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Meandering around the wonderful world of the bookish blogosphere, I stumbled across The Classics Club – a group of readers who have committed together to read more literature which can be described as classic. I love reading classic literature, fiction in particular. But somehow a combination of the demands of busy life and the attractions of other forms of entertainment, including that of contemporary fiction, means that all too often that classic that I’ve always meant to read, that I really want to read, never seems to reach the top of the teetering piles of books shamefully called ‘mount ToBeRead’. So of course I’m immediately committed to joining the club, already drooling at the prospect of being able to share reading experiences with like-minded booklovers. (There are lots of classics reading challenges in the bookish blogosphere if you go looking for them. The Classics Club wins out for me because it lets you choose your own reading path and allows a reasonable time-frame of five years). I dive heart-first into compiling my list of the 50 classic books that I will read. Fifty is the lowest number of titles allowable: I don’t want to set myself up to fail or exclude the possibility of reading other things as well.) There’s Austen, of course, and Hemmingway, Grahame Greene. Anthony Burgess’s The Clockwork Orange and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Arnold Bennett, the prolific author and critic who, through his precise observation and satirical wit enchanted my teenage years with his Clayhanger trilogy, gets several slots on my list. It’s as if I’m putting together the most luxuriously indulgent box of chocolates, with the promise of pleasures to come but without the calorific hit. A handful of the chocolates I’ve tasted before but most are tantalisingly new to me. But as I gorge myself on the possibilities, discarding Wilde in favour of Wharton, squeezing in Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop between George Eliot and George Gissing, I can’t help questioning why I’m salivating so. Why, after all, read the classics? [caption id="attachment_271" align="alignleft" width="114"] William Hazlitt*[/caption] William Hazlitt, that beguiling and oftentimes most offensive of 19th century critics, says in his essay On Reading Old Books “I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at all”. This isn’t me. I revel in the delights and rewards of contemporary fiction – and not just literary fiction but thrillers, crime novels, cookbooks and histories. I read about politics for my profession and the latest in literary criticism for currency in my studies. Reading time is finite, doubly so for slow readers like me, and every hour spent on Robinson Crusoe’s island or in trapped in Castle Rackrent is an hour not exploring How to be Both with Ali Smith, not joining Paul Kingsnorth’s Wake, or not being part of Us with David Nicholls. Reading new books is a risky pursuit. There’s always the chance that a much anticipated or carefully selected book prompts indigestion or, worse, elicits no reaction at all or turns out to be a penny dreadful rather than the hoped for lyrical story-telling or plot-driven excitement. The classics are safer and offer a more predictable experience. There is a confidence of reward or, for those readers not attracted to the classics, a forewarning of. A classic may gift entertainment, intrigue, escape, hope, enlightenment or insight; or one or more of many other prizes. But whatever its form there is a surety arising from the consensual judgment of previous generations of a return on the reader’s investment. Italo Calvino, in his posthumously published “Why the Classics” argues “there really is no use in reading classics out of a sense of duty or respect”. Instead, “we should only read them for love”. He argues that reading a classic in adulthood can be an extraordinary pleasure, different from the pleasure of having read it in one’s youth and that each re-reading is as much a different voyage of discovery. For Calvino, the classics those books with the palimpsest of earlier readings “and bringing in their wake the traces they themselves have left on the culture or cultures they have passed through.” The classics then are those books which are not constrained to speak only at the moment of production but transcend space and time to chime with other audiences. [caption id="attachment_272" align="alignleft" width="113"] Italo Calvino[/caption] Some resist reading the classics, perhaps deterred by perceptions of difficulty or irrelevance. Calvino holds that formal literary education can do more to obscure our appreciation of classic works. “Schools and universities,” he writes, “ought to help us to understand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in question, but instead they do their level best to make us think the opposite.” Although this has rarely been my experience, the array of scholastic critical analysis equipment, from commentaries to critical apparatus, from bibliographies to symposia, can easily become Calvino’s “smoke screen to hide what the text has to say”. But if we follow Calvino’s adage of reading the classics for nothing more than love, then Deconstruction and New Historicism are unnecessary tools. There’s no guarantee of reward of course, not even with the classics: the reading experience is dependent not only the novel but on the interaction between the work and the reader, with the reader adding the sum of their entire cultural experience as well as their mood of the moment to mix into the space between the words on the page and the reader’s eyes. This means that every reading is unique to the reader. But we are not all so unlike that we cannot have a reasonable prospect of gaining similar rewards, especially where there is some culturally comity between the reader and those who have read and judged before. And so I read the classics for love. I’ve kept my reading list to 50 titles to be completed over five years, because I do not want to be reading the classics only (how to define a classic is a topic all of its own but for the purposes of The Classics Club its anything published more than 25 years ago). No doubt the list will be chopped and changed and it will inevitably grow as introductions to one author or novel lead to others. And I hope that chattering with others taking part will also broaden and define my classics reading path – that surely is a part of the purpose, part of the delight? So here I go, the first of fifty in front of me, pen in hand, notebook to one side and strong cup of Hot Java Lava for company. Into the adventure of a lifetime. Whose coming with me? Here's my selection of classics to read with the Classics Club.

