This week is Read Outside the Box Week. Find out more about the project here.
Since the moment she read the manuscript Lindsey had been trying to get me to read Cataract City by Craig Davidson. “It’s amazing, it’s going to end up on the Giller list for sure.” she said. But I just couldn’t do it, a story revolving around the friendship of two boys, plus dog-racing, bare-knuckle fighting, and night-time smuggling? It certainly didn’t sound like what I normally read.
I’m not opposed to dark novels by any stretch — I enjoy mysteries and thrillers and true to life non-fiction as well but I don’t tend to gravitate to so-called “guy’s” books — novels with stories that are seemingly male. And then Lindsey was right, and Cataract City was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the pressure was building and clearly it was an awesome book.
Needless to say, Lindsey was positively gleeful when we came up with this week long project, I’m pretty sure sure I heard her cackle right before she said “And now Jess, you have to read Cataract City. It’s so good. READ IT!”
And you know what? She was right. It was an intense, gritty and emotional read but it was fantastic. Owen and Duncan’s journey is heartbreaking and breathtaking. Craig Davidson unfolds their story and their miseries in a masterful fashion and I just couldn’t stop reading. It really spoke to me as a wonderful human story but revealed itself slowly like the best of mysteries.
So I have to say thank you to Lindsey, she opened my eyes to a whole new genre of books that I unfairly had written off I’ve thought of a number of books that I will be revisiting and listed them below but I’d love recommendations from you of other books to add!
1. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy’s masterwork, Blood Meridian, chronicles the brutal world of the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the mid-nineteenth century.
2. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force.
3. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk’s darkly funny first novel tells the story of a godforsaken young man who discovers that his rage at living in a world filled with failure and lies cannot be pacified by an empty consumer culture.
4. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh’s controversial first novel, set on the heroin-addicted fringe of working-class youth in Edinburgh, is yet another exploration of the dark side of Scottishness.
5. Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane
An epic novel of unrequited dreams and forestalled lives, Red Dog, Red Dog is set in the mid-1950s, in a small town in the interior of B.C. in the unnamed Okanagan Valley. The novel focuses on the Stark family, centring on brothers Eddy and Tom, who are bound together by family loyalty and inarticulate love.
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