《泰晤士报》评选自《尤利西斯》以来的五十本最佳英文小说（2022）

原文链接：https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/best-books-21st-century-ranked-f98wbvdk9

在《尤利西斯》问世 100 周年之际，由《泰晤士报》16名作家和评论家（包括Sebastian Faulks, Colm Tóibín, Kamila Shamsie, Sarah Waters, Anne Enright, Yiyun Li, David Mitchell等）组成的评审团选出了自乔伊斯的经典之作出版以来的最优秀的小说。

流程简单而公平：小组的每位成员都写了一份他们最喜欢的 20 部小说的清单，然后将票数加起来。最终的选择是对过去 100 年来最好的英语写作的全面介绍。

50. 树叶裙 A Fringe of Leaves (1976)

帕特里克·怀特 Patrick White The horrors of colonialism in Australia are revealed in a novel based partially on a true story. The real-life Eliza Fraser becomes Ellen Roxburgh, who travels from Cornwall to the brutal colony of Van Diemen’s Land (which we now know as Tasmania) with her husband. When their ship home runs aground, she is the sole survivor. Aboriginal people and an escaped convict rescue her, and Ellen is left with a new perspective on the injustices in which she is complicit.

49. 他们眼望上苍 Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿 Zora Neale Hurston Janie Crawford tells the story of her life as an optimistic, energetic black woman, constantly beaten down by a society that doesn’t care about her. She is the product of two generations of rape, but while her Nanny wants her to marry only for stability, Janie has her heart set on a fulfilling, loving relationship. It is not to be, but there is no sentimentality here; just skilful, lyrical prose.

48. 白噪音 White Noise (1985)

唐·德里罗 Don DeLillo Consumerism is religion in DeLillo’s postmodernist skewering of America. Shopping lists, advertising jingles, even brand names take on an incantatory quality. And despite the emphasis on material culture, there is still an air of unreality here, as our narrator Jack Gladney and the other characters in this dystopia lose track of what matters. The result is spellbinding — DeLillo’s love letter to the English language, if not to capitalism.

47. 故园风雨后 Brideshead Revisited (1945)

伊夫林·沃 Evelyn Waugh So beloved that its title evokes blissful images of punting, picnics and youthful optimism, Brideshead Revisited tells the story of the young Charles Ryder, who is seduced (maybe metaphorically, maybe literally) by his fellow Oxford student Lord Sebastian Flyte. Charles takes refuge in the Flyte family estate, Brideshead, where sensuous ennui is the order of the day. In rich, sumptuous prose, Waugh traces the crumbling of their carefree youth.

46. 他们的容身之所 The Corner That Held Them (1948)

西尔维娅·汤森·华纳 Sylvia Townsend Warner While human lives are fleeting, buildings and institutions remain. This groundbreaking novel chronicles the life of a single convent over nearly 300 years. Priests and prioresses come and go, the Black Death rages — this is a historical novel that focuses not on single events, but the flow of daily life that really makes up history. It has an entrancing rhythm and beautiful, spare prose — this is a book to read and reread.

45. 大地之上（又译：微妙的平衡） A Fine Balance (1995)

罗欣顿·米斯特里 Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance is full of tragedies, but its fully formed characters always find something to laugh about. Mistry’s greatest novel follows the lives of four very different characters living in India after partition, as they suffer the uncertainty of the Emergency and their paths cross. It’s a hugely impressive portrait of the country in all its paradoxes: joy, fear, corruption and compassion.

44. 奥吉·马奇历险记 The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

索尔·贝娄 Saul Bellow From lizard-hunting in Mexico to sharing a lifeboat with a deranged man, Augie March’s life is anything but boring. This classic American picaresque novel is filled with memorable, almost Dickensian characters — such as the terrifying old woman who boards with Augie’s family, and the strange Einhorn, an estate agent with a penchant for quotations.

43. 兔子，跑吧 Rabbit, Run (1960)

约翰·厄普代克 John Updike In high school Harry Angstrom was a basketball star. Now he’s a 26-year-old salesman, living in the suburbs with his wife, Janice, and son, Nelson. Bored and unsatisfied, he runs away and shacks up with a prostitute in his home town. The search for freedom is a classic American narrative, and here it’s told with aplomb, in charged, fierce prose.

