Ed King, by David Guterson

Phenomenal update on Oedipus Rex. I had major doubts about how the classic tragedy could be updated, but the exceptional Guterson did it so well. A 16 year old au pair and her employer seduce each other, and she abandons the baby in a wealthy neighborhood, wishing the baby the best. Ed King grows up not knowing he is adopted. He has teenage years of being reckless - it is hard to not give plot spoilers, so I'm going to stop because the deft way Guterson brought the tale to modern times was really brilliant, and moving the drama into the hubris and grandiose ambitions of software barons was a genius stroke.

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The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfield
Raise High The Roof Beam Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, by Raymond Carver
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger
Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O’Nan
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, by Eric Hodgins
My Antonia, by Willa Cather
An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
American Psycho, by Brett Easton Ellis
Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis
Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Mariette in Ecstasy, by Ron Hansen