# Any recommendations for good literary fiction on Kindle?



## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

When I say literary fiction, I don't mean the classics. I mean novels like The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan. I'm guessing it's literary fiction from the blurbs I've read. These recommendations could be by published authors, or self published authors.


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## docnoir (Jan 21, 2011)

Adele Ward said:


> When I say literary fiction, I don't mean the classics. I mean novels like The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan. I'm guessing it's literary fiction from the blurbs I've read. These recommendations could be by published authors, or self published authors.


I'd go with rising star Kyle Minor. He's got a great short story collection out (available on Kindle) and he's got this short for sale, too, called "The Truth and All Its Ugly" http://amzn.to/y4N1fA. He's really one of the best around.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

I'll check those out. One of the great things about Kindle is that it's possible to get hold of short stories. They're just so hard to find in bookshops now, or published in print either. It's a form I love.


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## docnoir (Jan 21, 2011)

Since I've been involved with quite a few literary magazines, and I also teach in a university creative writing program, I deal with short stories all the time. Maybe so much so that I hardly ever write them anymore! But I love it when a good short turns you on to a great author.

Also, Donald Ray Pollack (KNOCKEMSTIFF http://amzn.to/wDxaPR), Bonnie Jo Campbell (AMERICAN SALVAGE http://amzn.to/AtTMWn), my friend Frank Bill, who did fantastic with his collection this year (CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA http://amzn.to/zU8kkD), and Daniel Woodrell http://amzn.to/xfgFp6 all had good literary collections out.


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## Holly B (Nov 15, 2010)

I've read several very good books recently...here are a few that come to mind...happy reading! 

Commune of Women - Suzan Still (www.amazon.com/Commune-of-Women-ebook/dp/B0056A0VF
Double Exposure - Michael Lister (http://www.amazon.com/Double-Exposure-ebook/dp/B005307MGC)
The Turtle Boy - Kealan Patrick Burke (www.amazon.com/Turtle-Timmy-Quinn-Book-ebook/dp/B0041T5BC)


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Thanks for these suggestions. It's so good to see so many short stories as well as novels. Where else would that happen except on a Kindle board these days?


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## Darlene Jones (Nov 1, 2011)

The Tiger's Wife and The Language of Flowers are two that I enjoyed recently.


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## Nancy O&#039;Hara (Jan 5, 2012)

The Art of Fielding is quite good even if it is about baseball:
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fielding-Novel-ebook/dp/B004QZ9PE2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1325816733&sr=1-1


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## Matt Bone (Dec 27, 2011)

Some modern literary reads:

Ali Smith - There But For The
Roberto Bolano - The Savage Detectives
Julian Barnes - The Sense Of An Ending
Jennifer Egan - A Visit From The Goon Squad
Aravind Adiga - Last Man In Tower

Edit: Not sure if the first two are on the kindle, but the last three definitely are.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Here's some I've really enjoyed:

Jim Breslin - Elephant (Raymond Carver-esque short sories)
Neil Schiller - Oblivious (more Carver-esque short stories, but set in North England)
Marion Stein - Loisaida A New York Story (really good multi character novel set in 80s NY)
Dan Holloway - Songs From The Other Side Of The Wall (if you like Murakami you'll like this...)

James


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

Never Let Me Go, and The Sense of an Ending are both on kindle. I read them both lately and enjoyed them.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Never Let Me Go is one of my all time favourite novels. There's a part in it that really tore me apart. I won't say what it is. I must read Julian Barnes because I haven't for years, so that will definitely go on my To Be Read list. I want all my books on Kindle and I'm clearing bookshelves from my house for a minimalist look. Don't worry - I'm not destroying the books!

Some more great suggestions in here including authors I hadn't heard of so I'll be looking them all up. This is great because we can keep reading the authors we know and love if we don't get suggestions like these.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

I really liked Never Let Me Go, but have been somewhat disappointed with the others of his I've read since. They were all 'well-written' but lacked a bit of... oompph for me.

David Mitchell hasn't let me down yet though.


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## Tony Rabig (Oct 11, 2010)

Look for the following writers:

Jon Hassler
Richard Russo
Joseph Epstein (two short story collections available)
V. S. Pritchett
Anne Tyler
Ann Joslin Williams
Thomas Williams (there are a couple Thomas Williams listed in the Kindle store -- the book you want is _The Hair of Harold Roux_)
Stanley Elkin
Tim O'Brien
Stewart O'Nan
Joyce Carol Oates

I'll probably think of some more later.

