated hardcover format, and traces a young man’s homosexual and political awakening in English Edwardian society. Both a commentary on repression and hypocrisy and the tenderest of love stories, this minor classic is ripe for rediscovery.

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Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

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Farenheit 451

Scarily prescient sci-fi

Enormous TV screens airing game shows all day, a robot with a mind of its own, persecuted academics, banned books, school shootings, communication through earpieces – sound familiar?  Written in 1953 during the dark days of McCarthyism, American classic Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a scarily prescient sci-fi novel that will leave you gobsmacked.

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Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

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Perfection

The Way We Live Now

It’s 2010, millennial couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin. From their home office – an apartment in the coolest part of the city furnished with Danish design armchairs and exotic plants – they create tasteful websites and clever brand strategies for hip hotels and microbreweries. They hang out with interesting, likeminded people from all over the world. Life seems perfect, but are they happy? Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico is a spot on portrayal of a generation for whom everything is possible, and nothing is permanent. One of my best reads this year.

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Birds as Individuals by Len Howard

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Birds as Individuals

Flights of joy

A delightful read for fans of nature writing, bird life, and old-school English eccentrics, the 1952 book, Birds as Individuals by Len Howard has been deservedly reprinted as a Vintage Classic. The author, Gwendolen (Len) Howard left her life as an orchestral musician in London in the late 1930’s, to pursue her calling as a naturalist in the Sussex countryside. Here, she built a small house, Bird Cottage, threw the doors and windows open to the birds of her garden, and lived the rest of her days in intimate observation of her avian housemates and (literal) bedfellows.

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The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan by Domenico Starnone

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The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan

A doting Nonna, a bewitchingly beautiful girl on the balcony across the street and the ‘pit of the dead’ below the courtyard. This is the world of Mimi, our 9-year-old hero in The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan by Domenico Starnone. First love, death, class and Neapolitan passion mix up beautifully in this coming-of-age story set in 1950s Italy.

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Ex-Wife by Ursual Parrott

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Ex-Wife

Brilliantly pithy observations of 1920’s American womanhood

It’s the Roaring Twenties and Patricia is living the Jazz Age dream in New York. Hers is a cosmopolitan life of smoky nightclubs and cocktail parties, with the added bonus of a sexually liberated husband. But at the age of just twenty-four, Patricia finds herself unglamorously dumped, after her ‘theoretically modern’ husband, Peter leaves her. Apparently, any agreed sexual freedoms had applied only to him, and so, when Patricia reveals an amorous liaison, she is spurned and forced to build a new life as a not-so-merry divorcée. Labelled scandalous and sensational upon publication in 1929, Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott portrays a generation eager for a permissive society but mired in double standards.

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The Children's Bach by Helen Garner

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The Children’s Bach

Domesticity and desire in suburban Melbourne

The splendid W&N Essentials series is a carefully curated collection of books considered to have stood the test of time, and been adored by their first readers. The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner is one of its brightest stars, a spare and fearless novel, highly acclaimed in the author’s native Australia in 1984, but curiously, only now feeling the love in the U.K. Set in suburban Melbourne in the early 1980’s, it’s the story of Dexter and Athena Fox and some blast-from-the past visitors, whose presence causes the Fox’s cosy domesticity to unravel into fantasy, escapism, and moral dilemma.

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Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto

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Dead-End Stories

Short stories to gladden the heart

An offbeat and lovely addition to the world of short story collections, Dead-End Stories by Banana Yoshimoto is, in essence, a tribute to hope, light, and resilience. The women in each of her five stories experience episodes of emotional pain or trauma, from the extremes of abuse and murder, to the heartbreak inflicted by an inconstant lover. In Yoshimoto’s tender hands, ultimately these events will not be allowed to warp and embitter, as each character is set on a path towards acknowledgement of life’s random cruelties and a final blessing of solace and clarity.

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