Great literature about the human condition

Add me to your William Maxwell list.

And me! Maybe we should have an online IM readalong, but I suspect my commentary would be something like 'Really, Charles Arrowby is a disgustingly vain, self-satisfied, old goat, and his pronouncements on food and women make me want to rip out the page and run screaming at a wall'. So maybe not.

I was a huge John Fowles fan at the same age (mid-teens), but now he just strikes me as a crashingly self-satisfied male bore who objectifies his female characters in intellectually self-preening ways.

Great to hear of a Kirstin Lavransdatter readalong, @JaninaDuszejko -- that's another novel I haven't reread since my teens, but maybe it's time to venture back!

The Hare With The Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. It's a biography but I found it utterly engrossing and very much a rumination on what it is to be a human in a complicated world.

Not as highbrow as lots of suggestions. But the pursuit of happiness by Douglas Kennedy is very thought provoking

And on Iris Murdoch, yes she's stylised but she's funny. I read her first as an adult in my 30s (not long after she died) and enjoyed them so I wouldn't think of her as a writer for young people but it may well be that a teenager reads them in a different way than an adult.

Lots of my favourites recommended on here. Here's some more:

Kirstin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. This follows the life of a noble woman in the 14th century. It's ansolutely fabulous and there's going to be a readalong on here starting in July if you want company whole reading it.

King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett. The life of Macbeth/Earl Thorfinn. More inspired by the historical sources than Shakespeare's play.

Your Wish is my Command by Deena Mohamed. A graphic novel set in a world where you can buy wishes and what three people decide to do with a first class wish. Short but thoughtful.

The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. Another full life story following a Nigerian woman in the mid twentieth century.

@PondGhost @heldinadream @Tolber just looking at the row of Iris Murdochs on my shelf which I've not picked up in 20 years so I'm definitely in the FFoM club. The last time I tried to read one it felt very dated to me, which I never picked up on in my teens at all when I loved them.

That's who I first thought of too! Staring at the Sun is the most profound thing I've read about human mortality.

It’s a good question. I mean, there’s no particular reason I can see why her novels should only work for the very young, but certainly if I read one now, I’m reading via the 15-year-old me who thought they were terribly sophisticated and witty and some kind of guide for how adult life was going to be, a sort of upper-middle-class intellectual sex comedy.

Whereas now I see them as weirdly schematic, so overloaded with intricate plots that it sometimes feels as if you’re watching a speeded-up film, and I realise she doesn’t really do character — they’re all ‘types’. The wily old enchanter, the precocious child, the fierce young woman etc. I think they simply don’t work as fully resolved novels. They’re like brilliant pastiches of the great 19thc realists, not quite welded to a post-Christian philosophy of ‘the good’.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I love this book and it really does set humanity and the art we produce in the vast expanse of space and time.

I’m so sorry to hear what you’ve been going through — grief has a way of pulling us into the big questions, whether we’re ready or not.

You're absolutely right that German and Russian literature have rich traditions of grappling with the human condition. A few novels that come to mind:

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy – a short but powerful reflection on mortality, meaning, and the quiet tragedy of an unexamined life. It’s stark, but deeply humane.
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann – a sprawling and philosophical novel that uses illness and time as metaphors to explore life, death, and everything in between. Demanding, but rewarding.
• Demons or The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky – for existential and moral wrestling at its most intense. Dostoevsky doesn’t flinch from suffering, but he also insists on the possibility of redemption.
• Stoner by John Williams – not Russian or German, but an exquisitely quiet American novel about a seemingly ordinary man’s life. It’s about work, disappointment, love, and acceptance — devastating in its simplicity.

Marking.
I think Watership Down, while being about rabbits, is a great book about the human condition.🙂

@PondGhost @heldinadream @Tolber I have never once managed to finish a book by Iris Murdoch and I've tried loads of times. Was I just too old? Every time I'd try, another Murdoch fan would say 'aha! Your mistake is you're reading the wrong one,' and then recommend another one which was also terrible.

@PondGhost please may I join the FFofM club. Her books used to mean everything to me. I recently listened to The Sea, The Sea which was still a pleasure because it was beautifully narrated however it was somewhat challenging in ways I'd not felt 30 odd years ago. I decided not to re-read/listen to any others.

@PondGhost@heldinadream I have never before met another William Maxwell fan and here you both are. My absolute favourite of his is so long see you later. You would both like A death in the family by James Agee.

Sorry for derail OP. Another wonderful novel about the human condition is Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. It won a Pulitzer in I think the 70s and I have never understood why it isn't better known here

I was re reading bits of Dombey and Son in floods of tears the other day.

Long Island is a wonderful, deceptively simple read about The Human Condition.
I also enjoyed Jonathan Franzen's Freedom but then felt a bit cheated when I found he wrote it quite young (it was about middle aged people amongst other things)

Also read Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller...theatre can be free!

No, but we could start a Former Fans of Murdoch club? Where we would sit around gloomily thumbing tattered copies of The Unicorn and saying ‘I used to love this!’

I’ve never reread TU since my teens, and suspect I’d just keeping wanting to shout, ‘Hannah, just leave!’ throughout.

‘Dombey &Son’ might meet your requirements re bereavement.

Also off the wall but …Ursula leGuin makes one think deeply about what it is to be human, by looking at different versions of humanity across the Universe. ‘Always Coming Home’ is my go to book in times of trouble and questioning.
🕊

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Buddenbrooks
Cancer Ward
And surprisingly ...Chesil Beach...find myself re reading and thinking about this one and how choices affect us
Crime and Punishment
Chekhov Plays

Great shout, I love her writing