Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Original poster

Recommend me a classic novel please?

95 replies

bulletjournaller · 22/06/2022 11:31

I fancy reading a classic novel but stuck for ideas. I've read and enjoyed all the Hardys, Austens, Gaskell and Brontë. I also really enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which is a slightly later classic. I've read some Dickens but not sure if his style is what I'm after, and I like reading about women's stories which I'm not sure he specialises in, correct me if I'm wrong.

I really want a book I can get immersed in and feel sad when it ends, if you know what I mean!

Any suggestions?

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Belovedfool · 26/06/2022 16:54

The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy.

Emma Brown by Charlotte Bronte and Clare Boylan. Charlotte B left behind the start of the novel in a short manuscript when she died, and it was used as the basis of this novel by Clare Boylan. I absolutely loved it.

Latenightreader · 25/06/2022 21:47

Havehope21 · 25/06/2022 18:33

@Latenightreader - if you don't mind me asking, where did you find the radio plays?

I bought the set in one of the £3 Audible sales (or possibly a deal of the day). If you search for Anthony Trollope on the site they are one of the first results. £30 something full price, so I’m pleased with my bargain!

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 25/06/2022 20:42

Perfectlystill · 25/06/2022 18:37

Saki for short stories

Yes, one of my recommendations earlier. The best in my view are:

The Open Window
Tobermory
Sredni Vashtar
Gabriel-Ernest

Contrasting, all masterpieces.

rumred · 25/06/2022 18:43

Ilyich not denisovitch 😬

rumred · 25/06/2022 18:42

Editg Wharton and daphne Du Maurier write so well.

Tolstoy i also love but takes patience. Ivan denisovitch is excellent

Another vote for anne bronte, both novels.

Modern authors that grab me and pull me in are Jonathan Franzen, ann tyler, joyce Carol oates, rose Tremain, iain mckewan, Sarah waters....

Perfectlystill · 25/06/2022 18:37

Saki for short stories

Havehope21 · 25/06/2022 18:33

@Latenightreader - if you don't mind me asking, where did you find the radio plays?

Havehope21 · 25/06/2022 18:32

Also, much later, buy the Cazalet Chronicles are well written...

Havehope21 · 25/06/2022 18:31

Middlemarch?

GelatoQueen · 25/06/2022 18:20

Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth
The Wings of a Dove - Henry james
The Golden Bowl - Henry James
Simone de Beauvoir - She came to stay, The Mandarins
F Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night

Not classics but fantastic reads - anything by JG Farrell especially Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur.

I have been buying a lot from Everyman's Library recently - www.everymanslibrary.co.uk/classics.aspx

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 25/06/2022 06:12

Saki's short stories.

A Dance to the Music of Time. Sequence of 12 novels by Anthony Powell.

RafasLeftBicep · 25/06/2022 00:15

Balzac: Cousine Bette and Eugenie Grandet are my personal faves. But so many of his works are fantastic reads.

beetr00 · 25/06/2022 00:09

apologies, realise you've read all Hardy

EcoEcoIA · 25/06/2022 00:04

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Wide Sargasso Sea

And as so may have said Middlemarch

beetr00 · 24/06/2022 23:50

May I suggest both

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

For those melancholy feels.

MrsFriskers · 24/06/2022 23:50

I like Anthony Trollope ‘The way we live now’ and Daphne du Maurier ‘The progress of Julius’ . Quite the city banking / family bubble failure, but so relevant

ozymandiusking · 24/06/2022 23:36

Jane Eyre
Lorna Doone

Yika · 24/06/2022 23:26

Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar (don't know if you'd feel sad at the end though!)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the time of cholera

Yika · 24/06/2022 23:22

What about some short stories?
Somerset Maugham
Dorothy Parker
Chekhov
Katherine Mansfield

skylark42 · 24/06/2022 22:37

Have you read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith?

Deadringer · 24/06/2022 22:28

The mill on the floss broke my heart, George Eliott is a really good suggestion. If you want to try Dickens again, Little Dorrit isn't an easy read but so worthwhile.

lljkk · 24/06/2022 22:18

Tale of 2 Cities was my thought soon as I saw thread title.

Some American literature?

Scarlet Letter
Grapes of Wrath
For Whom the Bells Toll

Girlwhowearsglasses · 24/06/2022 21:49

Age of Innocence for sure -

Evelyn Waugh — Scoop, decline and fall, vile bodies, brideshead revisited

Fifthtimelucky · 24/06/2022 21:41

I second (third) many of these, especially the Wilkie Collins and George Eliot novels.

I love the Barsetshire and Palliser novels by Trollope. Standalone novels of his that I have enjoyed, and that have interesting female stories include The Vicar of Bulhampton, The Claverings and He Knew He Was Right.

As for Dickens, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Dombey and Son all have central female characters and Martin Chuzzlewit is also interesting in terms of the female characters. I know not everyone enjoys his style though.

Moving into the the 20th century, the Frost in May series by Antonia White is interesting, as is The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West.

More recently, I think Captain Corelli's mandolin is wonderful.

Noisyprat · 24/06/2022 20:58

Anna Karenina