Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Antonya Nelson's five most essential books

Antonya Nelson is the author of the newly published short story collection Nothing Right (Bloomsbury, 2009).

Her books include the short story collections Some Fun and In The Land Of Men, and three novels: Talking in Bed, Nobody’s Girl, and Living to Tell; and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, Redbook and many other magazines, as well as in anthologies.

She told Newsweek about her five most essential books. And addressed two related issues:
A Book to which you always return:

"The Member of the Wedding" by Carson McCullers. A deeply felt descent into adolescence. Timeless and painfully beautiful.

A classic you revisited with disappointment:

"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë. What I thought was naughty and necessary romance and drama turns out to be more like melodrama.
Read more about Nelson's five most essential books.

Wuthering Heights appears on Valerie Martin's list of novels about doomed marriages.

The Page 99 Test: Wuthering Heights.

--Marshal Zeringue