There's that moment in a poem by Wyatt where he describes how he likes "in foul weather at my book to sit". All true readers will know how one-to-one relationship between writer and reader, regardless of weather. And then there's "the book business", one of the uglier oxymorons. Necessary to the act and art of reading, of course, is the bookshop, but too many of them now are overwhelming, brash and piled high like supermarkets. What to read, how to choose, are important, interesting and worthwhile questions, and this Good Fiction Guide goes a long way towards answering most, if not all, them. Check this book on your way to the fiction shelves.
The story goes that Coleridge had read everything there was to read, a claim that would be impossible nowadays, and here are signposts to help us make informed choices. Word of mouth, personal recommendations go a long way, but Jane Rogers and her team have read over 5,000 titles, and their practical and enthusiastic recommendations should serve any reader well. Professors, editors, reviewers and novelists offer practical, jargon-free and sensible advice, and there's not a whiff of stuffiness. This, appropriately, is the ultimate reader-friendly book, and Rogers at the outset declares her manifesto: "Snobbery in reading is the most pointless thing". A reader, once interested, is led to new suggestions, different genres, wider reading.
Rogers has divided the volume into two sections. Part one gives four-page overviews of 34 different kinds of fiction writing: Adventure, Childhood, Fantasy, Germany, Historical, Ireland, Magic Realism, The Sea, Sexual Politics, Teen, Thrillers, USA, Westerns and whatever you're having yourself. Contributors end with their top 12 within a particular category, except for Kate Sauder's section, Glamour, whose reduced list of six "reflects Glamour's fading appeal.
As with every list, there were astonishments. Stienbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Saul Bellow's Herzog and Richard Ford's Inpendence Day never made it to the top 12 USA novels, chosen by Richard Francis; and Jan Dalley included the The Diary of Ardian Mole over, say, To Kill a Mockingbird or Cat's Eye on her Childhood slot. But that way madness lies. And that's one of the book's strengths. It will set you arguing madly and will send you away to read and re-read.
Naturally, I went first to Patricia Craig's essay, 'Ireland'. She begins with Castle Rackrent and , in an admirable example of how to say a great deal succinctly, she gives an overview of how the Irish novel has embraced rural/urban, social/secular, political violence/communal psychic disorder. The best essays-Robert McCrum's on 'Adventure', Tony Tanner's on 'The Sea', for example-tackle ideas, The British adventure novel coincided with empire building, but after the Great Empire building, but after the Great War the genre became "more realistic and contemporary". Though Britiannia ruled the waves, the great sea narratives were written by Americans and a Pole.
The second and longer section is an !Author's A-Z", and entries here (1,120 in all) are sharp and up-to-the minute. You're told what title to begin with , and other authors whom you might also enjoy are named. Rogers in her introduction makes it clear that the Guide is "about personal taste and personal recommendation". You'll find John McGahern and Jilly Copper, Alan Paton and Josef Skvorecky and, when I checked authors whose every novel I had read( Jane Austin, Jim Crace, Iris Murdoch), I felt the reader was being given a fair and flavoursome account of their fictional worlds. And there are many ,many new names. But I did wonder occasionally about some facts: Glenn Patterson, "born and brought up in Belfast", is "British", as are Bernard MacLaverty, Robert McLiam Wilson and Seamus Deane, though Miuchael McLaverty is "Irish", Brian Moore "British/Canadian" and Jennifer Johnston "Anglo-Irish".
"We lie about drinking, sex, but most of all about the good books we've (not) read," says John Sutherland, whose job it was to look at the Classics. (Lady Chatterly, yes , but no Middlemarch, no Portrait of a Lady in Sutherland's Top 12. But stop. Stop.) Sutherland quotes Italo Calvino, who somewhat grudgingly argues that "only reason that can be adduced in their favour is that reading them"; the Good Fiction Guide offers more enthusiastic and convincing endorsements. This is the book for a lifetime, a fair-weather and foulweather friend.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin.