The Harpole Report
10 best books like The Harpole Report (J.L. Carr): Pictures from an Institution, According to Queeney, England, Their England, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Ennui, Augustus Carp, Esq. by Himself, Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man, The Polyglots, White Man Falling, My Search for Warren Harding
| Author | Randall Jarrell |
| ISBN | 0226393747 |
Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women’s college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall Jarrell’s classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging...
| Author | Beryl Bainbridge |
| ISBN | 0786709820 |
Bainbridge's brilliantly imagined, universally acclaimed, Booker Prize-longlisted novel portrays the inordinate appetites and unrequited love touched off when the most celebrated man of eighteenth-century English letters, Samuel Johnson, enters the domain of a wealthy Southwark brewer...
| Author | A.G. Macdonell |
| ISBN | 0330280414 |
Banished from his native Scotland by a curious clause in his father’s will, Donald Cameron moves to London and decides to conduct a study of the English people; a strange race who, he is told, have built an entire national identity around a reverence for team spirit and the memory of Lord Nelson . . .
...
| Author | Eric Hodgins |
| ISBN | 0743262328 |
The classic tale of leaving the city and building a house in the country, only to find country life isn't so simple. But it is hilarious. Mr. Blandings, a successful New York advertising executive, and his wife want to escape the confines of their tiny midtown apartment. They design the perfect home in...
| Author | Nigel Williams |
| ISBN | 0571173667 |
Wife: "What are you reading?"
Me: "The Wimbledon Poisoner. It's about a man trying to poison his wife."
This is a black comedy out of Britain, which some passages I found laugh out funny but others might find cringe-worthy. This confirms to me I'm a little bit warped.
I concede this novel...
| Author | Maria Edgeworth |
| ISBN | 1409765539 |
The shiftless Lord Glenthorn has money and a title but suffers from ennui—from boredom. When it is revealed to him that he is not, in fact, an Anglo-Irish earl, but the peasant Christy O’Donoghoe, he must face his changed circumstances in order to provide for a life and future for the woman with whom...
| Author | Henry Howarth Bashford |
| ISBN | 1598180355 |
It is customary, I have noticed, in publishing an autobiography to preface it with some sort of apology. But there are times, and surely the present is one of them, when to do so is manifestly unnecessary. In an age when every standard of decent conduct has either been torn down or is threatened with destruction;...
| Author | William Gerhardie |
| ISBN | 1853754455 |
The Polyglots is the story of an eccentric Belgian family living in the Far East in the uncertain years after World War I and the Russian Revolution. The tale is recounted by their dryly conceited young English relative, Captain Georges Hamlet Alexander Diabologh, who comes to stay with them during...
| Author | Mike Stocks |
| ISBN | 1846880246 |
White Man Falling is a tale of domestic catastrophe, deluded match-making and mystical absurdity set in a small town in South India. Police sub-inspector Swami has lost his job after suffering a stroke while beating up a Very Guilty Suspect. He can no longer talk properly, command the respect of his...
| Author | Robert Plunket |
| ISBN | 0060973900 |
This is an out-of-print book. It used to be harder tracking such things down. Then I realized there are places to go for them. I found a copy of this through 3rd-party selling at Amazon.
Robert Plunket has apparently stopped writing novels, and more's the pity. He made his debut with this and,...
Fireflies tells the story of Trinidad's most venerated Hindu family, the Khojas. Rigidly orthodox, presiding over acres of ill-kept sugarcane and hoards of jewellery enthusiastically guarded by old Mrs. Khoja, they seem to have triumphed more by default than by anything else. Only 'Baby' Khoja,...
Johnson, a young native in the British civil service, is a clerk to Rudbeck, Assistant District Officer in Nigeria, and imagines himself to be a very important cog of the King's government. He is amusingly tolerant of his fellow Africans, thinking them uncivilized; he is obsessed with the idea of bringing...
Pitting greed against Green a new town is being planned in England's green and pleasant land. Usually the champion of greed, conservative M.P. Leslie Titmuss is thrown off his political course, since the new development threatens his own Rapstone Manor. Bringing us up-to-date on the quirks, quarrels,...
Gils Blas recounts the education and swashbuckling adventures of an adaptable young valet as he progresses from one master to the next, making his way from naive youth to cunning servant to landed proprietor and nobleman--with a stint in jail, bereavements, and fits of remorse along the way. Finally,...
| Author | Michael Frayn |
| ISBN | 0571225578 |
The Council Estate
Before the internet in Britain, there was a thing called Fleet Street. This was as much a culture as a location. It sat culturally and geographically midway between the commercial city of London and the seat of government in Westminster. It produced something called newspapers,...
"Warning to Scholars: This book is fundamentally unsound." Master Will Shakespeare and his struggles to finish his new play are at the center of this classic 1941 satire of Elizabethan England, said by many to be the inspiration behind the recent film Shakespeare in Love. Joining Master Will in Brahms...
| Author | George Barr McCutcheon |
| ISBN | 1406956155 |
With the passing of his beloved grandfather, Monty Brewster inherits a long-anticipated million dollars. But he suddenly discovers that he can inherit seven times as much from his eccentric uncle if he spends every cent of his grandfather's money within a year. The carefree prospect of running through...
| Author | Peter De Vries |
| ISBN | 0226143899 |
It is 1963 in an unnamed town in North Dakota, and Anthony Thrasher is languishing for a second year in eighth grade. Prematurely sophisticated, young Anthony spends too much time reading Joyce, Eliot, and Dylan Thomas but not enough time studying the War of 1812 or obtuse triangles. A tutor is hired,...
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving,...
| Author | Leslie Thomas |
| ISBN | 0749325208 |
There is always a danger that when you revisit something from the past that you loved it will disappoint. Films look cheap, games are tacky, food doesn’t taste the same and books can leaving you wondering “what was I thinking..” Nevertheless I have recently bought a couple of books that I felt deserved...
| Author | Thorne Smith |
| ISBN | 0375753079 |
The beloved characters--mortal and immortal--of Topper return in this uproarious romp through the south of France. One of Thorne Smith's best-loved comedies, it proves once again that he is the undisputed master of urbane wit and sophisticated repartee.
Cosmo Topper, the...
| Author | J.P. Donleavy |
| ISBN | 0871132648 |
A Fairy Tale of New York is a funny, lusty, and sad novel of comic genius. Returning from study abroad, Cornelius Christian enters customs with his luggage and his dead wife. His first encounter in New York is with a funeral director, with whom he reluctantly takes employment to pay for the burial expenses....
| Author | Howard Jacobson |
| ISBN | 0099274728 |
From the beginning Oliver Walzer is a natural - at ping-pong. Even with his improvised bat (the Collins Classic edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) he can chop, flick, half-volley like a champion. At sex he is not so adept, but with tuition from Sheeny Waxman, fellow member of the Akiva Social Club Table Tennis...
| Author | Angela Thirkell |
| ISBN | 1559213221 |
Middle-aged Catherine Middleton, married to an obtuse but endearing older man, is the still center of a swirl of two generations of gentry on the brink of WW II. The activities of youngsters and contemporaries go on around her and it is only gradually that one sees how, without conscious manipulation,...
| Author | David Madsen |
| ISBN | 1873982712 |
In the intersection of the 15th and 16th centuries, a Dwarf (Big "D" to show respect) goes from the mean streets of Rome to walk with the giants of that world. Madsen remarkably gives us a tour of Europe, Italy, Rome, the Vatican, the papacy, Gnosticism, side-shows, sex, gore and love - always love. The...