* Credit for image of William Hazlitt: "William Hazlitt self-portrait (1802)" It is a self-portrait by William Hazlitt - Portraiture in the Oxford DNB, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.; Credit for image of Italo Calvino: "Italo-Calvino" by The original uploader was Varie11 at Italian Wikipedia - Transferred from it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Italo-Calvino.jpg; transfer was stated to be made by User:Daehan.. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Disturbing and at times darkly humorous, Dead Fathers Club is a grittily and sometimes gorily real portrayal of a young boy struggling to maintain his sense of right and wrong as the adults around him fail him time and time again. Philip, an immature eleven-year-old growing up in Newark, has his very average world ripped apart when his father is killed in a traffic accident and his mother rapidly succumbs to the dubious attractions of oily Uncle Alan. His father’s ghost, who no-one but Philip can see or hear, rides to the rescue, offering Philip a way of ‘saving’ his mother and assuring his father of eternal rest and peace. But, bullied at school and neglected at home, Philip is increasingly torn between his sense of right and wrong and loyalty to his father: he is manipulated further and further into a mental and behavioural decline. This isn't a bad book: Haig has a good story to tell, but he delivers it with a workmanlike detachment that offers little to engage the reader. An initially engaging style, if one can get over the mildly pretentious tone, the story becomes increasingly and wretchedly predictable. Leah, the serene and slightly mystical centre of Philip’s awakening sexuality, provides some light relief but is left undeveloped as other, less interesting, characters take centre stage. My main reaction to this book was ambivalence: it’s good, but not that good and mildly derivative with strong reminders of the numerous stories of troubled childhood which seem to fill the bookshops at the moment. If that genre of fiction appeals to you, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, or We Need to Talk about Kevin are both much better. Dead Fathers Club is a depressingly sad picture of modern childhood in a world where everyone seems to believe that something has gone wrong. Pity the reader who takes it too seriously. Read and Reviewed in 2008 © Jessica Mulley 2008, 2014

The Masquerade is a stylish and evocative mystery thriller, set in the early part of the 18th century. Three men, a young Lord, his tutor and his manservant, set out on a Grand Tour, destined for Italy. It's not long before Thomas Noon, Lord Stilwell's loyal and mildly ambitious servant begins to suspect that there is more purpose to their trip than absorbing the splendours of Ancient Rome. Nor is it long before tragedy strikes the party and Noon is forced to pretend that he is something he is not. A splendid account of falling in love, falling out of love and an intricate, multi-layered mystery make this a spell-binding read, utterly engrossing and pleasingly rounded. I might have wished for a little more pace at times but Griffin's lyrical writing is a pleasure to read, keeping one's eyes glued to the music of the page. The reference to Ironbridge in Shropshire annoyed me and interrupted the flow of the story. The novel is set in 1713: The Ironbridge, from which the surrounding town takes its name, was not erected (over the river Severn at Coalbrookedale) until 1779! But it is a small flaw and quickly passed over. Read and reviewed in 2008 © Jessica Mulley 2008, 2014

