Bruce Chatwin was born in Sheffield and died in the South of France. His other books include In Patagonia (1977), The Songlines (1987) and Utz (1988). On the Black Hill (1982) won the Whitbread First Novel Award.
Age in year of publication: forty-two.
Amit Chaudhuri 1962–
1991 A Strange and Sublime Address
‘Sandeep, meanwhile, had come to the conclusion that the grown-ups were mad, each after his or her own fashion. Simple situations were turned into complex dramatic ones; not until then did everybody feel important and happy.’ Sandeep is a small Indian boy, an only child who lives in a Bombay high-rise and in this book makes two long visits to his extended family in Calcutta. The novel tells the story of the atmosphere in the small house where they live. He watches his relatives, their servants and their neighbours, alert to everything — sounds, smells, domestic habits, moods, weather, plants. He is vastly amused by tiny details such as his uncle’s car, which breaks down, and his uncle’s bustling morning rituals. He loves the women in the family, their clothes and perfumes, their voices. He plays with his cousins.
Chaudhuri writes precisely, carefully, trying to capture in the rhythms of his prose the faded happiness of things, the strange, pure remembered moments. The boy is curious and intelligent, and Chaudhuri is clever enough and talented enough to let his observations stand for a lot, to let what he sees and hears become the drama of the book, rather than twists of fate or plot. There are moments of pure evocative beauty such as the family’s visit to the elderly relatives, the presence of a new baby, a rainstorm, Chhotomama’s illness, his time in hospital, his recovery.
Amit Chaudhuri was born in Bombay and brought up in Calcutta where he now lives. A Strange and Sublime Address (1991) won the Commonwealth Prize for best first book. It was followed in 1993 by Afternoon Raag, which won the Encore Award for the best second novel of the year, and Freedom Song (1998). A New World came out in 2000, Real Time in 2002 and The Immortals in 2009.
Age in year of publication: twenty-nine.
John Cheever 1912–1982
1977 Falconer
John Cheever is best known for his comic and ironic short stories, for his quiet, careful, sometimes satirical, often gently unsettling observation of American suburban life. This novel is not like that at all, although it resembles Cheever’s other work in its depiction of isolation and broken families.
In just over two hundred pages Cheever constructs a dark, tough, relentless universe. It is the prison called Falconer in which Farragut has been incarcerated for killing his brother, striking him with a fire iron. The novel is written in stark, clear prose; the darkness of the vision is unlike any work produced by Cheever’s American contemporaries. There is a blunt, deadpan edge to the sentences and observations; the absence of daylight is in the prose as much as in the prison. Every scene in the book is set up with a mastery and controclass="underline" the visit of Farragut’s wife would break your heart and chill your bones. It seems that things cannot get any worse until you come to the cat-killing scene, the descriptions of drug addiction, the violence, the sheer quality of the despair.
The novel offered Cheever a way to dramatize his own circumspect homosexuality: the homosexual love affair in the book is remarkable and unexpected for its tenderness, and for the quality of the love and longing between Farragut (who has been heterosexual in the outside world) and Jody, a fellow inmate. This book is a serious work of American fiction and deserves to be better known.
John Cheever was born in Massachusetts. His other novels include The Wapshot Chronicle (1957) and The Wapshot Scandal (1964). The Stories of John Cheever (1978) won a Pulitzer Prize and a US National Book Critics Circle Award.
Age in year of publication: sixty-five.
Agatha Christie 1890–1976
1950 A Murder is Announced
Of the novelists chosen for this book Agatha Christie is the most popular entertainer. In a hundred languages or more, she provides millions of readers with a view of England complete with afternoon teas, vicars, colonels and a dead body — in the library, in the watersplash, in bed, on trains, at sea and in every innocent seeming English village street.
She created two eccentric detectives — Hercule Poirot, who exercised his little grey cells and fingered his moustache through some of her best novels (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926 and Murder on the Orient Express, 1934) — and she wrote brilliant stories in which neither appeared (Ten Little Niggers, 1939 and Death Comes as the End, 1944). Her second detective, Miss Jane Marple, was Christie’s alter ego in the guise of a fluffy, elderly spinster, conservatively opinionated and sharp as a tack beneath her grey curls and woolly mufflers. Miss Marple is the genius at work in A Murder is Announced in which, in the wonderfully named village of Chipping Cleghorn, the local newspaper startles its inhabitants with an announcement of the precise date, time and location of a murder; thither wend the village worthies; the murder occurs on time, every clue is presented to us, but as ever only the ingenuity which is the hallmark of a Christie detective story makes the solution, perfectly obvious once revealed, utterly baffling until that moment. She fools us every time.
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, Devon. The acknowledged Queen of Crime, she published seventy-nine mysteries of which over sixty were novels. Many were, and continue to be, filmed and televised.
Age in year of publication: sixty.
Jonathan Coe 1961–
1994 What a Carve Up!
(US: The Winshaw Legacy)
This novel is an octoped. First, for those who experienced them, it emits a wonderful blast of indignation about the Thatcher years; secondly, for those spared that experience, it provides a hilarious and potent send-up of any political party driving its people round the bend at any given moment. Thirdly, it is a most satisfactory family saga, telling the story of the Winshaw dynasty, a gaggle of persons of the kind that owned, bought or ran Britain in the 1980s and 1990s.
Fourthly, its hero, Michael, biographer of the Winshaw family, is addictively engaging in the David Copperfield manner, the sort of young man who, sensitive, vaguely inept in a business sense, kind, embodies everything the Thatcher years most hated. Fifthly, Coe is a writer who uses the movies in magical ways, the title itself being a 1960s British film comedy which becomes crucially important as mysteries unfold. Sixthly, this is a mystery story too. Seventhly, Coe laces his satire with compassion, pointing the finger at the blusterers who tell us what to do and at us for our patience in putting up with same. Eighthly, What a Carve Up! is an incisive and funny polemic and a perfectly pitched satire that succeeds triumphantly in everything it attempts. Reading it is like watching Citizen Kane crossed with Singing in the Rain: we are left bouncing with laughter and admiration.