This is part of an ongoing series where I write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.
‘I’ was always going to be a tricky letter of the alphabet, wasn’t it? A toss up between Isherwood and Ishiguro, neither of whom I’ve read a lot by. But it does mean that I’m not doing my usual thing of forgetting to include some of their books in the picture! I only have five books by Isherwood.
How many books do I have by Christopher Isherwood?
Look, I just said. Five. I don’t even know how many he wrote, but I have decided to stop buying them until I read a few more.
How many of these have I read?
Two – Mr Norris Changes Trains and Prater Violet. I definitely preferred the second of these, largely because I had a wildly different idea of Isherwood in my head than the German sex clubs of Mr Norris Changes Trains, which I thought would be a charming rural tale, for some reason. Fun story: I was reading Mr Norris Changes Trains on a train and, when I got up to get off at my station, discovered that the woman in front of me had also been reading it. I wish I’d said something, but I had to ‘disembark’ (as they put it) before I ended up in the wilds of Devon.
How did I start reading Christopher Isherwood?
I picked up the Folio Mr Norris Changes Trains first, largely because that print is lovely. I don’t have the Folio case for it, so the print is always on display. And he is the sort of author you see a lot in secondhand bookshops, so it has been pretty easy to pick them up cheaply over time.
General impressions…
Difficult to draw any conclusions from two books, of course – especially since I was pretty lukewarm about one, and really liked Prater Violet. He is one of those writers whose life seems to interest people more than his writing now – is that fair? Anyway, I’m keen to read the others I have – but not yet quite keen enough to get to them. Thank goodness they’re short!
From the ones I have, anything particular you’d recommend?
And I think I’ll have more to say about J :D