The Belly of Paris ~ Emile Zola

If a book can be written like an impressionist painting then this novel is it.  The plot itself is rather banal with its direction only becoming evident within the last few chapters, but it's the descriptions of the food in the markets that make the reading of this book so worth while.

The premise is simple—Florent, a wrongly convicted man, has escaped from Devil’s Island and returns to Paris.  The opening scene has him lying close to death in the road where he is rescued by a woman on her way to Les Halles markets with a cart-load of vegetables.

Florent re-unites with his brother who is a corpulent owner of a butcher shop, and married to the plump but ‘beautiful’ Lisa.  Welcomed with open arms, Florent soon finds his feet but is dissatisfied with how much Paris has changed and the greed and complacency of the well-to-do.  Rather than comparing the rich with the poor he looks at them as being the ‘fat’ and the ‘thin’.  Lisa and her husband are ‘fat’ and ‘plump’ whereas Florent himself is always described as being thin, skeletal or a ‘longshanks’ and his appearance give rise to some sort of fear, or alarm, to those around him.

Florent begins to spend his evenings with a group of equally dissatisfied friends, and between them they discuss the idea of a starting a revolution.  When the beautiful Lisa gets wind of this, she cannot stand to think that something could happen to change her comfortable way of life and, unbeknownst to her husband, plots to betray Florent to the authorities.

The story is totally centred around Les Halles markets and it’s various gossiping and bitchy stallholder’s and the butcher shop.  Zola truly ‘paints’ with wonderfully descriptive words the colours, sights and smells of all the food at the markets.  And, oh boy, I could certainly smell the fish market and it was quite disturbing to see how the food was stored and handled there without the knowledge of today’s food handling practices.

One morning as the light begins to illuminate the fish market Zola remarks:

“…… these precious colours, toned and softened by the waves—the iridescent flesh-tints of the shell-fish, the opal of the whiting, the pearly nacre of the mackerel, the ruddy gold of the mullets, the plated skins of the herrings, and the massive silver of the salmon.  It was as though the jewel-cases of some sea-nymph had been emptied there—a mass of fantastical, undreamt-of  ornaments, a streaming and heaping of necklaces, monstrous bracelets, gigantic brooches, barbaric gems and jewels, the use of which could not be divined.”

There are plenty of passages like this, one even describing the various tones and shades of the green vegetables.  It  certainly makes you look at your food in a different way. 

I can’t say I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, but I can say that I really appreciated the writing, and by the end of the novel I felt like a glutton myself for having been exposed to so much food. 

David Copperfield ~ Charles Dickens

David Copperfield has been on my ‘must read list’ for longer than I can remember.  I don’t know what took me so long to pick it up, but I’m so pleased that I finally did as it was truly a very enjoyable read.

I was expecting a tale of destitution and cruelty with life only coming good towards the end.  But it was not like that at all.  It was a linear tale of David’s life, told in remembrance by David  himself, commencing from the date of his birth when his Aunt Betsy Trotwood appears out of the blue to meet the new baby girl only to disappear just as quickly upon being told ‘it’s a boy!’  Betsy later redeems herself by taking care of the orphaned David and paying for his schooling and articling him to a proctor.

David’s early life is happy enough until one day he is asked if he would like to go on a little holiday with his beloved nurse-maid Peggoty.  When he returns he finds that his widowed mother has  re-married, and life will never the same again. Mr Murdstone and his steely sister cast a gloom over the once happy home with physical and mental abuse, and David is sent away to a questionable school where he becomes friends with two boys who will play very different roles in his later life. 

There is plenty of drama and   tragedy and not all of it relates to David, but to some of the many people he comes to know from all walks and class of life – with the class divide being a major theme throughout.

This novel was Charles Dickens’ favourite, being semi-autobiographical, and it contains some very memorable characters such as Mr Wilkins Micawber and Uriah Heep, and I think it could well become my favourite too.

Ben-Hur ~ Lew Wallace

Ben-Hur is a Biblical tale of betrayal and revenge set during the time of The Christ. 

Judah Ben-Hur is a wealthy Jewish Prince who is betrayed by his childhood friend, the Roman Messala, and during the course of the narrative Ben-Hur’s path runs parallel, and crosses, with that of Jesus Christ.

I found this novel to be a bit dated and over descriptive but hugely enjoyable.  Wallace suggests the foundation for the birth of modern Christianity and rather than being preachy he has just told a damn good story.

Some of the elements are a bit hard to swallow, such as the literal translation of the Christ's miracles and I only wish I could have got the image of Charlton Heston from my mind as Wallace’s Ben-Hur is way more gorgeous.

The only disappointment for me was  after the build up to the Circus, and the huge description of the stadium, the race itself fell flat.  It could have done with an injection of excitement of the kind written by Matt Reilly.

