Like a Fiery Elephant

Jonathon Coe

An awesome book, magnificent. Anyone who cares about books, reading, and novels should have a look at this. It's a biography of BS Johnson, the modernist author who killed himself in 1973. Johnson isn't always a chap one can sympathise with, many of his views on the novel ('telling stories is telling lies') being rather difficult to agree with. But the story is presented so well by Coe that you're gripped from the off. A brilliant, brilliant book, which will be the missing tenth in my Top Ten.