Cillian Murphy's Reading List

"One of those books that you read as a young man and become intoxicated with, yet it is a book to be savored over the course of a life. It was written with great mischief and humor, but full of empathy for the outsider struggling to imagine a purpose in this world. Donleavy is a writer who will be dearly missed."

"Along with Updike, Ford has of course been the great chronicler of the modern American male. I relished the Bascombe Trilogy, beginning with The Sportswriter . Frank Bascombe worked his way under my skin."

"A quartet of Rabbit novels in one edition. For me, it is essential reading—as essential yet entirely different to Ford’s achievement. An extraordinary study and description of humanity and life in America between the ‘50s and the ‘90s."

"It’s always the beautiful simplicity of this story that transports me. Not a word is wasted. For such a short novel, it kind of approaches perfection in storytelling for me. Hemingway apparently said of the novel that it was the ‘best I can write ever for all of my life.'"

"This is a searing novel set in 1930s America, and the story unfolds in just over 36 hours. It is a book about sex, alcohol, class, and dreamers. Devastating in its conclusion, it completely drew me into the atmosphere and pressure of what it must have been like to alive in America at that time. All details are present—the cocktails, the cars, and in this book most overwhelmingly, the unhappiness."