Sunday, October 4, 2015

Jenny Eclair's six best books

Jenny Eclair is a comedian and novelist who was the first female solo winner of the Edinburgh Festival’s Perrier Comedy Award.

She named her six best books for the Daily Express. One title on her list:
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD by Richard Yates

This is about flawed people, marriage and suburban disappointment. I quite like alcoholics in stories, women who go off the rails, sadness and things going wrong. Reading about other people’s misfortune is safer than experiencing your own and Yates is a brilliant storyteller.
Read about the other books on Eclair's list.

Revolutionary Road also appears on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books for Mad Men fans, Hanna McGrath's list of five fictional characters who tell it like it is, John Mullan's list of ten of the best Aprils in literature, Selma Dabbagh's top ten list of stories of reluctant revolutionaries, Laura Dave's list of books that improve on re-reading, Tad Friend's seven best fiction books about WASPs, and James P. Othmer's list of six great novels on work.

--Marshal Zeringue