Mary Rizza

I wonder if Esther Summerson in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House is as unpopular with today’s young readers as she was in my student days? How we sneered with contempt and impatience when her diffident, self-effacing voice took over the narrative.

The coyness and self-consciousness with which she reveals her story and her character still jar today. How can you read, ‘I don’t know how it is I seem to be always writing about myself…you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn’t!’ without wanting to hurl the book at the wall?

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Cat Stevens’ Father and Son

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Randy Newman’s So Long Dad

The complex relationships between parents and their children are the enduring stuff of books, plays, music, art. Every human emotion is explored through the prism of this primal bond.

Songs about fathers and sons are shot through with ideas of admiration, rivalry, bafflement, inadequacy, disappointment, rejection, acceptance, regret, anger, forgiveness.

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I’ve been re-watching the box set of The Gilmore Girls in preparation for the return of the show and I’m troubled by Rory’s early days at Chilton Preparatory School.

The storylines are strong, the characters are captivating, the witty dialogue whips along at breakneck speed — and yet our enjoyment of The Gilmore Girls’ experiences at Chilton Preparatory School in Hartford, New England comes with a hefty dose of unease.

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Well, hello there, Lorelai and Rory! Is it really 15 years since we first knew you, and eight whole years since we last met?

It’s good to hear that you’re coming back to town for a brief spell — a chance for us to catch up and find out how the world’s treating you (glancing reference to the heart-wrenching song by the Louvin Brothers, inexplicably left out of the series’ encyclopedic range of cultural references).

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Whether you have never read Agatha Christie or would like to explore her work a little further, here is a selection of her novels that should give a good idea of the nature of her work and whet your appetite for more.

These books are crammed with typical Christie pleasures:

• A murder or murders to be solved by Poirot or Marple
• A juicy cast of suspects
• A smattering of social comment and satire
• A helping of psychological interest

Each of these mysteries also has a particular flavour and emphasis which gives it an individual appeal. Perhaps you love logic and puzzles. Maybe you like stories of passion and romance, or are interested in the criminal mind. You might be intrigued by family secrets and relationships.

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Acclaimed crime writers such as Sophie Hannah, Val McDermid and many others say that reading Agatha Christie when they were youngsters made them fall in love with mystery fiction. Me too.

In my case, the first Agatha Christie novel I read was Death on the Nile, which plunged me into a grown-up world of passion, sex, jealousy, greed, exotic places and even more exotic characters, and of course, murder. I gasped at the ingenious plot and the incredibly clever twist. I marvelled at the audacity with which the author baffled my expectations and assumptions.

This was the gateway novel which had me hooked and made me crave the deeper, darker, more dangerous and psychotic fixes which other crime novelists continue to provide.

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Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple should be just a quaint period piece. An elderly lady with no professional experience assisting the police in murder enquiries? You must be joking, guv! And yet her popularity endures.

Although it may seem that Christie’s creation is outmoded and irrelevant to present-day attitudes and expectations, in many ways she embodies the recurring motifs of contemporary crime fiction.

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Good news — Penguin Books have issued Penelope Mortimer’s 1962 novel, The Pumpkin Eater, as a Modern Classic, reawakening interest in this unique portrayal of a woman-on-the-edge, and introducing it to a new generation of readers.

It’s a compelling read, but not a comfortable one.

To a certain extent, the novel, and the 1964 film, scripted by Harold Pinter and directed with a sure, sensitive and arty hand by Jack Clayton, should provide an entertaining and perceptive look at marriage and relationships, but over and over again it challenges our expectations and overturns our assumptions.

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The publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman has inevitably shone a spotlight on To Kill A Mockingbird, and in the glare of present-day sensibilities, both novels are criticised for their portrayal of attitudes to race, justice, equality.

Mockingbird’s lack of real radicalism and its blinkered, sanitised view of society is highlighted by the perspective presented by the later publication as the grown-up Scout discovers her father was not the champion of civil rights she had thought him to be.

For many of us, however, nuanced discussions of ideology are eclipsed by visceral cries of outrage at Watchman’s treatment of our favourite characters.

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The friendship between Alicia Florrick and Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife TV series shouldn’t work. It doesn’t tick any of the boxes commonly associated with fictional depictions of female friends.

For a start, they are an evenly matched pair — different, but equal presence, authority and appeal. No stunning or at least quirkily attractive dominant figure with overweight but feisty best friend here, thank you very much.

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