A dream - or two - of Manderley, by Ali Bacon
For the last few months I’ve been helping with a teenage book-club and the breadth of reading of these 12 – 14 year-olds is awe-inspiring. Pride and Prejudice and The Help get equal billing with comic books, Harry Potter and Maze Runners . What was I reading at that age? Apart from school Home Readers and a few children's classics, m ostly the novels loved by my parents and already on our bookshelves at home. I mean authors like Howard Spring , Nevil Shute, Hammond Innes, Alistair McLean. Those we have loved This brought me to think about the lifespan of popular novels, books regarded as de rigeur by one generation and elevated to classics or simply neglected by the next. I mean is anyone still reading Rider-Haggard – adventure novels par excellence of my parents’ generation? Will The Thorn Birds , possibly the most popular novel of my twenties, still be around when my own copy has been consigned to the bin by grieving (I hope) offspring? Is there ...