Great discussion going on here about the “best debut novels”. Does it count if the author came out with a collection of short stories first??
I say YES, it counts. Otherwise Jimmy couldn’t be on the list.
My additions to the list:
— Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
— The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon
— Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
— Mating, by Norman Rush
— To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (uhm … debut and only)
— Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger
— Carrie, by Stephen King (that was his first, right?? Am I totally wrong?)
— The Bone People, by Keri Hulme (again: debut and only novel – which sucks – it is a fantastic book – she is MARVELOUS … anyone else read it??)
Oh shit, how could I forget:
— Anne of Green Gables, by LM Montgomery
What are some great debut novels that you can think of?? (And don’t be embarrassed about your personal taste, cause that’s no fun.)
Yep – Carrie was the first novel by King. I just re-read it a couple days ago. He was going to toss it after a few pages but his wife told him he should keep working on it.
Good job, Tabitha! :) It’s a helluva book – as I recall, I haven’t read it in years.
It is a helluva book – I hadn’t read it in a long time and have just gotten in a Stephen King mood lately – oh, I know why – Miser was on TV recently…Kathy Bates, oh my god. I love her. “MISTER MAN!” hahahaha…wonder if she ever danced with a cleaver…..
That’s Misery…with a y. I should know better than to leave such a critical letter out…
I did have a moment where I was like: Hmmm. I haven’t read The Miser!
LOVED Misery. Great book.
Yeah, “The Miser” was published while he was just starting out…he was only Stephen Prince back then…
It’s a monday…I can’t help myself…
Hmmm… not to lower the literary level of the discussion but what about:
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
JFH, No one said anything about low or high, worthy or unworthy books, or any such thing.
A Time to Kill is John Grisham’s best novel, and it was his debut. He should have stopped there, methinks.
The movie, however, infuriated me. I am totally irrational about how much I hate what they did with it. Hate. Haaaaaate.
Wow – I am not sure if my brother read the book but I know that he was pretty much enraged by the movie as well. I’ll check with him to see why. I remember him making fun of it after first seeing it.
Did they deviate in ways you found unforgivable, or …??
Please. Here is a platform for your rage. Begin. :)
I have to put a plug in for the great first books of two of my favorite hard-boiled detective writers: “Red Harvest,” by Dashiell Hammett, and “The Black Echo,” by Michael Connelly.
Other than the fact that Matthew McConaghey (who I LOVE, normally, so so pretty. ::sigh::) was about 10 years too young to play the lead, and Sandra Bullock was 10 years too old for her part, it was mainly just that they fucked with stuff that didn’t need to be fucked with.
The pivotal speech (“what if she was white?”) was given by a juror during deliberation, not by Jake during closing arguments. THIS IS PIVOTAL.
It is POWERFUL in the book, that scene. In the movie, not so much, since it’s given by the least racist person in the movie. The person you’d EXPECT to say it. But to have a white Southern woman stand up to white Southern men in a jury room and take up for a black girl? Whose black father killed two white men? THAT was powerful, not Matthew McConaghey blubbering like a baby.
Actually, one of the best debut novels I’ve read in a LONG time is called National Book Award by Jincy Willett. (yeah, that’s the name of the book itself -hahahha!!)
Laugh out loud funny, takes place in Rhode Island, great characters – AND the author is in her 60s. I love that. Coming out with this kick-ass book in your 60s.
I made RTG read that one – I knew she’d love it.
Other great debut:
Nancy Lemann’s Lives of the Saints – a fabulous melancholy novel of the New Orleans society party set. Debauchery, yet – pain and loss – and also – laugh out loud funny. She’s only come out with a couple books since then – but Lives of the Saints is, to date, one of my favorite books.
I remember when Mitchell and I were living together in a one-room apartment – I made him read Lives of the Saints – and he woke me up one night with his guffaws. I love a book tha tis that funny – but also poignant.
Lisa – oops – my last comment was NOT in response to what you just wrote. It was just me blithering. We hit “send” at the same time.
Okay, so now let me read your thoughts about Time to Kill ….
Lisa – wow. I just got chills. I totally see the difference. What a shame.
