Heather Reyes

Writer Heather Reyes- First Novel 'Zade' was on the 2006 longlist of 12 for the Anglo-French
Prince Maurice Prize.

Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
When Christmas comes for the four March girls,there is no money for expensive presents and they give
away their Christmas breakfast to a poor family. But there are no happier girls in America than Meg,
Jo, Beth, and Amy. They miss their father, of course, who is away at the Civil War, but they try
hard to be good so that he will be proud of his 'little women' when he comes home.

Speak Memory - Nabokov
Nabokov''s perspective on his life is like no other conventional autobiography. The author tells his
life story in the same mercurial, ironic and tender style as that which he used in his greatest
novels.'

Death at Intervals- Jose Saramago
On the first day of the New Year, no one dies.This understandably causes great consternation amongst
religious leaders - if there's no death, there can be no resurrection and therefore no reason for
religion - and what will be the effect on pensions, the social services, hospitals? Funeral
directors are reduced to arranging funerals for dogs, cats, hamsters and parrots. Life insurance
policies become meaningless. Amid the general public, on the other hand, there is initially
celebration: flags are hung out on balconies and people dance in the streets. They have achieved the
great goal of humanity - eternal life. But will death's disappearance benefit the human race, or
will this sudden abeyance backfire? How long can families cope with malingering elderly relatives
who scratch at death's door while the portal remains firmly shut?Then, seven months later, death
returns, heralded by purple envelopes informing the recipients that their time is up. Death herself
is now writing personal notes giving one week's notice. However, when an envelope is unexpectedly
returned to her, death begins to experience strange, almost human emotions. In his new novel, Jose
Saramago again turns the world on its head - an everyday event is snatched away, and humankind is
left to make of it what it will.

Mrs.Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past.
Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness.
Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. Here,
Virginia Woolf perfected the interior monologue and the novel's lyricism and accessibility have made
it one of her most popular works.

Textermination - Christine Brooke-Rose
The setting for this comic novel is at a conference, held at the San Francisco Hilton. The delegates
are there to pray for their continued survival in readers' minds. The characters include Captain
Ahab, Odysseus and Huck Finn.

Zazi in the Metro - Raymond Queneau
Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrived in Paris from the country to stay with her female-impersonator
uncle, Gabriel.All she really wants to do is ride the Metro,but finding it shut because of a strike,
Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure.

Submarine - Joe Dunthorne
Hello. I'm Oliver Tate, the protagonist. I am likely to use words like protagonist and,moments later,
words like twonk. My ambitions are as follows: to find out why my father sometimes stays in bed for
days at a time; to find out why my mother's getting surfing lessons - and probably more - from a
hippy-looking twonk; and to lose my virginity before it becomes legal - in just over a year. I am
monitoring my parent's intimacy via the dimmer switch in their bedroom. My parents have not had sex
in two months which, my research suggests, points toward impending marital breakdown. There are other lesser characters in the book: Jordana, who is my love interest, despite her eczema. Zoe, whose only real schoolfriend is a dinner lady. I feel sorry for Zoe which, in turn, makes me feel better about
my own life. Then there's my friend Chips, an outstanding bully. He made our Religious Education
teacher cry. This book might not change my life. But there is no telling how you will react.