My Favourite Books

Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made On is having a book giveaway: He is giving away a copy of each of his two favourite books (American Gods by Neil Gaiman and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card), plus a copy of Scar Night by Alan Campbell. To be entered, just leave him a comment saying what your two favourite books are, or write a post about it in your journal and link to it in the comments.

One of my favourite books is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Middlesex is the story of Cal, a hermaphrodite who grows up as a girl and is turned into a boy later in life. But more than that, it is a family saga, starting when Cal’s grandparents emigrated from Greece to Detroit, and following the family for three generations.

One of the reasons why I loved this book so much is how beautifully written it is. There is no author whose way with words I admire as much as Jeffrey Eugenides'. But of course it’s not only how he writes, it’s also what he writes about. Middlesex is part family saga, part fictional memoir, part historical novel, but most of all it is an extremely personal story about people’s deepest secrets, about their vulnerabilities, about their fears and the things that make them feel crippled. And this he conveys better than anyone. He writes about things like incest, gender dysphoria or teenage sexual experiences with such grace, such delicacy and such vulnerability that they become moving rather than shocking. Things that might be vulgar if written by another writer are beautiful in Jeffrey Eugenides’ hands.

At first glance one would think that the topic of this book is very specific, but what we find in it is, well, human emotions. I haven’t been through any of the things Cal went through, yet I could relate to his feelings a lot of the time. This is what the best literature does: it finds the universal in the particular.

My other favourite book is Death: The High Cost of Living, a comic by Neil Gaiman. To be honest I could also have picked Stardust or Neverwhere or Brief Lives or Anansi Boys or another one of Neil Gaiman’s books, but I had to go with one, and this one does hold a special place in my heart. It’s a Sandman spinoff, but you don’t need to have read the series to understand and enjoy the story. It's just that one of the main characters is Death of the Endless.

The book tells us how one day every century Death takes the form of a mortal girl, to better understand the lives she ultimately has to take. In New York City, Death meets a boy named Sexton, who is thinking of committing suicide. As they spend the day together, Sexton learns to appreciate the enormous privilege of being alive. The story is dark and sweet and uplifting all at the same time. Death is a truly memorable character, and reading it made me wish she were real so I could meet her. I think all of us could use a friend like her sometimes. This is more or less what Tori Amos says in her beautiful introduction to the book.

Apparently there is going to be a movie version of this book in the near future, and Neil himself is supposed to be directing it, with Guillermo Del Toro producing. I would be extremely worried if it were being done by anyone else, but this way there’s no way it won’t be great. I am really looking forward to it.