Faulks on Fiction

3 thoughts on “Faulks on Fiction”

• This series looks very interesting, I just wish there was a 50/50 mix of authors – ok so the series is not about the authors but out of 28 characters, only 6 were created by women, yup, 6:
  • Robinson Crusoe, 1719, Daniel Defoe
  • Tom Jones, 1749, Henry Fielding
  • Vanity Fair (Becky Sharp), 1847, William Makepeace Thackeray
  • Sherlock Holmes, 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • 1984 (Winston Smith), 1948, George Orwell
  • Lucky Jim (Jim Dixon), 1954, Kingsley Amis
  • Money (John Self), 1984, Martin Amis
  • Pride and Prejudice (Mr Darcy), 1813, Jane Austen
  • Wuthering Heights (Heathcliff), 1847, Emily Brontë
  • Tess of the D’Urbevilles, 1891, Thomas Hardy
  • Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Lady Chatterley), 1928, D.H. Lawrence
  • The End of the Affair (Maurice Bendrix), 1951, Graham Greene
  • The Golden Notebook (Anna Wulf), 1962, Doris Lessing
  • The Line of Beauty (Nick Guest), 2004, Alan Hollinghurst
  • Emma, 1815, Jane Austen
  • Diary of a Nobody (Mr Charles Pooter), 1892, George & Weedon Grossmith
  • Jeeves, 1915, P.G. Wodehouse
  • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1961, Muriel Spark
  • James Bond, 1953, Ian Fleming
  • Brick Lane (Chanu), 2003, Monica Ali
  • Great Expectations (Pip), 1860, Charles Dickens
  • Clarissa (Lovelace), 1748, Samuel Richardson
  • Oliver Twist (Fagin), 1838, Charles Dickens
  • A Woman in White (Count Fosco), 1859, Wilkie Collins
  • Gormenghast (Steerpike), 1950, Mervyn Peake
  • Lord of the Flies (Jack), 1954, William Golding
  • The Raj Quartet (Merrick), 1965, Paul Scott
  • Notes on a Scandal (Barbara Covett), 2003, Zoë Heller

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• no, how silly it’s a great big 7.

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• It does seem quite heavily weighted on the masculine side doesn’t it? I recall Faulks saying “there are some women in there…” on the BBC Breakfast programme yesterday, which alluded to a slight bias. I haven’t yet read the book of the same title; it might be interesting to note the balance in there. I’ve always had an aversion to being told what a book’s ‘supposed’ to be about (with the exception of Orwell’s unbiased reviews), but Faulks’ lighthearted approach seems quite appealing.

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