This classic is one bleak journey into the human psyche. Those who have not read it may be familiar with the story from the frankly excellent Apocalypse Now (1979), a modern film adaptation which transports the setting from Belgian Congo and the brutality of the colonial regime to the relentless horror of Vietnam War era South East Asia. The fundamentals of the plot remain intact however, as will become clear to readers of Heart of Darkness; the real story revolves around eternal features of humanity, not the setting.

It follows the retelling of the harrowing adventures of Marlow, an English sailor who takes a job as a riverboat Captain in Belgian ruled Congo in 1899. The title reflects the old, colonial European idea of Africa as ‘The Dark Continent’, dangerous, full of mystery and twisted things far removed from civilisation, a place where adventure could be had, a place that Europeans should ‘civilise’. Heart of Darkness is a product of it’s time, hence the casual racism, which is a constant theme. That said Conrad’s novel is not really about Africa at all in the end. The real heart of darkness in this novel is that which lurks in human beings.

The story partially mirrors Joseph Conrad’s life, like Marlow he travelled to the Congo where he was to have commanded a river boat. In the end he caught a tropical disease and was invalided home, but several of Marlow’s experiences are retellings of Conrad’s, the beleaguered condition of their prospective commands upon arrival in Congo, for example.

The main presence in the story, other than Marlow himself, is Kurtz. This remarkable individual has set himself up as a ruler deep in the Congo, served and almost worshipped by native tribes, beyond the authority of the Belgians. Kurz arrived as a trader for the colonial authorities, gathering huge amounts of ivory and other natural resources, until he grew so powerful as to become a law unto himself. He is a man of deep charisma, described as a “universal genius”, respected and feared by those who know him. Kurtz is a fascinating character: the contrast between his early despatches, full of optimism and belief in education of the locals and the “white man’s burden”, and the horrors that Marlow discovers are marked. The power-mad genius represents the darkness that resides, in one way or another, inside us all.

Marlow takes a native crew from a reputedly cannibal tribe and a handful of white men he despises for their moral corruption on an odyssey up the Congo, to find Kurtz. They find death and desolation along the way and Marlow gains insight into the human condition, which depresses him deeply, leaving him a changed man.

Heart of Darkness is a brilliant book. It is only relatively short, and if you are anywhere near as impressed with it as I was it will not take you long at all! Very much worth a go though, the chilling character of Kurtz is a real classic. I would say don’t read it if you are feeling down though, it will not help! (Incidentally, Marlon Brando’s interpretation of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now is worthy of the character – superb.)

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, Penguin Classics (1899/2007)

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

 “She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tyre, rim and all.”

When trying to recommend Chandler it feels like your own words will never do him justice, you have no choice but to quote some of the slick, sublime descriptions. Evidently as a female character in the world of private detective Philip Marlowe you can go one of two ways, but women often end up being the key to the story – not in the typical damsel in distress way, more the conniving vixen out to destroy everyone around her.

I was drawn to this as the second Marlowe novel, and I had read the supremely cool The Big Sleep at A-Level, where I have to say, my teacher read it brilliantly. I was engrossed by the seedy, dark, corrupt, mysterious worlds Marlowe operated in, and the ending was captivating to the point that despite being regarded as a classic, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall could not do it justice in the film adaptation.

I’d argue Marlowe is the greatest literary detective, and yes, I’m including Sherlock Holmes in that one. Marlowe operates as a lone wolf, is a womaniser and in Farewell, My Lovely he takes on jobs for the sheer thrill of the ride.

The story of Farewell, My Lovely is thrown at the reader from the start; Marlowe observes Moose Malloy, a physically intriguing character, he has – oh what’s the point? I’ll quote Chandler again:

“He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck…Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a piece of angel food.”

Malloy is out of prison after a stitch-up and is on the lookout for Velma, his former fiancée. Marlowe tries to find Velma, and uncover the framing of Malloy, but to say he gets more than he bargained for doesn’t really cut it. Marlowe witnesses robberies, murders and is on the receiving end of some tough treatment himself.

Marlowe as a detective is completely relentless, and there is a perpetual sense of peril that his intrigue will be his downfall, and that’s what makes this so exciting. There are so many threads of the plot, and you know that they will come together at the end, but the endless contemplation of how that will happen is a real treat.

If you’re a fan of The Great Gatsby read Farewell, My Lovely or The Big Sleep. In my opinion you will soon realise that when it comes down to it, the supposed literary king of American cool does not hold up to the descriptive delights of Raymond Chandler.

