I’m going to do five per entry form now. But – another two for my first five:

4. The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
A post-acopcalyptic story about life in the fictional Theocracy of Gilead, a kind of crazy rightwing American State, where women who are not married and staying married are forced into life as breeders for “properly” married couples, amongst other injustices. The protagonist is Offred, who was renamed since she is now “Of Fred”, whose lover was seperated from her, and whose child from an earlier partnership was removed by the State and given to strangers to raise shortly after the coup that changed her society from one like our own to what it is now. Atwood writes alot in her works about the structures of hierarchy and partiarchy, and about systems of control, particularly those around women. Although she is often heavy-handed, this is one of her best novels on these themes, IMO.

5.Vanity Fair by Thackeray
A period novel without a hero! I love pert, clever Becky Sharp and her nasty machinations, and can’t help but feel sorry for her, such is Thackeray’s skill. This novel is VERY thick, but don’t let it put you off – the prose itself isn’t particularly dense, and the characters are mainly rogues, villains or blackguards, the exceptions being sops and idiots for the more clever characters to use and abuse. Thackeray has a great talent for exposing, caricaturing and ridiculing average people’s foibles, and this is delightful, wicked fun.