Lit Fic for ME please

[Hullygully]

Any recommendations? Need lots of books for hols. I want lit fiction eg I do not want Khaled Hossein, Harold Fry, JoJo Moyes etc etc (nothing wrong with them, but I don't want them).

I want Mantel/Mitchell/Houllebecq type stuff please and thank you.

'The Midwife of Hope River' by Patricia Harman turned up this morning. Looks a good undemanding read. Not rocket science though.....If anybody loves food writing as much as i do then can I recommend two anthologies? Cornbread nation volumes 1-6 and Best Food writing 2000 to present year edited by Holly Hughes. Love them, re read them all the time.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is a wonderful, wonderful story of the town when it was under siege. The best book I read last year.

Sherwood Anderson isn't that male. (well, I mean, he was a male, but he wasn't butch with it.) I can't read Hemingway, or Updike, but Roth is fine, as is Steinbeck.

And please give Paula Fox a try, she is really really lovely.

What's the best roth?
will look at Paula fox

Goodness! Just read a guardian profile, she sounds amazing, will order immediately

have ordered The Widow's Children and Borrowed Finery

Musn't forget Elizabeth Taylor, FM Mayor and damn can't remember

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

I go through phases with authors loved Steinbeck, Marquez, Doctorow, Hoban, Alasdair Gray, Kelman but I also love classics and read certain books over and over - I do like Dickens, his characters are just brilliant. I like Kingsolver but find Tyler gets a bit samey. I like some Mitchell.

Yes, I should read more Paula Fox, she was a recent "discovery" of mine, I forget from where.

I do like Tyler, but wouldn't class it as Lit Fic really.

I think Portnoy's Complaint is a v good Roth, but you need to be ok with grossness, iyswim.

Oh, and how about The Brief History of the Dead, by Brockmeier?

(None of these have the linguistic inventiveness that I like of DFW/Barker/Self.)

Borrowed Finery is excellent and can I vote also for Lorna Sage's 'Bad Blood' which is a magnificent memoir.

Yeah, even Tyler's publishers sell her as 'middle-brow'...

I would say my favourite Roths are American Pastoral, Nemesis, The Human Stain and The Plot Against America, in that order.

MIDDLE?

Lovely lovely Anne?

huh and tsk

I would also like to say

Patrick White

How I forgot him I cannot imagine.

The Vivisectors is one of my all time top 10.

Tyler is what I would call accessible; that does not make her brow any lower IMHO.

I don't think anyone has mentioned Janice Galloway. I quite like her work.

Thanks for this thread, Hully. My Kindle (and library hold account) runneth over.

YY to Hogg and Kelman. Also James Robertson. (I discovered the trove of Scottish literature several years ago and have been working my way through much of it since.)

I really enjoyed Galloway's The trick is to keep breathing when I was a teenager, but I haven't read anything by her recently.

If we're talking about Scottish writers, can I put a word in for AL Kennedy? I've yet to read her last novel, but I LOVED So I Am Glad and Paradise. And her short stories. And pretty much everything I've ever read by her, ever.

Oh, and Lanark, by Alasdair Gray!

Yes, Bab Day by AL Kennedy is excellent - the story of a rear-gunner in WW2. Not a typical choice of subject for a woman writer really and she tackles it extremely well

I have a large pile of books on my table now and my kindle is groaning...

Haven't read whole thread and can't do links cos on phone but it you like Houllebecq, check out Peirene Press, And Other Stories, Pushkin Press etc who specialise in translated lit fic.

I have read some of Kennedy's short stories, which I liked, but have not read her novels. Will add those to the list. I own Lanark but have not read it yet. So many books, so little time!

As to Galloway, I know this thread is about fiction, but many people, inlcuding me, have also mentioned memoirs. Her memoir This Is Not About Me is really good. She manages to describe and examine her difficult childhood without a hint of self-pity. It reads much like a novel and has a certain detachment that I think needs to be in a memoir to keep it from being all woe-is-me (or woe-was-me).

Has anyone suggested Jim Crace yet? I really like Being Dead and Quarantine in particular.

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata is beautiful.

Yes to Lanark.