PenguinReaders' Group
 

Author Book Choices

The Idea of Love

We asked our Featured Author, Louise Dean, author of The Idea of Love, to recommend three books to our readers.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

The product of his close study of Madame Bovary and The Great Gatsby, this is a meticulous work, but it transcends the diligence of craft to allow the havoc of passion to be wrought freely on its pages. A beautiful novel, unflinching and honest. Some novels, you think, nearly kill the writer, and this is one of them.

Everyman by Philip Roth

A perfect novel, with its circular journey, the classic morality tail with the twinges of humour and insight of a fine writer; both self-deprecating and wise.

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

It gets you from the first line which seems so natural and plain 'This is the saddest story...'. In its elegance and restraint it is a piece of history, a hymn to an older more careful time, a book in which the gentility of the deceit makes it all the more excruciating.