Literary fiction recommendations

[WhoreDing]

I'm stumped for what my next batch of books should be.

I enjoy literary fiction and quite bleak stuff.

I've asked ChatGPT but it was pretty useless, recommending books I know I won't like or that are just too wide of the mark.

I've been through the back catalogue of:
Hanya Yanagihara
Kazuo Ishiguro
Yaa Gyasi
Mary Lawson
Charlotte Wood
Megan Nolan
Susanna Clarke
Siri Hustvedt
Benjamin Myers
Andrea Levy
Sarah Waters
Isabelle Allende
CJ Sansom
Daphne du Maurier
Rohinton Mistry
Bernadine Evaristo (apart from Soul Tourists)

To give you some more ideas:
I've enjoyed:
> Disgrace by JM Coetzee but not sure where to start with his other works.
> The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden.
> Handmaid's Tale but I've found other Attwood works hard to get into.
> Stoner by John Williams but his other works seen quite different.

I didn't/don't enjoy:
> First Love by Gwendoline Riley (ChatGPT recommendation, just awful)
> Hamnet and MOFs other works actually
> Annie Proulx's work
> The Vegetarian
> God of Small Things
> Eleanor Ferrante's Neapolitan triology
> Long Road to the Deep North
> Anything by Hilary Mantel
> Anything which is too magic realism
> The classics

I'm just coming to the end of my last Charlotte Wood book and am completely out of ideas for where to go next. Help!

Anne Enright (start with The Gathering), Sigrid Nunez (start with What Are You Going Through?) Colm Toibin, Miriam Toews (start with All My Puny Sorrows), AL Kennedy, Laurie Moore (start with A Gate At the Stairs), Claire Kilroy (start with Tenderwire or Soldier Sailor), Jenny Erpenbeck, Annie Ernaux, Magza Szabo (The Door), Elaine Feeney (As You Were), Deborah Levy (Hot Milk), Lily King (start with Writers and Lovers) -- Helen Garner if you liked Charlotte Wood? (HG's diaries are also wonderful.)

if you like Megan Nolan, you might like Naoise Dolan or Caoilinn Hughes?

Where indicated novel titles are suggested places to start and see if you like someone's work. Most of the people I've listed are pretty prolific.

My taste is literary but not very dark.

Anything by Sarah Moss.
All Among the Barley and Clay by Melissa Harrison.
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood.

DH who loves dark stuff suggests
Tender is the Flesh
Hurricane Season

I should've said that I've also been through Claire Kilroy's back catalogue - completely forgot about her 😬
I really enjoyed Tenderwire.

I'm a bit unsure about Ann Enright - I read The Gathering and didn't enjoy it much. Same with The Wren, The Wren.

Thank you so much for these suggestions

Jane Gardam - very underrated IMO

I read Old Filth years ago. It was OK, not great but not boring.

Which of her other books would you recommend starting with?

Jenn Ashworth

God on the Rocks
Bilgewater- this is YA in a way, a coming of age story, but many times the depth and breadth of a typical YA book.

Iain Pears Instance of the Fingerpost

I love her The Summer After the Funeral, about a teenager who is convinced she is the reincarnation of Emily Bronte and spends an aimless summer after her father's death separated from the rest of her family. I suppose it's YA, or at least I read it when I was twelve or so, but it's brilliant and mordant. The heroine is called Athene, which stuck out like a sore thumb at a time when girls were 'called breezy, artless things that went well with tennis'.

Have you tried Atwood’s Alias Grace?

I love everything by Rose Tremain. I also adore Patrick Gale.

Try Jessica Andrews, Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti, Claire Keegan, Olivia Laing, Deborah Levy, Helen McClory, Sarah Moss, Jenny Offill, Andrew O’Hagan, Elif Shafak, Ali Smith, Anne Tyler.

If you’re open to stuff that’s a bit less contemporary, try James Baldwin, Edna O’Brien, Simone de Beauvoir’s fiction, Margaret Drabble, Jean Rhys.

Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow - which is the best book I’ve read in ages)
David Mitchell (Try Black Swan Green, Number 9 Dream or Cloud Atlas)
Ian McEwan (start with Atonement or Saturday, but lots of good stuff to enjoy)
Sebastian Faulks (in particular Birdsong and Charlotte Gray)
Tara Westover (Educated, which is autobiographical and seems hardly credible).

Thank you for all these recommendations

I've ordered:
> "Cloud Atlas"
> "All my Punt Sorrows"
> "Soul Tourists"
> "Days of Abandonment"

The bottom two were from another list I found. Wish me luck....

Lots of ideas on the 50 books thread. I mainly read literary fiction and tend to follow the prizes and back lists for inspiration.

My favourite books from last year included:
The Benefactors - Wendy Erskine
Show Me Where It Hurts - Claire Gleeson
Ordinary Saints
Glorious Exploits
We Pretty Pieces of Flesh
Nesting
Human Acts - Han Kang, you didn't like The Vegetarian but this is quite different. Also massive trigger warnings for war and torture so raiser is not for everyone.
I'd add.
Anything by Eimear McBride
Anything by Sarah Waters

If you like misery lit, as you appear to, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Madeline Miller? Circe and Song of Achilles. I thought both were great.

Oh, I hope you love All My Puny Sorriws. I think it’s an astonishing novel, that deals with a dark subject from a warm, funny, life-affirming, profound perspective, in memorably good, unshowy prose.

Sorry - spelled it wrong in my last post!

I'm looking forward to it, thanks for recommending it.

Have a look at the Women’s Prize for Fiction back catalogue.
also I have recently liked
The Covenant of Water
The Whalebone Theatre
Fresh Water for Flowers
Larchfield
Any Tracey Chevalier

@notatinydancer I think this prize is a bit hit and miss to be honest.

There are some absolute bangers that've won but other winners are just awful.

The last couple of years I've read all the books on the shortlists and I've been absolutely baffled as to how some of them have been shortlisted for a prize, any prize.

Agreed. I always used to read the shortlist , but some of the later books are rubbish. I just keep thinking there must be some good ones.

Following! Will try to add some suggestions later

Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, Ali Smith, Curtis Sittenfeld, Sally Rooney, Louise Erdrich, Julia Armfield.