42. 重生 Regeneration (1991)

帕特·巴克 Pat Barker Tiptoeing the line between fiction and non-fiction, Regeneration follows Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen during their time in Craiglockhart hospital, where they were treated for shellshock. It’s an unflinching exploration of the horrors of war, psychiatry, masculinity and class. But, as with all of Barker’s work, the women are front and centre too.

41. 美丽新世界 Brave New World (1932)

阿尔多斯·赫胥黎 Aldous Huxley Brave New World is often compared to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it paints a very different kind of dystopia. In the World State, citizens are given Soma, a drug that makes them happy and docile, to prevent resistance. Artificial wombs replace real ones; casual sex replaces relationships; and Henry Ford, with his production line, replaces God. Huxley’s writing is immediate and arresting; his reworking of Shakespeare’s The Tempest masterly.

40. 太阳照常升起 The Sun Also Rises (1926)

欧内斯特·海明威 Ernest Hemingway The American expat Jake Barnes experiences the Roaring Twenties in Paris and comes away disillusioned in Hemingway’s greatest novel. His fatal mistake is to fall for Brett Ashley, a veritable New Woman: twice-divorced with bobbed hair and lots of love affairs. Barnes gives up friendships and his reputation for Brett, who decides in the end to leave him. It’s a beautiful portrait of the Lost Generation.

39. 金色笔记 The Golden Notebook (1962)

多丽丝·莱辛 Doris Lessing Like many women (writes Megan Nolan) I had a visceral and profound responseto reading The Golden Notebook in my twenties. Here was a work half a century old that seemed to encompass — and often rapidly render outdated — thoughts and worries and impulses I was only just learning to articulate. The story of the writer Anna Wulf and her four notebooks (one for each aspect of her life) is formally dazzling; a wonderfully inventive device to convey the splitting of self; the identities of mother and writer and lover and activist all undermining but informing one another.

38. 马戏团之夜 Nights at the Circus (1984)

安吉拉·卡特 Angela Carter Gaudy, excessive, overwhelming, Nights at the Circus isn’t for everyone. But it’s an intoxicating sensory experience. The story of Sophie Fevvers, a circus star who claims to have been left at a brothel as a child, and sprouted wings when she hit puberty, is an almost Dickensian treat. As the circus goes on a tour of Russia, thrills and spills abound — with Fevvers a victorious feminist heroine.

37. 查泰莱夫人的情人 Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

D.H. 劳伦斯 DH Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s husband is paralysed from the waist down. She begins an affair with their gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. It’s not an unfamiliar plot to us, but Lady Chatterley’s Lover helped to kick-start the sexual revolution. Its explicit passages (and the class divide) meant that the book was heavily censored. But apart from its cultural significance, read it for a beautiful depiction of desire.

36. 血色子午线 Blood Meridian (1985)

科马克·麦卡锡 Cormac McCarthy With not one but two McCarthy novels coming out this autumn, now is the perfect time to read his magnum opus, Blood Meridian. It follows a 14-year-old boy, “the kid”, as he drifts through the Wild West, eventually joining a band of outlaws hunting for Apache scalps. It’s shockingly violent, constantly asking moral judgments of its readers, but the darkness is balanced out with lyricism.

35. 麦田里的守望者 The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

J.D. 塞林格 JD Salinger From the sanatorium where he is now a resident, 17-year-old Holden Caulfield recalls his actions after being expelled from school. Running away to New York, Caulfield goes to the cinema, dances with tourists, visits a prostitute and goes ice skating, all while railing against society. This is a searing depiction of teenage solipsism and the unbearable injustice we sense in our youth.

34. 算了 Never Mind (1992)

爱德华·圣奥宾 Edward St Aubyn In this first book in St Aubyn’s much-loved Patrick Melrose cycle, Patrick is just five years old. We follow him over the course of a day as his family wait for guests to arrive. His father is cruel, his mother resigned, and on this day Patrick’s life is about to be altered for ever. An unforgettable introduction to a complex character, this tragedy is deepened by the fact that it is semi-autobiographical.

