6. The Untold Stories of Broadway - Jennifer Ashley Tepper
Do you wish you were in the audience during Barbra Streisand's final performance of Funny Girl on Broadway? Do you wonder how far Jonathan Groff was willing to go to score tickets to Thoroughly Modern Millie? And are you dying to know which beloved TV star and Tony Award winner was caught with his pants down in front of a movie legend? From opening nights to closing nights. From secret passageways to ghostly encounters. From Broadway debuts to landmark productions. Score a front row seat to hear hundreds of stories about the most important stages in the world, seen through the eyes of the producers, actors, stage hands, writers, musicians, company managers, dressers, designers, directors, ushers, and door men who bring The Great White Way to life each night. You'll never look at Broadway the same way again.
Mutual friends and twitter followers have been telling me for years that I am the British Jennifer Tepper. I get it. I think, when it comes to theatre, our brains work in sort of the same way. So much so that when I first read this first volume of her brilliant Untold Stories, I considered getting in touch to be like "Girl. I wanna do the West End version. Shall we?". In the end I just blogged a few of my own untold stories from the Gielgud to the Garrick to the Duchess rooftop the week before my writing debut, inspired by the expanse of the stories in Jen's book, and the care taken with them. She spoke to ushers and stage door keepers and box office treasurers as well as legendary composers, book writers, producers and actors. These are everyone's stories, told tenderly and just really well written. It's a difficult thing, I think, to take other people's words and craft them in to a cohesive love letter to American theatre, but that is exactly what this is. And the story from Jonathan Larson's friend about their first visit to the Nederlander? Cried on the bus. If you love theatre, or people who love theatre, you should read this.
7. The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their difference, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles' mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess.
But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.
This is my sister's favourite book. I resisted for a long time, because ancient philosophy isn't really my thing, but a spontaneous overnight visit with nothing to read in the bath lead to me asking "Remind me what it's about?".
"It's basically ancient Greek philosophy Gay fanfiction" was, I think, what she said. I was like "Gimme the book".
As a person I'm an absolute sucker for a forbidden love story, and as I writer I love nothing more than a world so fully understood by it's author that you can feel part of it without questioning any of the details. The Song of Achilles absolutely has both. It is a rough, tender, frustrating and oh god so passionate story about not just romantic love, but familial love and friendship-as-love too, and I was so taken by gorgeous, arrogant Achilles and sensitive, rational Patroclus.
You know when you just want fictional characters to be happy? There were times I was absolutely raging at them both; times I wanted to reach back through history to grab them, and push them together, and say "Just have a conversation, please!". It's also, I'm told, mostly very loyal to the plot of the Iliad, so unlike so many of these 'new imaginings' will be loved by philosophers (like my sis) and historians alike, not just romantic readers looking for the next thing to get all-up-in-their-hearts. Ancient philosophy may not be my thing, but love stories in all their forms definitely are. I absolutely loved it.
8. Sister - Rosamund Lupton
When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her Tess's disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister's life - and unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face.
The police, Beatrice's fiancé and even her mother accept they have lost Tess, but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost.
I made notes on all these books before typing this post. The note for Sister is all in capitals and says nothing more than THIS BOOK IS SO UNDERRATED. So. There you go.To elaborate, though, the twist in Sister is the best I have ever read; one of the only twists I truly did not see coming. It's crime fiction written like literary fiction; no cliche or unnecessary sensationalist language to be seen. It's a thriller with real substance, and an emotion you don't often find in the must-turn-the-page books. There have been a lot of great literary thrillers in the years since I read Sister, many of which have had huge mainstream success. For me, none of them have quite lived up. I can't wait 'til it's been long enough that I don't really remember how it all goes down, so I can read it and be surprised all over again. I could never definitively answer if asked what book I'd most like to read again for the first time, but I'm pretty sure that most of the time I'd say this one.
9. Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
San Francisco, 1976. A naïve young secretary, fresh out of Cleveland, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, and Jockey Shorts dance contests. The saga that ensues is manic, romantic, tawdry, touching, and outrageous - unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin.
