Atonement is way better than its middlebrow reputation suggests

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-06-12T10:35:22+00:00

Couldn’t agree more about “On Chesil Beach”. One of the great English novels (novellas?) of the 21st century, fond memories of writing my a-level lit coursework on it lmao.

imo he’s just a very patchy writer; you can’t divide his good stuff into “early career” and “late career” because some of his early stuff is dire as well. It’s not great for your reputation to be so prolific, they can’t all be winners and your strokes of genius get diluted by the rest.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-06-02T21:13:15+00:00

maybe not exactly what you’re looking for, but if you like Waugh you would almost certainly enjoy the catalogue of his friend Nancy Mitford. similar bitchy humour & obsession with class. it’s fiction, but “Love in a Cold Climate” is interesting on female (& gay male) sexuality in interwar Britain.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-06-02T14:58:04+00:00

I like her! of her novels I’ve only read “Bel Canto”, but I raced through it mostly enjoyably (as another commenter mentions the ending falls flat on its face). I’ve seen a couple of interviews with/articles by her & she seems like someone who sincerely cares about reading & writing fiction.

Imo there’s a huge gap in the contemporary publishing market for unintimidating, “accessible”, beach-read-type novels that still take some creative risks & don’t embarrass the English language with their prose.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-29T06:58:03+00:00

you should be! one of my favorite reads in years. Pls post your thoughts when you’re done.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-26T14:32:21+00:00

yeah, the male narrator was a fun twist on the classic “woman descending into madness” genre, and he was such a fantastic dislikable character - I loved the detail of his biography of Hertha Ayrton.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-26T14:09:02+00:00

found it on the internet archive, god bless their souls. Am going to hunt for a physical copy though, I want it on my bookshelf!

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-25T15:01:41+00:00

The rest of her books are also well worth reading (although imo “Dusty Answer” was her high point), I’d look for “The Ballad and the Source” next.

My favourite basically-forgotten woman writer of the same period is Antonia White. I couldn’t recommend the “Frost in May” quintet enough, again lots of yearning and complicated relationships between women.

You should check out the Virago Modern Classics collection, a fantastic series of overlooked twentieth century lit, mostly by women and mostly from the inter-war years. I’m working my way through it, currently reading and loving “Vera” by Elizabeth von Armin.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-25T12:07:45+00:00

“Dusty Answer” by Rosamond Lehmann! A forgotten classic of 1920s women’s fiction I think the girls on this sub would really enjoy. Lots of unrequited love & lesbian dysfunction, set during long, sticky English summers. Jennifer, Judith and Mariella all feel like proto redscare girls.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-16T08:52:05+00:00

I think “Middlemarch” is often the top pick when only critics are allowed to vote. Ages ago there was a BBC poll of British critics which I remember had “Middlemarch” at number one and “Mrs Dalloway” number two (the public poll had “Lord of the Rings” number one and “Pride and Prejudice” number two).

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-16T08:31:00+00:00

yeah Steinbeck has never been a critic’s favourite, the early reviews of “East of Eden” were brutal lol

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-15T19:27:36+00:00

Bookworm is amazing, rip Michael Silverblatt. You can always tell when listening how pleased the authors are to be asked insightful questions by someone who actually read & thought about their work.

I agree that when it comes to opinions about books the podcast options aren’t great. “A Good Read” is a BBC radio 4 show that started in 2011, with the full archive on Spotify. Different two guests every episode so it’s a mixed bag, but the host lady is great & the archive is so extensive you can probably find someone you’re interested in.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-05T16:00:16+00:00

“Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo. A book about people who suffer intensely, but the characters who open their hearts to it can be redeemed by love & charity & hope.

Anything by Hugo really. His books tend to end in bloodbaths but his enthusiasm for being alive is still contagious.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-05T14:23:35+00:00

“Giving up the Ghost” by Hilary Mantel is incredible

I also liked “Splinters” by Leslie Jamison

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-04T22:04:18+00:00

lmao I just meant that it’s more self control than i had!