[caption id="attachment_221" align="alignleft" width="181"] Blind Assassin[/caption] This novel, winner of the Booker Prize in 2000, is quite simply, gorgeous. In elegant yet accessible prose, Atwood relates the compelling, intriguing and thought-provoking story of Iris and her younger sister Laura growing up isolated in small town, war-torn Canada in the early part of the 20th century. Intertwined is a story of unnamed lovers whose experiences and emotions alternatively match and juxtaposition the story of the sisters. A third story is laced in, a story set on a planet far, far way of a mute girl destined to be sacrificed for the glory of nothing and a blind assassin set to kill her. Iris, the eldest, is the dominant character and for the most part the novel is told through her voice. Unsophisticated and humanly flawed, Iris struggles to make sense of the world around her while Laura remains vaguely drawn and a little ethereal. Their mother dies giving birth leaving the children to the care of their distant and disturbed father, Norval. Iris agrees to marry nouveau-riche Richard Chase in an attempt to save her father's business and to protect her sister. But Richard betrays Iris and Norval dies, leaving Iris, ill-prepared and unsupported, to look after her wayward sister. Thus is the scene is set for an intriguing mystery and a touching, devastating account of young - and lifelong - love. You're just never sure whose love, until the very end. The premise may sound complicated, but don't be put off. Atwood guides the reader so well, so gently, that the action moves effortless between the nested narratives, leaving the reader riveted but not confused. Atwood's prize winning novel is at once a masterpiece, a great read, a good mystery and by far the best book I've read so far this year. Read and reviewed in 2006 © Jessica Mulley 2006, 2014

“Stephen King knows who killed him: “It’s terrific – terrifying, amazing and the prose is incandescent”.

“Kate Mosse knows who killed him: “Gripping and ingenious”

Sophie Hannah knows who killed him: “The thing Tana French does better than almost any living crime writer is create suspense”

[caption id="attachment_212" align="aligncenter" width="199"] The Secret Place[/caption] Detective Stephen Moran- young, ambitious, clever and likeable - has been working cold cases long enough. He wants murder squad. In walks ‘his’ Holly Mackey, the teenager daughter of an old-school copper, with a clue to a year-old unsolved murder which took place in the grounds of her private girls school, St Kilda’s, and who was a witness in a murder case Moran worked some years previously. A clue which could, just, be his ticket to promotion. Teamed up with Conway, the spikey, hard as nails, lead detective on the case, Dublin’s finest reel into St Kilda’s and are thrown into the nightmarish manipulations of girl gangs and the seemingly alien but oh so credible machinations of troubled, isolated teenagers. Two stories run in parallel throughout the novel as French slowly and skilfully weaves the tragic, wasteful backstory to the murder of Christopher Harper into Conway and Moran’s frantic investigation. Christopher was superficially charming, the boy who had it all and a manipulating heartthrob for most of St Kilda’s girls: “He doesn’t just get his tit pics: he gets an apology of her for not sending them faster”. The investigation exposes a devilish network of teenager conspiracy, subterfuge and power games within the walls of the prudishly conservative St Kilda’s, bombarding the detectives with clues and red herrings in equal measure. They soon learn that Holly’s clue – a photograph of Chris, his t-shirt obscured by letters cut out of a book spelling out the confessional “I know who killed him” had been pinned up in the mysterious and unsettling Secret Place by one of the girls the day before. That is the only thing they discover easily. [caption id="attachment_213" align="alignleft" width="150"] The Secret Place[/caption] But this is a cut above the average, fast-paced crime thriller. French creates a complete world which fascinates and repels in equal measure yet, for someone like me who also attended an all-girls private school, it is a world which rings true: the gaggles of ridiculously bitchy and tribal girls, the friendships formed that will last for ever, the isolation-driven unawareness of anything other than themselves, the heart-wrenching levels of unnecessary self-sacrifice all attest to French’s acute observation. We are reminded just how fragile sanity is, how easy it is to misunderstand the behaviours of others and how ill-equipped girls, albeit on the verge of womanhood, are to understand any of it. Watching the relationship between Moran and Conway spark into gear, and occasionally misfire, is one of the pleasures of this novel, providing a counterpoint to the troubling teenage dynamics. They juggle their matching ambitiousness with a shared and genuine desire to get the ‘right result’ and get it fast, all the time testing each other, not knowing when to trust and when to doubt, searching for ways to exploit each other’s’ skills, searching for the perfect partner yet never sure of what that is. I was less taken with gothic blur towards the supernatural and was felt wondering if this was strictly necessary – but this is a very small reservation regarding a crime mystery which I enjoyed immensely. This is the best police procedural that I’ve read for many a year. It’s genuinely unputdownable. It’s like reading Josephine Tey’s prose and mystery mixed with Linwood Barclay’s plot and pace, and a bit of Wilkie Collins’ devil-making and characteristation thrown in. This is classic crime fiction not far from its sizzling, bewitching best. And now I know who killed him too. I’m grateful to the Commuter Book Club (@railbookclub on Twitter) for sending me an Advance Reader Copy of this book. The views expressed in this review are however entirely my own. Read and reviewed in August 2014 ©Jessica Mulley

