Properly literary fiction vs just fiction

[Myrobalanna]

I mean great writing AND great plotting AND great characters AND inspirational use of language AND a certain take on the world...does it still exist? I keep reading reviews, buying a book I think will be fantastic, and there's just nothing to it.

Would really love some recommendations for recent, 'proper books' - not that I don't enjoy the others but I want something amazing!

Thank you. This is a great thread.
I too loved Americanah, Narrow Road to the Deep North and The Bone Clocks. I would also recommend Ali Smith and my great find of this year, Elizabeth Strout. I found Golden Hill by Francis Spufford absolutely fantastic on the language, character and observation front, but I suspect it could irritate ... I thought it was wonderful! The best 18th century novel since the 18th century!

Can highly recommend All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr - can guarantee you will enjoy everything about it. The prose, plot, characters etc. His writing really makes you feel you are taking the journey too. All our book club scored it over 9 out of 10.

Also as someone has mentioned Pat Barker books are a close 2nd choice.

John McGahern, Anne Enright, , Hugo Hamilton (fiction and memoirs), Claire Kilroy? Sara Baume?

If you haven't read Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows, do. She's a Canadian Mennonite novelist, and all her novels are good, but this one manages to be definitely literary, thought-provoking and hilariously funny and sad simultaneously I think it's its light-footedness that's so impressive. Another writer would have made the same subject matter a woman whose brilliant, suicidal concert-pianist sister wants her to help her die -- deeply gloomy, but this is very funny, brilliantly-written, and compulsively re-readable.

(Hanya Yanagihara and her 'let me see exactly what gruesomeness I can now put my tormented protagonist through' A Little Life should take note.)

Love this thread. Added some to my wish list.

Thinking about stuff that I'm just hob smacked by the writing I would say

Wolf Hall

Or

A spool of Blue Thread

Really want to try A Little Life but need to wait for a holiday or good chunk of reading time!

Sonotkylie - I liked Golden Hill too - I thought the writing was good and the book was a really interesting portrait of Colonial America/NYC. A bit of a "boys' book", though - the female characters were rather flat. I don't know Elizabeth Strout so thank you for the recommendation.
I can't believe I left brilliant Hilary Mantel off my earlier list!

I've been thinking a lot about this. Books that have stayed with me, made me think:

Every Last One
A Brief History of the Dead (my desert island book!)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Sue Gee- all her books have been special to me.

I am bookmarking this! I'm always looking for decent books to read and constantly disappointed with those that have 'amazing' 'fantastic' 5 star reviews.

My favourite book in the world is shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Supposedly a true story but I highly doubt it. Nevertheless it is a wonderful tale of Indian culture and life, the descriptions are colourful and the whole book gripped me

I posted before I read most of the threads, I can recommend Kate Atkinson too. Read quite a few of hers and one my husband agrees are also good.
I can recommend the kite runner too. Such a moving story, I cried buckets

I loved a light between oceans as well (film isn't a patch on the book). It's great writing and most of the characters are pretty decently portrayed. It's a hard hard book to read in terms of the topic (miscarriage) but so very good. Again I cried my eyes out

Oh my goodness, how did I forget Hilary Mantel? I should be shot! Maybe we were just taking her as read (apologies for pun).

I wonder whether the female characters reflect the time and lack of 'place' for women as they exist either as family or strumpet rather than having a proper 'stage'?

I also forgot Rachel Cusk. I have only read Outline, which I thought was chick lit until I read a review somewhere. It's short episodes, so doesn't build a great narrative, but I thought it was brilliant for writer's craft. Great for a change.

Yes Hilary Mantel writes superb prose.
Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge is great. But I found Lucy Barton too slight to be great.
I agree with PP who said We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. That is oe of the finest books I've read in years, in terms of prose quality and structure, but it clearly divides people.
Adichie writes brilliant prose but I never quite get lost in her novels the way I want to.

But I do get stuck with modern prose. If you read Graham Greene or Steinbeck or Fitzgerald or Mansfield or Austen - any of the classics, then read a modern 'great' it's like wading through lumpy porridge. Not sure why.

"Yes Hilary Mantel writes superb prose"

A what? Wolf Hall was excruciating with its ungrammatical, nonsense prose in present tense. An example:

Finally, he thinks, I must end this: can it be true, he wonders, that as a subject should, I really love my king?

Just reread my pp and reference to female characters was to Golden Hill and in reply to puttingthegenieback. Sorry. Not had coffee at that stage and it shows!

Rachel Cusk is a divisive figure -- I really admired her prose when I was younger (and I thought Outline was brilliant), but I sometimes now find, rereading her earlier stuff, that it's rather overwrought for my tastes. Though Country Life remains extremely funny.