33. 半轮黄日 Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)

奇玛曼达·恩戈兹·阿迪契 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The success of Half of a Yellow Sun (writes Diana Evans) is in its depiction of the horror of the Biafran War in 1960s Nigeria while telling an intimate yet universal story about human relationships — romantic love and familial bonds. It is masterly in structure and execution, with every scene feeling absolutely immediate and larger than life. I read it a long time ago but some of the scenes are still clear in my head and I can remember the voices and conversations of the characters. I love a novel that informs and envelops you at the same time, and this is one of those books.

32. 心之死 The Death of the Heart (1938)

伊丽莎白·鲍温 Elizabeth Bowen Portia, a 16-year-old orphan, moves in with her half-brother, Thomas, and his wife, Anna, in London. Awkward, innocent and in the throes of adolescent love, Portia keeps a diary in which she tries to decipher human interactions. When the diary is discovered she is distraught. This is a stunning portrait of the human heart, a raw account of romantic betrayal and the pains of growing up.

31. 奥丽芙·基特里奇 Olive Kitteridge (2008)

伊丽莎白·斯特劳特 Elizabeth strout Olive Kitteridge is a plain, plump, retired schoolteacher living in Maine. These 13 short stories, which take in other inhabitants of the small community, all link back to her. Together they form a resonant, hopeful portrait of humanity. There is marriage, divorce, children, regrets, ageing, but above all the quiet love that binds people and places together. And, if that’s not enough, read Olive, Again next.

30. 名利场大火 The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)

汤姆·沃尔夫 Tom Wolfe An expertly drawn portrait of 1980s New York and the simmering tensions underneath its surface, The Bonfire of the Vanities centres on the life of Sherman McCoy, a rich Wall Street trader. Driving in the Bronx one night, McCoy hits a young black boy by mistake and runs away. In the ensuing search for the guilty driver, McCoy’s carefully constructed life begins to crumble.

29. 权力与荣耀 The Power and the Glory (1940)

格雷厄姆·格林 Graham Greene A huge number of Greene’s novels got votes from our panel, but this got the most. The Power and the Glory tells the tale of an alcoholic Catholic priest in Mexico — where both alcohol and Catholicism are banned. He is forced to go on the run from a very committed lieutenant. Violent and raw, the novel is ultimately about the search for redemption.

28. 天才瑞普利 The Talented Mr Ripley (1955)

帕特里西亚·海史密斯 Patricia Highsmith Highsmith was a pretty abominable person but a terrific writer — and this is her finest novel. We follow Tom Ripley, a struggling young man employed by a wealthy man to convince his son Dickie to return home. Ripley soon realises he enjoys Dickie’s lifestyle. In fact he wishes he could become Dickie — whatever it takes. It’s appalling but totally thrilling.

27. 狼厅 Wolf Hall (2009)

希拉里·曼特尔 Hilary Mantel As a boy Thomas Cromwell was beaten by his father so much that he ran away from home. Thirty years later he was at the heart of the English crown as a member of the king’s council. Mantel’s gripping book, the first of a trilogy, shows the machinations behind his inexorable rise. She manages to recreate the Tudor era vividly: you’ll finish the 650 pages wanting more.

26. 钟形罩 The Bell Jar (1963)

西尔维娅·普拉斯 Sylvia Plath The witty but melancholic story of Esther Greenwood, a US college student and poet who struggles with mental illness and endures electroshock therapy, has resonated with readers for more than 50 years. Esther’s suicide attempts also provide a tragic insight into the mind of Plath, who killed herself shortly after the publication of the book.

25. 紫颜色 The Color Purple (1982)

艾丽斯·沃克 Alice Walker Almost unremittingly bleak, The Color Purple is composed of a series of letters written by Celie, a black woman living in the American South in the early 20th century, addressed first to God, and then to her sister. In them she reveals her suffering at the hands of men — first her stepfather, who repeatedly rapes and impregnates her; then her abusive older husband. But this is a beautiful story of resilience, of sisterly bonds, and of the love women can have for each other.

24. 赎罪 Atonement (2001)

伊恩·麦克尤恩 Ian McEwan Superbly intense, subtle and intricate, Atonement traces the lifelong repercussions of a childhood blunder (writes Peter Kemp). Throughout her career as a novelist, a woman struggles to rectify a “crime” she perpetrated as a 13-year-old during the torrid summer of 1935. Recording her attempts to make amends, McEwan lays bare the dangers of the literary imagination but also magnificently displays its powers. Wartime scenes — especially a wounded soldier’s trek to Dunkirk — have harrowing physical immediacy. Psychological complexity, keen social observation and a tour de force of structural sleight of hand brilliantly combine.