Audrey Williamson's assessment of the evidence surrounding the disappearance of the two Princes in the Tower, Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York, is as frustrating as it is enlightening. Williamson does well in defence of Richard III, playing her part in the campaign to restore his reputation after hundreds of years of apparently unwarranted demonisation at the behest, or at least, in the interests of those who followed him on the throne of England, Henry VII and his second son, Henry VIII. She tears apart the loosely collated near-contemporary indications that Richard was an inhuman monster, responsible for not only the murder of his nephews, but also the deaths of this brothers, Edward IV and George, Duke of Clarence and perhaps even his wife, Anne Neville, undermining the credibility of sources that have provided the basis for the myth of the monster. But her forensic demolition of the evidence that has been used to propagate the myth, mostly famously by the likes of Sir Thomas More and Shakespeare, is not matched by the quality of evidence presented to bolster her argument that Richard was in fact an early version of a Renaissance Prince, albeit an asexual one. She is prone to flights of fancy in favour of her hero, based on little more than conjecture and supposition to the extent that her argument becomes as weak that of those who have sought to undermine Richard III and his legacy. Research presented in a more scholarly manner seems to indicate that Richard was not responsible for the disappearance, let alone the murders, of his nephews, and thus that Williamson is correct in her overall thesis.  It is unfortunate the she did not choose to share with readers the basis for some of her suppositions.  The Mystery of the Princes is, however, a very readable introduction to one of the most tantalising mysteries in English history. There seems little room any longer to consider Richard III as the perpetrator. Some have suggested that Henry VII had more cause to do away with the princes, but Williamson demonstrates, in one of the finer sections of the book, that even this theory is doubtful.  But what, then, did happen to the young brothers, housed in the Tower of London at the beginning of Richard's reign in 1483?  Williamson has no conclusive answer, but leaves the reader with tantalising possibilities.

[caption id="attachment_194" align="alignright" width="204"] 1st Edition cover of The Franchise Affair[/caption]This is about as perfect an English mystery story that you can imagine. Elegantly written, intriguingly plotted and an immensely satisfying denouement. Robert Blair is a quiet, professional, country solicitor in a quiet, sleepy, English country town until a phone call from a lady in trouble turns his live upside down. The beauty is that it doesn't turn him upside down. He remains Robert the dependable solicitor throughout, just caught up with a serious crime and new passion which makes him take stock of his way of life. Each character is fully drawn, utterly believable and for the most part warm and engaging, with the exception of the criminals of course, who you don't want to like anyway. Tey's skill shines through in her reflection of English society, in her passion for the study of faces and ultimately in her force of will which means that the mystery, rather than sub-plots or socially commentary, remains paramount at all times. Yet she doesn't need multiple murders or gratuitous violence or complicated plot swings to keep the reader's interest or to keep the plot moving. Scraps of evidence emerge not by chance but as the result of hard detective work and acute observation. An easy and engaging read, this is the perfect way to spend an enjoyable lazy afternoon. Read and reviewed in 2007 © Jessica Mulley 2007, 2014

T S Eliot called The Moonstone "the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels". It's hard not to agree. The Moonstone, an enormous diamond of religious significance, is vilely plundered by a British soldier during the taking of Seringapatam in 1799. The Moonstone is brought back to England and, eventually, given to the prim, beautiful and willful heiress, Rachel Verinder, on her birthday in 1848. And it goes missing the very same night. Rachel's family and friends are keen to recover the lost stone and to identify the thief and call upon the services of Sergeant Cuff, the most celebrated and successful detective that Scotland Yard can offer. Yet Rachel is strangely reluctant to assist in the investigation, and the professional sleuth is not the only one searching for the stone and for answers. Three juggling Indians accompanied by a clairvoyant young boy, a ruthless London money lender and an amiable philanthropist all seem to have their own interest in recovering the stone while others, including Rachel and a reformed thief turned servant girl, seem at least as anxious to conceal certain facts surrounding its disappearance. The stage is thus set for a gripping detective story full of twists and turns and unexpected developments, all centred on the Verinder's country house in Yorkshire.