I just saw this on Stumble Upon:
— Boob 22, by Joseph Boober
— The Mysteries of Pittsboob, by Michael Chaboob
— Portrait of the Artist as a Young Boob, by Boob Joyce
— Mating, by Boobman Rush
— To Kill a Mockingboob, by Boober Lee
— Catcher in the Boob, by JD Boobinger
— Boob, by Stephen Boob
— The Boob People, by Boobi Hulme
— Boob of Green Gables, by LM Boobgomery
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
Ah, finally. A wide forum in which to discuss my fiery center of the sun hatred of A Time to Kill. This was the second worst of a spate of “hey, who cares if laws are broken as long as our sense of revenge is satisfied!” movies. The worst was “Sleepers” because that movie used sexual child abuse as an exploitive funnel for repressed homophobic fantasies. “I’m gonna kill that guy who raped me, but not before I remember it in slo-mo. I’m also going to use a voice over at the most crucial point in any abused person’s story…the moment when they reveal their trauma.”
Ooh, don’t get me started.
However, A Time to Kill is more fun than Sleepers for a lot of reasons. First of all, the Hollywood hype machine was salivating all over Matthew McConawhozamajigger. He’d done NOTHING yet, but there were all these articles about how AMAZING he was in this movie, how Oscar was calling, blah freakin’ blah.
I saw an interview around this time where McConaflamacky talked about the last speech, the “what if she was white” speech. And how he and Joel worked so hard on how the character was thinking about his own daughters and what he would do.
Hmmm…how about a lawyer who is thinking about THE CASE HE’S TRYING? And not crapping his pants because he’s trying so hard to cry? There is a moment when Donald Sutherland walks into the courtroom…a supposed shocker because he “swore he’d nevah entah anothah courtroom”. Two more martinis and ol’ DS would have been a Kennedy instead of a southern lawyer.
And we’re supposed to cheer that a lawyer makes a jury let a man go who committed COLD BLOODED MURDER? Sorry, but a true hero is someone who faces tragedy and does not succumb to the dark desires of retribution. John Grisham can kiss my ass. Yet another “I SAY EVERYTHING IN STACCATO RHYTHM BECAUSE MY BRAIN IS WORKING SO FAST” performance from Kevin Spacey, and McJiggsy sweating all over the place…
Holy mackerel it is so bad. Could watch it over and over again!
Carrie – you are on FIRE today. Michael Chaboob. hahahahahahaha
Bren – hahahahahahahaha Oh man. Look what I started. I despised Sleepers too except for the hotness of Billy Crudup and Ron Eldard in that first scene.
Uhm – was Time to Kill as bad (meaning: enjoyable) as, say, The Astronaut’s Wife???
“Since he came back, he’s never spoken of it. Never never never. he never speaks of it. Ever.”
Uhm – didn’t he come back from space, like, 2 days ago? Give him a minute, woman!!
And yeah, Bren – back to Matthew McM – I still dream, yearningly, of the Dazed and Confused days when he was so funny and ridiculous. I am convinced that when Interview mag put him and Ashley Judd on the cover (to promote Time to Kill) – sort of saying that he was “the next Paul Newman” – that was the beginning of the struggle for him. he could never live up to that hype. I mean, here he is, still making movies – so obviously something worked – but I think he was meant to be a weird character actor, rather than a leading man. He was so good in Dazed and Confused – he was used really well. Nobody could live up to the hype he got before Time to Kill even came out.
I think he might have been too stoned to know any better for Dazed and Confused. He CHOSE to do the movies he does.
The mularkey veneer of social commentary actually makes A Time to Kill more infuriating. Astronaut’s Wife is just gobbledygook.
Bren – member the scene in Astronaut’s Wife when she’s pregnant and she starts dancing in the kitchen, eating whipped cream? She’s having a “private moment”?? And you and I looked at each other – and we cringed. We were just mortified.
Delicious!!
Johnny Depp was great in that piece of ridiculousness though. He really was. And how about when the two alien twin boys get on the schoolbus at the end, with their gleaming Damien eyes and Charlize Theron, with her new brown hair, smiles knowingly as thye get on the bus. Like … what … they are now aliens … who are going to infiltrate NASA someday with …. their evil spacecraft that will … what … destroy the earth? What???
I literally cannot remember anything about that movie except for the “Never talks about it” mockery. I have no idea what twins you are referring to or how they fit into the overall scheme. The badness was erasing my memory as it happened. Johnny Depp is always great no matter what. I’ll have to watch it again.
