Opinion
04 Oct 26

5 Essential Books to Read as a Student – Selected by Donal Ryan

Donal Ryan. Credit: Steve Pyke

As part of our Student Special, award-winning author Donal Ryan selects his top student reads.

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing
(1950)

I think students of writing should read this one. The tone is so intense and oppressive. If you want to imbue a piece of writing with a particular mood, The Grass Is Singing is an object lesson in that. Every single line pushes you down and down.

Even the way Doris describes the ceiling of the cabin where the couple live, in the savannah: the corrugated iron, and how they’re never going to be able to afford a proper roof. We know what’s coming with the terrible ending, because we’re shown in the very first passage in the book.

We know there’s no way out, but still you’re reading, going, ‘Oh, please don’t let it fucking happen, please let it be okay!’ There isn’t one likable character, but still you feel for them, you can see their humanity. Finding empathy and compassion in characters is almost an obligation. It’s an onerous obligation at times, but it’s always there.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
(1963)

I always advise students to read this one – it might be a bit on the nose for some students, but it’s kind of a studenty book, because Esther Greenwood is on an internship in New York at the start.

The Bell Jar is so accessible, it’s a way into Sylvia Plath. Some of Sylvia’s poetry is beautiful, but as profound as it is, it can be a bit opaque. The Bell Jar is so beautiful, but in a terrible, tragic way – it’s almost a suicide note. She died not long after it came out. Her mum tried to stop it being published because it was such a thinly disguised memoir; a recollection of her own trauma and her suicide attempts.

It’s humane, compassionate, clear-sighted – and funny. She’s going, ‘Oh god, the fucking pain is just too much, I can’t take it, I can’t take it! But look how great the world is as well, and how funny it is!’

It’s an amazing book. I mourn Sylvia Plath every time I read it or think about her.

The Stand by Stephen King
(1978)

Stephen King gave me my love of books. With The Stand, reading, as a pastime, became so fulfilling. What really got me was that it was this big, long, winding story, but it was also a very simple story of a battle between good and evil.

There were two groups in a post-apocalyptic Earth: one led by Randall Flagg, who was Satan, and the other by Mother Abagail, this African American lady, who was God. These two groups are going to have this conflagration, but in the meantime, you’ve got this epic journey. And on the journey, just as Steinbeck did in The Grapes Of Wrath, Stephen King intersperses these incredible little vignettes, these self-contained short stories describing people’s experiences of this wasteland.

It’s just a brilliant book, and it gets loads of young teenagers addicted to reading.

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
(1996)

It’s as perfect as a memoir can be. Frank himself said: “This is not a series of my vivid recollections, this is my impression of what happened when I was young.” And there was war over the book in Limerick! Still is. People are still fucking banging on about it.

My mum was in Limerick in the ‘50s. She remembers going to the market with her dad and selling vegetables out of the back of his car, and Dad would give Mum and her brothers sticks to beat away the urchins. Children who were barely clothed, in rags, would try to steal food from the trailer, and her brothers would be whacking them.

Mum would often say, ‘Why didn’t we just give them the food and go home? Why did we fight them away like that?’ So Mum knew. She said Frank McCourt doesn’t go far enough. He’s describing the poverty in Limerick in the ‘40s and ‘50s perfectly.

But it’s beautiful as well. The way I write dialogue was very influenced by the way Frank writes in Angela’s Ashes. He uses the same style of working the dialogue into sentences.

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
(2003)

This book is a glorious novel in every way. It’s a comment on corporate chicanery, family life, abandonment, and capital punishment. And it’s really funny. It’s incredible.