Reading List
Jessica Francis Kane
Novelist and Short Story Writer
Jessica Francis Kane’s first novel The Report reconstructed the 1943 Bethnal Green tube shelter disaster and the inquiry that followed, and Rules for Visiting sent a middle-aged university gardener to stay with four old friends. She has published two story collections alongside them. Her reading here is almost a monograph: three books by Penelope Fitzgerald and two by writers she groups with her, which tells you what she values, namely how much a novelist can leave out.
The Afterlife
Essays and Criticism
by Penelope Fitzgerald · 2003 · Essays
“That is when you turn to this collection, full of brilliant literary and personal essays .” — via Article
Beautyland
by Marie-Helene Bertino · 2024 · Fiction
“This beautiful novel about Adina, a girl not quite of this world, is my favorite novel of the past year.” — via Article
The Queen of the Tambourine
by Jane Gardam · 1991 · Fiction
“Gardam is well known for her Old Filth series, but this novel about a woman losing and then regaining her sense of self is not to be missed.” — via Article
According to Queeney
by Beryl Bainbridge · 2001 · Fiction
“This novel about Samuel Johnson captures the great man's personality with dexterity, humor, and compassion.” — via Article
The Means of Escape
by Penelope Fitzgerald · 2000 · Fiction
“Like her novels, the stories are precise and morally astute. They range across countries and ages, stretch from the historical to the supernatural , and are all mordantly funny.” — via Article
The Beginning of Spring
by Penelope Fitzgerald · 1988 · Fiction
“A city (Moscow), a landscape (winter giving way to spring), and a vanished time (pre-revolutionary Russia ) are all mastered in less than 200 pages.” — via Article