Are we right to give such attention to debuts, though? For
some writers, maybe the first novel represents a clearing of the throat, before
their full creative powers can be unleashed. This list celebrates ten authors
who disproved the ‘difficult second novel’ cliché to spectacular effect.
Middlesex: Jeffrey Eugenides
Eugenides’ trick in his debut novel The Virgin Suicides was
to use a group of narrators who, despite their best efforts, simply cannot
understand their subject; try as they might, they would never be able to piece
together the reasons for the Lisbon sisters’ mass suicide (‘obviously... you’ve
never been a 13-year-old girl’, as Cecilia Lisbon says). In Middlesex, he reverses this,
using a single, omniscient voice to narrate generations of family history,
tracing the progress of one gene across decades and continents. The story of
Calliope, a Greek-American hermaphrodite, Middlesex is by turns breathtakingly expansive
and heartbreakingly tender. Whilst not as iconic as The Virgin Suicides, it
deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003.
Midnight’s Children: Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie’s second novel made him an international star
on its release in 1981. Released six
years after his debut, Grimus, the novel heralded Rushdie’s embrace of magic
realism. If his first novel was greeted with a mixture of public indifference
and critical scorn, his second was in a different league altogether, winning
three separate Booker prizes and spawning a rather belated cinema adaptation.
The former advertising copywriter would agree that good things come to those
who wait.
The Plague: Albert Camus
While Camus’ debut, The Stranger, has become the book of
choice for students of an existential bent to have poking out of their jacket
pockets, his second novel The Plague is a more accomplished piece of work.
Based on the true story of a plague epidemic in the Algerian city of Oran, the novel is
strongly influenced by the author’s experiences during the Nazi occupation of
France during World War II. Stylishly written and full of empathy, The Plague
is particularly interesting for the way Camus expresses multiple viewpoints
within a largely first-person narrative.
Sometimes A Great Notion: Ken Kesey
Kesey is mainly remembered now for his debut, One Flew Over
The Cuckoo’s Nest, but his follow-up is a remarkably ambitious piece of work.
Taking its title from the lyric of Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene, the novel mixes
environmental themes with labour disputes and familial conflicts. Like Cuckoo’s
Nest, Sometimes a Great Notion plays on the conflict between a rugged
individualist (here represented by the logger, Henry Stamper) and a coercive
institution (the unions, in this case), but where Kesey’s debut offered a
concentrated burst of satire, his follow-up was both broader in scope and more
experimental in style, making for a more satisfying read.
The Crying of Lot 49: Thomas Pynchon
Great second novels don’t have to be expansive, of course.
Pynchon’s debut, V, weighed in at close to 500 pages; the follow-up is a slim
volume indeed by comparison, but doesn’t suffer for it. The Crying of Lot 49 is
a (sometimes) playful account of paranoia and conspiracy. Appointed as executor
on an ex-lover’s will, Oedipa Mass finds herself drawn into a centuries old
conflict between rival postal services (or not). Along the way she meets
drug-crazed psychiatrists, esoteric inventors, paranoid disc jockeys and louche
garage bands, while Pynchon finds time to create a brilliantly observed
Jacobean revenge play, ‘The Courier’s Tragedy’.
The Luminaries: Eleanor Catton
Another Booker-winning sophomore, The Luminaries built on
the promise of Catton’s aptly-named debut novel The Rehearsal to great
effect. The first book explored illicit
relationships, shifting identities and power play within the confines of a
school, as the students deal with the after-effects of a music teacher’s affair
with a pupil. With the follow-up, Catton gave herself a bigger canvas to work
on, creating an intricately structured, multiple-perspective narrative. Time
will show that The Luminaries’ success was not a victory of hype over
substance, even if the media narrative did focus on Catton’s ‘natural blonde’
hair.
The Magic Toyshop – Angela Carter
My mum once climbed through an upstairs window while wearing
a wedding dress; my parents had got married in the morning, and then my dad
nipped off to watch West Ham before the reception, taking the only set of housekeys
with him. She borrowed a ladder from the neighbours and broke the bedroom window
to gain entrance. This is also a key image in Angela Carter’s second novel. The
tale of a young woman’s sexual awakening, The Magic Toyshop is a remarkably
audacious piece of storytelling, intertwining the mythical story of Leda and
the swan, the real-world faded grandeur of South London suburbs and the gothic
imagination of the Brontes. The fairy tale allusions Carter employs were to
become a feature of her most successful work; with The Magic Toyshop she staked
out her territory, demonstrating her mastery of magic realism.
My Idea of Fun – Will
Self
Like American Psycho, Self’s second novel (after 1992’s
two-part Cock and Bull) satirises the psychosis underlying the 1980s consumer
boom. But where Bret Easton Ellis’ story descends into slasherdom, My Idea of
Fun inhabits a ‘wild, primeval place… where the very manifold of your identity
can easily be gashed open’. Focusing on the relationship between Ian, an
unremarkable marketing exec with an eidetic memory, and Mr Broadhurst, a domineering,
Crowlian figure also known as The Fat Controller, My Idea of Fun contains Self’s
trademark mixture of gothic humour, psychological insight and sesquipedalian
prose, marking him out as a genuinely original voice in British fiction. 
Pfitz: Andrew Crumey
Released in 1995, Pfitz is something of an overlooked classic.
Blending elements of JK Huysmans’ decadent style with a sense of metafictional
humour, the story follows a European prince who conceives of grand civic plans,
but lacks the funds to enact them. Instead, he employs scribes to create great
cities on paper, detailing everything from citizens’ lives to drainage systems.
Pfitz is a clerk who notices a loose thread in this imagined history, becoming
entangled in a mysterious and threatening game. With the character of the
prince, Crumey charts the disillusionment of a recently-published writer,
producing great works of imagination without any tangible benefits.
Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Beyonce’s favourite author came to prominence with
her Orange Prize winning second novel. An expansive and ambitious narrative, Half
of a Yellow Sun explores the psychological effects of the Biafran War of
Independence on five characters, each of whom is struggling to negotiate the
boundaries of race, class and family to find their own place in a new society. Unflinching
in its depictions of conflict, and the consequences for civilians, Half of a
Yellow Sun has become a landmark in post-colonial literature.
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