“All the best stories are but one story in reality—the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times—how to escape.” […]
Possession
“The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time. Its spine was missing, […]
The Rachel Papers
“I was, after all, a man of the world.” Chapter 1: Introduction to Charles Highway The novel opens with Charles Highway, a precocious and self-absorbed teenager, preparing for […]
London Fields
“Murder considered as one of the fine arts.” London Fields follows the intertwined lives of three central characters in a decaying, pre-millennial London. The narrator, Samson Young, is […]
Money
“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.” Part One […]
Lucky Jim
“The decision that he could, after all, bear her presence for a short time longer was reached without difficulty.” — Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim Chapter 1 Jim Dixon, […]
The Comforters
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” — John Milton (Epigraph referenced in The Comforters) Chapter […]
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.” Chapter Summaries The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie follows the unconventional teaching methods of […]
Under the Net
“All is to be dared, for a person of courage has no need of any other virtue.” Chapter 1: A Disrupted Life Jake Donaghue, a struggling writer and […]
The Sea, The Sea
“The sea which is everywhere the same and everywhere different.” — Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea Part One: Arrival at Shruff End Charles Arrowby, a retired theater […]