Very literary fiction recommends

[UntamedShrew]

Morning all. I’m looking for any recommends from those whose reading tastes lean towards the highbrow end of literary fiction.

I have a very bookish father and would like to get him some challenging but rewarding reads for the winter. Have you read anything that has stayed with you? He likes character led stories but has really broad ranging interests within this - doesn’t need to be modern or historical, British or international etc.

thank you ☺️

Could you give some authors he’s read and enjoyed both to give some idea of his tastes and so posters aren’t recommending authors or novels he’s already read? I mean, are you looking for contemporary suggestions? Has he read Conrad, or Woolf, or Joyce, or Proust, or Elizabeth Bowen?

Tim Pears West Country Trilogy

Has he read The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford?

Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell series starting with Wolf Hall??

Booker prize winners might be a good place to start.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is seriously good. A very even match for Dickens, but contemporary - examines the Oxy crisis in USA.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray is a modern novel in the vein of a classic Dickens/Tolstoy/Hardy realist saga. Set in Ireland.

The Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St Aubyn are excellent with some stunning literary passages. Especially the first two: Never Mind and Bad News.

If he likes a bit of a challenge, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders definitely classifies as a literary novel. Less of an overt story.

Ooh, I haven't even heard of this. Off to look it up. Thanks for the recommendation.

I've heard several people (all men, if that is relevant) rave over The Dig by Cyan Jones. (Nothing to do with the film of the same name). May be worth a look if he has read all the classics listed above.

What about Alan Hollinghurst? ‘Our evenings’ is a wonderful novel

Atonement by Ian Mcewan one of my favourite ever books. I haven’t been inclined to read any of his others but this is his masterpiece.

Also Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (was Barack Obama’s book of the year when it was released) and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

I’ve found myself still thinking about passages from all three years after I’ve read them.

Was just going to say, anything by Barbara Kingsolver, esp The Poisonwood Bible, Pigs in Heaven/The Bean Trees and The Lacuna.

The Balkan trilogy and the Levant trilogy by Olivia Manning

Trying to guess at authors your dad may not have come across.

William Maxwell is a great writer, he was fiction editor of the New Yorker for decades and edited all the greats. So Long See You Tomorrow is his most famous novel but they are all good

Wallace Stegner. Crossing to Safety, All the Little Live Things, Angle of Repose.

I would imagine he will have read Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, but if not, then that would be perfect.

I would definitely start with booker shortlists. I adore the Poisonwood Bible, have loved Demon Copperhead and. It’s probably not quite as highbrow but Hamnet is an amazing book.

I love Barbara Kingsolver’s work, especially her early stuff (though my favourite novel of hers remains Prodigal Summer), but I wouldn’t consider either The Bean Trees or Pigs in Heaven anywhere near ‘the highbrow end of literary fiction’, which is what the OP says she’s looking for.

They’re very good novels, though, and I would absolutely love for her to revisit Taylor, Turtle and Alice, or the reservation community in PiH, because it seemed to me that she was suggesting in it she had more to say about Annawake Fourkiller!

Maxwell is a good shout. I’m continually surprised by people who haven’t come across him. The Chateau is my favourite, about the first American tourists coming back to France after WW2.

Thank you all so much! It’s so hard to recommend for people you’ve never met but I see some brilliant ideas in here and really appreciate it. He has read all the classics (read English lit at Cambridge, reads a book most weeks) so off the beaten track and more contemporary reads are the best bet.

we both recently read and loved We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen. Have any of you read that? Also loved Glorious Exploits.

Off to Google the above recommendations- thank you again and if any more spring to mind please post! Thanks again

George Gissing is one of my favourites (a contemporary of Charles Dickens but easier to read).

Patrick Hamilton was one of my favourites (just re-discovering him).

Have read a couple of Turgenev’s books and they were excellent.

C.P. Snow.

I haven't heard of either of those OP, thanks for the recommendation!

We, The Drowned is superb.
Victor Klemperer’diaries or the Patrick O’Brien Master andCommander series?

Jonathan Coe? I feel like that might be his sort of thing. His latest book centres around Cambridge University in part, in fact.

Assuming he’s read Th Magic Mountain, he might also enjoy The Empusium? A sort of re telling. Also The Buddenbrooks

the Rachel Cusk trilogy and the Elena Ferrante quartet

Olivia Laing is excellent for literary types - I enjoyed a trip to echo spring and a garden against time.

The Dream of Scipio. It’s delicious and about the death and rebirth of civilisations; intertwining historical fiction set in France. I revisit it periodically and it gives me hope in today’s mad times. Stone’s Fall by the same author also v good and completely different.

Also Cloud Atlas or Ghostwritten by David Mitchell if not already read. Not so keen on his others.

Second pp’s suggestion of Elizabeth Bowen. Maybe start with The Death of the Heart or The Heat of the Day.
The Real Charlotte by Somerville & Ross is a masterpiece.