One of my all time favourites.

Mockingbird is a powerful story that can be read as a metaphor for human life in the context of our own day in which an interest in the arts and humanities is declining while the masses mindlessly gather around a huge television. While nowhere near as bad as the depiction of Tevis' futuristic world, contemporary society has enough elements in common with it to make us attend to certain societal trends.

"What is it, to know you were going to die? We all carry that knowledge inside us, he thought: it is the one thing we know for certain."

Surely that should make us all live better.

Despite its self-professed unexceptional subject matter, this book is so beautifully rendered that you won‘t want to put it down.

It is the life story of an unassuming literary scholar called William Stoner, forgotten by colleagues, and history itself. The clarity and sincerity with which Williams treats this ordinary life is mesmerising.

Stoner is literary perfection. You will wait a long time for another book like this.