23. 毕司沃斯先生的房子 A House for Mr Biswas (1961)

V.S. 奈保尔 VS Naipaul Mr Biswas was born into abject poverty in rural Trinidad, a state he is desperate to claw his way out of. His ultimate goal is to own a house. We follow him on that mission as he gains object by object, marries into an influential family and finally finds his home. But this is no tale of despair: Mr Biswas’s failed attempts at attaining wealth, his dysfunctional relationships, even physical violence, all are portrayed with comic irony. Somehow Naipaul juggles heartbreak and hilarity.

22. 蓝花 The Blue Flower (1995)

佩内洛普·菲兹杰拉德 Penelope Fitzgerald This is an unusual, complex novel, a fictionalisation of the life of the German Romantic poet Novalis. But even if there is no sense of certainty in The Blue Flower, there is a great sense of fun. Its experimental prose is balanced out by perfect comic timing and laugh-out-loud bathos, knocking down the high-minded poet a few pegs. Domestic squabbles meet philosophy, a student duel ends in ridiculous physical comedy. Read it — and be ready to be confused.

21. 蝇王 Lord of the Flies (1954)

威廉·戈尔丁 William Golding A group of British schoolboys are stranded on a desert island and must learn to rule themselves. But instead of constructing a decent and orderly life, they quickly descend into savagery. Written after the horrors of the Second World War, Golding’s novel captures how mankind lost faith in the idea of civilisation and innate morality. The simplicity of the plot and the initial innocence of the boys makes Lord of the Flies even more horrifying. Are we, after all, no better than animals?

20. 基列家书 Gilead (2004)

玛丽莲·罗宾逊 Marilynne Robinson This Pulitzer-winner takes the form of a letter written by John Ames, a minister in Iowa, to his six-year-old child. He recounts the lives of his father and grandfather, two ministers who took very different conclusions from the Bible. Ames’s own life was one of late-found contentment, having married in his sixties. But this means that his son will grow up without him, lending a constant bittersweet poignancy to the novel. In simple, mild prose, Robinson has made a masterpiece.

19. 耻 Disgrace (1999)

J.M. 库切 JM Coetzee Coetzee’s story of a white man who loses power and influence in post-apartheid South Africa won the Booker prize. David Lurie is dismissed from his job as a professor after having an affair with one of his students. But when he moves on to his daughter’s farm, true horror awaits them. Any attempt at a consistent political interpretation is refused; at its heart this is a virtuoso novel about what it means to be human, about suffering and the search for redemption.

18. 微物之神 The God of Small Things (1997)

阿兰达蒂·洛伊 Arundhati Roy Roy’s 1997 Booker-winner is literary Marmite: critics and readers either love it or hate it. Our panel fell firmly in the former category. Dazzling in its sweep, The God of Small Things charts the lives of the twins Rahel and Esthappen. Born in 1960s India, the pair are separated due to the fallout of the caste system. They are irreparably damaged when they finally reunite in their thirties. This is a deeply moral novel, in which love is always political, but it is also powerfully imaginative, almost magically so.

17. 如意郎君 A Suitable Boy (1993)

维克拉姆·赛斯 Vikram Seth At more than 1,300 pages, A Suitable Boy is one of the longest single-volume novels in the English language. Don’t let that put you off. Seth’s tale of four families in post-partition India is politically astute and full of humanity. The 19-year-old Lata must choose between three suitors, each of whom her mother considers to be a “suitable boy”. Her dilemma is a common one: should she follow reason or passion? Slow-paced but movingly transparent, A Suitable Boy has echoes of Tolstoy.

16. 长日留痕 The Remains of the Day (1989)

石黑一雄 Kazuo Ishiguro It’s the summer of 1956 (writes Carys Davies). Stevens, an elderly English butler, is looking back on his life while he motors down to Cornwall from the great house in Oxfordshire where he has worked for 40 years, to ask its former housekeeper, Miss Kenton, if she would consider returning. Beneath this seemingly unremarkable present, the past slowly begins to unravel as the repressed Stevens’s unreliable account reveals the heart-crushing cost of his self-deceptions and misplaced ideals. With delicate wit and exquisite irony, Ishiguro’s novel asks one of the biggest questions fiction can ask: what, when we look back on our lives, have they been worth?

