Contemporary novel where main character isn't middle class

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Sorry for the title but having started 4th book in a row with main character being middle class, white, very well educated....

It made me thinking - haven't read for a while (until yesterday when started from recommendation on another thread Flowers for Algernon which is also classed as SF and published in 1959) a contemporary novel where there were a non-middle class main characters.

Please suggest some great books I can choose in that category.

I like good book. Genre is less important providing is well written.
I find some crime novels not very convincing.

The Shock of the Fall is brilliant, and definitely not middle class iirc.

The Letter by Kathryn Hughes, about a charity shop worker who decides to trace the owner of a letter she finds in an old suit.
On offer for just over one pound at Kindle ATM!

Peter Ackroyd's Three Brothers www.tripfiction.com/book-set-in-london-louche-living-swinging-60s/ Contemporary but looking back to the 60s

Just about all of irvine welsh.

I just read Our Lady of the Forest by David Gutterson(?) which is about a teenage mushroom-picker - brilliantly written and definitely working class heroine. Just scanning my bookshelves:

The Elegance of the Hedgehog (protagonist is working class surrounded by patronising middle classes!)
Paddy Clark/Woman who walked into doors/Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Sacred Country/The Road Home by Rose Tremain
The White Tiger
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

I would definitely second Longbourn unless you also want a contemporary setting.

Crime/utopian novel, much more of a light read than the above - Acts of Destruction, by Mat Coward (he is a writer for the Morning Star, too )

A Kestrel for a Knave - Barry Hines
The Bone People - Keri Hulme
Village of Stone - Xiaolu

Brixton Beach. Sri Lanka/Lambeth setting. Beautifully written imo: the juxtaposition of war and disaster in quite lyrical prose.

Brixton Beach is a wonderful novel. Roma Tearne writes such beautiful, haunting and heartbreaking prose. There are many scenes in it that moved me to tears. I loved it, was completely absorbed by the story.

I started Brixton Beach few years ago and something about it didn't agree with me, I will give it another go

Thanks everyone for great suggestions!

One I've just finished reading - Academy Street by Mary Costello. It starts off similar to Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, but quickly moves away from the similarities to become a completely different story. Loved it.

The Road Home, Rose Tremain. I just read this and loved it. It's set in modern UK, and follows a Polish immigrant who comes here with nothing to try to earn money for his family back home. Very compelling, not too doom and gloom though it has its moments.

Other books that spring to mind are:

• Girl in Translation (Jean Kwok) about a Chinese girl and her mother moving to New York.
• The Cider House Rules (John Irving) about an orphanage in Maine.
• Americanah (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) about a Nigerian girl and her childhood love, and their stories across Nigeria, the US and the UK.

...it's true that there isn't a whole lot of contemporary fiction about blue collar, working class characters, now I come to think about it. All the ones on my list tend to look at people living in actual poverty, with that being a major theme, rather than people from working class roots living a stable working class life and just having a story within that.

I loved Brooklyn by Colm Toibin!

Alan Johnson's memoir "That Boy". Definitely "Angela's Ashes "

The Uncommon Reader - main character is upper class - the Queen. A really lovely book (although probably not what you had in mind!!)

Anything by Thomas Pynchon (except possibly Vineland - brilliant, but recognisably bourgeois). Best is Gravity's Rainbow, though if you do not know TP it may be best to start with The Crying of Lot 49.

This is not to say TP's heroes aren't middle class - it's just that class does not seem relevant when your mind is being blown...

Any book by June Allyson (Trash, Bastard out of Carolina, etc)

Jim Harrison's Brown Dog

any book by Toni Morrison.

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head, you make a good point.

Fantastic thread - so many books to read!

My meagre contribution - (although I hate it!) - Incendiary by chris cleave

Panopticon - Jenni Fagan. Very contemporary, very raw, very spirited. Set in the care system in Midlothian. The only word is 'wow'.

Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz
Lexicon - Max Barry