Samantha Gillison is the award-winning author of The Undiscovered Country. Her second novel, The King of America, has just been published by Random House.
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence (Modern Library, $9). To me, this is the most exquisite of Lawrence’s novels. The writing style, the rhythms of his sentences, and his heartbreakingly real portrait of an English farm family coming of age put this book on par with the great literary works of all time.
Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell (Penguin, $14). This beautifully constructed novel, the second installment of Durrell’s dazzling Alexandria Quartet, is more like a movement in a symphony than traditional fiction. Open to any page and you will find a sentence, a paragraph, a metaphor that will blow you away with its beauty.
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Henry James: The Complete Biography by Leon Edel (out of print). This five-volume life drips with interesting factoids and gossipy portraits. While never prurient, Edel examines James’ sexuality, and he also parses the master’s conflicted relationships with his family, his brother William, Edith Wharton, Hugh Walpole, and, not least, his American readers.
Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud (Vintage, $9). An exciting reconstruction of who the real Moses was (a breakaway Egyptian priest, thinks Freud) and what his impact on the world has been. This thrillerlike investigation of anti-Semitism was completed by Freud after he’d fled from the Nazis, to England, and it may very well change the way you look at monotheism.
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner, $12). Fitzgerald is on fire in this dark, magnificent tale of a talented man throwing his life away. From the famous opening to the unbearably sorrowful ending, this book threatens to seep into your soul and make you feel as though you have lived through it.
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