Properly literary fiction vs just fiction

I just finished Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor and it is beautifully written and very sad. It was from a set of Virago Modern Classics I bought a few years ago that also included very good books by Rebecca West, Rosamund Lehmann, Kate O'Brien and Pat Barker.

Other really memorable books that I'd recommend:
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd
The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

So, embarrassingly, for my birthday despite my pretensions and aspirations to proper books, the children guided by dh have bought me a copy of The Unmumsy Mum.🙄

Robertson Davies (Canadian) is also very funny and writes very well.

I love an american writer called Cheryl Mendelson - she has a trilogy starting with Morningside Heights that is delightful - well written, great plot, lovely characters and a different view of NYC. Not sure if you can get them in UK though.

I'm not a great Anne Enright fan but I thought The Green Road (?) was great.

For a thumping good read, you can't beat Trollope (see my user name!)

If you google Nancy Pearl (or NPR Librarian) you'll get this great woman who recommends under the radar books. She has 2 books too recommending great books that are not that well known. I read 2 of the funniest books from her recommendations The Bear Went Over The Mountain and Evolutionary Man (Or How I Ate My Father).

Missy

You'll thank me. Towards the end when we start spending a lot of time in Jude's childhood reading it was rather like repeatedly slamming your own head in a door.

Another recommendation for 'literary and clever, but with a very light touch' Jane Stevenson. She's not wildly well-known, I think, but she has two collections of novellas which I think are brilliantly clever, funny, absorbing, unshowy but good prose. Good Women (three novellas, one about a philandering Scottish architect who divorces his upper-class wife to marry a sexy nouveau-riche oil wife, one about an Irishwoman who becomes a Buddhist nun in a Tibetan community in 1960s India, one about a gardening-obsessed widow being edged out of her Kew house by her son and daughter-in-law). The other collection, Several Deceptions, is more varied a kind of version of The Secret History set in the law faculty at a Dutch university, a literary joke perpetrated by an Umberto-Eco-ish academic that goes out of control, the theft of a painting by an upper-class dinner party gathering.

She also has a trilogy of historical novels that I like less, but I'd really recommend the novellas.

Chavelita That's that then, the book needs to move on. I really can't cope with any more. I can't even imagine there's anything else that can go wrong in Jude's life and I feel I know enough about his childhood to understand how it impacts him in adulthood. I did read a spoiler so I know one thing and I don't like the sound of it at all.

OOH I have wondered about Elizabeth Taylor before but not taken the plunge. One for the Kindle (which of course isn't real spending ...).

And I second John Williams. Just started Stoner but Augustus was mind blowing. Funny how we are going a bit more classic ... Does that tell us anything? Can I push it to Dorothy Whipple and Molly Panter Downes (as I see the OP wasn't strictly 'modern')?

Elizabeth Taylor is wonderful.

missy, all I can say is that if you're unusually empathetic and taking on Jude's pain, and you're only halfway through A Little Life, then you should probably put it down and get someone to give you a plot summary of the rest. Shall we say that everything terrible that hasn't already happened to Jude, happens, gruesomely, plus multiple lengthy flashbacks to the details of his horrific childhood....?

Yes I love Elizabeth Taylor and also Rosamund Lehman.

Agree on Margaret Forster. 'The Battle for Christabel' is probably my favourite of hers; love the snobby narrator character.

Nina Bawden and Elizabeth Taylor (not the film star) are other writers whose books don't seem to be mentioned very often, but well worth a go IMO. Think Nina Bawden is better known nowadays for her children's books, but her adult books are just as good.

ChristopherWren Lady's Maid was so good! Must have read it twenty years ago. Never hear anyone talk about it!

I'm a great fan of Margaret Forster - I don't hear her mentioned much these days but have enjoyed her novels. They are all quite different from each other. My favourite was Lady's Maid, an account of the life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning written from the perspective of a fictional maid. She also wrote a terrific memoir about her grandmother, her mother and her own lives and how their opportunities were so different. Very thought provoking.

Oooh and before I forget (I've got to get off this thread, I've got loads of work to do but I could talk about books all day) ... Stoner by John Williams. I've never read such a humble but absorbing book. It was written years ago but was rediscovered a few years back. A beautiful portrait of a quiet man living a quiet life.

Chavelita All I'll say is that I'm overly empathetic and I feel like I'm taking on Jude's pain and anguish. I can only read it in small chunks. I'm half way through and I'm not sure how much more I can read without having a breakdown :-). The thing that I'm really missing from it a sense of time and place. I can only presume she did this deliberately. It feels like a very dark adult fairy tale. I love how she writes though.