Hilary Mantel is a goddess who walks among us. Though again, I now really dislike her novels before Fludd, and still prefer the brilliant Beyond Black to either of the Cromwell novels.

I don't see that sentence as at all problematic, Cote. It's grammatically unorthodox, but the meaning in clear, and it works well in context, if I'm remembering the context properly?

I liked Elizabeth Strout's Lucy Barton because it was so slight - as I get older I am enjoying sparer novels more. (Olive Kittredge is excellent, though.) I loved the latest Gwendoline Riley, also very short.

I can see why Rachel Cusk is divisive Chavelita and I need to read more of her writing to form a fuller view. I am going through a strange stage though as I am seeking out Ali Smith too! I am not sure either of them fulfil the plot criteria but the writing is worth working at and I enjoy the change of pace.
Its funny, I enjoyed We are All Completely Beside Ourselves but don't feel I loved it as many have done (or probably as I should!). Beautifully written but also great plot - maybe I read it too quickly?

Sonotkylie, I knew that was for me. :) I think you are right about the female characters in Golden Hill. [spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't read it yet] The final, shocking scene between Tabitha and Smith is all about a highly intelligent woman driven mad by the repressive role to which she is relegated.
Chavelita I agree that Hilary Mantel is a goddess! (And I have just bought Beyond Black on your recommendation.) I thought the Cromwell novels were completely mesmerising. Then again, a friend who is a serious reader couldn't get past the first fifty pages of Wolf Hall. I honestly think she is one of those writers with whom your brain either "clicks" or doesn't.
One more recommendation: The Sympathiser by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Has anyone else read English Passengers by Matthew Kneale? Brilliantly inventive, I love the use of language and dialects to create the unique voices of the different characters, also very funny in places despite the tragic nature of the subject matter. I'm now reading and loving This Thing of Darkness as English Passengers put me in a sailing mood! Also second Golden Hill (although I didn't think the ending lived up to the rest of the book) and All The Light We Cannot See.

badkitty and now I am adding English Passengers to my reading pile! Agree that the ending of Golden Hill was anticlimactic.

Many of my favourites have already been mentioned (Cloud Atlas, The Children's Book by AS Byatt, Barbara Kingsolver, Donna Tartt) but can I add A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra.

Books I thought were great or at least very interesting in the last few years:

Cloud Atlas (and other David Mitchell)
Possession
Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies (and other Mantel)
John Updike's Rabbit series
A Fine Balance
The Left Hand of Darkness (and other Le Guin)
Half of a Yellow Sun/Americanah
The Luminaries

Books I've seen mentioned on here that I couldn't stand or thought were massively overrated:

The Goldfinch - ludicrous plotting, implausible behaviours and one main character who sounds like Ali G
All the Light We Cannot See - overwritten and too highly stylised, daft plot
Narrow Road to the Deep North - just a very bad book

Do say what you think of Beyond Black putting -- I find it more genuinely unsettling than almost anything I've read, and it freaked out a lot of my third years when I taught it years ago on a Gothic novels course.

I am going to see HM give a Reith lecture in June and will be suppressing my urge to hiss 'When is The Mirror and the Light going to be done?' any time she pauses for breath. But everyone will be thinking it, anyway, so perhaps she'll say 'Funny you should ask!' and produce a complete MS from under her arm...

For anyone who hasn't already discovered her, and likes literary comic novels - Barbara Trapido? Start with Brother of the More Famous Jack (lower-middle class undergraduate fascinated by the bohemian family of her philosophy professor, then meets them again in adulthood after a long gap), and its sort-of sequel The Travelling Horn Player (focuses on the resulting marriages and children of the first novel) -- lots of characters coming together and apart and coincidences, like a Shakespeare comedy, and patterning via 19thc German song cycles and The Magic Flute, if that doesn't sound too mad.

Chavelita so jealous that you will be seeing Hilary Mantel's Reith lecture! I just googled and it's in Manchester and I'm in London, but I might apply for tickets anyway. Re the third Cromwell novel, I know the probable publication date keeps being pushed back, so I hope she isn't suffering tremendous anxiety in the writing of it - just taking the time she needs. I hope she'll produce that manuscript from under her arm! ...I am very eager to read Beyond Black now. I must also google Barbara Trapido as I've never heard of her.
Ontopofthesunset I couldn't agree more about The Goldfinch, I thought it had huge problems (although I don't want to start a bunfight about Donna Tartt!).

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.

Couldn't finish All the Light we Cannot See.

ontopofthesunset you just listed 5 of my least favourite novels ever! You only have to add Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and you'd have the set! I'm afraid I don't think I would be able to take a recommendation from you. A bit concerned about Americanah as that's on my 'to read' list but also one of your favourites!

As to the original question Fingersmith fits the bill for me. In fact anything by Sarah Waters - proper page turners. Fingersmith is the best though.