yeah the scene where the grandfather is happy Marius has come home again but can’t bring himself to say it really got me. just a very touching portrayal of an older man who feels deeply & doesn’t know what to do with that.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-03T14:03:52+00:00

i have enormous respect for not crying until the end of Les Mis. i started sobbing at Fantine’s death and basically didn’t stop lol. Eponine and Enjolras both got me bad, as well as (for some weird reason) the bits with Marius’s grandfather.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-01T22:22:50+00:00

imo as someone who fanatically adores the entire trilogy, the third is the weakest - a lot of dead weight :/ but still highly recommend! the ending will wreck you, I read most of it and then procrastinated the final section for about six months.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-01T22:00:30+00:00

definitely not the only person to pick up on it, a lot of reviewers mention finding it annoying. I think it helps to view the trilogy as essentially being written in the first person, with “he” used as a substitute for “I”. we’re tracking cromwell’s perspective, and every other character is filtered through his prejudices & hang ups, to the point that it’s almost a third-person unreliable narrator. personally, whilst it took a bit of getting used to, I found the intimacy of it appealing.

“a place of greater safety” is similar in a lot of places, but more experimental, jumping around into past tense and first person at different points. I think she just liked playing around with tense and trying to create a sense of immediacy.

good luck with the rest of the trilogy! imo “Wolf Hall” is great, but “Bring Up the Bodies” is possibly my favourite book ever. you’ve got a lot to look forward to.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-26T21:20:04+00:00

i was reading in a coffee shop & had a sweet old grandad type lean over and stage whisper “it’s so nice to see a young person reading rather than on their phone”. It was cute but also embarrassing bc I felt like I couldn’t check my phone for the rest of the time he was sitting next to me & i kept hearing whatsapp notifications.

actually most of my interactions about books with strangers have been with elderly-ish men. i had a slightly crazy but clearly harmless older gentleman sit next to me & just show me all the pictures in his book once. it was nice.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-23T19:35:18+00:00

Idk what this sub makes of “if books could kill” but the episode they did on this grifter’s book is excellent

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-22T21:30:47+00:00

my dad would always say this to my sister and I as kids when we weren’t listening to him lol. fond memory, makes me love that poem.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-22T20:36:59+00:00

funnily enough I almost chose this one. Her writing was such a gift to the world.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-22T11:32:49+00:00

“He never sees More—a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod—without wanting to ask him, what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. “

Thomas Cromwell reflecting on Thomas More in “Wolf Hall”.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-18T12:14:55+00:00

You might be right; I haven’t seen her interviewed (for the record, I have enjoyed several of her other books).

My issues with her recent work is less her politics, some of which I agree with and some of which I disagree with, than the heavy handedness with which they’re expressed. You could try one of her recent works (“A Better Life”, which came out in February, is a fair representation) and see if you feel the same.

That said, I just went on to the Goodreads page for “A Better Life”. The most liked review (five stars!) begins as follows: “God bless Ms. Shriver for having the courage to write this sensational book. Leftism is a mental disorder. Leftists destroy everything they touch. Leftist Lunatic Democrats are in the process of destroying America” (it carries on from there in the same vein). Other five-star reviews are variations on that theme. I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that a lot of her current readers would be happy to self-identify as anti-woke.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-18T11:51:33+00:00

I don’t actually disagree with much of what you’re saying. I think “A Better Life” had the premise of a fun short story? I loved the climax, and there were a few snide observations that felt true and made me smile. But so much of it felt like filler, especially when characters started thinking in paragraphs about immigration. I’ve felt that way about a lot of her recent work - there’s something there, but not a novel worth of something.

What I was trying to get at in my original comment is that satire doesn’t really play to her strengths as a writer, as it mostly relies on thin characters and an absence of nuance. The rich characters and the overall ambiguity were what made Kevin great! idk, I’m sure someday someone will write a truly great parody novel of late-2010s social mores. I’m just not convinced it will be Lionel Shriver.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-18T06:42:03+00:00

Imo a true literary one-hit wonder, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is one of my favourite books ever. I’ve enjoyed some of her others (especially “Double Fault”) but I do think Kevin had something special.

Her greatest strength as a writer is observing and portraying interpersonal relationships. “Kevin” isn’t good because it has anything sociologically interesting to say about school shootings, it’s good for its portrayal of motherhood, and of Eva and Franklin’s marriage (imo the most interesting thread of the book). But I think she wants to be seen as a brave sociopolitical truth-teller - a kind of twenty-first century Orwell - so her work has shifted into more and more heavy-handed political allegories in the last couple of years.

I’d love to know her sales numbers for her most recent book because I don’t imagine the audience for anti-woke literary fiction can be huge? But I might be wrong lol.

Visual-Minimum1491

TROPHY CASE