From the Times. The top five are:
Bring up the Bodies
The Line of Beauty
Small Things Like These
Atonement
Never Let Me Go
It’s easy to snip about what’s missing, but that’s the whole point, right? Including Ireland is understandable (the rest of the list is quite Irish), but make it British for a real challenge! Piranesi should be in the top five, really quite high. I would also add The Inheritance of Loss and Hamnet to the overall list, ahead of Never Let Me Go perhaps. I loved The Glutton but I don’t know if I’d add it to a top 25. Probably I would after a reread. Atonement is an easy one to lose, not just from the top five, but from the whole list: it is perhaps the most grossly overrated modern English novel. If you really think it’s good, read The Go-Between and reassess. If McEwan has a place (which I deny) it must be for Chesil Beach, no? I would drop Cusk also. But I know I am in the minority there. Beautiful World Where are You is clearly superior to Conversations with Friends. And surely On Beauty instead of White Teeth? Including Pullman was the right choice, but Haddon instead of Clark? Psh. The best part about the list is that it has given me a few ideas of what to read and is not entirely the books one expects. Perhaps the most notable thing is that the list won’t elicit anything like the sort of discussion that the comparable NYT list did recently. Are we British just too complacent?
It must just be me, because while the rest of the world fetes and lauds Sally Rooney, I find her novels almost unbelievably dull. Honestly, I tried, but kept dropping the book and jolting myself awake. This in contrast to Mantel’s ‘Beyond Black’ after which I was too scared to sleep.
I have one strong opinion. Wolf Hall is a better book than Bring Up The Bodies because it has to do the hard work of creating the man Cromwell and his world and it does it so well. I love the entire trilogy. Thanks for the list to go fishing.