Books by Annie Proulx
“Proulx’s story builds on the Western books about gender and violence that I mentioned previously by indicating how certain forms of masculinity have become absolutely brutal. In this case, it’s in the form of homophobic fathers and employers. Her Western takes place in the early 1960s. The main characters, Jack and Ennis, are sheepherders instead of cowboys. The two men fall in love while working in Wyoming. They end up in unhappy and tortured marriages but manage to meet up and reunite for the next several years. Their relationship ends when Jack is brutally killed. Brokeback Mountain had a tremendous impact, and no doubt opened up new possibilities for storytelling in the genre.” Read more...
Susan Kollin, Literary Scholar
“The story is told through the lens of the families, but its real subject is the destruction of the forests of North America, and the environmental and human cost of that process” Read more...
The Best Climate Change Novels
James Bradley, Novelist
“The Shipping News is an extraordinary book. For 350 pages, she does the most extraordinary thing with language – things which break all the rules. W Somerset Maugham said there are only three rules for writing and no one ever agrees what they are. Well, she takes what rules anyone may have and breaks all of them.” Read more...
The best books on Human Dramas
R J Ellory, Novelist
Interviews where books by Annie Proulx were recommended
The best books on Human Dramas, recommended by R J Ellory
Roger Ellory is a bestselling author whose recommendations include Annie Proulx, Stephen King and Truman Capote. There are, he says, no rules to great writing
The Best Climate Change Novels, recommended by James Bradley
The best fiction allows us to hold ideas in our heads about time and space and causality and connection that are difficult to articulate in other ways, argues the Australian author James Bradley. It helps its readers engage with dangers and possibilities that are at the very edge of imagination
Landmark Western Novels, recommended by Susan Kollin
The Western evolved out of colonial adventure narratives that dramatised a battle between so-called ‘savagery’ and ‘civilisation’; dime novels then turned the cowboy into an iconic symbol of masculinity—explains Susan Kollin, professor of American studies at Montana State University. But this antique genre has plenty of literary potential and moral uncertainty to offer to the modern reader. Here, she selects five landmark Western novels that explore frontier mythology.
The best books on Sex, recommended by Susan Quilliam
Sex: it’s all around us, but many of us still have questions. Relationship coach and author Susan Quilliam, who updated the 1970s classic, The Joy of Sex, talks us through the best sex guides and also some of the groundbreaking books that broke taboos and paved the way to more open-minded sexual attitudes.
