Douglas Kennedy’s novels have sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and the latest, Afraid of the Light (Hutchinson £13.99), is out now.
1. The Great Gatsby
Fitzgerald’s seminal novel sold only 3,000 copies on its publication, but with its lyrical exactitude and an eye for the complex nuances of class and social hierarchy, it remains one of the most perfectly judged visions of that deeply American longing for perfection amid that equally American obsession with lucre. I re-read it every two years – and it always astonishes.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Penguin £6.99; The Week Bookshop £5.99
2. A Flag for Sunrise
Robert Stone (1981)
My favourite novel of the Reaganite 1980s by this shamefully undervalued novelist, whose work grappled with the geopolitical mess we created during the Cold War, and the spiritual vacuity of modern life.
Picador £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99
3. The Collected Stories
William Trevor (1992)
I discovered Trevor’s brilliant oeuvre during my Dublin years – and still consider his short stories to be among the finest of any postwar writer. His reserved, unobtrusive narrative voice gives way to a frequently lethal dissection of the human condition in all its manifold contradictions.
Penguin £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99
4. Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates (1961)
Yates’s ruthlessly lucid examination of marital hell and self-entrapment remains, for me, one of the great achievements in postwar American literature. Its portrait of a couple who talk themselves into a move to the New York suburbs and descend into destructive disaffection might be the most blistering examination of the way hell is not just others (as Sartre once noted). Hell, indeed, is often our self.
Vintage £9.99; The Week Bookshop £7.99
5. Pick-Up
Charles Willeford (1955)
Written by one of the most underrated masters of American noir, this deeply strange, shadowy account of two drunks who meet in a sleazy bar and begin a romance doomed to conflagrate is pulp fiction at its most skewed.
-
Political cartoons for December 13Cartoons Saturday's political cartoons include saving healthcare, the affordability crisis, and more
-
Farage’s £9m windfall: will it smooth his path to power?In Depth The record donation has come amidst rumours of collaboration with the Conservatives and allegations of racism in Farage's school days
-
The issue dividing Israel: ultra-Orthodox draft dodgersIn the Spotlight A new bill has solidified the community’s ‘draft evasion’ stance, with this issue becoming the country’s ‘greatest internal security threat’
-
It Was Just an Accident: a ‘striking’ attack on the Iranian regimeThe Week Recommends Jafar Panahi’s furious Palme d’Or-winning revenge thriller was made in secret
-
Singin’ in the Rain: fun Christmas show is ‘pure bottled sunshine’The Week Recommends Raz Shaw’s take on the classic musical is ‘gloriously cheering’
-
Holbein: ‘a superb and groundbreaking biography’The Week Recommends Elizabeth Goldring’s ‘definitive account’ brings the German artist ‘vividly to life’
-
The Sound of Music: a ‘richly entertaining’ festive treatThe Week Recommends Nikolai Foster’s captivating and beautifully designed revival ‘ripples with feeling’
-
‘Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right’ by Laura K. Field and ‘The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare’ by Daniel SwiftFeature An insider’s POV on the GOP and the untold story of Shakespeare’s first theater
-
Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secretsfeature Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, through Feb. 22
-
Homes with great fireplacesFeature Featuring a suspended fireplace in Washington and two-sided Parisian fireplace in Florida
-
Film reviews: ‘The Secret Agent’ and ‘Zootopia 2’Feature A Brazilian man living in a brutal era seeks answers and survival and Judy and Nick fight again for animal justice
