Known in the U.S. by the title: The Stranger.

Tom?

One of the best books I’ve read in many years. I thought the ties to Hamlet would make it trivial or too obvious, but it is about so much more than Hamlet, and the Hamlet parallels are handled so deftly, that I was enthralled the whole way through. Even the ending is perfect.

I read about 50 pages of this book. I found it a very depressing book about a very depressing (and depressed) character, so I decided to read something instead that would give me a little pleasure.+

Why does a book about a murder have to tell you who committed the murder? From the beginning it was clear that the little girl was not going to solve a crime committed before she was born. The book is a brilliant story of a little girl growing up with a family who has had to live through something horrible, and how she learned to cope.

OK, it was a quick fun read, and I got to check another book off the list. But there are lots of better children’s books, and why put this on the list and leave off “The Red Badge of Courage,” for example?

Beautifully written, but terribly sad. Reminiscent of Ian McEwan.

This book was very little help to me in reading GR. The section summaries did not summarize, and the explanations of the allusions did nothing to tie the book together.

I started this four times. This time I got almost halfway through with a little help from “A Companion to Gravity’s Rainbow” (which was really very little help). I was clearly not having fun—many pages had to be skipped because, while they were masses of useless information, they were also totally lacking in narrative appeal. I decided that since there are over 700 books on the list I have not read, I would go back to something that is a little bit of fun. When I’ve finished the other 1000, I’ll come back to this again.

Pretty good time travel SF. The ironic ending is wonderful.