General Fiction – Arthur Edward Waite, Mary Webb, Marianne Wiggins, Charles Williams, Wu Ch’eng-En & W B Yeats

A mishmash of styles and genres seems to be the case for this post. which is also the last for the time being in the General Fiction category.

To start, a curious fiction by Tarot Card designer (Rider-Waite Pack) and occultist, Arthur Edward Waite called The Quest of the Golden Stairs published by Newcastle in 1974, though it was not part of their Forgotten Fantasy series.

Mary Webb’s Precious Bane is a classic rural countryside novel. It is an extraordinarily moody novel, as bleak and lonesome as the landscape in which it is set. Actually, I have always had a fondness for this book, in the same way I appreciate sad songs.

Marianne Wiggins is the ex wife of Salman Rushdie, but is also a fine writer in her own right. Probably her best known novel is John Dollar a female version of Lord of the Flies. I do have a copy of John Dollar somewhere, but the three below are others of her work in my possession, written in the 1980s and ‘90s.

To continue with my Charles Williams collection, here are three more published by Eerdmans 1974, 1979 & 1980, the latter two having surrealistic covers by Jim Lamb.

Monkey or Journey to the West by Wu Ch’eng En is a classic of Chinese Buddhist Literature. The definitive translation is by Arthur Waley. I remember being addicted to the TV series of it back in 1970s, which is no doubt why I have a copy of the book.

And finally Mythologies by Irish poet William Butler Yeats, studies of the supernatural based on Irish country folklore. This edition published by Collier Books in 1974.

Coming up next – Penguin Crime

General Fiction – Masako Togawa, Michel Tournier, Violet Trefusis, Rose Tremain & William Trevor

Now where was I… off somewhere? No, not at all, but just distracted by other things. Anyway, I’ve got myself back into the mood to post more book covers after a long hiatus, for which I apologise.

We’re still on general fiction for the moment, but I have scanned many more covers in the interim, and plan to tackle Crime Fiction after I’ve got through the next few posts.

First up The Master Key by Masako Togawa, a creepy Japanese detective novel set in a single ladies apartment block. 

French author Michel Tournier won 1970 Le Prix Goncourt for his novel The Erl King which was a best seller here in Australia at that time. A black, savage novel of a misfit forced to serve the Germans as a prisoner of the Third Reich.

Something of a curiosity is Echo by Violet Trefusis. Violet Trefusis is best known as the lover of Vita Sackville-West and was the daughter of Edward VII’s mistress, Alice Keppel. Echo is a romance based on her affair with Sackville-West. A classic of gay literature.

Possibly the finest of the writers in this post, is Rose Tremain, who has long been one of my favourite authors. I therefore have most of her books in my collection, mostly paperbacks, but at least three hard cover first editions. I recently picked up on a bargain table, a signed copy  her novel The Road Home. What distinguishes her books for me is how each of them is totally different to the others and how pristine is her prose style along with her skill in creating endearing and vivid characters . My favourites among her novels are Restoration, Music & Silence and Sacred Country (which has gone missing, but I have managed to acquire a Kindle version).

And finally for this entry, The Love Department by William Trevor. It’s a King Penguin edition of this 1966 novel, so has a rather splendid cover.

Next – the final post, for now, on general fiction before I launch into Crime.

General Fiction – Arturo Perez Reverte, Jean Rhys, George Saunders, Carol Shields, Susan Sontag, Patrick Suskind, Graham Swift, Steve Szilagyi

Arturo Perez Reverte, though not a household name, is quite well known as the author of The Dumas Club and many other books. I have several of his novels, including The Dumas Club below. The Dumas Club was made into the film by Roman Polanski. Called The Ninth Gate, it totally ignored the Dumas portion of the book, and concentrated instead on the quest for the mysterious magic book.

A writer of mostly depressing books, Jean Rhys is best known for the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, a sort of prequel to Jane Eyre, telling the story of Rochester’s mad wife.

George Saunders on the other hand writes weird, funny sad stories of dysfunctional persons, set in his own off beat universe. CivilWarLand In Bad Decline contains the stories "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz" and “Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror", which sort of gives you an idea of his style. Pastoralia includes the superb short story The Falls available here on online.

Now you don’t hear much about Canadian writer Carol Shields these days, no doubt because she passed away in 2003. Her novel The Stone Diaries won the Pulitzer Prize and several other awards in 1993. I recently reread the three of her books I could find in my library and enjoyed them enormously. I thought i had a copy of her novel The Republic of Love, but have yet to unearth it. Happenstance is actually two novels, back to back, telling firstly the wife’s story, then the husband’s or the other way around if you so wish.

The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag is the superbly written story of vulcanologist Sir William Hamilton and Emma Hamilton who became the mistress of Lord Horatio Nelson.

Patrick Suskind is famous for just one book – Perfume The Story of a Murderer, published in 1985.

English writer Graham Swift is fairly well known and won the Booker Prize in 1996 for his novel Last Orders. My favourite of his books is Waterland, which alas I can no longer find on my bookshelf. I have others…

And to end this post, the wonderful Photographing Fairies by Steve Szilagyi, loosely based on the Cottingley Fairies. It’s written with blithe insouciance, a style that belies the darker nature of the story.

I’m drawing to the end of this particular part of my book collection, but will go back to it later on, as there are still heaps of interesting fiction books to scan.

Coming up next will be “T” writers then “W” to “Y” after that.

General Fiction – Lawrence Norfolk, Robert Nye, Robert C. O’Brien, Charles Palliser, Mervyn Peake, Juan Perucho , Jayne Anne Phillips, Popol Vuh & Amanda Prantera

Lemprière's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk is an unusual and complicated historical novel described in Wikipedia as “starting out as a detective story and mixing historical elements with steampunk-style fiction It imagines the writing of Lemprière's dictionary as tied to the founding of the British East India Company and the Siege of La Rochelle generations before”.

Robert Nye’s imaginative and clever The Memoirs of Lord Byron is quite a wonderful confection, written in a style that one imagines would be Byron’s had his memoirs not been destroyed on his death.

Robert C. O’Brien is the author of several award winning children’s books, his best known being Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser is a Dickensian mystery set in Victorian times. A best seller in its day, it is a complex sprawling monster of a book.

Look what I found lurking in the general fiction shelves – Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor by Mervyn Peake. This is a 1973 edition published by Academy Editions.

An unusual magic realist vampire novel - Natural History by Catalan author Juan Perucho.

Jayne Anne Phillips book of short stories Black Tickets, won her the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and has since become a classic. This King Pengiun edition has a rather classy cover by Russell Mills.

I seem to have this edition of Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Ancient Maya, no doubt acquired during my New Age phase in the 1970s.

And finally for this post, the novels of Amanda Prantera. The first of her books that I read was Strange Loop, an elegant and haunting gothic tale of a werewolf . The Cabalist, a spooky metaphysical thriller is her second novel and well worth the effort to seek out and read. All Prantera’s early books are interesting and unusual novels, (and I dare say her later ones too) but my favourite still is Conversations with Lord Byron on Perversion 163 years after His Lordship’s Death.

Next - “R” to “S” writers