Books for Big Boys

All the Light We Cannot See (2014) Anthony Doerr The past seventy years, millions of stories have been told about the war, but Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See proves that here is still room for countless more stories. The story starts at the bombing of a small French village. Marie Laure, blind trapped and we feel for her. We feel for the blind girl who has nowhere to go, but the Nazi… Well, although he doesn’t seem like such a bad guy, he’s still a Nazi. Before we know how it ends, the story takes us back in time. To Paris, where we meet the girl who turns blind, but who’s taught to read Barile. What's more, here father makes a miniature of the city for her so that she can find her way. Doerr makes us feel her father’s love for her, which is truly a great achievement. But Doerr also takes us to Werner’s orphanage. We learn how his parents have died and we watch him as he falls in love with radios. He is destined for the mines, and as he dreams o...

Ragtime E.L. Doctorow 1976 MacMillan London Ltd This is the kind of books that makes you want to stand up and applaud, even before it is over. If you can read between the lines, in Ragtime you can see how the industrial revolution is changing the United States and the world after the turn of the twentieth century. The excesses of capitalism, from the extensive exploitation of labourers to the inevitable objectification of women, are wonderfully explained. It explains the onerous struggle of African Americans to civil rights, but also illuminates the era’s ideas about marriage and sex. Even if reading between the lines isn’t your thing, Ragtime will not disappoint. There is the story of a man who realises that his best years are behind him. We see his wife, who was born a century too early. And her brother, who’s proof that dreamers have always lived amongst us. And then there are the people who gave colour to that intriguing era of our history, be...