The most important word in the title of this lively survey of fiction with conservative appeal isn’t “novels,” “conservatives,” or “love.” It’s “haven’t.” When novels come up in conservative discussion, the range is narrow. We have 1984, The Brothers Karamazov, Brideshead Revisited, J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy, Flannery O’Connor’s grotesqueries, and a few others—the “same handful of works,” Christopher Scalia laments. And yet, the novel is “one of the great achievements of Western culture,” a sometimes “astonishing mode of human expression.” It gives psychological instruction when it “immerses us in the minds of others” whose motives must be interpreted as the action proceeds. Evocative language and knowledge of human purposes can serve readers well in real life. With the expansion of the Right’s reading list overdue, Scalia, a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and former English professor, offers 13 novels as a start, lesser-known gems conservatives probably haven’t read.
The first one comes
