Reading 1001 discussion

Does this book deserve to be on the list?

Being harsh I am going to say no, the list is supposed to be about books that have added something to the development of the novel and I don't feel that a biography, no matter how critically acclaimed, can actually do that.

I agree with Book that it may not belong on the list because it is a memoir but it isn't the only memoir on the list so some others would have to go too. If the book is taken as a memoir of a country perhaps even then it doesn't belong on the list. Anyway, I was glad to read it but it wasn't an easy read.

I don't think so because I'm not sure how it advances the "novel." I enjoyed the book but not sure how it fits the criteria to be on the list.

I think it belongs because of the quality of the writing. Parts of it were imagined, most especially when Oz describes the two walks which his mother took on her last day. He had to have imagined these. So it deserves a place.

I guess I understand and don't disagree with what BW, Jen and Kristel are saying, because a memoir can't really advance the form of the novel, but, as I've said before, that justification is academic high-brow nonsense.

I also disagree with Pip that just because parts are imagined it can count as a novel. On that basis there is no excuse for leaving out History of the Peloponnesian War, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance or most any work (ghost)written by a politician (except in the latter cases the lack of quality).

So, does it meet Boxall's claimed criteria for being on the list? No. Should it be on any honest list of the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die? Absolutely.