I have got The Goldfinch in hardback. I was given it years back as a present and never got round to it, may start it next. I loved The Secret History and liked The Little Friend. I read The Secret History when it first came out. I was around 18 and it affected me quite deeply and stayed with me. I was about to go off to Uni, which as anyone who has read the book knows is the setting of the novel. I also love a bit of gothic and this tapped into it in a modern way. Probably should read it again as it has been a long time and I may have misremembered it

I am also a big Daphne du Maurier fan and a few years ago read Justine Picardie's book Daphne which is a novel not a biography and I completely and unexpectedly loved it. A good one for du Maurier fans.

I like Margaret Atwood's post-Oryx and Crake stuff much less than her earlier novels. The Robber Bride is my favourite of all of hers -- it does that very difficult thing where it has three different point of view characters, and the narrative switches between them, but in her hands, the three are all equally interesting and vivid.

Missy I don't think Yanagihara gets away with it at all in 'A Little Life'! I've sounded off about it before on here, but to me that was unpleasant, high-grade misery porn that seemed to take some perverse delight in seeing how much it could put its tormented main character through.

I agree with whoever said Sarah Waters' earlier books were better - I like her clever neo-Victorian ones with plot twists, but I've found the last few, particularly The Paying Guests, rather turgid.

Any Anne Enright fans here?

I like Margaret Atwood too.

I also enjoyed (although it's sad) 'Did you ever have a family' which is a debut by Bill Clegg

I like

David Mitchell, particularly Black Swan Green and 'The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Margaret Atwood - particularly 'The Handmaid's Tale', 'The Penelopiad' and the Oryx and Crake books
Hiary Mantel - the Cromwell books
Maggie O'Farrell
AS Byatt - Possession
Donna Tartt
some Kazuo Ishiguro
Annie Proulx - especially 'The Shipping News'
Sarah Waters

And I also love Any Human Heart by William Boyd which is amazing. His other books are readable and entertaining but nowhere near as good imo.

Whoever recommended Ian Banks I would agree totally, but think his earlier novels are better than the later ones. The Crow Road is one of my favourite books ever but not a typical Banks.

I read the Plainsong series by Kent Haruf last year - absolutely loved them, the writing is beautiful but the stories are slow. They're about people's lives in small town America (but also about what it is to be human). People who like Anne Tyler would probably enjoy.

KarenCBC Sounds like we have similar tastes in books so I'm going to recommend 'Problems' by Jade Sharma to you. It's quite gritty and edgy, about a functioning heroin addict in New York. It's funny in parts as well. Don't read it if you're easily offended though! I always think if someone likes 'Battle Born' then there's a chance they'll like 'Problems' but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to everyone.

Have you read 'Gold, Fame, Citrus' by Watkins? I didn't enjoy it as much as Battle Born but it's still a good read. But thinking about it, if you enjoyed Station Eleven, you make like it - it's a similar genre.

Another recommendation is 'Lightening Rods' by Helen De Witt. What a little gem of a book. It's so quirky and she is a brilliant writer.

I'm currently reading 'A Little Life' by Hanya Yanagihara and I love it and hate it in equal measure. If anyone's read this you'll understand why. A writer less skilled wouldn't have gotten away with it.

No not at all! And I hope you realised I was joking when I said I shouldn't take recommendations from you. It is funny how certain books really polarise people.

I bet we can find some middle ground, like Sarah Waters.

Ontopofthesunset I hope you weren't offended when I said I wouldn't take recommendations from you. It was totally tongue in cheek. I just thought it was funny to find someone who's taste in books was the polar opposite to mine. One of my closest friends is a bit like that. We always disagree on book group choices.

MissyMop123 Battleborn is my favourite book I've read this year. Can't believe I forgot that, I've been recommending it to everyone!

Also second Station Eleven. That was last year's favourite!

Margaret Atwood is a given. Also Donna Tartt.

Ontopofthesunset I completely agree that Sarah Waters' earlier books are the best. I've been slightly disappointed by the last couple.

Most definitely The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It is epic.
I read Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood many years ago and remember thinking "this is a proper book". Also love anything by Siri Hustvedt, Rachel Cusk and Carol Shields. Special mention goes to William Boyd who is AMAZING - Any Human Heart should be compulsory reading.