Twenty-five novelists' comfort reads

The Guardian collected twenty-five novelists' comfort reads.

The contribution from Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage and Silver Sparrow:

The Color Purple by Alice Walker is the novel I return to when I am in need of comfort. When most people talk about this book, they lean so heavily on the issues of child abuse, poverty, and racism. And while these societal ills are part of the weave of this powerful story, it is also a testament to love of all types – romantic, familial, spiritual, any kind of attachment that binds one heart to another. Also, Walker’s down-home humour is on full display in this work, not a laugh-to-keep-from-crying sort of humour, but the kind of humour that reminds us that the human spirit always hits every note on the scale of emotion. She grants us the happy ending we long for, but she makes us work hard for it. Like the old folks say: to get to freedom, you got to cross the river.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Color Purple is among Isabella Hammad's top six books of correspondence, Jenn Ashworth and Richard V. Hirst's top ten modern epistolary novels, Sarai Walker's ten top novels about women's political awakening, Hollie McNish's top ten literary works about breasts, Sarah Alderson's top ten feminist icons in children's and teen books, Bruna Lobato's top ten must-read classics by African American authors, Hanna McGrath's top five fictional characters who tell it like it is, Andy McSmith's top ten books of the 1980s, and Sophie Ward's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue