10 Books to Inspire Your Next Trip to the United Kingdom
There are many reasons we read: to learn, to lose ourselves, to leave the worlds we're familiar with in order to discover new ones. In tribute to the transportive power of books, we're asking the staff members at some of New York City's best independent bookstores to recommend titles that will inspire your next trip. This month: 10 books that'll take you to the UK, chosen with help from Greenpoint bookshop WORD.
By Shoko Wanger
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
"I can't think of a better way to experience London than through the eyes of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway," Pullen says. "As she prepares for a party, we catch a glimpse not only into the psyche of a woman in the early 20th century, but also of a nation still reeling and recovering from The Great War."
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
It's difficult not to mention Dickens when discussing writing set in England; this novel, written between 1852 and 1853, is considered by many to be his best.
London Fields by Martin Amis
"I read this clever, unforgettable story as a 19-year-old college student who had no idea there was so much to learn about ales and lagers, darts and pubs," says store manager Molly Templeton. "In it, Nicola Six is going to be murdered—she's decided this herself. Who the murderer will be—the unsavory Keith Talent, the wealthy banker Guy Clinch—is just one of the novel's many mysteries."
"Here, unlike Mitchell," Northington says, "Zadie Smith zooms in on one particular location—NW, a working-class neighborhood in London. She looks long and hard at the lives of its residents, at the vagaries of city life, and at the crises of modern times."
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
WORD events director Jenn Northington recommends English novelist David Mitchell's latest, The Bone Clocks. "Not only does it hop from place to place—including London and Ireland—it also moves through time. Tying it all together is main character Holly Sykes, who keeps a stiff upper lip—she's one of my favorite protagonists of 2014."
Red or Dead by David Peace
Next, Northington points to David Peace's 2013 novel Red or Dead. "It tells the story of Bill Shankly's decorated run as manager of the football team Liverpool United, but it's about so much more than soccer," she explains. "It's about politics, obsession, community—plus, what could be more British than football?"
For fans of Orange is the New Black and Girl, Interrupted, inventory manager Emily Pullen recommends Jenni Fagan's critically acclaimed debut, The Panopticon. "Once you get used to the Scottish slang—and vulgarity—it's easy to get wrapped up in the story of Anais, a girl whom we meet in the back of a cop car on the way to a youth detention home," she says. "She's had a rough life, but we watch her come of age over time, and form bonds with her fellow detainees and staff from her facility."
The Humans by Matt Haig
Matt Haig's inventive 2014 novel centers around a Cambridge mathematician whose work has caught the attention and incited the concern of distant aliens. "So, naturally, the aliens send one of their own to inhabit his body, destroy the proof and anyone who knows about it, and dispose of his wife and teenage son," Pullen says. "The alien has preconceived notions of what humans are supposed to be like, and his observations of Cambridge academic society are both scathing and surprising."
Read Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic The Secret Garden—beloved by readers of all ages for over a century—for a time-traveling journey to England in the early 19th-century (and right back to childhood, too, when there was nothing in the world more enchanting than a secret).
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel "You may think you know Henry VIII. Read Wolf Hall anyway," Northington says. "Instead of focusing on the infamous and oft-divorced king himself, Mantel tells the story of the 16th century court from the point of view of an upstart politician and self-made man, Thomas Cromwell. The whims of kings are capricious, and being the one to grant them can make you powerful—and make you dead."