Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1931

Very sad to discover that, knowing already that I mix up Arnold Bennett and Alan Benett, I am now further cursed by the discovery that I had also conflated Arnold Bennett and Anthony Powell.

The Dream Life Of Balso Snell is barely a novella imo but wikipedia lists it as a novel - I included it anyway because it's a pretty insane work, absurdist and darkly funny. Some internalized anti-semitism in there, mind.

I have not read Boy but did encounter a short story by James Hanley, which I found deeply repulsive but also impressive - just a complete orgy of gore written by someone clearly traumatized by WWI. "It's good because it's transgressive" is an argument with very little merit in 2021 but, within Hanley's historical context, I gotta say, respect.

I read a book of Papini short stories edited by Jorge Luís Borges that was very eerie and melancholic. The man himself was a fascist, alas.

Simenon wrote eight fucking Maigret novels in his first year so I picked the one that Le Monde chose as one of the best novels of the century, sorry if I omitted your fave.

I've only read the West and Hammett, both of which are okay, but no doubt several of the others here are better---bummer to recognize so many other titles and/or authors parading by.

The Good Earth won Buck a Nobel Prize but I have never felt the slightest inclination to open it

I feel sure the best novel here is the Woolf or one of the others I haven't read.

Sanctuary is as close as Faulkner got to a hardboiled crime novel. It's more comparable to Cain than to the Black Mask boys.

I like The Glass Key. It's not as well-constructed as The Maltese Falcon but it shows Hammett reaching for a less pulpy approach, while at the same time writing his harshest scenes of violence. The central relationship between a dirty politician and his fixer (along with some elements of Red Harvest) was the basis for the Coens brothers' Miller's Crossing.

Castle Skull is another example of the mix of gothic and detective genres that Carr wouldn't perfect until the early Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale books.

The Five Red Herrings is one of the better Sayers mysteries.

Simenon was good from the start, but the best Maigret novels came later.

Anyone who votes for anyone other than Jean Rhys will be voting for someone that I am not voting for.

Wikipedia says: "From 1960, and for the rest of her life, Rhys lived in Cheriton Fitzpaine in Devon that she once described as 'a dull spot which even drink can't enliven much.'"

I grew up not far from there, and I still think I might come across people who remember her. I haven't yet. One day I'll go drinking in Cheriton and see if I can locate her gloriously malignant spirit.

Love the place names in that part of the world. I see that nearby there is Stockleigh English and Upton Hellions

Marketa Lazarová by Vladislav Vančura

Wondering if this is as oblique as the film version.

Rhys. Powell's first novel is fine but slight. Must read Sanctuary.

i was assigned the good earth in middle school and then AGAIN two years later in high school. despite that i can't really remember it at all. i wonder if it still gets assigned much these days?

I haven't read any of these. The Floating Admiral sounds interesting.

Night Flight is gorgeous. About a mail pilot who gets caught in a storm, climbs above it, and then realizes he's not going to be able to land.

Hard agree - Night Flight is beautiful.

Woolf, yet again.

Content warning to anyone thinking about reading Sanctuary that it's intensely violent and contains a graphic rape scene.

The Waves vs Spacehounds Of IPC

i'm happy to see love for night flight, the opening pages -- describing what it's like to fly for hours in the darkness and then finally see the dim light of a city pop up -- contain some of my favorite writing ever.

i hate V Woolf but it's hard not to vote for the wavs

Hanley's BOY is excellent but brutal and one of the saddest novels i can think of.

Do love de Saint-Exupery. he's so much more than the Little prince's author ho ho.
I think the premise of taht comes from him getting lost while flying the mail doesn't it?

The Road Back by Remarque is presumably somewhat connected to All Quiet on the Western Front? though I thought the protagonist of that didn't survive.
again not come across a lot of these. I thought I might be more familiar from a certain point and assumed that was earlier than this. would have at least come across some of these titles

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Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1932