Help us choose the May 2013 selection to read for the MR Literary Club! The poll will be open for two days.
The vote is multiple choice. You may vote for as many or as few as you like.
A discussion thread will begin shortly after a winner is chosen.
In the event of a tie, there will be a one-day non-multiple-choice run-off poll. In the event that the run-off poll also ends in a tie, the tie will be resolved in favour of the selection that received all of its initial nominations first.
Select from the following works:
The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1844
The American Senator by Anthony Trollope, 1875
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 1899
Spoiler:
It's a short novel but incredibly powerful as a result. Here's an extract from Wikipedia:
Heart of Darkness (1899), by Joseph Conrad, is a short novel, presented as a frame narrative, about Charles Marlow’s job as an ivory transporter down an unnamed river in Africa. ... a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land. In the course of his commercial-agent work in Africa, the seaman Marlow becomes obsessed by Mr. Kurtz, an ivory-procurement agent, a man of established notoriety among the natives and the European colonials.
The story is a thematic exploration of the savagery-versus-civilization relationship, and of the colonialism and the racism that make imperialism possible. Originally published as a three-part serial story, in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’, the novella Heart of Darkness has been variously published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh top-novel of the hundred-best-novels in English of the twentieth century; and is included to the Western canon.
There are moments in this novel--such as the appearance of the African woman--and those final words of Kurtz--which are unforgettable.
In 1979 it was made into a film Apocalypse Now which changes the setting but keeps the basic thematic approach--but loses the intensity of the novel.
It is in the Public domain and easily available from PG and here at
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17486
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896
Spoiler:
From Wikipedia:
The Country of the Pointed Firs is an 1896 short story sequence by Sarah Orne Jewett which is considered by some literary critics to be her finest work. Henry James described it as her "beautiful little quantum of achievement." Because it is loosely structured, many critics view the book not as a novel, but a series of sketches; however, its structure is unified through both setting and theme. The novel can be read as a study of the effects of isolation and hardship experienced by the inhabitants of the decaying fishing villages along the Maine coast.
It is available in the MR library.
Also in audio form at LibriVox.
Eline Vere by Louis Couperus, 1889
Spoiler:
Free from Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19563
Not free from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...s=Eline%20Vere
Louis Couperus (1863-1923) is arguably the greatest Dutch novelist. He made his name at home and in the English speaking countries with psychological novels such as The books of the small souls, The hidden force and Old people and the things that pass.
(This novel is situated in The Hague. It was a great hit in these days. At the time of the installments in the daily newspaper, people asked each other: 'did you hear what happened to Eline Vere?)
From Wikipedia:
The naturalistic novel, first published in a daily newspaper (1888-1889), instantly established Couperus as a household name in the Netherlands. It has been in print ever since. In Dutch, there have been about thirty editions until 2010, two adaptations for the theatre and one for film. Composer Alexander Voormolen dedicated his Nocturne for Eline (1957) to the protagonist of the novel. It has been translated into English (twice), into Norwegian and into Urdu.
After the publication of the translation by Ina Rilke, the book was reviewed in The Scotsman in 2010: "Couperus is a fine, driving storyteller even when he's off telling fairy stories in some symbolist landscape as in the rather mimsy Psyche. He wrote Eline Vere for serialisation, so it has the energy of the great Victorian novels without the melodrama, something astounding spread over 600 careful pages. ... Rediscovered novels usually make you realise why they were lost in the first place, but Eline Vere is an exception: a pleasure we've missed for far too long."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eline_Vere
Nana by Emile Zola, 1880
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:
One of the founders of literary naturalism, Émile Zola thought of his novels as a form of scientific research into the effects of heredity and environment. He created characters, gave them richly detailed histories, and placed them in carefully observed, precisely described environments, and his readers watch as they wriggle and thrash toward their inevitable destinies.
In Nana, the characters are a prostitute, who rises from the streets to become what Zola calls a “high-class cocotte,” and the men—and women—whom she loves, betrays, and destroys. Among the novel’s many ironies is the mutual envy felt by Nana and those around her. She yearns for their material possessions, while they admire her apparent independence and sexual self-confidence. And despite the chaos Nana causes, Zola imagines her as being essentially “good-natured,” a stupid, vain, but beautiful creature who can’t help drawing people into her web.
Not surprisingly, Nana’s portrait of a decadent world in which a prostitute amasses great wealth and power provoked protests from “polite society,” and it became one of Zola’s most controversial works. Today it is regarded as his masterpiece.
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, 1818