Tom Crewe's 6 favorite works that challenge societal norms

When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.

Tom Crewe was recently named to Granta's list of Britain's best young novelists. "The New Life," his acclaimed fact-based debut novel about two men collaborating on an 1890s study supporting homosexual freedom, is now available in paperback.

'Miss Marjoribanks' by Margaret Oliphant (1866)

Some days it feels like my life's mission to help enshrine Oliphant's rightful place as one of the greatest Victorian writers. She wrote many wonderful books, but this one, about a young woman's successful campaign to revolutionize her town, is a great place to start. It's so witty and wise in unexpected ways that no one who reads it will want to stop there. Buy it here.  

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

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.

Sign up

'The Vagabond' by Colette (1910)

Colette mined her own experience to tell the story of a music hall artiste. This novel is fascinating for its time, and still exceptional in being about a woman — already divorced — who is living life on the road, with a sweet, loving man at home. Lively, sensitive, and sad, it also features the best kiss I've encountered in literature. Buy it here. 

'The Tree of Man' by Patrick White (1955)

White won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973, but it hasn't kept him in wide circulation. The Tree of Man describes almost the entire lifetimes of a husband and wife living simply on a farmstead in the Australian bush, in ceaselessly interesting, dramatic prose. You won't read anything else like it. Buy it here. 

'Ayala's Angel' by Anthony Trollope (1881)

I greatly admire Trollope, who comes closest to tracking in prose the slow but haphazard and never uninteresting movements of life in human society. He wrote so much that even many of his fans aren't aware of quite how much he could do, and how extraordinarily well. Ayala's Angel is a late novel full of comedy, romance, and delight: It's ostensibly leading up to one marriage but ends with five. Buy it here.

'The Comforters' by Muriel Spark (1957)

Among other things, this book is about a woman who comes to believe that she is living in a novel (which she is). Like all Spark's work, it is done with stylish economy — economical in everything except its immense cleverness. How wonderful, and how intimidating, that it was her debut. Buy it here. 

'Maid and Manservant' by Ivy Compton-Burnett (1947)

This book is about a domestic tyrant, especially in his relationship to his children. But one doesn't read Compton-Burnett for her plots so much as for her extraordinary dialogue. Her characters war with words, spilling blood with perfectly pointed phrases. Buy it here. 

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.