by John Berger (1972)Ī true product of its time, Berger's novel of self-liberation (some might call it promiscuity) is also one of the oddest works of fiction to win the Booker Prize. Who says one's first great love need be human? After a long-haired Alsatian named Tulip comes into his life, the arch, grouchy Ackerley is transformed before our eyes from a middle-aged London cynic into a poet of heartbreak. She's as flawed and feckless as the rest of us, which is one reason the novel is a cornerstone of literary modernism. She's not a particularly sympathetic figure. Portia, a lonely 16-year-old who falls for an unsavory family friend, hurls herself into the lopsided affair like a suicide jumping into the sea. This is first love as tragedy - nowadays one might call it trauma. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (1938)
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