This looked like a category I could write a nice easy piece for - I was wrong, it’s hard to choose just 5. I thought of a lot of books to write about, here are the best of the rest.
Hanif Kureishi ’’ The Buddha of Suburbia’’
JD Salinger Catcher in the Rye
JRR Tolkien Lord of the rings
CS Lewis The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe
CJ Cherryh The Chronicles of Morgaine
Leon Uris Mila
Iain Banks The Wasp Factory
John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath
Brett Easton Ellis American Psycho
Tom Sharp The Throwback
Neal Stephenson Cryptonomicon
So, now on to the winners.
5th comes Ash; A Secret History, by Mary Gentle. This is the best stand-alone Fantasy novel thats passed my way for years. Describing it as Fantasy is slightly dubious though, as it crosses the genres of Altered History and SF. Whatever, its a brilliant book. Set mainly in 15th century Europe, but interspersed with the research of historians in our own time, Ash is the story a young female mercenary. Although not out of her teens she commands a force of 800 men and women, by virtue of her military skills, having made her first kills at the age of eight following her brutal rape. Her supreme tactical abilities are not of a natural origin though, and this embarks her on a rollercoaster ride of kidnapping, betrayal, political intrigue and even marriage. The book is crammed with detail about the weaponry and battles of the day, as Gentle, a master fencer, has an MA in War Studies. The bloodiness and coarse language add to the realism. Ash is an extremely likeable character, who is brimming with pragmatism and humour. My favourite line from her comes when she is denigrating a man of God she has genuine reasons for loathing - “I’m an equal opportunities hereti; I think you;re all talking through your ar**s
So on to Julian May and her Saga of the Exiles in 4th place. This series of four books, which begins with the Many Coloured Land, was written in the eighties, and is set in two ages, the 22nd Century and the Pliocene Epoch, 6 million years ago. I always considered it a cross between SF and Fantasy, as much of the goings on 6 million years ago hint at being the origins of many of humanities myths. The plot is simply that a French physicist accidentally discovers a route back in time, and it becomes a secret method of opting out for mankind’s misfits. When the travellers arrive though, they discover Pliocene Europe to be inhabited by factions of two warring, humanoid races, the Tanu and Firvulag, who’ve elected to flee their own planets to continue a way of life they love. This includes indulging in epic tourneys and tournaments for the honour of each race, using fantastic telepathic powers. The earthlings that land in the middle of all this are either enslaved, or if they have useful skills or latent psionic powers (The Tanu have the science to unleash the mental powers of the humans who have them) elevated to prominent positions within the society. This series glows with May’s fantastic imagination, and she is also possessed of a style that makes it all so believable.
In at 3rd is another Fantasy series, Stephen Donaldsons trilogy The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. The first of the trilogy sets the scene for a dark, agonising tale in which so many who try to befriend the hero, Covenant, are betrayed or die. It begins in our world, where he is leprosy sufferer. Shunned by family and neighbours, he lives alone but one day is knocked unconcious and wakes in another place. In this New World his leprosy is gone and he is whole again, apart from lacking the two fingers his disease had claimed. He is aided by villagers in the Land, who due to his missing digits and a white gold wedding ring believe him to be an incarnation of a past hero, Berek Halfhand. His reaction is to rape Lena, one of those who aids him. The people tolerate this, and everything else he does, as they believe him to be a saviour. Covenant though, is no willing hero, and the mental scars inflicted by his illness haunt and cripple him. This may sound depressing, but its also very rewarding as Donaldson is a rich writer who describes a magical land filled with his invented creatures, with great skill. Laden with epic battles and quests, this is a Tolkienesque tale, but better, because Donaldson loves to tackle painful subject matter head on and succeeds.
Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting is my no 2. Indeed, some might say they think Welsh himself is no 2, but I find his riotous writing about a way of life that sounds horrible to most people rather refreshing, optimistic and compassionate, and not least of all bubbling with humour. Until he wrote Filth, I felt Welsh was possibly the best contemporary British novelist. I’ll hold back on that until I’ve read Glue though. Trainspotting follows the lives of a bunch of reprobates from Edinburgh’s housing estates in a series of loosely connected short stories. Littered with foul language in an Embra brogue, and oozing with drugs, drink, sex and violence, one of Welsh’s loves is making the reader listen to his characters thinking out loud. That is a key to Welsh’s success, in my opinion, and he often delivers his best lines in this fashion. Backed up by being highly descriptive of people’s mannerisms, Welshs skill as an observer of human nature is what makes him a winner. Unfortunately, those who can’t abide the C word may have to miss out.
First place goes to The Drifters by James A Michener. Im not honestly sure whether it’s my favourite book ever, but his books en masse have kept me entertained for years and this is definitely the best of the lot. Michener specialises in historical epics covering generations. This book is also an epic, but covers only about 18 months. Written towards the end of the sixties it is the story of six young peoples rebellion and coming of age. They travel around Europe and Africa and he certainly makes the Torremelinos and Marrakech of the day sound like a sad loss to us. As well as being a fantastic period travelogue, for me it is a timeless study of the push back against the previous generation. George Fairbanks narrates the tale in an autobiographical fashion, he is an Uncle like figure to the youngsters, whom he meets sporadically on their travels. Always a slightly stick in the mud character, he acts as a foil for their constant forays against the adult world, including draft dodging, drugs, sex, religious rebellion and mixed race sex, which I guess would have been a very sensitive subject in the US then. Written, I feel, to try to help two disparate generations understand each other, this is a great book about people, which as a bonus includes a fascinating description of the bull running at Pamplona.