The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker
Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993), The Ghost Road (1995)
This amazing trilogy combines fiction and fact spanning the First World War, its aftermath and the shattering neuroses suffered by men from all walks of life. All three novels are excellent and 'The Eye in the Door' and 'The Ghost Road', won the 1993 Guardian Fiction prize and the 1995 Booker Prize respectively. However, the opening book is my favourite. In 'Regeneration' poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen meet at Craiglockhart, a Scottish convalescent home for soldiers injured in the Great War. The subject matter is fascinating and I think Barker demonstrates a real gift for writing about male friendships and interaction. Her prose is strong, readable and hugely emotive. Sassoon and Owen are immortalised in their writings but this fact v fiction insight into the lives of the 'war poets' - and the effect the war had on collective male identity - is fascinating. An emotional, gripping work of fiction set in a powerful historical context; this is a great read (but do all read all three).

To The Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
I had never read any Virginia Woolf until university and opted for a Woolf seminar in my final year. One of the main focuses of the course was 'To the Lighthouse', a deceptively short book that covers a wide range of themes, subjects and acerbic social commentary. Not only is Woolf's style of writing hugely original, I admire the fact that she triumphed as part of 1920s Modernism, a predominantly male canon. The word 'feminist' is often bandied around too much about any literary female but Woolf really did set a standard to which a lot of subsequent women's writing aspired. The book is strong on every level from characters to dialogue, setting to story but it is the symbolism that jumps out at the reader. I'd like to think of Woolf as one of the true interactive writers as she makes the reader work hard and challenge what she's saying on the surface. Don't let her representation in the disappointing film of 'The Hours' put you off. Every home bookshelf should own at least one of her books; I recommend it be this one.

The Sound and The Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
Okay maybe I like my modernism but this is American style - and is much more raw and a lot darker. Faulkner is an exceptional writer who won both Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for his writing. For me, no American writer conjures up the thwarted heat of segregationist pre-WW2 America the way he does. This is the story of once-genteel Compson family and their disintegration as told by the family son's and their black manservant. Faulkner's style is brutal and heady and I didn't want to get to the end of this book - I wanted it to keep on going, to tell me more. It's an emotional book written with a wisdom before its time. Exceptional.

Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children (1981)
Rushdie is as famous as he is infamous and this won the 'Booker of Booker' prizes (the best novel to win the prize in its first 25 years). When I finished reading this I was gobsmacked at its brilliance. The story is so huge that you wonder how Rushdie managed to capture it in one book. It's a magical, colourful story of life, death and fate and I just loved it. Subsequently I've bought this book countless times as a gift for people.

John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)
The story behind this book is as tragic as the book is funny. Kennedy Toole tried unsuccessfully to get it published and was so dismayed at its failure that he killed himself at 32. His mother's persistence resulted in it not only getting published, but winning the Pulitzer Prize. Ignatius J. Reilly is one of the funniest anti-heroes ever written and this book made me laugh out loud.

Good Behaviour by Molly Keane