Gearing up for the Ivy Compton-Burnett experience: 'PG Wodehouse rewritten by Patricia Highsmith'

I have mentioned before my epiphany, about 40 years ago, that reading novels for pleasure might be a good thing - both intellectually improving and enjoyable. At the time I cast around for guidance on what I should read, with the aim of becoming WELL READ.

Among my discoveries was a short volume by Anthony Burgess, 99 novels: the best in English since 1939, a personal choice. Given that Burgess was a famous novelist and respected critic, I figured he should know what he was talking about and resolved to work my way through his list. I learned later that it had been produced in a fit of pique after none of his works made it onto a list published by the Book Marketing Council of the 12 'best novels of our time' (in English). Burgess described that list as 'execrable' and his decision to choose 99 novels came with the suggestion that the reader could decide on the hundredth and might choose one of his own novels.

In 1984 I might have hoped that 40 years later I might have read at least a majority of the recommendations, possibly nearly all of them. I was probably never much up for Finnegans wake and never much liked the sound of the 15-volume A chronicle of ancient sunlight by Henry Williamson, the dreadful fascist who is most famous for Tarka the Otter. 

Much of the list was predictable, the familiar roster of Waugh, Greene, Spark, Murdoch, Amis etc. that I would probably have added to my list anyway. But it introduced me to many authors and books I hadn't heard of, whether John Kennedy Toole's marvellous picaresque A confederacy of dunces, Richard Hughes' The fox in the attic, which is not as well-known as it should be, and Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan.

For a while I seemed to be working through the list, but then somehow became parted from the book and ceased to use it as a guide. Also I began to read more history and less fiction and hopes of achieving well-read status diminished. But recently I was given a new second-hand copy and looked with curiosity to see how I was doing. Not good – 28 out of 99, which means I've been going at a rate of not much more than one every two years. I could make myself feel better by noting that my list disproportionately included the multi-volume novels like A dance to the music of time, The sword of honour and the Balkan trilogy.

It's true that I have read other good or great books from the same period that aren't on the list. Among them are, Elizabeth Bowen's The death of the heart and Brian Moore's Cold heaven, both of which I could have sworn Burgess included but are clearly not there. I can see a few more that I really don't want to read. Maybe one should have a go at Norman Mailer's The naked and the dead, but Ancient evenings – I don't think so. And having listened to a radio adaptation of CP Snow's Strangers and brothers, I think I can spare myself its 10 volumes - even if part of me feels I should read a classic novel sequence by a  a fellow University of Leicester alumnus. By all accounts it is a stodgy old read.

Others I thought it best not to bother with because I had not heard of the author let alone the book, but on closer inspection Pavane by Keith Roberts and The disenchanted by Budd Schulberg look quite interesting. I might give them to go.

The ambition remains to get to 50, and to make progress I should target shorter ones that I actually want to read. To that end I have lighted on one of Burgess's recommendations that I haven't read and which isn't that long, Ivy Compton Burnett's The mighty and their fall. Compton-Burnett has long been in the same category for me as BS Johnson, about whom I wrote last year - intriguing enough to want to read, but with a sense that it's a bit daunting so not quite what I want to pick up just now.

There are a few reasons for this, starting with the author's rather scary appearance. Next, the forbidding appearance of hardback versions of her books lined up in public libraries when I was younger, with the yellow Gollancz covers offering no pictorial enticement. In paperback they appeared in the somewhat austere Penguin Classics range with their white and orange spines, implying seriousness rather than fun.

Then there were the titles with their consistent 'and' format starting with Pastors and Masters (1925) through to The Last and the First (posthumous (1971). And then there are the distinctive features that the books are all written almost entirely in dialogue and all set in Edwardian country houses even through to those written in the 1960s. Their themes of claustrophobic family (occasionally institutional, such as a school) life seemed rather daunting too. It all sounds like a kind of Kafkaesque ghost story.

Yet there have always been reasons not to be put off. I remember seeing an edition of the South Bank Show in 1984 on the centenary of Compton-Burnett's birth presented by Melvyn Bragg and featuring a dramatisation of scenes from Elders and betters, which if I remember rightly is about an elderly relative using her debilitating illness and the prospect of inheritance to manipulate her family. I seem to remember it concluding with a haunting scene showing leaves being blown about in the wind. That was what first intrigued me about her work.

In addition, the books are supposed to be funny, which is always an attraction to me. So is the unconventional format and style (see BS Johnson again). They were read and popular in their time and Compton-Burnett was well-known enough to have a damehood conferred on her. They can't be that difficult.

So my Dame Ivy moment has almost arrived. I've done a bit of preparation, listening to an edition of the Unburied Books podcast, focsuing on Dame Ivy's A house and its head, featuring John Darnielle, the lead singer out of the wonderful Mountain Goats, who I'm somehow not surprised to find is a Compton-Burnett fan. I've listened to a dramatisation of another novel, A family and a fortune and read this article by Stuart Jeffries on the Royal Literature Fund website, arguing that on the 140th anniversary of her birth Compton-Burnett's novels are ripe for rediscovery, although it's debatable whether his description of her novels as 'PG Wodehouse rewritten by Patricia Highsmith' will encourage this or not.

While I continue to prefer hard-copies to e-books, it has been hard to find The mighty and their fall in decent condition so Kindle it is then. I hope to report back here on what I find.