Books spanning several years

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I don't mean those epic books covering thousands of years.

Having just read One Day I'm looking for recommendations that follow characters over several years, seeing how their lives pan out. Maybe 20 or 40 or so.

I've just finished The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. It follows a family moving from New Zealand to an Australian sheep station and beyond through the 1920s to 1960s. A book of interlinked stories of the characters as they grow, leave, stay, die, or come home.

My Brilliant Friend - the series was fantastic, too

It's a while since I finished it and I still find myself thinking of the main characters and wondering what happened next.

Kate Mosse- Labyrinth and Burning Chambers series are set over periods of time and are very good

Edward St Aubyn's Melrose novels. If you haven't read them, I urge you to try. There are five in total (I think), and they cover the childhood, adolescence and middle-age of Patrick Melrose, a British aristocrat. The stories are semi-autobiographical and cover the horrific abuse he endured as a child, then the inevitable drug addiction and marriage breakdowns that followed. Funny, humane, and beautifully written.

Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy, Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, and Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End are also worth reading.