Oh, go on then, have another quote:

 “You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and feel mean and discouraged and sneer at politicians, but there are a lot of nice people just the same. Take the guy that left that half bottle of whisky there. He had a heart as big as one of Mae West’s hips.”

Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler, Penguin (1940/2005)

When my friend passed this 624-page novel to me, starting it honestly felt like a bit of an epic endeavour: I am, admittedly, a very slow reader. It also didn’t help that it was set in, and describes, a period of political history in a country that I at that point had never visited and knew nothing about: 1970s India. However, I was also incredibly curious because the aforesaid friend had been reading the book for the past three weeks of our travels together, and I had been forced to sit next to her on trains, planes, buses and boats as she gasped with horror, laughed out loud and, eventually, finished the book with her hand clasped against her mouth with tears running down her face. Sworn to secrecy so as not to spoil it for me, she hadn’t breathed a word about the plot: but had thoroughly convinced me that this was a book I needed to read. Also, when she finally passed it to me, we were 2 hours into a 42-hour bus ride in Africa. So time was something I wasn’t short of…

I can honestly say that reading this novel was one of the most intense experiences I have had with a book. You are literally tossed between extremes of emotion, thrown back and forward through time, and transported into new worlds: both bewitching and unspeakably cruel. The story centres around four unlikely characters who are thrown together as a result of the tumultuous political and social circumstances in the present-day of the novel. However, as Mistry skilfully reveals the very different, and often very sad, back-stories that have led each of the characters to where they are now, the relationships formed between the four become all the more moving…

And yes, at the end, I cried. (It took me somewhat longer than the 42 hours of the bus journey…not least because the bus had no lights, and my head torch had packed-up). But the tears weren’t just because of the events that take place at the book’s conclusion. They were because suddenly, at that final moment, the whole of the book was brought crashing back into my head all at once: I remembered all of the terrible things that meant, it couldn’t have ended any other way; I remembered the parts that made me smile and laugh and forget about all the enormous, ugly, impossible things the characters are pitted against. It was overwhelming, to say the least…. my friend had to hold my hand.

If you have ever wanted to know anything about India, or contemporary history, or raw human survival and connection: READ THIS. I dare you.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry, Faber and Faber (2010)

Two nights ago I woke up after having a terrifying dream. I was sitting down in a hall surrounded by large open fields, the hall looked like an old school hall, and there were a panel of people sitting down some distance from myself. I knew these people were there to judge my sanity in some way but felt powerless to have any input on how they judged or viewed me. I just had to sit and wait and in the process felt extremely vulnerable and frightened. As you would expect,  I woke up feeling rather disorientated but also found myself recalling the name of Randle McMurphy, one of the central protagonists from Ken Kesey’s classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a novel which I had only just finished reading for the first time a few days before.

My memory of McMurphy’s highly disturbing experience of a psychiatric institution during the 1960s and his relentless commitment to challenging the ‘all-powerful Combine’ in which he finds himself trapped no doubt had contributed to my nightmare but also helped me to refocus and get up out of bed that day. 

I don’t know why remembering McMurphy’s experience should have helped to steady my nerves that morning.  The book is a terrifying read and McMurphy both undergoes and witnesses some horrendous treatment while he is at the asylum. McMurphy is also a morally dubious character himself, having supposedly faked insanity to escape serving time in a state penitentiary for being convicted on a charge of rape. I think however McMurphy comes to encapsulate a massive challenge to the system during the novel and champions the cause of many of the vulnerable men also staying on the ward and I think this is why I found myself trying to remember his name after the dream and, shortly after his, the name of Chief Bromden, the narrator of the story who rediscovers his voice quite literally through his relationship with McMurphy. The book taps into that deep-seated fear which I’m assuming lurks within many a soul at any one point in their lives – the fear of losing one’s sanity in life, and in that sense the book, however harrowing, provides a language and a narrative through this darkness. The reader sees McMurphy not only challenge the psychiatric system, but also help to reawaken the hearts and minds of the other male inmates – most of whom, he discovers to his shock, are voluntary patients of the hospital, frightened to live in the world outside.

So if you can withstand and get through some of the more harrowing passages in the book, it is certainly worth reading. Reading this book will take courage, but the experience will stay with you forever and as well as remembering the pain in the novel, you will never be able to forget how McMurphy makes men laugh again, men who for a long time have been too frightened to laugh. The novel is about therefore the possibility of reawakening back into life as much as it also follows the tragic loss of life.  It is a shame Kesey didn’t write some more.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , Ken Kesey, Penguin Classics (1962)

Over the Christmas break, I read William Trevor’s Two Lives. It was a Christmas gift from my mother, who told me as I opened it that it had been the mutual love of its first story, Reading Turgenev, that had cemented her friendship with her closest friend, Ian; ‘It’s just beautiful Soph’. I’d read ‘An Idyll in Winter’ in the short story collection recently given away by the Guardian and loved it, so Two Lives immediately went to the top of the pile.