Worst best movie of all time? The January Man with Kevin Kline. Mitchell and I watched it, rewound it and watched it again to see if what we’d witnessed was really possible.
There is a wince inducing love scene between he and Mary Elizabeth Mastromichalangelonionio where they give you the treat of both actors under a sheet and their faces at the moment of consummation. Puky!
And an unbelievable scene from Rod Steiger as a police chief screaming at somebody…”You want to f*ck me???” as loud as he can. He is so over the top it is as if he is channeling Medea on steroids. Great fun.
Generation X by Douglas Coupland.
He doesn’t get the props he deserves because his writing seems so casual and of the moment. But he is time capsule material. This one basically prefigured our society for the next twenty years. NAILED IT!
That was his first novel? Wow. Yup – very very prescient. Tapped right into what was going on.
I so remember you and Mitchell telling me about how unbelievably bad January Man was .. hahahahaha I still haven’t seen it. I remember something about Robert Sean Leonard walking around in a silk bathrobe?? Like: who does he think he’s kidding?
Is that the movie where the serial killer spells out the melody of Calender Girl with the floor where they were killed?…
Martin Amis The Rachel Papers.
One of the funniest novels ever written is COLD COMFORT FARM by Stella Gibbons. It was her first. The heroine, Flora Poste, is addressed to her face by her eccentric Starkadder relatives as ‘Robert Poste’s child’. Why does Ada Doom, the ancient matriarch, stay locked in her room? Because when she was a child “she saw something nasty in the shed”. One of the cow’s legs falls off. No particular reason. Just falls off. The phrase “There be no butter in Hell!” from a Starkadder fire and brimstone sermon I have been known to borrow for use myself more than rarely.
That is the January Man movie. Worst “solving crime slowly through intense discussion” scene ever. They simultaneously slowly sing the song and then rush out. SOOOO BAADDD.
I must see this film. NOW.
I just howled at the “Never never never” quote so hard that my dog looked at me like, “what’s so damned funny?”
Steve on the mountain beat me to it! COLD COMFORT FARM!
Which I’m saying even though I’m in the middle of the book right now …. whatevs.
And even though I’m reading the book because I adore the movie. Double whatevs.
Hooray for steve on the mountain and Cold Comfort Farm!!
China Mountain Zhang.
Terrific book. When you read McHugh’s other stuff you realize she has Themes, over and over, but the writing is so good you can forgive it.
The things I remember about A Time To Kill are:
The cool scene in the redneck bar when the rapists are bragging about what they’ve done, and are too drunk and stupid to see that their friends are utterly appalled.
The fact that if Jake had been Carl Lee’s friend he would have stopped him. Never mind the ego-stroking about “you know you can get me off”. How about “your little girl needs her daddy” and besides, “these men will never leave Parchman alive” and “what you are contemplating is too good for them”.
My surprised agreement with the prosecutor when he said that Carl Lee was in court looking for the due process that he had decided the men he shot shouldn’t get. My irritation with the argument the juror made. It shouldn’t have mattered what race the little girl was. What mattered was whether Carl Lee’s shooting those men was justifiable homicide. Since they were in custody and every indication was that they were going to be convicted, no, it wasn’t. Too bad his “friends” didn’t stop him.
Okay, Laura, it’s fiction already.
It’s fiction, already – but culture tells a lot, and a culture that produces that book and movie (and makes them popular) gives clues that a newspaper or a politician’s speech would not. Not that you can omit those, but the movies, books, music, et al are also important.
This has been a Public Service Announcement from the Lileks Society – preserving ephemera for the future since 2003.
Huh?
Oh, please, I beg you, Let’s not get all culturally serious.
Debut novels you loved. GO.
For all the shite she writes NOW, the first Kay Scarpetta book by Patricia Cornwell was AWESOME. She kept the mystery moving so tightly that there were parts where I literally gasped. D and I were on vacation when I read it, and I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. to finish it.
It almost makes me cry to read the crap she puts out today.
The Hobbit.
Black Beauty (cut-rate Dickens, but it affected me deeply as a child and my eldest son loves it too).
Finally, The Last Starship from Earth, by John Boyd. “I’m no Fairweather, I won’t build your pope.”