Ben Hur, however, is quite an achievement for the era that it was written in and well worth the read.

Northanger Abbey ~ Jane Austen

As with all the Jane Austen novels I have read the main theme is about getting married, and marrying well. But the joy of her novels is in the dialogue and her observations of genteel life. 

Catherine Morland is a young girl heavily into reading gothic novels.  Unfortunately this increases her already vivid imagination and when she is invited to spend some time at Northanger Abbey she is thrilled.  Living in a modern day abbey is not as chilling as in the gothic novels, but the father of her love interest would make an excellent character in one of them.  Whilst not as sinister to murder his wife as Catherine supposes he has, he is a very disagreeable man, and Catherine inadvertently falls foul of him.  

There are some wonderful characterizations in this novel, one being the selfish Isabella Thorpe.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Middlemarch ~ George Eliot

Cover Illustration shows the
birthplace of George Eliot

It’s rare to read a novel where the characters are so richly imagined, and the progression in their lives so well documented.  Even the minor characters are fully embodied.

Set during a period of three years and ending just prior to the first reform Bill in 1832 we meet and grow to love the inhabitants of Middlemarch.  From the well to do Brookes' and the manufacturing Vincy’s to the working class Garth's.

This provincial town isn’t without its gossip, scandals and dogmatic principals and moving forward with the times can be a little difficult as the new age Dr Lydegate finds out to his peril when he moves to Middlemarch in 1829 (the year the novel opens).

The story is told mainly through the lives of Dorothea Brookes and Tertius Lydegate, and they both have a common story in that both have marriages that do not fulfil the ideal and both want to do so much more than they are able to.

This novel is also a political statement of the times, and it would be recommended to research a little on the political environment leading up to the Reform Bill.  However, I found the biggest message in Middlemarch was how important it is for someone to have something to do and a goal to reach for especially when it relates to the betterment of people other than yourself; I don’t think that Eliot would have had much respect for the idle rich. 

Don’t pick up this book if you are after a light read, but if you enjoy immersing yourself into a novel and enjoy full characterisations that grow and develop as one does in real life then I can fully recommend Middlemarch.

The Trial ~ Franz Kafka

This is a nightmare world, where a 30 year old man, Josef K. is arrested and put on trial for a crime of which he is oblivious, his is not told what the charges are, and he has no idea who brought the charges against him.

Free to carry on with his life, but with the threat of the imminent trial, K. seeks help from a gravely ill lawyer and is given advice on the legal system by a painter known as Titorelli. 

K. is a senior bank clerk, but he finds that as he spends more time trying to get helpfor his case, his co-workers are beginning to undermine him.

Towards the end of the story he is duped into going to a cathedral where a priest who is part of the prison system has been waiting for him.  There they discuss the faceless/nameless system and the Priest tells a parable about the law, which was published on it’s own as ‘Before the Law’.

K. comes to a sad end, but as Kafka died before completing the novel who knows what the true ending would have been?

Bizarre and haunting.  I really liked it.

Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair (a novel without a hero) was a great surprise for me. Published in 1848, it is an epic story of two women who are introduced to us in the first chapter as they leave Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for Young Ladies. Amelia - fair and genteel, and her friend the artful and sly Rebecca.


Thackery relates their fortunes and misfortunes with great wit and satire, from courtship to marriage, through the battle of Waterloo, parenthood, middle age and a reversal of fortunes for both Rebecca and Amelia.

Rebecca and her husband Rawdon teach us how to live well on nothing a year, and the gambling, and credit debt is definitely relevant to our current climate. Rebecca’s character would work well in any modern novel, she manipulates men with ease but the Society women can see right through her in an instant. This anti-heroine is cunning and conniving, however you can’t help but admire her as much as the author does! A very enjoyable read.

A Tale of Two Cities ~ Charles Dickens

This tale of love and redemption set before and during the French Revolution is wonderfully plotted and executed (pardon the pun!).


There are no wasted characters or narration. Everything is relevant and finds its place as the storyline is revealed.

Set in London and Paris, the two central characters are Sidney Carton and Charles Darnay (two personalities of Charles Dickens?) Darnay is a French Aristocrat by birth whilst Carton is a Barrister who has not seen his full potential and finds his life slipping away through drink. But, because of his love and respect for Lucie, Darnay’s wife, Carton will give her the ultimate gift.

There are a lot of comparisons in this novel between light and dark (good and evil), Lucie being the Golden Thread and Madam Defarge, (the main antagonist) casting dark shadows. Even Carton and Darnay are considered to be light and dark versions of the same character.

I thought the ending was very good, whereby the rest of the story is told by a prophetic vision – it was sensitively done and finishes with the wonderful line:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

Wow, what a story teller.

The Thirty Nine Steps - John Buchan

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan, first published in 1915 by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous habit of getting himself out of sticky situations.


