MY FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS
“Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov. So funny, so extreme, so dangerous that its very outrageousness makes its classic love story viable.
“Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert. Out of gimlet-eyed scorn arose a novel of bourgeois life that is a controlled work of art.
“Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy. Anna and Vronsky are so real you can smell them!
“In Search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust. A long masterpiece that’s a short alternative life for the reader.
“The Savage Detectives” by Roberto Bolaño. The living heart of this book is the knowledge of what it would be like to be young and poor, and in love with art and sex.
A classic book that, upon rereading, disappointed: John Fowles’s “The Magus” was thin at a second look.
A much-recommended book that you’ve resisted reading: I’ve never read anything by Margaret Atwood—maybe because I found her double reputation as a feminist and a Canadian daunting.
