Literary fiction - any good reads lately?

[JulieBilly]

I have just worked my was through last year's Orange Prize nominees (have a baby, so have been starved of reading time) and have ordered this year's nominees, too.

What else can I read? Any books you have read lately you can recommend?

I don't like chick lit, misery memoirs. Fantasy/scif fi and historical fiction need to be really, very good for me to bother.

tia

Remus have sent you a PM.

Catmint I loved the Rotters Club but hated What a Carve Up! (& I know people generally love that book, was so surprised I didn't like it!). Would like to give the Closed Circle a try one day, although if it's a poor second to the Rotters Club, think I might be disappointed.

Try The Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman. New author. The cover makes it look very genteel and lit-lite but it's a really meaty story about what happens when the maternal urge outstrips every other moral impulse. I was really gripped by it and impressed by the voice and the emotional insight. I think she's an author to look out for. This is her first book.

Marshmallow - I preferred Rotters to Circle by a long chalk. However, I loved What a carve up & House of sleep so we might just have diiferent tastes.

These aren't fiction but I LOVED "In search of our mothers gardens" by Alice Walker and "The Treehouse" by Naomi Wolf and I'm not a non-fiction fan. "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is a stunning novel by Zora Neal Hurston whose life is discussed in Alice Walkers book. Then there is the marmite book to end all marmite books - "Fugitive Pieces" by Anne Michaels. I love it, many hate it. I'm currently reading "Great Expectations" which I (shock horror) have never actually read before.

I liked The Secret Intensity of Everday Life, btw it's set in Sussex, not Surrey - Surrey about that, darling as DH and I used to say when we lived down south

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is brilliant and insane. As is Darkmans by Nicola Barker.

I only read this last year and can't believe I'd overlooked it in the past - I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (she of 101 dalamations!).
Favourite book of all time - Bram Stoker's Dracula - free on the Kindle. The book is so TENSE...

Oh, Fugitive Pieces is astonishing. Brilliant, disturbing, beautiful.

Lovely book is The Butterfly Cabinet by Bernie McGill - I am biased as she is a Northern Irish author and I know the place she sets the book in :) It starts slowly but it really gripped me as it is based on a true story of a mother who accidentally kills her child. It is historical but very literary and the characters are very well drawn. Seems to get quite love / hate reviews on Amazon - maybe a Marmite book!

Did the OP ever come back?

Girl Reading, by Katie Ward is interesting

ruls of civility

Remus et al - I've just finished Thing of Darkness and you were right, it was worth persevering with. Fascinating men! And SAD.

Told you so

Hurray! Now read, 'The True Story Of Jeremy Button' for the real life version of it - hope I've remembered the title correctly. :)

Cote - I read 'Slaughterhouse Five' on Saturday and enjoyed it a lot. Not quite as groundbreaking and powerful as I thought it might be, but a good little read all the same. Now what should I read?

Please, Remus, finish Cloud Atlas.

I am rereading it again for book club and I keep finding references & hidden meaning that I missed the first time around. And you, who loves dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories, just have to read Sonmi & Sloosha stories.

Glad to hear Secret Intensity was good, as I recently snapped it up for 99p on my Kindle, and another of his books for £1.49 a few months ago. At least hoarding Kindle books just in case you run out of reading material doesn't take up so much space!

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. I haven't finished it, but it is absolutely beautiful prose and a joy to read. Set in the American civil war, it's basically a love story I suppose, but so much more.

Recommended to me by an asst in Waterstones - thank you so much! (if you happen to read this.)

Remus - I'm reading Slaughterhouse Five now (came to 20% in 1 hour) and I find it very dull. I know what an "iron maiden" is and I've read "Extraordinary Delusions & Madness of Crowds" some 15 years ago. Is this book written to impress/educate readers with these snippets of culture? If so, I'm bored already.

Does it get better?

I thought it was you who had rec'd it - that's why I read it!

I think you're being hard on it - I don't think it just throws in snippets to 'impress people with snippets of culture' at all. Anybody who reads widely/is interested in history will know what an Iron Maiden is but that doesn't mean that all characters (especially somebody who it has been deliberately created to be a naive 'Have done to you' character) should.

I thought its value was in its simplicity - Billy is just 'Joe Public' and the fact that he gets through the war whilst retaining his simplicity and 'niceness' to some extent (but by having to imagine an entirely different new world to allow himself to survive after the war) is what is so damning, I guess. War has changed nothing, the birds go on singing, but lots of people (including simple Billy) have been broken by it, mostly for nothing.

Like I said - it's not revolutionary, but I do think it is a nice little read.

Ha! No, it was someone else who recommended it to both of us on the other thread I started "Coming off a literary high", I think.

I think author does well with snippets but maybe not that great in long novel form. He is pretty good on twitter, for example.

I second Cloud Atlas, La Lacuna, White Tiger, any Julian Barnes... Have also recently read The Hare with The Amber Eyes, and was entranced. Beautifully written and fascinating family history spanning post-war Japan, 19th Century Paris and Vienna pre/during 2nd World War.

Hi, just been reading through some of the more recent posts here...nice to find some fellow bookworms! Yes, reading Fugitive Pieces (Anne Michaels) a few years ago was a really memorable experience for me too: one of those rare books which continue to stay in your mind and haunt you for years afterwards. She writes so beautifully, and the tragedy at the end (or was it the beginning) was almost unbearable.

I have just finished reading 'The Red House' by Mark Haddon, and really enjoyed it. He creates very believable characters with tremendous empathy for each of their situations; not too challenging a read, but I couldn't put it down and felt I had read something of real quality by the end...would definitely recommend it.