I'm running out of books - Literary fiction recommendations please.

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I'm rapidly reaching the end of my "To Read" book list. The problem is that I have no idea what to read next, nothing is really grabbing me.

I love literary fiction, especially if its depressing 😛

I'm not that keen on period classics. I'm not sure why, I just struggle to get into them. So I'm after something from C20 and beyond.

To give you an idea - I loved loved loved "The Luminaries" and "A Little Life". I'm waiting for Ngozi Adiche's new one to be out in paperback. I've read the whole of Ishiguro's back catalogue.

I hated "The Vegetarian", "Brotherless Night" was alright but "Enter Ghost" and "Orbital" both bored me to absolute tears.

What shall I read next? HELP!

Philip Roth? Ian McEwan? Iris Murdoch?

Have you read The People In The Trees by Hanya Yanigahara? Definitely depressing. I’ve heard Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance described as the most depressing book - but it was too much for me I gave it up

Kristin Hannah - The Great Alone (she has written others that are on my to be read pile, but Alaska is pretty depressing :>)
Curtis Sittenfield - Rodham, and others

Legend Of A Suicide by David Vann

At random —

Samantha Harvey’s previous novel The Wilderness
Anne Enright’s The Gathering, The Forgotten Waltz, or Actress
Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica
Magza Szabo’s The Door
Deirdre Madden, Molly Fox’s Birthday
Claire Kilroy’s Tenderwire
Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights
Barbara Trapido’s Brother of the More Famous Jack (and its sequels)
Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour
Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army or Burntcoat
Eimear McBride’s The Lesser Bohemians and its sequel, just out, The City Changes Its Face

Nervous conditions and the sequels by Tsitsi Dangeremba

If you like your classics dark and depressing then Thomas Hardy would be the obvious choice. They don’t come more bleak than Jude the Obscure and Tess.

Joesph Conrad also does bleak pretty well.

Evelyn Waugh’s novels, though comic, are often really dark - with an undercurrent of sadistic cruelty (characters being beheaded, drowned in swamps, lost in jungles, killed in car crashes, etc, often at random).

How about Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose novels? Even Wilde’s Dorian Gray is kind of dark. Maybe M R James?

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid

My Year of Rest and Recreation, Otessa Moshfegh

The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is incredible.

Carson McCullers
Truman Capote
Paul Auster
Patrick Hamilton

I was going to suggest A Fine Balance, it’s outstanding and devastating

I’m reading a Fine Balance at the moment. The writing is fantastic.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Outstanding Irish novel about an ordinary, messed up family.

Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess
Catch 22, if you've not already read it.
Pat Barker

On a slightly easier reading note, I like Robert Harris, John le Carre, and Mick Herron (Slow Horses).

I really enjoyed American Wife and Prep, both by Curtis Sittenfield.
I have enjoyed quite a few by Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer and The Bean Trees are all good, I thought.
Watching this thread with interest as I am always running out of good stuff to read.

I like Robert Harris too. Pompeii is great. But my favourite recent books are Cloud Cuckoo Land and Demon Copperhead. Also The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman In Moscow, both by Amor Towles.

Thought of another good one I enjoyed years ago. In a Land of Plenty by Tim Pears, quite a long family saga, but the characters were all really interesting.

Oscar and Lucinda
Little Fires Everywhere
Another one for A Fine Balance
The Crimson Petal and the White
French Lieutenants Woman
The Fraud by Zadie Smith

The Corrections
Demon Copperhead

Did you read The Bean Trees sequel, Pigs in Heaven?

Yes, I did, that was good too.
I wasn't so keen on demon copperhead, but I know it's popular!

William Boyd? I particularly liked A Good Man in Africa.

I'm also here for the suggestions.

James Percival Everett
Anything by Colson Whitehead.
A Fine Balance mentioned above
Elizabeth Strout (is she literary enough?)
God's Old Time Sebastian Barry

The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually. Yes to Poisonwood Bible and Demon Copperhead. Elena Ferrante Neapolitan novels might fit the bill. Kate Atkinson?