Desperate plea: need a cracking book to read...

[LadyThompson]

Ok, I like literary fiction (favourite authors John Updike, Evenlyn Waugh, Graham Green and Jonathan Coe); I like comic novels; however, I will also read the occasional page turner (say, by David Nicholls) and I even read (and thoroughly enjoyed) the dreaded Twilight books.

I need something that is going to hook me in. Stylishly written would be great, but, as I say, I read and enjoyed the Twilight books Old or new, it doesn't matter. Please help!

Anything by Douglas Coupland is worth reading I think (esp All Families are Psychotic and Miss Wyoming) and also David Mitchell's stuff. Neil Gaiman has written some good books too but the only ones I can remember are Smoke and Mirrors (short stories) and Stardust (now filmed and on tv last week). All my books are still boxed since we moved last year and I miss rereading them

Gaiman - 'Anansi Boys' is my favourite but 'American Gods' good too and "Miss Wyoming' is the best of Coupland's imho. And another one too but I can never remember which one: it may be Life After God.

One day I think Coupland will write an utterly perfect book (if he stops trying to be too clever, as he has been doing in his most recent ones) - he hasn't yet but he deffo has the potential as he has just the right mix of scathing urbanity and tenderness.

yes, anasi boys var good

The Forgotten Garden (just fab)
The Wedding officer (makes me want to go to Italy for the food)!
The Island (Makes me want to go to Greece for the food)!!
A Thousand Splendid Sons
The Kite Runner

Here's one I always recommend - Woman's World by graham Rawle, I think.

Very funny in parts with a fast-moving, funny but at times quite painfully sad plot. A rollicking read.

did you ask what The Gargoyle was about there lady T? this is what it says on the opening page.

"The nameless and beautiful narrator the The Gargoyle is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and wakes up in a burn ward, undergoing the totures of the damned. his life is over. he is now a monster.
but in fact it is only the beginning. On day Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles enters his life and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly burned mercenary and she was a nun and scribe who nursed him to health in the famed monastery of Engelthal. As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion and related equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Greenland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life and finally to love"

it sounds a bit twee there, but really isnt. its a great read and really beautifully written. i really enjoyed it.

Thanks, it sounds good...rather original.