15. 别让我走（或译：莫失莫忘） Never Let Me Go (2005)

石黑一雄 Kazuo Ishiguro Ishiguro’s dystopian novel follows Kathy through her time at boarding school and beyond, as she and her friends try to figure out what is their purpose in life. But something is wrong. Their teachers are guardians who emphasise the importance of art and health. They are sent to a little cottage on graduating — what comes after is unclear, until it isn’t. Ishiguro’s crafting of the twist is masterfully eerie and leaves you with questions about love, humanity and what we will do to extend our lives.

14. 管家 Housekeeping (1980)

玛丽莲·罗宾逊 Marilynne Robinson Ruthie and Lucille Stone are orphans living in the fictional town of Fingerbone in remote Idaho, cared for by their strange, transient aunt Sylvie. Over time the sisters grow apart: Ruthie enjoys the solitude of their life, while Lucille wants to get away more than anything. When she does, the local community begin to look on Ruthie and Sylvie with suspicion. But the two will do anything to stay together. Housekeeping beautifully demonstrates the power of family and the danger of transience.

13. 印度之行 A Passage to India (1924)

E.M. 福斯特 EM Forster Set in the British Raj, A Passage to India tells the tale of Adela, her elderly companion Mrs Moore, and their Indian guide, the charming Dr Aziz. But when Aziz finds himself falsely accused of a sexual assault, he becomes bitter and disillusioned with the regime. His trial and the aftermath brings tensions to a head, revealing the prejudices of the colonial era. Eerie and unnerving, but evoking the place in vivid detail, this is Forster’s greatest novel.

12. 使女的故事 The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

玛格丽特·阿特伍德 Margaret Atwood In a future America ruled by fundamentalists, women exist only to breed. Atwood charts the slow but steady repression of women through the removal of reproductive rights, then their ability to own money or property, or read and write. Sound familiar? Atwood says she wrote only about things that had already happened — and new abortion laws in the US make this a particularly timely read. But it manages not to be heavy-handed; it’s a truly gripping tale.

11. 乔凡尼的房间 Giovanni’s Room (1956)

詹姆斯·鲍德温 James Baldwin Revolutionary for its time, Giovanni’s Room is a remarkable depiction of same-sex desire. It is narrated by David, an American man living in Paris. There he begins an affair with Giovanni, an Italian man. The entire story is told by David on the night before Giovanni’s execution. This is a powerful tragedy, but it is also curiously hopeful. To tell this story is a victory in itself, elevated further by Baldwin’s skilful writing: tightly plotted but also full of sumptuous descriptions.

10. 达洛维夫人 Mrs Dalloway (1925)

维吉尼亚·伍尔夫 Virginia Woolf How can the story of one woman preparing for a party manage to pack in so much humanity? Clarissa Dalloway is an upper-class woman living in a London still scarred by the First World War. As she shops for her party, she considers her choice of husband and the loves she had to give up. Her narrative is interspersed with that of a traumatised war veteran. Time works in unusual ways in this truly groundbreaking novel.

9. 这个世界土崩瓦解了 Things Fall Apart (1958)

钦努阿·阿契贝 Chinua Achebe The debut from the Nigerian master writer is also his finest. Okonkwo is a wrestling champion in 19th-century Nigeria whose life is torn apart by the onset of European colonialism and the arrival of Christian missionaries in the village. As his efforts to protect the community fail, Okonkwo hurtles towards tragedy. Things Fall Apart is full of pathos and humanity and, together with the rest of Achebe’s African Trilogy, reshaped world literature.

8. 一九八四 Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

乔治·奥威尔 George Orwell Perhaps the best known dystopian novel in English, Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a totalitarian state in which all citizens are under constant surveillance from Big Brother, and any resistance (or even acknowledgment of obvious untruths) is met with torture and re-education. In the midst of this, Winston Smith begins an affair with a young woman called Julia, and gains a new perspective on the Party. It’s not hard to guess that it ends in disaster.