Written in a semi- epistolary style, with several of the major characters telling the parts of the story with which they were most concerned from their own perspective, Collins' novel has strong gothic overtones and much in common with the `big-house' novels written earlier in the century, serving as a bridge with the welter of English detective fiction which was to follow. It is long, but you hardly notice as Collins whisks his story from India to Yorkshire, to London, to Brighton and back to Yorkshire and the mystery deepens. Elegant prose reminiscent of yet lighter than Dickens’ encapsulates an enchanting mystery with magical, even fantastical overtones, and presents a series of warm, engaging, if somewhat stereotypical characters: who can forgot the admirable Gabriel Betteredge, with his mystic faith in the powers of Robinson Crusoe to provide answers to daily difficulties, or the misunderstood Erza Jennings, with his face so much older than his body and his two-tone hair?

A sheer delight to read and, like so much detective fiction, hugely entertaining, The Moonstone does not demand to be taken seriously, yet for the careful reader, it offers deeper strains of tension over class, over Empire, and over religious differences and good and evil, which one might more readily associate with the post-war literature of a cosmopolitan diaspora.

Read several times over the years; reviewed in 2007

© Jessica Mulley

There was some chatter on Twitter this morning on reactions to Jane Austen's 'heroine' of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price (if you're a twitter user, check out the hashtags #savefanny & #killfanny). This prompted me to think again about the differences between post-colonial readings, such as Edward Said's, and feminist readings of the novel, and ultimately to dig out an essay I researched and wrote way back, while studying. This was, if course, well before the days of easy internet publication. But on re-reading, I thought it might be worth an outing. So here it is: Revisiting Mansfield Park It takes as its starting point Lionel Trilling's assertion that Mansfield Park has as much capacity to offend as it does to garner the label of greatness. For those particularly interested in the #killfanny vs #savefanny debate, the bit about Fanny's qualities as a heroine is roughly in the middle. Jane Austen is among my favourite authors, and Mansfield Park is for me the most rewarding and provoking of her novels. The essay is a much longer (and denser) than my usual ramblings about books, but for dead-hard Austen fans, and Janeites, it might just be interesting enough to sustain you to the end.

[caption id="attachment_140" align="alignright" width="120"] Virago's edition of The Yellow Wallpaper[/caption]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman provides a stunning and disturbing account of a women's decline into madness. Margaret Atwood comments in the Blind Assassin that life is little more than a period of waiting interspersed with a few significant moments. For the nameless women in The Yellow Wallpaper, this is one of those moments. Over a three year period we see in acute and distressingly real detail how her inability to match her identity with the role of submissive wife that late Victorian society demanded leads to a steady, inexorable descent from sagacity to despair. Suffering from some unnamed illness - which modern readers might recognise as post-natal depression - she is confined to a room for rest and sleep. Unable to find any outlet for emotion or intellect, she becomes obsessed with the room's wallpaper - it's complex and endless pattern of pointless swirls. At first she just dislikes it, then hatred bordering on fear follows, to be usurped by a semi-dependent fascination and ultimately total identity: she becomes, not so much the wallpaper, but the embodiment of the creeping women who dwell, reluctantly, behind the pattern.

It is a picture of personal despair, of desperate attempts to retain sanity and ultimately of failure. On one level it's a chilling horror tale reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe. On another it is a clinically precise picture of a mental aberration. But it is more than that. A powerful indictment of the institution of marriage, of the social mores and misguided kindliness of late Victorian middle-class America, and of the treatment of women, Gilman's story is as timeless as it is authentic.
I would particularly recommend the Virago Modern Classics edition which includes a literary and biographical commentary.

The Yellow Wallpaper was first published in 1892 in the New England Magazine.

Read and reviewed in 2006 (and re-read in 2013)
© Jessica Mulley