Guest Post: Top 5 Books - by Elizabeth Buchan

JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte

The unmatched story of an orphan’s struggle to grow into maturity who, after suffering deprivation and abuse, survives to take charge of her life and family, all rolled up into a novel with high gothic drama and echoes of the fairy tale. Above all, its heroine stubbornly insists that, if she is poor and plain, she has a much as heart and soul as the richest and handsomest. It is great cry for equality.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

This shows the author on top form in which he uses his narrative skill to explore themes of guilt, retribution and redemption in such a clever and subtle way that one is almost persuaded that the novel is simpler than it is. Also the ending offers big questions for debate.

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

I still laugh and weep after several re-readings. The story of a buttoned-up travel writer whose son has died and whose wife has left him, and his subsequent emotional education at the hands of the chaotic Muriel shimmers with humanity and tenderness. Who else can write about ‘ordinary’ people with such freshness and insight? 

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

An extraordinary and complex novel. Filled with romantic longings, Emma a troubled young wife is married to a doctor in the French provinces and driven almost mad with boredom. In it, Flaubert drives deep into the female psyche, exposing intimate, pitiful and, ultimately, destructive fantasies.

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

This is an agonized, heartbreaking, sobering and haunting account of Vera Brittain’s experiences of the 1914-18 war which turned her into a life-long worker for peace. In her anger and grief, the author speaks for a wasted generation in particular and for the agony and stupidity of war in general.

About The New Mrs Clifton by Elizabeth Buchan
As the Second World War draws to a close, Intelligence Officer Gus Clifton surprises his sisters at their London home. But an even greater shock is the woman he brings with him, Krista - the German wife whom he has married secretly in Berlin.

Krista is clearly devastated by her experiences at the hands of the British and their allies - all but broken by horrors she cannot share. But Gus's sisters can only see the enemy their brother has brought under their roof. And their friend Nella, Gus's beautiful, loyal fiancée, cannot understand what made Gus change his mind about their marriage. What hold does Krista have over their honourable and upright Gus? And how can the three women get her out of their home, their future, their England?

Haunted by passion, betrayal, and misunderstanding these damaged souls are propelled towards a spectacular resolution. Krista has lost her country, her people, her identity, and the ties that bind her to Gus hold more tightly than the sisters can ever understand... 

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