Four addictive literary series to read over summer
Sometimes one book just isn’t enough! Readings staff share the series they love.
Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
There are four novels in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series (the last of which will be published in 2015) but together the works read like one long master take.
Elena and Lila grow up in a neighbourhood ruled by the Camorra – where violence pervades every action and every word. I have yet to read a better work on the cycles of class and dysfunction. Both girls show early signs of being able to grasp for more: Lila through her charismatic and vicious mind, and Elena through her dedicated studiousness. Yet as the friends become young women, age and marry, it is never clear which one is the ‘brilliant friend’ of the first title.
Like Karl Ove Knausgaard and Javier Marías, Ferrante is relentless in her questioning of the self. She writes with an intensity that is almost gothic, though her outlook and her feminism are radically contemporary.
– Jess Au, bookseller
My Struggle series by Karl Ove Knausgaard (translated by Don Bartlett)
After reading the first volume in this series, Zadie Smith is reported to have said she needed ‘the next volume like crack’ and I wholeheartedly agree. I can’t think of anything else I have read in recent times that has been so utterly absorbing.
Knausgaard has written six volumes about his life growing up in Norway and living as an adult in Sweden and the level of detail he goes into about his everyday experiences is masterfully written. This focus on small details is the genius of the series; it is a work of fiction (no one could remember that much detail) but it reads like an autobiography of an ordinary person going through the usual struggles of life.
I recommend you start with volume one but buy volumes two and three as well, because you’ll want to start the next one as soon as you have finished the last.
– Kara Nicholson, bookseller
Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer
This trilogy deals with the (almost) impenetrable Area X, an object of intense interest for the US Government. The first volume, Annihilation, follows the twelfth expedition into this troubling zone, while the second, Authority, moves inside the David Lynchian secret service HQ just outside the Area X border.
Jeff VanderMeer has an amazing ability to make things that should be horrific seem merely curious, while at the same time making runof- the-mill occurrences really unsettling – much like the way Area X turns logic inside out. This trilogy is not scary in a way you’d expect, but its confusingly twisted images and ideas will stick with you for days. I promise you will never look at mushrooms, rabbits or lighthouses the same way ever again.
– Chris Dite, bookseller
Gilead novels by Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead novels are exquisitely tender; her prose is so delicately crafted that I almost feel I have to whisper when describing her work. Also, unlike the other books in this feature, these novels aren’t a series but, rather, they are companion novels: the same events occur in the books but from different perspectives, and thus in an entirely new context. Unlike most Robinson fans, I’d started with Lila (2014) and read my way backwards through the two earlier novels, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead (2004) and the Orange Prize-winning Home (2008), and I’d recommend this reading order to anyone.
Robinson’s portrayal of the town of Gilead and its inhabitants is infused with evocative imagery that is undeniably gorgeous, and her musings on theological and moral concerns are accessible and relevant. These novels are lovely, gentle reads, though, fair warning, they did break my heart repeatedly.
– Bronte Coates, bookseller
