The most under-rated books you have read - recommendations please

[TondelayoSchwarzkopf]

OK - they are doing overrated books over in AIBU - let's do under-rated because I'm bored of being negative.

These are my favourites that need dusting off and distributing to everyone instead of the usual McEwan / Franzen / Orange / Booker / TV adaptations snooze-fests.

Main Street - Sinclair Lewis.
Beautiful book about a young woman's growing disillusion with suburban life in the midwest.

Angel - Elizabeth Taylor
I know she is raved about by those who know but it's time for her to be famous and exalted. Amazing book about an Edwardian romantic novelist who is totally deluded.

Damon Runyan short stories - hilarious vivid and brilliant - set in the New York of the 1920s and full of gangsters and molls.

The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
Frankly weird but engrossing tale of travellers crossing the Sahara.

Please dig out all of the above and let me know your secret favourites.

yy to Robertson Davies, Rumer Godden (In This House OF Brede is one I read over and over again) and all of Piprabbit's suggestions.

Elizabeth Goudge "The Little White Horse" is a kids classic - ignore the travesty of the film called Moonacre.

Tove Janssen "The Summer Book" - sparse, quiet, unsettling and beautiful.

Monica Dickens "One Pair of Hands", "One Pair of Feet" and "Mariana". THe firsttwo make me giggle and the last is sweet.

Marge Piersy is generally under-rated I think.

Amazing Duchess, I saw this thread had been bumped and came on to say "monica dickens!". One Pair of Feet is particularly good (all about her being an - untrained - nurse during WWII), I remember so many bits from that.

Also I've never met anyone else who's read Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, despite it being a "classic". It's brilliant, definition of Romp.

another big Robertson Davies checking in
so incredibly funny and humane writing

I read Tom Jones by Fielding at Uni and loved it - far more relevant and funny than I had imagined before I read it.

I love the Lucia books by E F Benson - they are all well worth a read

Does anyone remember the Carbonel series by Barbara Sleigh? I remember loving these as a child and recently picked them up at a car boot sale so read them again and still enjoyed them.

Try Goodnight Mister Tom
A childrens book really I suppose but I absolutely loved it

Oh yes, Goodnight Mister Tom is a lovely book - there are some great kids books that are still nice to read as an adult.

I love all the Eva Ibotson books as well - they are really for children but they soothe my soul.

Goodnight Mister Tom, ive read it twice since reading it at school.

Recently found in a 2nd hand shop Kindred by Octavia E Butler--not sure how it is rated i think it may have been an American ,school, book. It is wonderful I read it once then straight away again.

My Antonia by Willa Cather.

That's partly to keep this bumped until I can print it out.

Gah! Most of these are NOT ON KINDLE. Grr!

Octavia Butler is great, by the way, especially the Xenogenesis series.

Agree with Main Street, although it just about shattered me when I read it. So depressing- and real!

Another Barbara Comyns- The Juniper Tree.

Hmm...my dear Beauty Myth bible! None of my peers have read it, and it would be so good for them...

Oooh yes to A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, Winifred Holtby's The Crowded Street and anything by Barbara Pym .

A few more: Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood, a creepily haunting and sometimes comical (in a dark way) novella about an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family in decline. Actually I don't think it was under-rated, it's just not as well known now as IMHO it deserves to be.

The Rector's Daughter by F M Mayor. Again perhaps less known than under-rated? About Mary Jocelyn, a 30 something spinster in Edwardian East Anglia, daughter of the retired rector (you'd never have guessed that ) who is charming, erudite - and thoroughly selfish. Mary and the new rector Mr Herbert, it soon becomes clear, have feelings for each other but fate intervenes. It's one of those books where for long periods not a whole lot happens, but it's stayed firmly in my consciousness since first read about 20 years ago. The characters so vivid I have clear mental pictures of them and part of me would love it to be dramatised. No sex (so Andrew Davies would have to write some in!) but one of the most highly charged and moving romantic encounters I've yet read.

The Blood Doctor by Barbara Vine. Generally reckoned to be one of her weaker offerings but I love it. A lot of the criticism stems from the fact that what the Blood Doctor actually did becomes obvious quite early on... that didn't detract from my absorption in the book though. I find it desperately sad and chilling.

DuchessofAvon - Tove Jansson "The Summer Book" - sparse, quiet, unsettling and beautiful Ahh, yes. Such a gem of a book. Love Tove Jansson's writing.

Goodnight Mister Tom - read for the first time at the back end of last year. Wonderful.

Nadeem Aslam - Maps For Lost Lovers and The Wasted Vigil. Beautiful writing.

The Snow Goose - Paul Gallico. Sends shivers down my spine yet it's barely talked about.

David Nobbs - Reggie Perrin, Cupid's Dart etc. Funny as fuck.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers - Yiyun Li. Bleak stories but sharp.

A Mouse and His Child and Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban. These should be way more popular than they seem to be.