while you're ahead…

The colour purple by Alice Walker.

Published in 1982, it won the Pulitzer Price for Fiction in 1983.

It is such a well known and famous book I’m not going to sit here and critique it… it would be ridiculous, I’m just kind of ashamed it took me so long to read it, although to be fair I was 12 in 1982 and I wouldn’t give it to my 12 yr old to read it.  (Especially because I don’t have a 12yr old anymore… he’s 13… but I wouldn’t give it to him yet anyway).

Powerful stuff.  Violence, racism, explicit content, social inequality, female inequality, it’s all there.  Not for the fain hearted even though, at the end of it all it’s a great book about humanity and love and friendship and integrity…

I was really bowled over by it.

I had seen the movie years ago and I thought I was prepared for the more hard hitting themes/scenes… but I forgot how more real words on a page can be… how they can enter your mind and stay there, simmering and singeing, scarring your brain.   It had the same  ‘punch to the solar plexus’ effect that Toni Morrison’s book have on me all the time.  Makes me ashamed to be human… make me terrible proud to be human too.  Hard to explain.

A must read.

 

2018   Mr Hanckock and the mermaid

2017 – Magari domain resto (Lorenzo Maroni)

2016 – Upstream (Mary Oliver)

2015   –  Reasons to stay alive (Matt Haig)

2014 – Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)

2013 – Careless people (Sarah Churchwell)

2012 – Wonder

2011 – The Paris Wife (Paula McLain)

2010

2009 – Let the great world spin (Colum McCann)

2008 – The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)

2007

2006

2005 – Never let me go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

2004 – American Gods (Nail Gainman)

2003

2002 – Everything is illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer)

2001

2000 – Coram Boy (Jamila Gavin)

1999

1998

1997 – Paradise (Toni Morrison)

1996 – Wilfred and Eileen (Jonathan Smith)

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991- Regeneration (Pat Barker)

1990 – Darkness visible (William Styron)

1989 – Like water to chocolate (Laura Esquivel)

1988

1987 – Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)

1986

1985­ – Oranges are not the only fruit (Jeanette Winterson)

1984  – Hotel du Lac (Anita Brookner)

1983 –  Heartburn (Nora Ephron)

1982  – The colour purple (Alice Walker)

1981

1980 – Emmeline (Judith Rossiter)

1979– The bloody chamber (Angela Carter)

1978

1977

1976

1975

1974

1973

1972

1971  – Reunion (Fred Uhlman)

1970  – A slipping down life (Anne Tyler)