The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

"I feared him more than it's possible to fear a mere man. Feared Him, loved Him, clamped my hands over my ears to stop His words that rang in my head even when He was far away, or sleeping. In the depths of my sleepless nights I would turn to the Bible for comfort, only to find myself regaled yet again. Unto the woman God said: I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is a wide-reaching novel. It's about white Western privilege and white Western guilt, the meddling of the first world in the third, the tyranny of religious fanatacism and of misogyny. It centers on Orleanna Price and her four daughters - Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May - and their hard life under the thumb of the family's patriach, Nathan, a Baptist missionary. At Nathan's behest the family moves to a village in the Congo, where they come undone under Nathan's harsh rule - made all the more intense by his inability to impose his beliefs on the Congolese people - the clash of cultures, political upheaval, and eventually a death. In the end, the family ends up scattered, some remaining in Africa, others returning to the United States, but always connected by their experiences in the Congo.

At the heart of the novel is the theme of one entity attempting to impose its will on another. First the Belgians and then the Americans impose their will on the Congo, attempting to tailor it to their own interests and turning it into a war zone of conflicting desires and stark brutality. Nathan attempts to force Christianity on the Congolese and eventually goes mad (if he could ever have been said to be truly sane) at his inability to make them accept the teachings of the Bible. For a time Nathan succeeds in ruling over the women in his life but, one by one, they turn away from him, their fear of him becoming outright hate. Kingsolver sets up Leah as a mirror to her father, beginning the novel as his most ardent disciple and ending it as his exact opposite. She comes to embrace the native way of life, to despise the foreign intervention which has massacred the African continent, and to have four sons, each of whom possesses qualities that remind her of herself and her sisters. Through her, as part of the true legacy that Nathan has left, he will be redeemed, though he hardly deserves it.

Kingsolver tells the story from the perspective of the wife and daughters, the wife relating her story far removed from the events, the daughters as the events are happening. The narrative voices of the daughters shift as they age and grow as people and as their perspectives change, so does the novel's view of the Congo and its people, becoming more nuanced, less simplistic. Kingsolver's prose style is strong and assured and incredibly effective and the novel itself is rich and poignant. The Poisonwood Bible is a wonderful book, beautifully rendered.

Les Misérables (1862)

"Certainly they appeared utterly depraved, corrupt, vile and odious; but it is rare for those who have sunk so low not to be degraded in the process, and there comes a point, moreover, where the unfortunate and the infamous are grouped together, merged in a single, fateful word. They are les misérables - the outcasts, the underdogs."

Victor Hugo's Les Misérables is at once an intimate story centering on a small cast of characters and more than a few coincidences, and a sprawling epic that takes as its subject the whole of France and the complexities of revolution. It focuses primarily on Jean Valjean, a convict turned hero several times over who spends the novel changing identities and eluding capture by the relentless Inspector Javert. The story also involves Cosette, the girl Valjean raises as a daughter, and Marius, a young idealist with whom Cosette falls in love. Long before they meet Cosette and Marius have a connection, though neither knows it: a man named Thénardier is believed to have rescued Marius' father after the Battle of Waterloo - a debt the elder Pontmercy is never able to repay and thus bequeaths to his son - and is the same man who abused young Cosette before she was rescued by Valjean. Like Valjean, Thénardier and his family change their identities whenever the walls are closing in, but unlike Valjean they live lives of disrepute, stealing and taking advantage of others. In the streets of Paris and beyond, these characters weave in and out of each others lives.

The story unfolds over a seventeen year period and against the backdrop of the events leading up to the June Revolution of 1832, in which both Marius and Valjean participate (though for very different reasons). The story is staggeringly ambitious and Hugo is meticulous when it comes to the details, no matter how small. This is somewhat problematic in that the minor tangents Hugo follows slows the flow of the story and presents unwanted distractions from the main thrust of the narrative. The characters are so well drawn and their struggles are so compelling that to be brought so deep into their experiences only to suddenly be confronted with, say, several chapters devoted to the history of the Paris sewers, is really disruptive. It isn't a big enough flaw to detract from the ultimate greatness of the novel, but it's a flaw nevertheless.

What really works in favour of Les Misérables is how thoroughly Hugo brings his characters to life. Valjean, in particular, and the moral struggles that he endures as he tries to live a good life and atone for past sins, is a character so totally fleshed out that he may very well walk off the page and into reality. Here, the details serve Hugo well, because without characters the reader comes to care about so much, the story would simply be a collection of historical facts strung together. It's much more than that, however, which is why the story is still so widely celebrated and continues to live on through countless adaptations on stage and screen. This is the kind of novel the word "classic" was made for.

Far From The Madding Crowd (1874)

"It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides."

Far from the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and is a story of country life, romance and tragedy. It centers on Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene, the former a steadfast suitor who, even after losing what little opportunity he may have had at making Bathsheba his wife, remains loyal to her. The latter is a fiercely independent woman determined never to be under the thumb of a man - husband or otherwise - and who has the misfortune of falling in love with Francis Troy, a handsome rogue whose lack of character she discovers much too late. The story also includes a third man - the farmer William Boldwood - whose indifference to Bathsheba is transformed to love after she plays a reckless joke on him and whose obsession with her sets up the novel's climax.

Hardy is a terrific writer of characters, particularly female characters. Bathsheba is spirited and complex and through her romantic entanglements Hardy explores the delicate balance that must be reached in order to achieve a successful union. Troy sparks her passion but his ultimate lack of consideration for her could lead to her ruin; Boldwood is a solid man who could provide her a comfortable life but because she feels nothing for him, a marriage to him would be emotionally unfulfilling. Oak is (perhaps) the midway point between the two extremes, but for much of their acquaintance she simply cannot bring herself to consider him. In the hands of a lesser storyteller all of this might be mere soap opera, but Hardy makes it incredibly compelling. The only real problem with the novel is that Oak is a little too saintly, lacking in the weaknesses that plague many of Hardy's other characters, and so he seems less human.

Tragedy and Hardy seem to go hand in hand, but Far from the Madding Crowd is different from his other novels like Jude the Obscure or Tess of the D'Urbervilles in that it has a (somewhat) happy ending. There is a great deal of darkness in the story but it is not an unrelentingly grim tale and Hardy's prose, as always, is beautiful and the narrative flows easily, drawing the reader not only into the lives and minds of its main characters, but also into the community that surrounds them. It's a terrific novel from one of the masters of English literature.