The Guardian recently(ish) published a list of ‘The 100 Best Novels’. The way they compiled it was quite interesting, they asked 170 writers and literary types to list their top ten novels and then assigned the ranking by how many times they appeared on these authors lists, weighted by how high the person had listed them.
Of course these lists aren’t worth taking seriously, but they are fun for a bit of a chat.. which I will now do.
The eighteenth century is not highly represented. Poor ol’ Defoe, sometimes called ‘father of the novel’ doesn’t get a mention. Nor did Eliza Haywood or Samuel Richardson. My personal favourite novel, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones doesn’t make the list either. Jane Austen has four, but she’s more long-eighteenth century. The only actual eighteenth century book represented is The Lives and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which got into the top twenty, with seventeen of the writers putting it on their list.
One of the things most fascinating about the list is to look at who voted for a book, and also to look at their lists to see what else they picked. Jennifer Egan, writer of Visit from the Goon Squad puts Tristram Shandy as her 9th pick and actually has Clarissa as her third, I presume not many others picked it. Nina Stibb put it 5th (and put Ducks, Newburyport as her first, she’s obviously a bit of a masochist). Sandra Newman, the author of Julia, a retelling of 1984, puts Tristram Shandy as her first, many of the other authors had it between 5th and 8th. The editor of The Scotsman put it at 2.
The overall winner is Middlemarch, and it seems by quite a high margin, with a third of the people asked putting it on their list, many in the top 5. There’s been a mini outcry about it, with some people claiming to have not even heard of it. To be honest, it makes sense to me, and it also makes sense why Tristram Shandy does so well against its eighteenth century brothers and sisters - this is a list created by writers.
Middlemarch is not quite the page-turner, but it is truly experimental, telling the reader off for becoming too invested in any particular character over an investment in the general network of people. Although Middlemarch’s writing is not as experimental and flashy as Tristram Shandy, its purpose is far more daring. The books on this list are ones enjoyed by people who have read many books and written a few, they want things that go off the beaten path and succeed - they are after something a bit odder, possibly less satisfying but more challenging than the average.
I enjoyed the list, I’ve read 39 of them, and all but 1 of the top 20. Of course I’d have loved Tom Jones to have got in, had Catch 22 do much better and In Search of Lost Time do much worse, but I like the idiosyncrasies of this list, 3 Sebalds, 4 Austens, reams of Woolf. It’s a strange list.
