My life’s library card

If my son would come up to me tomorrow and say, “Poppa, I’m going to start my own home library, and I have 27 shelves to fill up with contemporary, living fiction authors. Who would you recommend on a per shelf basis?” My reply would be — “Hey, The Philippine Star is celebrating its 27th anniversary, and to celebrate that I made a list of 27 such writers! It’s in my Sunday Allure column — What a coincidence!” And so, here’s the list, and in no particular order:

1. Julian Barnes — Urbane, intelligent wit and exacting use of words, this is Julian Barnes, a writer’s dream. The Englishman won the Man Booker in 2011 for The Sense of an Ending, but I’ll remember him best for 1984’s Flaubert’s Parrot.

2. Ian McEwan — He may have started his career with Gothic short stories, but novels like Atonement and his 1998 Man Booker-winning Amsterdam proved him the master of the internal dialogue, of brooding, enigmatic protagonists thrust in unusual situations.

3. Kazuo Ishiguro — Japanese-born but raised in England, Ishiguro is noted for his deep sense of pathos, and how his first person narratives reveal flaws and weaknesses with dazzling accuracy. The Remains of the Day is still his best-loved novel.

4. David Mitchell — Forget the film adaptation of his novel, Cloud Atlas. Mitchell is meant to be read for his dizzying multi-strand narratives that intersect and play on each other with subtlety and élan. Number9dream is still my favorite among his dense novels.

5. James Ellroy — Remember the film L.A. Confidential? Here’s the author of the sprawling novel. Intricately plotted, and marked by staccato dialogue, Ellroy is today’s answer to Pulp Fiction. The Black Dahlia and American Tabloid are among my favorites.

6. William Boyd — A sophisticated writer who still knows how to “fold up his sleeves,” Boyd first came to my attention with his fish-out-of-water, Englishman in the deep-south comedy Stars and Bars. He’s been tapped to write Solo, the new James Bond novel.

7. Christopher Brookmyre — Here’s my guilty pleasure No. 1: crime fiction that’s loaded with sarcasm and wit. Brookmyre is a Scottish writer who also dabbles in politics, social commentary and comedy. He recently turned to sci-fi; but Boiling a Frog, about corruption, still takes the cake!

8. Tash Aw — A gifted Malaysian writer, Aw first came to my attention with The Harmony Silk Factory, which took on modern Asia, colonial heritage and socio-economic realities in one fell swoop. His latest, Five Star Billionaire is set in Shanghai, about Malaysians seeking their fortune.

9. Carlos Ruiz Zafón — If ever there were novels meant to be directed by Guillermo del Toro, Zafon’s novels are crying for the treatment. Crime and noir elements, mixed with fantasy and his love for books, make Zafon’s stories ache and yearn, to our reading enjoyment.

10. Miguel Syjuco — Miguel may just have one novel to his name, but Ilustrado won the Man Asian Literary prize as a manuscript a few years ago. So while the likes of F. Sionil Jose and Jessica Hagedorn are still out there, we had to have a Filipino my son could better relate to.

11. Don Winslow — Crime fiction set in California doesn’t come much better than in Don Winslow’s novel. The film adaptation of Savages gives us just a hint of the kind of incendiary power that pulses through his novels. Read The Power of the Dog and The Death and Life of Bobby Z.

12. Julian Fellowes — Wonderfully British, Fellowes’ novels dissect the upper class and starchy British attitude. His novels Snobs and Past Imperfect are true reading pleasures. And just so you know, he’s the writer of the hit TV series Downton Abbey, and the film, Gosford Park.

13. Patrick McGrath — My absolute favorite black comedy has to be McGrath’s The Grotesque. His Spider was adapted into film by David Cronenberg, so that should give you an inkling of the kind of disturbing, macabre Gothic fiction that McGrath specializes in.

14. Kate Atkinson — Subtle, densely plotted, with numerous twist and turns, Atkinson writes like a woman possessed, and yet, there’s a familiarity that haunts us. She shot to fame with Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and her detective series are superb — read Started Early, Took My Dog.

15. Tom Wolfe — Modern fiction just can’t ignore the man in the white suit. Author of The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe has come the closest to writing a parable for our times. He’s an astute social observer and plots like a demon! Back to Blood is his latest.

16. Jonathan Franzen — Hailed as one of the better writers of the new generation, Franzen first shot to fame with such novels as Motherless Brooklyn and The Twenty-Seventh City (isn’t that title so apt for this feature?). While he does have a tendency to “overshoot,” one can’t deny the talent!

17. Haruki Murakami — Wildly humorous, very often surreal, very Japanese and yet universal in appeal, one just has to love Murakami’s work. While works such as 1Q84 got a lot of buzz, I still am partial to his earlier works, like A Wild Sheep Chase.

18. Michael Chabon — The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys “made” Chabon in literary circles; but my favorite, one I could share with my son when it first came out, is Summerland — a mythical, fantasy take on baseball!

19. Louis de Bernières — While Bernières will be best known for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a wonderfully literary romance novel; I look back to his South American trilogy as my favorites, when, by his own admission, he was a “Gabriel García Márquez parasite.”

20. Matthew Pearl — This is guilty pleasure No. 2: historical fiction that oozes with careful plotting, mystery and action. Just read the titles: The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow and The Last Dickens. Pearl loves his Boston, and sets his novels in this city with regularity.

21. Christopher Priest — Here is a novelist who also writes in the science fiction/fantasy genre with ease. You may remember the Christopher Nolan film adaptation of Priest’s novel The Prestige. That along the The Separation and The Extremes are my favorites.

22. Carl Hiaasen — Guilty pleasure No. 3 comes to us basking in Florida sunshine, where Hiaasen’s crime novels are set. What sets him apart is his offbeat humor and constant harping about the environment and ecological issues. From Skin Tight to Bad Monkey, all great reads.

23. Jess Walter — Citizen Vince and The Zero drew my attention to Walter’s writing. But what got me convinced was last year’s Beautiful Ruins. From 1960s Italy to modern-day Hollywood, this is one poetic, poignant trip of a lifetime — a novel that’s meant to be savored like fine wine.

24. Arthur Phillips — A relatively young writer, it was Prague and The Egyptologist that got me hooked on Phillip’s writing. He flits from subject to subject, and his latest, The Tragedy of Arthur, has him playing subtle and impressive writing tricks! He’s a five-time 1997 Jeopardy champion.

25. Mario Vargas Llosa — Peru’s grand “Man of Letters” well deserves his reputation, as well as his 2010 Nobel Prize win in Literature, I really loved Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter the first time I read it back in 1977.

26. Salman Rushdie — Modern literature and the fight against censorship still owe much to this talented writer. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is still a most impressive read, while The Satanic Verses was overshadowed by the fatwa that was levied against Rushdie’s life.

27. Neil Gaiman — Hard to find a better interpretation of modern Renaissance man, as Gaiman has written novels, short stories, comic books and graphic novels — all to acclaim. Stardust, American Gods and Coraline come to immediate mind when one thinks of Gaiman.

Feel bad because Stieg Larsson couldn’t make the cut because he passed away, as did some of my favorite Latin and South American authors. But still, I think the list above will go a long way in representing what contemporary fiction can be all about, the diversity of possibilities and how it has gone global.

Happy 27th, The Philippine Star!