Disorientation has me swimming against the current. The depths of the ocean call my name. There are no Angels down here.
A circle of light draws me to the surface. Bursting through, a wave crashes against my chest and sweeps me onto a foreign beach. There is no sign of the wreckage. I am marooned in complete isolation.
Days blur into weeks and all I can think about is story. The flawless novels whose stories have seeped into my skin and defined me. None more so than the three treasures I ache to read. Their pages are the only rescue I seek. Perched on the sand, gazing at the horizon, I know they will haunt and inspire me for the rest of my days.
American Tabloid by James Ellroy
An exhilarating account of the JFK presidency featuring a stellar cast from: Howard Hughes; Sam Giancana; J Edgar Hoover; Jack Ruby; Jimmy Hoffa; the Kennedy Brothers; and one of the truly great fictional characters: Pete Bondurant. Written in an incomparable hard boiled prose of staccato style, it stretches across a vast canvas of interwoven story, as it hurtles towards my favourite final sentence. A denouement whose ultimate punctuation left me breathless, and certain that I will never read a better novel.
The Stand by Stephen King
A post-apocalyptic epic about the surviving 0.6% of the world’s population who must take a stand against the forces that seek to destroy them. The enormous empthatic cast allows for readers to cherish their own personal favourites as the battle between good and evil escalates. Throughout this breathtaking scope it is littered with a multitude of iconic images that have influenced countless movies and television shows since. So that after only a few short chapters I found myself reading just five pages a day to savour a novel that is a tour de force of storytelling, and an undeniable masterpiece.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The morality tale of Raskolnikov’s journey from murder to redemption, is a gripping psychological study of the human condition in the midst of extreme circumstances. The existentialist nature of the novel propelled me into its pages while I read Philosophy at University, for here was a character redefining the boundaries of ethics and testing the philosophical questions we studied. So that anytime I huddle in the cold I still always think of Raskolnikov and smile. His quest is so utterly mesmerising it remains the only novel that upon finishing I turned to page 1 and began reading again.