As literary events go, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is an absolute miracle of prose. Clocking in at almost 800 pages, occurring in a post WWII geography that sprawls over several continents, and featuring a cast of over 400 characters, each hustling and busting for whatever attention they can get (or in some cases, get away from), Gravity’s Rainbow is a work so wide-eyed in its vision and relentlessly thorough in its execution that it does not deny the reader anything except maybe the chance to catch a breath. Often lauded as one of the greatest books of the 20th century, and widely regarded as Pynchon’s best, Gravity’s Rainbow is the post-modern novel par excellence: it is a collision of worlds seen and unseen, a rumpus of ideas high and low brow, and a tumult of things deathly, humorous, and erotic.

For the sustained screaming that comes across the novel’s epic length, Gravity’s Rainbow is a novel without compassion. Easily the best book I’ve ever read, it is a reading experience no reader should pass up.

Recommended by Dale