Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme for the list lovers among book bloggers, created and hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. And yes, it should be top 10, but for this week’s theme I could only come up with three make that two and a half books, because the third one I didn’t like that much.
These are the books I wish I could read again for the first time, because they are much less powerful once you know. There is a big mystery at the heart of them (*), a Life-Changing event, but you only get to discover it little by little, one touch at a time and from the points of view of different characters. Hints, foreshadowing, non-linear narration and several intersecting points of view, that’s how they call this style; I’d rather say the author builds the novel and tells about this crucial event in the way an oyster builds a pearl, layer by layer, so there’s no Big Reveal. And these precious novels are:
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
- Goodbye Little Women by Marcela Serrano
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
If you know of other books constructed in the same way, please share.
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(*) I hear what you say: this applies to detective stories as well, these are the characteristics of a whodunit. And you’d be right (although there is a different narrative technique in these three, and I think that’s what makes them so precious). I guess crime novels would fit the “Books I Wish I Could Read Again For The First Time” description for many people, but not for me: I erase them completely from my memory as soon as I finish them, so that I am able to read them again and again, and each time is like the first time…
I read Poisonwood Bible a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Have you read any of her other books? They’re also very good.
What a great list! Worth reading again and again…
Here is my post:
Top Ten Picks!
@ Trish: no. I’ve wished for some, but never actually got to them.
@ Gautami Tripathy: glad you approve! (I remember you from the old times of my first blog…)
I liked Poisonwood Bible a lot. Have you read White Teeth by Zadie Smith?
Come visit my list at The Scarlet Letter.
No I haven’t. Is it like that?
Thank you for visiting!