Tag: La casa de los espíritus

10 Great Debut Novels

On this blog, I reviewed some debut books which I loved (such as When Rain Clouds Gather, Moth Smoke, The People in the Trees and The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau) and which I hated/disliked (such as The Miniaturist, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Idaho and A Pale View of Hills), and this got me thinking about debut novels – what are the chances of writing/publishing one’s first novel and it becoming a straight “literary masterpiece”? Apparently for the authors below exactly that happened. For the purposes of this list, a debut book is the first published (not written) novel of an author (excluding poems, plays, non-fiction and short stories). This list of 10 great debut novels is in no particular order:

The God of Small Things CoverI. The God of Small Things [1997] by Arundhati Roy

It is hard to believe that this Booker Prize-winning novel is a debut of Arundhati Roy, but it is true. This book changed my perception of literature and what it can do. The tale of a pair of twins growing up in India in the late 1960s is a powerful and exceptionally beautifully account. Roy’s language is inventive as she explores in this book such themes as hope, love, loss and despair. A modern classic.  Continue reading “10 Great Debut Novels” →

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Six Degrees of Separation – from News of the World to The Woman in the Window

I saw this meme on the Books are My Favourite and Best blog, and decided to give it a go. The idea is that books are linked to one another in some way and there are “six degrees” to their separation. This is taken from the idea by Frigyes Karinthy that everyone is separated from everyone else in this world by six links. Since my previous book review was for News of the World, I am deciding to start there. 

Paulette Jiles’s News of the World is an understated adventure story of quiet power and beauty, involving the relationship between two people, and that brings to my mind the novel by Jack London – The Sea Wolf. I read this classic book translated to Russian when I was very young, but what I remember distinctly is the unparalleled sense of sea adventure. In this story, one young man is rescued by another ship captained by Wolf Larsen, a ruthless man, and our main character is forced to play by Captain’s rules if he wants to survive.  Continue reading “Six Degrees of Separation – from News of the World to The Woman in the Window” →