The Beatriz Williams List

Book

The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway disputed the notion that the Lost Generation of war survivors was somehow irredeemably damaged by its experience, and this iconic novel of expatriates roaming the villages of Spain for local color almost explodes with masculine energy. I first read this book in high school, when my imagination was ready to be captured by Lady Brett Ashley, who drew every man around her into disastrous jealousy; now, it's the interaction among the competing males that fascinates me.

Maisie Dobbs

by Jacqueline Winspear

Not just men but women are veterans of the front lines in this first book of Winspear's series about a female detective setting up shop in 1920s London. Winspear adroitly illuminates the range of human reaction to the experience of war, and both the opportunities and challenges the aftermath presents to the "leftover women."

The Crimson Room

by Katharine McMahon

Evelyn Gifford is another "leftover woman" in 1920s London, this time breaking ground as an attorney whose personal and professional life reverberate with the Great War's effects: her brother's death in battle may not have been all it appeared, and her investigation of a murder uncovers painful truths in the character of a magnetic barrister she's fallen in love with. Mesmerizing prose and a bristling, believable main character kept me turning the pages.

Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks

Published in 1993, Faulks's beloved novel about a man's journey through a love affair in pre-war France to a dangerous mine-laying expedition on the Western Front continues to absorb readers. What I found particularly illuminating was the perspective of his descendant in a parallel narrative taking place in 1978, as she recalls her grandfather's emotional distance and early death, and the reader fits the puzzle pieces together.

A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

Like all Helprin's novels, the tale of Alessandro Giuliani's life and adventures--as recounted during a journey with a young man, after they're both thrown off a bus--is not brief, but the author's extraordinary imagination and poetic imagery make every one of its 800 pages count. You finish this book having lived a full, bizarre lifetime, and you're left with the same conclusion as in Hemingway: this generation, though battered, found a way to soldier on.

About Beatriz Williams

A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz Williams spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons, before her career as a writer took off. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore.

Latest Book from the author

A Certain Age

by Beatriz Williams

The bestselling author of A Hundred Summers brings the Roaring Twenties brilliantly to life in this enchanting and compulsively readable tale of intrigue, romance, and scandal in New York Society, brimming with lush atmosphere, striking characters, and irresistible charm.

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