Sunday, September 26, 2010

Val McDermid's top ten Oxford novels

Val McDermid won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award for The Mermaids Singing (1995).

Her latest novel released in the US is Fever of the Bone.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten Oxford novels. One title on the list:
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

I was instantly seduced by Waugh's portrait of the collision between a decent middle-class chap and a dysfunctional bunch of Catholic toffs. Although superficially I had nothing in common with his characters apart from studying at Oxford, I couldn't avoid all sorts of emotional identification with them. This is the quintessential novel of Oxford gilded youth flying too close to the sun.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Learn about the fictional character who McDermid think she most resembles.

--Marshal Zeringue