01
Q
Christina Dalcher
In Q, everyone is administered a Quotient test. The ones with a high ‘Q’ score get placed in elite schools, while the ones with a low ‘Q’ get sent to government schools. Elena Fairchild teaches at an elite school and is not worried about her three perfect daughters. But when her 9-year old’s Q test results show low scores, Elena deliberately fails her own test to accompany her daughter to a school hundreds of miles away. Elena believes the education system to be fair-minded, but the discovery she makes on reaching her destination is one that she’d never envisioned even in her wildest dreams. Christina Dalcher’s dystopian novel takes a look at eugenics and the perverse effects it has on society.
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02
Y
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra (Illus.)
Yorick Brown and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand, are the sole surviving male mammals in this dystopian world since all the other mammals with the Y chromosome have died due to a mysterious illness. Y follows Brown and Ampersand as they set off on a quest to find the cause of this illness, discover why they survived and track down Yorick’s girlfriend. They meet different women along the way, all of whom are dealing with this dystopian world in their own manner. Along with the other books in this graphic novel series, Y explores what would happen if there were no men in the world.
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03
G.
John Berger
The 1972 Booker Prize winner, G. is set in the early years of the 20th century against the backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of the Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the first flight across the Alps. G. is a young man whose sexual initiation began at an early age and he ends up becoming a womaniser. Over the course of this novel, ‘Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and woman, and what happens during sex’ to reveal what makes G. so successful in capturing women’s hearts. This is a postmodern rendering of Don Juan with an unconventional non-linear narrative, told from the perspective of the women involved.
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04
V.
Thomas Pynchon
After finding mentions of a mysterious ‘V’ in his father’s diary, Herbert Stencil embarks on a journey to uncover V’s identity. It is harder than it looks though, as Herbert finds that V seems to be a female with multiple identities – an English rape victim in Cairo, a German dancer in South Africa, and a lesbian in Paris. On top of that, Herbert finds out that could also be a country called Vheissu, which adds to the suspense. Who or what is V? Read Thomas Pynchon’s novel to find out.
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05
S.
John Updike
The characters from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter find a home in John Updike’s The Scarlet Letter trilogy, with S. as its third novel. In S., we meet Sarah Worth, who joins Hindu mystic Arhad’s ashram in Arizona. There, along with other disciples, she struggles to achieve salvation. She sends letters to her husband, daughter, hairdresser, and psychiatrist that note all that she undergoes. What is Sarah planning? What is hidden beneath the words in her letters? Written in Updike’s signature style, with a new story based off of old characters, this novel is a classic well-worth reading.
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06
J
Howard Jacobson
J is set in a future where people don’t talk about the past, aren’t allowed to keep heirlooms or know about family histories. It is in this world that Kevern and Ailinn fall in love. Both have no idea about their family histories, or even if they have fallen in love of their own accord, or if someone has brought them together. In the midst of all this is a catastrophe that people refuse to talk about, naming it as What Happened, If It Happened. Will the truth about the catastrophe come out? Read Howard Jacobson’s Man Booker Prize-shortlisted dystopian novel to find out.
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07
X
Sue Grafton
In X, P.I. Kinsey Millhone is asked by a woman to look for her long-lost son. But when she finds out that the payment for finding the son is made with marked bills, it becomes apparent that the woman is hiding something. Determined to find out the truth, Kinsey is hot on the woman’s trail when she finds a coded list in her friend’s IRS files. The list leads her to a criminal who destroys everything without leaving a trace, and Kinsey quickly becomes his text target. Will she able to nab the criminal this time? A prolific author, Sue Grafton is best known for her Alphabet series, and reading her novels from A to Y (Z is still in the works) is certainly a treat.
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She writes at The Curious Reader. You can read her articles here.