January Man!!!!!!!…oh my god..the crime solving scene..Brendan..we howled!!!…”I…love….I Love…my.li-tt-l-e..cal…en..AHA!!!!! “..soo fucking dumb…genius..ive never been able to watch Mary Elizabeth Pastrami-on-rye9whatever her name is) again seriously!!!..and books..what about Ms. Lahiri’s book?? Quite a debut!!!
Mitchell – what about Oldest living confederate widow?? I was sure you would say that one!!
Lisa – I’ve never read any Patricia Cornwell, believe it or not – what’s the name of the first book? I’m looking for a fun novel to read now.
im not sure that was his first..if it was..im even more blown away..did u ever read it??? ilove it soo much!!
Oh ken – Black Beauty – I LOVE that book!!
Mitchell – no!! I never read it. The only one I read of his was Plays Well With Others – amazing. He’s marvelous.
“Postmortem”
Dearest: At Swim-two-birds. love, dad
Dad – yes! How could I forget? That opening scene makes me laugh out loud.
Lisa – thanks!!
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
I enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife. Interesting premise for a story.
Johnny – I really enjoyed that book too! I loved it because it was like a road map of Chicago – and I lived there, so that was fun – but also, it was a great premise that she really developed. I was surprisingly really moved at the end. sniff!!!
The Bone People was awesome. In Australia it got a big boost from the Prime Minister of the day Bob Hawke who raved about it on national TV as his favourite book. I loved its poetry and wonderful descriptions of the wilderness coast of New Zealand. The honest portrayal of Maori life and the violence caused by alcohol was a precursor to films like “Once were Warriors”. Such a shame it is her only novel but I understand she has published poetry.
“Set in remote New Zealand, this Booker-prize-winning novel tells the story of the ties that bind three amazingly different people together: Kerewin, an unconventional female artist who has turned her back on her family and an ordinary way of life to live alone in a tower by the sea; shipwrecked Simon, a mute boy with unusual scarring on his body who has strange behavioural problems and an aversion to haircuts; and Joe, a Maori widower who fosters Simon by providing love and heavy-handed violence in equal measure.
Beautifully written with uncannily realistic accounts of the blossoming friendship between the three characters, this fable-like story is funny, cruel and moving. It is a testament to love, friendship and family, and worth the effort despite the complicated style, the depressing/distressing twist in the last third and the sometimes confusing passages of inner dialogue”.
From the Avid Reader blog…..
Top Ten Books of All time
The Bone People – Kerri Hulme
Being Dead – Jim Crace
White Noise – Don Delillo
The Shipping News – E Annie Proulx
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
The Famished Road – Ben Okri
Farenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Written on the Body – Janette Winterson
Post Office – Charles Bukowski
Love your book recaps, brings back lots of memories of winter book binges Sheila.
Bluebottle – wow, we’re kind of kindred spirits. I adore all those books you mention as well. Are you a Jeanette Winterson fan?? I just read her latest novel called “Weight” – well, it’s not really a novel – it’s rather short – but it’s a re-telling of the Atlas myth, in typical Winterson style. I adored it.
The Passion is my favorite of hers.
And I’m so glad to read that someone else has read The Bone People!! You think you’re gonna hate Joe – and then you love him so much it hurts. I love all of them. I love the mixing in of Maori language, I love her poetry, I love the descriptions of that coast and that tower. Wow. She is a phenomenal writer.
Thank you for the tip. I’ll hit up our library for “Weight” and “The Passion” and let you know. “Written on the Body” was recomended by my late mum, a voracious reader. I’m not that surprised no one else has commented on “The Bone People”, only a few authors from this neck of the woods get recognition across the pond. The shame is they tend to be the likes of Bryce Courtney or Germain Greer.
Well, the book did win the Booker though, didn’t it? It at least was shortlisted for the Booker and it did get quite a bit of press over here on this side of the pond. :) I got my copy after reading the review in The NY Times so it did have quite a nice high profile.
I’d love to read some of her poetry. I always wondered, too, what she looked like. I always pictured her as Kerewin, but I know that’s probably inappropriate, because it’s FICTION!
Wonderful book. Life-affirming.
Fall on your knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald.
I loved The Bone People, too. Thanks for reminding me of it, it’s been so long.