Ten top mentors in fiction

Benjamin Myers was born in Durham, UK, in 1976. He is an author and journalist, translated into several languages.

His new novel is The Offing.

At the Guardian, Myers tagged ten top mentors--"inspiring, sometimes ambiguous figures [who] are a perennial flint-spark for storytelling"--in fiction, including:

Cardinal Wolsey in Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Sharing weighty intellect and lowborn status that mark them out in the court of Henry VIII, Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell make for a classic mentor/protege coupling. Long after the cardinal’s death, Cromwell still defers to his advice. In time, he too adopts the role of mentor by nurturing all manner of disadvantaged orphans and urchins in whom he sees potential.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Wolf Hall made Jessie Burton's list of eleven of the best books about/with cats, Pete Buttigieg’s ten favorite books list, Ruby Bentall's six best books list, Rula Lenska's six favorite books list, Deborah Cadbury's top ten list of books about royal families, Peter Stanford's top ten list of Protestants in fiction, Melissa Harrsion's ten top depictions of British rain, the Telegraph's list of the 21 greatest television adaptations of novels, BBC Culture's list of the 21st century’s twelve greatest novels, Ester Bloom's ten list of books for fans of the television series House of Cards, Rachel Cantor's list of the ten worst jobs in books, Kathryn Williams's reading list on pride, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of books on baby-watching in Great Britain, Julie Buntin's top ten list of literary kids with deadbeat and/or absent dads, Hermione Norris's 6 best books list, John Mullan's list of ten of the best cardinals in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on dangerous minds and Lev Grossman's list of the top ten fiction books of 2009, and is one of Geraldine Brooks's favorite works of historical fiction; Matt Beynon Rees called it "[s]imply the best historical novel for many, many years."

--Marshal Zeringue