7. 到灯塔去 To the Lighthouse (1927)

维吉尼亚·伍尔夫 Virginia Woolf With its multiple perspectives and flowing, interior narrative, To the Lighthouse takes much inspiration from Ulysses. It follows the Ramsay family in their summer home on the Isle of Skye over ten years. During that time the First World War begins and ends, family members are lost and memories evolve. Perhaps Woolf’s finest novel, it is a searing but beautiful account of change and loss, which transforms the limits of human perception into a strength.

6. 洛丽塔 Lolita (1955)

弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫 Vladimir Nabokov Perhaps one of the most controversial books of all time, Lolita tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a professor with a penchant for young girls, and his relationship with 12-year-old Lolita. Distressing and even nauseating at times, it is a powerful allegory and a masterpiece of the English language; filled with word games, linguistic tricks and beautiful, lyrical descriptions. Lolita is a must-read, but prepare for some glares if you peruse it in public.

5. 宠儿 Beloved (1987)

托尼·莫里森 Toni Morrison This devastating tale of an escaped slave in the aftermath of the American Civil War is all the more shocking and powerful for being based on a true story. When her master arrives to recapture her and her children, Sethe kills her baby daughter rather than see her return to slavery. Years later she is haunted by her daughter’s ghost. This is a story of trauma that won’t go away, of a family and community torn apart by slavery, told through Morrison’s sumptuous, sensory language and vivid atmospheres.

4. 布罗迪小姐的青春 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

缪丽尔·斯帕克 Muriel Spark Undoubtedly the Scottish author’s greatest work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie follows six young girls taken under the wing of their eccentric teacher Miss Brodie, whose enthusiasms include Giotto, Tennyson and fascism. As the girls grow up, Miss Brodie draws them into a love triangle she is conducting with two other teachers in the school — until all falls apart with a great betrayal. She is a wonderful creation, the beating heart of a novel of pure joy.

3. 午夜之子 Midnight’s Children (1981)

萨尔曼·拉什迪 Salman Rushdie The best books, to my mind, are those whose existence makes it possible for future books to exist (writes Yiyun Li). Sometimes a book makes space for the author’s other books to follow; or it makes a space for other authors to follow. Midnight’s Children is an allegory for history around the Indian partition. It follows the children born close to that event, each with magical powers. It is full of brilliant audacity, and is a book that inspires other novelists and makes future Rushdie novels possible. The importance of the novel becomes more apparent as younger novelists tackle 21st-century events that are quickly becoming history.

2. 藻海无边 Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

简·里斯 Jean Rhys Rhys wrote tough books about drink and damaged vanity (writes Anne Enright), but her last and most successful novel was criticised for being too “romantic” in its evocation of the Caribbean childhood of its protagonist, Antoinette. She was the Creole bride of Jane Eyre’s Mr Rochester, the original madwoman in the attic, and this novelistic reclamation spawned hundreds of retellings of the lives of fictional women. Seen as a postcolonial or feminist work now, Rhys was simply, and urgently, drawing from personal experience. The novel glows. Her editor, Diana Athill, who met all the greats of the day, described Rhys as the only genius she had ever known.

1. 了不起的盖茨比 The Great Gatsby (1925)

F. 斯科特·菲茨杰拉德 F. Scott Fitzgerald In The Great Gatsby the sentences seem effortless, and the undertones of comedy and wisdom work closely with each other (writes Colm Tóibín). The voice of the narrator, Nick Carraway, appears natural, part of his immense tact. As Nick tells the story of Jay Gatsby and his great, doomed love for Daisy Buchanan, he has a lovely way of suggesting that he is out of his depth in this world of vast wealth and mysterious desires and then letting us know that he is equally alert to their shades and intricacies. Nick is both innocent and implicated. Nothing is lost on him. Like Joyce in Ulysses, Fitzgerald knows the power of spectacle. In both novels, intimate life, as reflected through the single mind of an ostensibly ordinary man, is placed against extravaganza. Also, like Ulysses’s Molly Bloom, Daisy wants much more from life than she can easily name. As in Ulysses too, The Great Gatsby sets out to elevate style and character while managing slyly to suggest a much larger story, almost a national story, this one about sex and power and money as well as high dreams and low disappointment. Colm Tóibín is the author of ten novels, including Brookly.