What is your favourite novel, and why?

A favourite is “Silence of the Girls” by Pat Barker, a novel which deals with the aftermath of the battle of Troy and what happened to the female captives as they awaited their fate in the Greek camp. It’s a very powerful, heartbreaking story.
I also love Madeline Miller’s “Circe”. Madeline Miller is an extraordinarily skilful storyteller who draws you immediately into the narrative.

Sara1954

TerriBull
Lots of my favourites in there, and a couple I haven’t read, but will add to my list.

Sarah I think we often like the same type of novel, such as The Stopped Heart, that was definitely one of my best read's of last year, although I wasn't keen on Owen Meany one of your favourites but that's the nature of books they are very subjective. I know a lot of people didn't like The Goldfinch it was a bit Marmite but I did love it.

The Handmaid's Tale. Read most of it sitting on a radiator in the school library and have been an Atwood groupie ever since. My never-to-be PhD was going to be on another of her novels, Surfacing.

Pensionpat
Really?
Well they don’t know what they’re missing.
The first one I read was ‘A widow for one year’
followed by all the others.
Oh, Riverwalk, join the club.

As a child I loved Heidi, the Katy books, Little Women and Black Beauty.

The first adult book I read when I was about 13 (it was Mum's copy) was Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, and I have loved it ever since.

Since then ... well, so many books and so little time.

TerriBull
So to answer the question of "why" it's that, books that stay with you long after finishing , feeling so immersed and lost in them that you never want the book to end and then feeling bereft when inevitably it does and knowing possibly it will be a long time before finding anything as good again. I always have a book on the go some will be great, many forgettable but that extra special quality only comes along infrequently there's a kind of deep satisfaction when it hits you at some stage into it knowing this is going to be a special one and afterwards you want to tell others about it.

Exactly this. You have put it perfectly.

The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. I read it as a teenager but need to reread it. I keep waiting for Netflix to pick it up and make it into one of their mega budget series. The BBC tried it once but cgi and such are so much better now.

More recent favourites include:

The Time Travellers Wife - much better than the films
Her Fearful Symmetry - same author as above
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - still can't decide what it is really about but it has stuck with me
Most of Anita Shreve's books
Jenny Eclair (the comedian) has also written some decent books.

I read a lot of popular fiction e.g. Lisa Jewell and similar but they all tend to blur into one after a while.

I don't read many classics but I have bought a few Daphne du Maurier. I have started The House on the Strand a few times now.

Sparklefizz

As a child I loved Heidi, the Katy books, Little Women and Black Beauty.

The first adult book I read when I was about 13 (it was Mum's copy) was Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, and I have loved it ever since.

Since then ... well, so many books and so little time.

Oh yes I loved the Katy books, I read What Katy Did over and over and Little Women passed to me by my mother, favourites of hers when she was young. . Heidi was another well loved childhood book, along with both the Alices and Wind in the Willows.

Monica - I have just downloaded Hester on Kindle for 99p. Looking forward to reading it.

Gone with the Wind,Margaret Mitchell
The Nuns story, Katherine Hulme
Far from the Madding Crowd/Return of the native, Thomas Hardy
Vanity Fair,Trollope
My favourite recently was Cecily about Cecily Neville

As a quiet, timid teenager I loved Jane Eyre because the heroine said something along the lines of, "Do you think that because I am small, plain and poor that I am an automaton?" which resonated with me. She triumphed over her life experiences.

Also, Coming Up for Air by George Orwell. The main character is disappointed with his life, wins some money on a horse and decides to revisit his childhood haunts, only to find that they've changed. and of course he must return to his usual routine. It sounds a bit depressing, doesn't it? But it isn't, the chap had an interesting 'inner life' and the descriptions are beautifully written.

I return to both of these fairly regularly.

My favourite novels are an eclectic mix.

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett, I can return to this one time after time. It's a thumping good murder mystery.
Going Postal, another Terry Pratchett novel.
The Secret Life of Bees.
Pride and Prejudice
David Copperfield
The Flight of the Heron, The Gleam in the North, The Dark Mile.
(A Jacobite trilogy by D K Broster)

M0nica

^I don't read much fiction and I'm hopeless at modern novels, but I think my all time favourite is Jane Austen's Persuasion. Her portrayal of Anne Elliot's emotional reactions to the reappearance of her former lover and having to endure close proximity when no-one knows their past history is absolutely perfect. Happy ending too.^

MaizieD Me too, on novels in general and Persuasion in particular.

Have your read the alternative ending, that JA rejected? You can find it here www.mollands.net/etexts/persuasion/prscancel.html. It pulses with a sexual tension, lacking in the final version. I think I prefer it.

