Any ideas for short novel choice for book group?

[Clawdy]

My book group choice next, and for various reasons, we've got less time to read it, so I need a shortish novel! Any ideas?

Completely disagree about Claire Keegan.. Small Things is full of compassion and hope

Troubling Love by Helena Ferrante

The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Keeper of the Bees bu Gene Stratton Porter
White Boots by Noel Streatfield
Anything written by Nevil Shute
Cheap Day return or Too Few for Drums or All over the Town by Delderfield

Foster or small things by clare keegan

Turn of the Screw - Henry James

Me too.

Because CK ends the story before we have to see Bill, his wife and his daughters suffer for his actions — his business potentially founder as the convent withdraws its business and pressures other businesses and individuals in the town to do the same, the girls be penalised educationally and in terms of future jobs and marriageability etc, Bill, whose background makes him vulnerable, be stripped of all he’s managed to claw together, possibly his marriage, as his wife is clearer-eyed than he is about social penalties etc. Ireland in the eighties was in deep recession, very poor and brutal in many ways.

The end where he’s carrying the girl through the town is absolutely brave and touching, but whatever future he’s carrying her towards, his own is bleak. It’s a humane, morally good decision, but also one that’s going to involve a terrible cost for his family as well as for him.

If CK hadn’t chosen to end there it would be a far bleaker story. She does something similar in ‘Foster’ where she ends with the girl running into the arms of her foster father, not with the bit immediately after, where she will have to go back up the lane into her brutal, neglectful family while her temporary parents drive home, heartbroken at another loss.

Thanks for this recommendation. I have read Zweig, but not this. Will do.

My recommendation - ‘Raising Hare’ by Chloe Dalton.

It was our most recent read. We all enjoyed it immensely.

Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
Aldous Huxley: Chrome Yellow
George Orwell: Coming up for Air
Iris Murdoch: The Severed Head
Evelyn Waugh: Vile Bodies