John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps while he was ill in bed with a duodenal ulcer, an illness which remained with him all his life. The novel was his first "shocker", as he called it — a story combining personal and political dramas. The novel marked a turning point in Buchan’s literary career and introduced his famous adventuring hero, Richard Hannay. He described a "shocker" as an adventure where the events in the story are unlikely and the reader is only just able to believe that they really happened.

Buchan's son, William, later wrote that the name of the book originated when the author's daughter, then about age six, was counting the stairs at a private nursing home in Broadstairs, where Buchan was convalescing. "There was a wooden staircase leading down to the beach. My sister, who was about six, and who had just learnt to count properly, went down them and gleefully announced: there are 39 steps." Some time later the house was demolished and a section of the stairs, complete with a brass plaque, was sent to Buchan

The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass

The Tin Drum was full of disturbing imagery, which repulsed and fascinated me, and made this difficult but compulsive reading.

Oskar is an unlikable character, and his narration very contradictory. On one page he would say that he never saw a certain character again, yet on the next page he describes their next meeting. Written in the first person, it often lapsed into the third person within the same sentence which was very annoying and sometimes confusing.

There were elements that could divide the novel into a series of fables, and individually I did enjoy and appreciate them.

In the end though, I found it dragged on, and I was only reading the last 200 pages for the sake of finishing the story. Once Oskar began to grow, he lost his charm and just became a creepy hunchback who well deserved to be instutionalised.

Magic realism is my least favourite story telling device, yet it crops up again and again in the novels I choose. Certainly it is a story I won’t forget, and it makes sense of the weird and shocking movie I saw years ago, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it.

Bleak House - Charles Dickens

I didn’t enjoy this half as much as I enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities. I felt there was far too much going on, and too many characters. I did enjoy what was known as ‘Esther’s Narrative’, Esther being one of two narrators, the other narrator is unknown telling a parallel story which Esther’s briefly intersects.


Esther’s Narrative is told in the past, whilst the other is told in the present. Esther is a little sickly sweet, and Jarndyce her Guardian is one of those benevolent Dicken’s characters who are too good to be true. The back story of the disputed wills in the Court of Chancery has provided interesting reading outside of the novel with regards to the legal system of that time. Dickens had his own experience in Chancery as a Law Clerk, and when trying to enforce copyright on his earlier work.

Bleak House includes those awful Dicken’s character names such as Mr Turveydrop, Mrs Jellyby etc and also includes a scene where one of the characters spontaneously combusts—something Dickens, at the time, believed could happen.

Considered to be a Dickens masterpiece, I beg to differ.

Glimpses of the Moon - Edith Wharton

Apparently now out of print, I got this as an audio book from the library.


This is a story of Susy, who is penniless, but has been taken care of by wealthy friends since the death of her parents. She marries Nick, who is also penniless, but is an aspiring writer who moves within the same circle of friends. Their marriage is an experiment. They will live off their friends for as long as they can using the cheques received as wedding gifts and take up the offer of places to stay for their long honeymoon. Susy works out that they can manage for a year, and if they sell Susy’s pearls, then possibly for a bit longer.

As part of the experiment, it is agreed that if the other finds a better opportunity then they will split.

Two months later, due to a disagreement, Nick leaves. During their time apart and their attempts at starting their respective lives again, they come to the realization that although they married for an experiment, they were meant to be together and are very much in love.

The characterisations were very good. I liked Susy very much, and her friend Strefford who wants to marry her after Nick leaves. The characterizations of Susy’s wealthy idle friends would probably be based on those Edith Wharton knew. They are completely shallow and selfish.

Nick is a little misguided and reminded me of Angle Claire from Tess of the D’Urbevilles due to his stubborn high mindedness. Thankfully this tale has a happy ending.

This is my second Edith Warton novel, and I’ve enjoyed both very much.

Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell

At times depressing this book really showed the reader the human qualities bestowed to the poor in 1840’s Manchester. We have lost many of these qualities as our standard of living has improved. It wasn’t a case of keeping up with the Jones’s, but helping the Jones’s in times of need and sickness, even though you were in need yourself.


I found the writing style a little difficult to read, having to reread sentences and some passages to make sense of it all. The motto’s at the beginning of each chapter were annoying, and so were the notes as I just wanted to read the story and not keep flicking back and forth for explanations!

I found the first half of the book very interesting as we were introduced to the characters, the middle of the book became a bit of a slog for me but once Mary was in search of Will Wilson I couldn’t put it down. We had a real bit of adventure and heroism going on there.

The “Not Guilty” heading spoilt that particular chapter for me and I thought it could have been better work as we had such a lead up to the advent and it was over before we knew it.

To think when this book was written though, the story line does hold up and it has certainly made me think differently about certain things now – like do I really need that new pair of shoes?