Some excellent recommendations would second/third/fourth Vanity Fair brilliant story, great writing, very funny and semi-tragic at the same time.
Love Dickens and agree late, long novels but would add Dombey and Son, also brilliant memoir of a very unconventional childhood Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son. Also Lady Audley’s Secret gripping melodrama by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
Agree Antonia White recently rebought the Frost in May and the rest of the series would add Kate Chopin The Awakening wonderful story with great female central character, anything by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway, Colette’s Claudine series (the Antonia White translation); Gertrude Stein wonderful book about hob-nobbing with writers and artists in turn of the century Paris The Autobiography of Gertrude Stein.
Love The Portrait of a Lady but the original version, can’t stand the later New York rewrite much too ornate, those awful convoluted sentences, love the direct, accessible language of the original.
Joseph Roth The Radetsky March marvellous, funny, tragic book about family, the end of an era and war. Alain Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes (or The Lost Estate) wonderful magical book about first love, friendship.
Love Zora Neale Hurston (was hesitating about buying Barracoon but sounds even more tempting now) and Maya Angelou; would add Nella Larsen’s Passing, Audre Lourde's Zami: a new spelling of my name and The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston.
Leonora Carrington The Hearing Trumpet short, funny, off-beat.
Primo Levi The Periodic Table, Vasily Grossman Life and Fate brilliant book about war, family and life in general.
Jean Genet The Miracle of the Rose, anything by Jean Cocteau
James Baldwin’s short, brilliant Giovanni’s Room tale of desire and obsession.
Marlen Haushofer The Wall classic haunting novel about a woman left alone after an apocalyptic event, lyrical and gripping. Marguerite Duras The Lover beautifully written story about a young girl coming of age.
Lolly Willowes eccentric, funny, poignant novel by Sylvia Townsend-Warner recently republished.
T.F. Powys Mr Weston’s Good Wine eccentric, allegorical tale of a village where a mysterious stranger turns things upside down, the kind of village that might feature in a Stephen King novel, full of dark secrets and strange people.