Gripping classic to take on holiday! please i need ideas..

[McCloudismynewnameforawhile]

Something that is clever without being too intellectual.

Madame Bovary. Always Madame Bovary.

daphne du maurier
marian keyes
iris murdoch
laurie r king

Wild Swans

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

it's very long, you'll only need to take one book!

Anna Karenina. Don't be put off by the fact it's 19th century and Russian. It's as good as a soap.

Have a look at persephone books titles

here

I was gripped by The Priory by Dorothy Whipple recently.

More please, have read most of these.

Count of Montecristo (fab book, c**p movie)

Count of Montecristo, thank you,will add it to shortlist...

Vanity Fair.

Pride And Prejudice of couse!

But also:

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day
Lolita
The Good Soldier
Brideshead Revisited
Dracula
Frankenstein
The End Of The Affair

yep, finished Vanity Fair recently, and it was fun.

What was the book Vikram Seth wrote about his aunt and uncle? I loved that, but can't remember what it is called.

I just reread A Prayer for Owen Meany after many years.

Love in a Cold Climate/Pursuit of Love?

Or the Thorn Birds?

A Prayer for Owen Meaney - also fab (but then love just about anything by John Irving)
Hotel New Hampshire is something else

North and South

I second Anna Karenina if you havent read it before.

Confessions of Felix Krull, by Thomas Mann

The Way We Live Now (Trollope)

The Woman In White

I loved it

I'd second Love in a Cold Climate/The Pursuit of Love.

Forsyth Saga.

Middlemarch
The First Circle- Solzhenitsyn.
Great Expectations
I,Claudius

Also I would second recommendations for Woman in White and A Suitable Boy.

Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski, from Persephone Books.

The Weather in the Street - Rosamund Lehmann

Balkan trilogy and Levant trilogy - Olivia Manning

The Poisonwood Bible. Just finished it. Utterly brilliant, beautiful and moving.