Mumsnet Talk

I need a book, an important book, perfectly written, excelent plot. By a woman.

I thought of Mrs Dalloway
Beloved
the grass is singing

but what do you think?

It is my choice next month and I want to silence the pig who said this, Women don't write important novels'

The problem being my mind is blank (sleepless nights) and I cannot think of a really exceptional novel to smite him with...

help

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood is a fine writer. Handmaid's tale is a classic.

Any Jane Austen obv

The chap is a loon

oooooh at x posts

The Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood

Wuthering Heights
or The Bluest Eye

Consensus there then

Does he mean self-important novels? I struggle with the idea that there is a self-evident canon of 'important' novels. Does he mean novels that deal with the big themes, or the fundamental problems of existence or other such pompous tripe?
Or just novels that are so bloody boring that you have to feel they have done you good just by getting through them?
Ask him to define his terms.

Mary Shelley Frankenstein

George Eliot Middlemarch

Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

To kill a mocking bird Harper lee(?)

OMG. What a twat.

I also love Margaret Atwood, but Alias Grace is my fave. I go back to it over and over again.

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson is amazing. Such beautiful prose.

Beloved by Toni Morrison.
"Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Diremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don’t know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all the way.

It was not a story to pass on."

Still makes me weep inside.

beloved is a very important book.

rose tremain the long road home is fab as is music and silence

fugitive pieces by anne michaels is stupendous.

the vintner's luck by elizabeth knox

anything by a l kennedy

lets shut the pig up.

3 of the most important novels ever written were by women, wuthering heights, pride and prejudice and jane eyre.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt! If you ignore her name, it's perfectly executed.

what a tit. he has dh and i riled up now.

To Kill a Mockingbird.

Possibly the most important novel ever written. So perfect, she wrote no more.

grass is singing-doris lessing
rebecca-daphne du maurier
to kill a mockingbird -harper lee
frankenstein -mary shelley

bastard !
Jane Austen ! Maggie Gee !

clearly to kill a mockingbird would shut him right up.

but somehow i feel something more contemporary would be a better quality of victory.

(Disclaimer, haven't read any of these but they are all widely regarded as 'important' ie wideranging social comment etc)
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
The Women's Room - Marilyn French

Also pretty big, stood-the-test-of-time books (which I have read and liked)
Most Jane Austen
Another vote for The Handmaid's Tale
Another vote for To Kill A Mockingbird

What does this bellend think of as an Important Book, though? Martin Amis? Charles Dickens? Nick Hornby and all the rest of the self-obsessed masturbators?

white teeth zadie smith

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. The description of his grief at his son's death makes me shrivel inside with imagined pain.

Middlemarch. 'One of the few English novels written for grown-up people' (Victoria Woolf).

What a tit.

frigging proust i imagine. or conrad.

The tit would probably get his rocks off with the Well Of Loneliness

silas marner by george eliot