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Yeah, Brighton Rock---yall may well be right that he went deeper later, but meanwhile: compelling, teeming, zoom-in-and-out-of-interior setting, plotting (incl. some switcheroo subplotting, appropriate for beach town), memorable characters and story and momentum---not "couldn't put it down," but always knew it was waiting for me.
Although, as usual, I either haven't read or can't remember well enough some other likely strong contenders.
― dow, Monday, 1 February 2021 22:55 (three years ago) link
Here I go again:
The Castle Of Argol by Julien Gracq -- chunky over-the-top surreal weirdness; it's grand
Murphy by Samuel Beckett -- I do love this
Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre -- I enjoyed his Roads to Freedom WW2 trilogy more, as it had good jokes
The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov -- minor Nabokov but I just love the whole vibe of the White Russians scuffling impotently round Berlin thing
Young Man With A Horn by Dorothy Baker -- great jazz novel with a title that has not aged well
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene -- kind of my ideal for literary thrillerdom, just excellent in all ways
Cause For Alarm by Eric Ambler -- this is close behind in the same category
The Code Of The Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse -- peak Wodehouse
Count Belisarius by Robert Graves -- never finished this
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson -- everybody absolutely went apeshit for this when it was rediscovered buy it was the very mildest of mild sauce, I thought
Night And The City by Gerald Kersh -- great bleak noirish novel
Out Of The Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis -- terrible piece of shit
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier -- effective and beautifully judged bit of Gothic melodrama
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh -- love it
A Night Of Serious Drinking by René Daumal -- almost as good as its title, discursive rambling angry book
The Emperor's Tomb by Joseph Roth -- sequel to the Radetzky March, not as good, but what is?
Hope Of Heaven by John O'Hara -- I have an extremely high tolerance for struggling-screenwriter-in-Hollywood novels from the 30s/40s, so you may not like this as much as I did
On The Edge Of Reason by Miroslav Krleža -- really great book; a quiet man suddenly honestly says everything he's been thinking for years at a dinner party and wrecks his own life
Address Unknown by Kathrine Taylor -- so short it's not even a novella, but an effectively nasty little fuck-the-Nazis story
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Tuesday, 2 February 2021 00:08 (three years ago) link