In this week's Week, A.M. Homes makes her "best books" picks, although it seems she was asked to point out a few from her childhood, vis-a-vis The Mistress's Daughter:
- The White Album by Joan Didion -- "Album of the year, of the decade, for its clarity, insight, accuracy. With these essays, Didion set the standard. She taught me how to look, to write, to think."
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov -- "Lyrical, poetic, sexy. Nabokov taught all of us how to write in English."
- Bullet Park by John Cheever -- "Yates is not afraid of the dark; he doesn't need the warm comfort of a night light glowing in the corner. It is as though he can see in the dark."
- Everyman by Philip Roth -- "At a point in his life when he didn't have to stun, amuse, provoke us any further, Roth last year delivered a book that is perfect. In essence, he fully delivered himself to us -- human, pained, filled with failing -- and it made me fall in love with him."
- Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown -- "Admittedly it is odd that this raw narrative of growing up in Harlem is the favorite book of my late childhood. Published in 1965 and read by me repeatedly at 12 and 13. I identified with the author as an outsider, as someone in peril, as someone who wanted and needed more from himself and the world around him. Brown died in 2002 and this book is a great work, not to be forgotten."
- Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown - "At some point during my childhood this 1964 book was banned, and briefly vanished from library shelves and bookstores. The story of a bulletin board falling on and flattening the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Lambchop was "too disturbing" for children."
Such dark stuff for a teenager. Although I do remember being kicked out of school (for three days!) for reading the entire V.C. Andrews catalogue at the age of 11. Something to do with finding the books in my locker and such reading not being suitable for a young girl. I'm not sure what that says about me or any future memoirs I may write...
