Books |
11 Short Novels, None More Than 225 Pages
By
Published: Aug 02, 2018
Category:
Fiction
Short novels. What I write. What I like best. Some go down easier than others. But all can be finished before midnight.
Paolo Coelho: The Alchemist
In an unnamed time, a Spanish shepherd named Santiago guides his sheep into an abandoned church for the night. There he has a puzzling dream: While he tends his sheep, a child appears and suddenly transports him to the pyramids of Egypt, where, he is told, he will find a hidden treasure — but just before he finds it, he wakes up. And then… 197 pages.
Arthur C. Clarke: Childhood’s End
It’s the end of the world. The kids are alright. Possibly even better than Clarke’s other project. You know: “2001.” 200 pages.
Elizabeth Strout: My Name Is Lucy Barton
Three weeks into her hospitalization, Lucy looks up to see her mother sitting in a chair at the foot of her bed. It’s a stunning surprise — her mother’s never taken a plane. But Lucy’s husband has asked her to come, and there she is, an intensely private woman suddenly turned into a companion and confidante. Ann Patchett: “I believed in the voice so completely I forgot I was reading a story. I felt like I was being pulled aside by a friend who was saying, ‘Look, there’s something I have to tell you.’” 191 pages.
James M. Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice & Double Indemnity
The elements of his books are easily understandable: an unhappily married woman, a susceptible single man, a primal crime, and one very determined investigator.
“Postman” runs 116 pages.
“Double Indemnity” fills 115.
You can read them both in an afternoon.
The novels of Mohsin Hamid
I think he’s the most important novelist on the planet.
“Exit West.” 250 pages
“How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.” 225 pages
“The Reluctant Fundamentalist.” 191 pages
Muriel Spark: The Driver’s Seat
“She will be found tomorrow morning dead from multiple stab wounds, her wrists bound with a silk scarf and her ankles bound with a man’s necktie, in the grounds of an empty villa, in a park of the foreign city to which she is traveling on the flight now boarding at Gate 14.” 112 pages.
Thomas McGuane: Ninety-two in the Shade
Thomas Skelton is young, attractive, super-smart — picture Peter Fonda. And yet Skelton throws over graduate work in biology to repair to Key West and become a fishing guide. You don’t just get a skiff and start booking clients. Not when one of the other guides is Nichol Dance, who came to Key West after killing a stable boy in Kentucky. In the matter of Thomas Skelton he couldn’t be clearer: Skelton cuts into his business, he’s going to die. 197 pages.
Jean Rhys: After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
It’s the late 1920s, and Julia’s in Paris, where her nightly companion is a bottle rather than a man. But now comes a lawyer’s letter, with a check for 1,500 francs, five times the usual amount: This is her final payment. Mr. Mackenzie is cutting Julia off. So Julia meets… another man. 191 pages.
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Last Tycoon
Monroe Stahr is based on Irving Thalberg, head of production at MGM in the late 1920s and 1930s. Thalberg was a realist — the ultimate realist. For more than a decade, he assembled hit movie after hit movie. His success was measured each weekend in box office receipts. He was never healthy; he worked himself to death at 37. And Shahr, like Thalberg, was a ”boy genius.” “Not half a dozen men have been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads,” Fitzgerald wrote. Stahr could. 192 pages
LIFE SUPPORT
Anthelios with Mexoryl
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Hot stays hot. Cold stays cold. For hours and hours and hours…
