Publishers Weekly Picks Ten Best Novels by Poets
At Publisher's Weekly, writer Naja Marie Aidt lines up "10 best novels by poets," and it's not what you'd think (no New York School writer in the bunch!); instead, an eccentric list that includes Inger Christensen's Azorno, Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina, Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, Mina Loy's Insel, and six more. Here's what Aidt has to say about some of these books, from a genre we're quite fond of:
2. The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul - In a perfect balance between crime fiction and the literary novel, the prize-winning and internationally acknowledged Danish poet Pia Juul tells the thrilling story of Beth and Halland. It is characteristic of Juul’s dry and dark sense of irony that she reveals the name of her victim already in the book’s title. Nevertheless, The Murder of Halland is a true page-turner, written in powerful sentences till the very last period.
3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - When I recently reread The Bell Jar, I was struck by the variation in Plath’s syntax, the complexity of her metaphorical language and her bottomless sorrow. Personal and political grief are interlaced on so many levels, beginning with the opening lines’ depiction of the electrocution of the Rosenbergs – which is connected to electroshock therapy later in the story.
4. The Notebook by Agota Kristof - If I had to choose only one favorite writer it would probably be Kristof. The Notebook is the first novel of her trilogy on war and identity, following identical twin brothers Lucas and Claus as they are placed with their not at all nice grandmother in a small village somewhere in Eastern Europe to hide from the war. The novel is as simply written as a child’s notebook, but it has the most brutal beauty to it. The lack of sentimentality is striking. Part of the reason why this book is so unforgettable is that Kristof chooses to write in the first person plural, narrating the entire book in the voice of the twins’ indivisible “we.” I recommend reading the entire trilogy to see how Kristof gracefully explores second person narration as well. Taken together, the three books make up a sort of a labyrinth. When you finish the third novel you want to go back to the first to solve the mystery… Reading The Notebook many years ago persuaded me for the first time of the necessity of the novel – being then pretty arrogant, I had seen prose as the stupid younger sister of poetry!
Read on at Publisher's Weekly.