It is beautiful. Trevor is deeply concerned by the disparity that can develop between the life that you’ve imagined for yourself and the reality that you find yourself in, a situation that many of us will certainly have known at some point in our lives. In Reading Turgenev, the gentle, young Mary Louise aspires to work in the local town and to become self-sufficient, which leads her to marry the local draper, Elmer Quarry. The marriage soon beings to deteriorate, with the constant presence of his overbearing sisters and Elmer’s developing alcoholism creating a distance within a relationship that had never been close to begin with. Mary Louise finds herself inhabiting an unbearable, lonely reality that only her secret, unspoken worlds can attempt to liberate, and she falls deeper and deeper into these fantasies as the years pass. It is a very powerful story, one that forced me to think deeply about how vital it is that you try to deal with your problems as they appear through sharing them with others.

It may sound rather bleak in its overview, but I found Trevor’s poignant account of Mary Louise’s love for her late cousin and its ability to redeem this ‘wasted’ life the most striking element of the story, restoring her despite his absence. It was a great read, and definitely a book that I shall return to.

 Two Lives, William Trevor, Penguin (2010)

Keen Readers should tune into Radio 4 next week, as Stop What You’re Doing and Read This! has been chosen as Book of the Week.

This new collection of essays from Vintage Books is a funny and inspiring mission statement about the transformative power of reading; the tangible impact it can have on our wellbeing and its importance as a fundamental part of our existence.

Five of the ten essays have been adapted for the radio, including those by Michael Rosen, Jeanette Winterson, and Mark Haddon. The book itself contains a contribution by The Reader Organisation’s Jane Davis, sharing her passionate belief in improving lives through literature and spreading the message of the Reading Revolution.

Don’t forget to join the conversation on the Stop blog where you can share reading recommendations, discuss the future of the book, and much more. Jane herself has just posted a piece: ‘To Go Forward, Go Back’.

Already Number 1 on the Guardian Bookshop’s bestseller list, you can read her full contribution by buying your own copy here.

Book of the Week: Stop What You’re Doing and Read This!

Radio 4, 9^th-13^th Jan, 9:45am and 00:30am.

The book’s editor, Frances Macmillan, tells us on the book’s blog:

The writers are all from very different backgrounds. Some grew up with a multitude and variety of wonderful books within their reach; some had parents who imparted to them a fierce desire for books and for learning; for others, books were hard to come by, or even illicit. But all ten are united here in a passionate belief in the distinctive and irreplaceable pleasures and powers of reading.

In a year of rude awakenings to low levels of literacy and a widespread apathy towards books and reading, this book demands an interruption. Stop What You’re Doing and Read. Read these essays, because they aim to convince you to make reading part of your daily life. Read a novel because it will enable you to travel in time and space, or else quicken your sense of ordinary existence – family tensions, falling in or out of love, growing up or growing old.  Read a poem, because it won’t be as difficult as you think, and it might help you uncover and articulate a thought or a feeling previously buried deep. Read a story, if you’re short on time, because it imposes a unique period of peace and concentration into your busy life. Read out loud, to your children, to a partner, because reading together casts a potent and intimate spell.

The book aims to start people talking and thinking about books, and valuing reading itself in a new way, so we’re starting up a blog as a way of carrying on that conversation. We want to hear from readers – which books or poems do you love? Which book or poem changed the way you see the world? Have you ever found consolation or relief in reading a great book? Do you ever read books or poems aloud? We’ll be recommending great books throughout the year, encouraging debate about the importance of reading and we want to hear from you.

Read more about the book and share your comments on the Stop blog. You can also ask questions, recommend great books and join in the debate.

Help us remind everyone about the transformative power of reading and to build the Reading Revolution even further. Buy your copy now. Stop what you’re doing and read it.

You can follow Jane Davis, Director of The Reader Organsiation, here on Twitter and also over here, on her blog.

Given to me as a gift last Christmas I’ve finally got round to reading Orhan Pamuk’s part autobiographical account of his home city. I’d been putting this book off somewhat in favour of other, seemingly more exciting, ‘stories’ but have found myself pleasantly surprised.