More generally, when I do read novels they tend to be 19th century. In recent years I have discovered the author Mrs Oliphant. Her novel Hester is about the power and ability of women, in the first half of the 19th century, with a woman who rescues the family bank when her cousin ruins it and her relationship 20 years later with her cousins 14 year old daughter and over the next 10 years.

I read it again and again over about a year. I cannot understand why it has never made it to television.

Just for once we agree on something, MOnica.

I must revisit Mrs Oliphant; I read some of her books a long, long time ago and did enjoy them.

I like 19th C novels, too, and found myself drawn more and more towards the women authors, particularly George Eliot and Mrs Gaskell. Not the Brontes, though. I positively loathe Wuthering Heights..

But I missed Cranford in my favourite novels list. Wonderful book (loss and reconciliation again..)

My exception to 19thC male authors...After being put off Thomas Hardy by 'doing' a couple at school I've enjoyed him as I get older. The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Trumpet Major are particular favourites.

The Penguin copy of Persuasion I bought in the 1960s has the alternative ending. I'll have to re-read it...

This is a lovely thread and it's inspiring me to be a bit more adventurous.

Loved the Kite Runner and a Thousand Splendid Suns.
Loved Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun but…
Cutting for Stone is the one that always does it for me. Nobody else seems to know it, but it’s my weakness.

Looking for a bit of comfort reading I took Shadow of the Sun by MM Kaye off the shelf I see I bought it in 1980, having been unable to concentrate with reading lately I find I am well into it now.

Maizie
I really enjoy George Eliot, and I too love Cranford, but I also love Wuthering Heights!

Maizie we share so much. I too loathe Wuthering Heights. However I like and appreciate (words chosen advisedly) Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, It is a warts and all story of what being a governess in the mid 19th cenury could involve. It has a very thin romance cast over it, but most of all it shows how nasty the life of a governess could be. Far more realistic than Jane Eyre.

I like Hardy's poetry but find his books unreadable. Mrs Gaskell, I love North & South^ George Elliott, after 60 years I have at last cracked Middlemarch.

Anthony Trollope and Mrs Oliphant are, probably favourites. Both were very prolific and as a result the quality of their output is very variable. But I think The Belton Estate is superb. The study of a woman, the daughter of a landowner, left virtually penniless on her father's death and navigating between a perverted belief that she must marry the man she 'ought' to marry and the late comer on the scene, her cousin, who has inherited her father's estate. For Mrs Oliphant Hester stands out head and shoulders, but also Phoebe Junior in the Carlingford series. But both of them wrote some dreadful books, best forgotten.

I have never enjoyed books so much as when I was a child: I never enjoyed a story more than Dragon Island by Violet M. Methley.

I like Hardy's poetry but find his books unreadable.

I thought they were unreadable, too, MOnica. We 'did' Under the Greenwood Tree' and 'Far From the Madding Crowd' at school and I loathed them. I've never re-read them. But much later I was reintroduced to him by a relative and found that I did enjoy some. Being interested in 19thC social history helps.

'Doing' classics at school has a lot to answer for. Despite liking George Eliot I will never read 'The Mill on the Floss' again... It also engendered my deep dislike of Wuthering Heights... Kathy and Heathcliffe are such a cruel pair.

As a child : What Katy Did, Little Women, Ann of Greengables and books by Cynthia Harnett.
As an adult: Middlemarch by George Elliott, Most of Jane Austin, Anthony Trollopes Barchester series. Memoires of a Highland Lady by Elizabeth Grant, The Diary of a Country Parson by James Woodforde.

Not a novel, but “Sight Lines” by Kathleen Jamie is a collection of essays about the natural world and our connection with it physically and emotionally. Insightful and very readable.

Maizie
I re read Wuthering Heights a few years, and I’d forgotten how horrible Kathy was, but I still enjoyed it.

We did Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders at school I quite enjoyed it and then I read Tess of The d'Urbervilles at a later stage, which I found really depressing, so many of his books were. I believe he was haunted by a public hanging he once saw. I enjoyed visiting his home when we were down in Dorset.

I read both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre in my teens they aren't the sort of books I would want to return to, although I am very interested in the 19th century. Like visiting Hardy's home I also enjoyed a trip to The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, both well worth a visit if ever in those respective parts of the world. .

Sara1954

Maizie
I re read Wuthering Heights a few years, and I’d forgotten how horrible Kathy was, but I still enjoyed it.

😂

It’s got to be ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles.’ I’ve read it several times after I first studied it for A level. Also seen it in film and play. Never fails to make me sad and amazed.