Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1918

Gyac, have you ever heard the phrase 'valley of the squinted windows'? Never heard of the book before, but the wiki is a treat. Some choice cuts:

The novel is set in central Ireland c. 1914–16. Garradrimna is a tiny village where everyone is interested in everyone else's business and wishes them to fail.

Reception

Hostility toward the work in MacNamara's native Delvin led to the book's burning shortly after its publication. The stir caused the author's schoolmaster father, James, to be boycotted. In response, Weldon, snr., initiated a high-profile court case against those who thought that they had been described in the novel.[1]

MacNamara's novel has been reprinted several times, particularly when interest in the topic re-emerges. "Valley of the squinting windows" has become a colloquial term in Ireland to refer to a place where judgmental gossip is common.

The Return Of The Soldier by Rebecca West

this is one of a bunch of female-written wwi things i read a few years ago. she had quite a life by the sounds

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/BOOKS/Pix/pictures/2011/6/10/1307711664464/Rebecca-West-007.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=e8abe87bb6b4bc13731e7a22c328a0ee

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/BOOKS/Pix/pictures/2011/6/10/1307711664464/Rebecca-West-007.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=e8abe87bb6b4bc13731e7a22c328a0ee

(oh, maybe i have pictures off on this laptop...!)

Rare is quite a savagely funny book but all I've read from the list.

I read My Antonia earlier this year and it was about 100 times better than I'd expected ... I think I had the impression it was a children's book, perhaps because the main characters are children at the start of the story, but it's far more than that

My Antonia also the only one of these I've read and I second the praise.

My Antonia would rate high in a poll of the entire decade, let along a single year, which year happened to be one where the Great War swallowed up so much time and talent and shrank the market for ambitious or reflective novels.

The publication of the Wyndham Lewis is a bit more complex, it's included here because wikipedia lists it by year of US release, sorry for collaborating with american imperialism.

Tarr had a somewhat complicated publishing history anyway so i think it’s legit. I’m a fan; psychology is depicted as a vividly pictorial or dynamic element, and this leads to continual invention of descriptive concepts and a visual/dynamic space that is full and combative and energetic, as you might expect from someone who saw himself in pure form as a satirist and was an exceptional artist. as with much of lewis’ writing the overall effect can be quite unappealing: cynical and unhuman, certainly quite strange. bracing though, and fizzing with energy.

a better painter, draftsman and essayist than a novelist generally. he was a person of ideas and images in words really. tarr probably the easiest to read and best of his novels (tho the v late self-condemned is bleak af, and the revenge for love is pretty savage).

find it hard to believe it’s the best here, tho a quick look suggests it’s the only one i’ve read.

xps to LBI: I had not, but I understood the phrase immediately, sounds like something my nana would have said. There aren’t too many novels set in the Midlands, would be interested in checking that one out.

Fucking hell, Edgar Wallace, give it a fucking rest.

cather or west
(Tho the Norman Lindsay is a stone cold childrens fiction classic)

Wallace was a fucking writing machine. Now people only remember him for writing King Kong and, in Germany, for having his name appropriated for a series of proto-giallo films.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Georges Duhamel’s Civilisation is missing (not that it matters). I’m sitting this one out, yet again, for lack of knowledgeability.

Rare is quite a savagely funny book but all I've read from the list.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 19 November 2020 bookmarkflaglink

*Tarr

funnily enough just got this thru the post. mainly for its two essays on satire:

https://imgur.com/gallery/exp66Et.jpg

https://imgur.com/gallery/exp66Et.jpeg

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/exp66Et.jpg

fuckit

https://i.imgur.com/o6Rh7hL.jpeg

I admire your dedication there, Fizzles.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I admire your dedication there, Fizzles.

You can if you’re using zing, I’m far too lazy to do it otherwise for the most part.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1919