Top ten novellas about love

Rosa Rankin-Gee is the author of The Last Kings of Sark.

She named ten top novellas about love for the Guardian, including:

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Someone borrowed my copy of The Virgin Suicides and hasn't given it back. When I find them, I will kill them, for this is as close to a perfect book as I've ever read. The story of five sisters who commit suicide over the course of one year in 1970s Michigan is narrated in haunting first-person plural by the neighbourhood boys who came to love them. OK, so the New York Times says it's "almost novella-length" but it must be mentioned. It is extraordinary, given its modest word count, how full and devastating a world is created.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Virgin Suicides is among Kate Finnigan's top ten fictional fashion icons, Patrick Ness's top ten "unsuitable" books for teenagers, Cathy Cassidy's top ten stories about sisters.

--Marshal Zeringue