“Many films, little time,” my Letterboxd bio reads. It is no wonder, then, that I struggle to choose a favourite film, never mind the four Letterboxd permits. With the volume of books I read, choosing four literary favourites is even more difficult. But I have tried my best.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)
The ever-enigmatic Spark’s masterpiece is a shamefully underappreciated modern classic. It tells the story of Jean Brodie, an unorthodox teacher at an Edinburgh girls’ school, whose exotic yet controversial charm captures the minds of her influential pupils—the “Brodie set.” After the headmistress’s fruitless attempts to dismiss her, Miss Brodie’s reign ends only after one of her girls betrays her secrets. But who, and why? This taut and seductive novel was made into a brilliant 1969 film, and contains some of the best lines I have ever read. It should be a requirement for all Edinburgh residents to read it.
The Accidental by Ali Smith (2005)
Smith’s work is not for everyone. Her postmodernism and sometimes challenging format do not make it a beach read. Yet, The Accidental is irresistible. It charts the dramatic holiday of the bourgeois Smart family after an eccentric and mysterious stranger named Amber inserts herself into their lives. Amber, as she crosses boundaries and burrows into the minds of the Smarts, profoundly changes the family’s understanding of themselves. Although Amber shatters the family’s modus operandi, her shocking intrusion ultimately liberates the Smarts from their rather suffocating life. A mysterious novel short on neither praise nor stimulation.
Outline by Rachel Cusk (2014)
Another that is perhaps not for everyone, but that even my mum loves—a rare occurrence when I give her a recommendation. Cusk’s genre-bending novel centres on a narrator whose name is only revealed towards the novel’s end (best if I keep it quiet). She is a writer who finds herself in Athens teaching a writing course, who only reveals who she is through interactions with others. The combination of the intimate first-person narration and the elusive, sidelined female narrator is a hypnotic paradox. Dripping in gender roles and power dynamics, Outline questions what it means to be perceived, and how those around us shape who we are.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (2018)
The only book I re-read annually, Moshfegh’s dark comedy may sound familiar to many TikTok user. For those of us who actually read it and do not just post about it, though, it is a witty and side-splittingly funny satire of youth, beauty, and privilege. Set in New York in (mainly) the year 2000, the WASP-y unnamed narrator has almost everything material, but not much else. Retreating from society in an attempt to understand herself and the world around her, the narrator eventually propels herself into a year-long medicated sleep with the help of an amoral psychiatrist and a Hirst-like artist. In 2001, she wakes up to a new world and self. But what does this new life hold? An essential read in your early 20s.
Photo by Tom Buxton for The Student