Starting with a black and white photo of a boy, Pamuk tells of how as a five year old he was terrified by the idea that another ‘Little Orhan’ existed across the city identical to him and would be able to displace him from his own family without anybody noticing. To this day Pamuk says he is still haunted by this notion. What follows is a non linear progress of an ‘Istanbullu’ life, one that has a fierce familial bond at its centre but is also struggling to understand its new historical placing and the value of its borders.

Driven by a joyous melancholia, hüzün, Pamuk thrives in the darkness of his city and finds a comforting warmth in it all. For decades, it seems, he has wandered the backstreets of his city in sweet tristesse, lovingly storing in his mind every last minutia of what he sees and hears and smells, and relating it all to what he imagines:

When I watch the black-and-white crowds rushing through the darkening streets on a winter’s evening, I feel a deep sense of fellowship, almost as if night has cloaked our lives, our streets, our every belonging in a blanket of darkness, as if once we’re safe in our houses, our bedrooms, our beds, we can return to dreams of our long-gone riches, our legendary past.

I’ve never been to Istanbul but its past, present and future are coursing through this book. Perfect for reading as the long nights creep in.

I chose What Becomes for its title – it’s so tantalising – and for its author, A.L. Kennedy, whose Costa Prize winning novel Day I had fallen in love with. When I bought it, I didn’t even know it was a short story collection. These are stories about people in crisis. Whether it’s a grieving woman who picks up a stranger in a hotel bar or a young soldier and his mates struggling to accept what their war has done to them, you are made to care deeply about these characters over only ten or so pages.

If you’re like me, and don’t have much time for leisure reading right now, I’d recommend this book. Who can’t find twenty minutes to sit down and get immersed in the lives of The Broken Hearted?

What Becomes, A .L. Kennedy, Jonathan Cape (2009).

Few male authors can come close to Thomas Hardy in creating such defining, enduring and well-loved female literary heroines. Though controversial discussions could rumble on for some time debating whether or not Hardy could be classified as a feminist champion of women in a deeply patriarchal time or if the misfortunes that often befall his leading ladies said otherwise, the fact that three of his most famous novels are sculpted around incredibly memorable, entrancing female characters surely speaks volumes. Of course, there is the eponymous and ubiquitous (in literary terms, at least) Tess and Sue Bridehead of Jude The Obscure, but completing the trilogy is the ‘beautiful, impulsive and spirited’ Bathsheba Everdene; the central character of Far From The Madding Crowd, Hardy’s fourth novel which was also his breakthrough into major mainstream literary success.

Bathsheba is most definitely a striking and captivating presence, not only in appearance but in character too – she appears the most outwardly strong and confident of all Hardy’s heroines, with her wilful and fiercely independent nature coupled with a certain degree of vanity making her a woman who could not be easily ignored.  Indeed, Hardy’s description of her in the latter stages of the novel is quite revealing:

 “She was of the stuff of which great men’s mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.”

While there is much to admire about Bathsheba, she is far from flawless – there are a few instances in which her attitude and conduct appear questionable. Yet such complexity is precisely what makes Hardy’s characters so appealing and in the end it is hard not to be affected by Bathsheba’s journey from free-spirited farm-girl to farm-mistress, shouldering her various professional and personal burdens along the way and undergoing a quite remarkable transformation from strength to weakness, finally to a shadowy stability.

The cause of Bathsheba’s descent has much to do with her romantic entanglements – the main focus of the story. Hardy generates not a love triangle but a love rectangle, if you will, as Bathsheba attracts the attentions of three men; Gabriel Oak (through whose eyes we are first introduced to the enchanting Miss Everdene), Farmer William Boldwood and Sergeant Francis Troy. In Bathsheba’s relationships with each of her three potential suitors, I suspect that many readers would be able to find templates for identifiable romantic encounters in their own lives: the tempestuous whirlwind that is not realised to be wrong until too late; the passion that burns heavily for one lover but not the other; the dependable friendship which deepens. The novel has its fair share of melodramatic moments, certainly, but Hardy prevents things from going overboard using several techniques – the chaos surrounding the central characters is nicely tempered by the more down-to-earth goings-on of the farm workers, whose personalities are fleshed out just as much as the protagonists, and the descriptions of the landscape of Weatherbury are just wonderful.  Hardy’s quite remarkable descriptive ability is always a highlight in any of his works, but is particularly noticeable and affecting in Far From The Madding Crowd; it is quite astounding how he can make the most ordinary of observations burst with energy and emotion, producing in a mere sentence an idea utterly profound, as in the following:

 “She was in a state of mental gutta serena; her mind was for the minute totally deprived of light at the same time that no obscuration was apparent from without.”

 Not to mention that deliciously ironical title; a fine example of a true master of language at work.