Tales of the City is a legacy book; the kind I think most people come to through a recommendation. It's an induction, of sorts, I think: a person you love tells you to read this book (these books), and you're introduced to a whole lot more people you love, albeit fictional. I read Tales of the City because my Mum told me to. She heard about the books from her friend Vanessa. I bonded even more with Nicci when we realised we both loved them, passed them on to Siobhan, who fell in love with them too. There is something about these books that feels like belonging, and home. Also they're funny, romantic, and completely ridiculous, all of which are things I love. There's a cult in one too so...
I must have been about 12 when I read these books for the first time. I didn't know a lot of openly LGBT people, beyond a few friends of my Mum and obvs Stephen Gately, and certainly hadn't read books with LGBT characters. It was amazing to me, as a child who thought she was a lot older than she was, that I was only just learning about this now. I thought I knew it all and Tales of the City showed me I really didn't; there were so many more ways to love, and live, and struggle and thrive. I wanted to go to San Francisco (I now have) and have friends as brilliant and fucked up as the Barbary Lane gang (I now have) and meet the man who wrote all this (that too). 'Cause the thing is, he wrote it all as if it was completely normal. As if people lived like this; loudly and messily, just fumbling their way through. And in reading it, I realised that of course it is. That they do. We all do.
More recently, Armistead Maupin has continued the story; written more where before it seemed we'd reached the ending. My mum refuses to read them. For her, where it stopped was perfect; she doesn't need any more. I get that. I have, though, and I'm glad I have. It's like checking in with old friends. The copies we share are worn and well-thumbed; most have been dropped in the bath at least once, and being able to find all of them at the same time is a rarity. It feels like a sort of sacrilege to buy new ones. Like I said, these are legacy books, and so much of the beauty is in the stories you build around them; the crispy pages and bent spines are sort of why I love them.
10. How I Paid for College - Marc Acito
It's 1983, and in a sleepy community in New Jersey seventeen-year-old Edward Zanni is Peter Panning his way through a carefree summer of magic and mischief. However, the fun comes to a halt when his father refuses to pay for Edward to study acting at Julliard. Edward's truly in a bind. He's ineligible for scholarships because his father earns too much. And, in a sure sign that he's destined for a life in the arts, Edward's incapable of holding down a job. So he turns to his loyal (but immoral) friends to help him steal the tuition fees from his father, all the while practising for their high school performance of Grease. Disguising themselves as nuns and priests, they merrily scheme their way through embezzlement, money-laundering, identity theft, forgery and blackmail. But along the way, Edward also learns the value of friendship, hard work and how you're not really a man until you can beat up your father, metaphorically or otherwise.
I've reached number 10 with 3 books still on my list. I didn't know if it should be The Beach, which I love with absolutely no ability to articulate why, or Beautiful Ruins, the last chapter of which is, just as a standalone piece, among the most beautiful things I've ever read. In the end, though, I had to go for How I Paid for College (sub-headed "A Tale of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theatre", which I think tells you all you need to know).
HIPFC was another that was passed around my group of friends, all of us teenagers with very different tastes, yet somehow finding something we commonly loved in this book. It was the first book I have ever read about musical theatre, and came at the exact point I was starting to explore maybe being a part of that, somehow. It's hilarious and awkward and relatable and refers to Pippin a lot. It felt like a book that was of-my-world; like someone was writing just for us and people like us. There were so many ways in, because we knew these people, and loved them. Once, I lost my copy and immediately ordered another, because being without it was not an option (it was down the side of my bed, also known as the Book Graveyard of Nunhead. Some absolute treasures made their way down there when I'd fallen asleep with them in my hand). For most of my 20s "Like in HIPFC" was a pretty common phrase (we actually called it HIPFC for a while 'cause another thing we loved was abbreviations). I have a fondness for this one that probably goes beyond any of the others; this book is comfort and laughter and being a teenager just figuring out that she could do this, if she wanted. Work in theatre. Meet people who loved it too. It was coming, I knew. It might take a while, though. So in the mean time, I'd be happy just to read about it.
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