I read two novels as perfect as the novel can and should be: exhilaratingly intelligent, downright cerebral, and yet strangely knot-in-throat moving. They’re also as unlike as two novels can be and yet, both about turmoil and war, inner and outer, of the historical-literal variety and domestic-lethal one. You don’t have to read the rest of this post, but you should run, don’t linger, to read Laurent Binet’s HHhH (2009) and Elizabeth Jenkins’ The Tortoise and the Hare (1954; reissued by Virago in 1983). Thanks to the Eiger Mönch Jungfrau blog for suggesting the former and the Backlisted podcast for the latter. Linked here, please check them out. (more…)