Important Artifacts by Leanne Shapton (2009) is a teenager when he's seduced by his aunt, and his fall from innocence is rendered even more jarring by Berger's impartial, omnipotent tone. by John Berger (1972)Ī true product of its time, Berger's novel of self-liberation (some might call it promiscuity) is also one of the oddest works of fiction to win the Booker Prize. Who says one's first great love need be human? After a long-haired Alsatian named Tulip comes into his life, the arch, grouchy Ackerley is transformed before our eyes from a middle-aged London cynic into a poet of heartbreak. She's as flawed and feckless as the rest of us, which is one reason the novel is a cornerstone of literary modernism. She's not a particularly sympathetic figure. Portia, a lonely 16-year-old who falls for an unsavory family friend, hurls herself into the lopsided affair like a suicide jumping into the sea. This is first love as tragedy - nowadays one might call it trauma. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (1938) It's achingly beautiful, magnificently sad. He claimed to have taken it directly from his own life. First Love was his favorite of his own works, dearer to him than Fathers and Sons. Is there any more literary subject than first love? I'd say not - and Ivan Turgenev, Russian literature's great romantic, would have agreed. First Love and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev (1860) In his latest, Gone to the Wolves, a teenager falls for a fellow death metal fan, turning their coming of age into a unique love story - much like the unique love stories Wray recommends below. John Wray is the acclaimed author of Lowboyand five other novels.

From A to X by John Berger