THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Kazuo Ishiguro, Faber, £8.99
An exquisite tale of regret from the upstairs–downstairs world of a country house in the 1930s.
The head butler is unable to admit his love for the housekeeper, then his Lordship turns out to be a Nazi sympathiser.
Repressed feelings spurt out sideways like Play–Doh through a sieve. So British, so sad.
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by Arundhati Roy, Harper, £10.99
I put a lot of care into writing daft lines.
This debut novel is bulging with sentences that are plain beautiful, jewels of language that paint an intoxicating picture of India and family relationships.
FEVER PITCH by Nick Hornby, Penguin, £8.99
This book intelligently describes how the life of a football fan is bound to the highs and lows of their club, which in many ways is illogical and embarrassingly tribal.
It’s about Arsenal, my team, so I identify with the joy and frustration of being irrationally attached to a bunch of millionaires I’ve never met.
COLLECTED POEMS by Dylan Thomas, W&N, £9.99
My father was from Swansea (that “lovely ugly town”), not far from where Thomas lived.
The language of these poems conveys both the beauty and the melancholic rhythm of the area.
The epic and the trivial, the ethereal and the blunt are side by side.
TINTIN: EXPLORERS ON THE MOON by Hergé, Egmont, £10.99
A friend gave me this for my sixth birthday around the same time as the Apollo missions, except the real astronauts didn’t have their hair growing in multiple colours as a result of the Formula 14 in the book. It was not my last Tintin book.
THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS by Cs Lewis, Collins, £8.99
A short satirical book about the nature of evil.
It takes the form of one experienced devil trying to teach a novice how to bring down “the Patient” and keep him away from “the Enemy” (God).