And I'll second several of James Everington's recommendations.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

@James I really like Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day, and Nocturnes (short stories). I wasn't really keen on When We Were Orphans. I wasn't completely sure in that if it was all a delusion due to the narrator having a condition like Aspergers and only imagining he was a private detective as there were clues that people didn't view him the way he viewed himself. But at other times his 'delusions' seemed to be reality, so it didn't work too well for me. A similar kind of self deception does work in The Remains of the Day much better. It would ruin it to see the film first though, because the reader mustn't know what is really happening with the housekeeper until the end. The main character hasn't got a clue and neither should we.

@Tony. Some great suggestions. I keep meaning to read more Joyce Carol Oates and good to hear she's on Kindle.


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## StephenLivingston (May 10, 2011)

Try Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger".  I thought it was excellent.
Best wishes, Stephen Livingston.


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## Maryann Christine (May 18, 2011)

Alice Hoffman. She's trad published yet I notice that a couple of her ebooks are priced quite reasonably. For example, Seventh Heaven is under $5 as I type this. Seventh Heaven

(Note: I can't attest for the formatting of the ebook, because I have the hard copy book around here somewhere and didn't buy the ebook.)


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## Steve Silkin (Sep 15, 2010)

I see that you can get Glenway Wescott's "Apartment in Athens" and "Pilgrim Hawk" for Kindle. (Although they're both in the $9 range, and Pilgrim Hawk is a pretty short book. But they're both great.)

If you don't know Wescott: Hemingway ridiculed him in a brief passage in "The Sun Also Rises." (They met in a Parisian bar, and Wescott was openly gay.) Wescott got his revenge, in a way: His book "The Grandmothers" went on to outsell Hemingway, Fitzgerald and just about everyone else of their generation. (It's an extraordinary book, too - the life stories of his pioneer grandparents, aunts and uncles and how they got through the Civil War - but I don't see it available on Kindle.)

"Apartment in Athens" is the story of a German officer quartered in the apartment of a Greek family during the Nazi occupation. "Pilgrim Hawk" is the story of a woman who brings her hawk and her husband for a visit to the French country house of the narrator's sister. I can't recommend them highly enough. They are great, great books!! (Don't read the introduction to Pilgrim Hawk before you read the book, though, it gives too much away, read it afterward.)


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

These sound good and it's encouraging to see so much literary fiction available for Kindle, but by trad published and self-published authors. I don't mind about price to get the books I like. I read on Kindle because I prefer it and love my decluttered bookshelves! Well - I'm still working on the bookshelves but it's happening. Some of these sound intriguing - especially the hawk.


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## djgross (May 24, 2011)

Three of my favorites from 2011:



The Language of Flowers has already been mentioned in the thread, as has Alice Hoffman.

I loved Never Let Me Go - beautiful and disturbing


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## Sean Patrick Reardon (Sep 30, 2010)

Good timing. Just put the following review on Amazon:



5 Stars: A Work of Art
I have been entertained by many a good read, but what I truly enjoy, the reason why I read, is to be emotionally moved. A truly good piece of writing stays with you after the last page has been read and makes an impact on the way you view not only the world around you, but yourself. TOLLESBURY TIME FOREVER is such a story. The product description caught my attention and after reading the sample chapters, I could not buy it fast enough. There are sentences, paragraphs, and passages within, that are better than entire novels I have read. During the course of the read, I had to make the decision to keep moving on rather than re-reading the beautiful prose, because the story was so good, I wanted to finsh it. A catch-22 for sure, but I knew I would be revisting the story again.

Along with the excellent writing and story, there are plenty of twists and turns you will never figure out, and it all builds up to a tremendous ending.

From the first page to the last, I was engaged, entertained, and most of all emotionally invested. As a reader, I could not ask for any more!


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa (who won the Nobel Prize last year)

EDIT: Not available for the Kindle. Good to see his publisher up to speed. You would think now that a guy winning the Nobel Prize might give you some impetus to release one of his biggest sellers as an e-book, right? Not so much.

Ok, new recommendation, "Birds Without Wings" by Louis de Bernieres http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Without-Wings-ebook/dp/B005Y0N2FQ/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1326154355&sr=1-5

Expensive, but worth every penny. A masterpiece.


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## R. Doug (Aug 14, 2010)

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver


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## Rebecca Burke (May 9, 2011)

Margaret Atwood's books are great if you haven't already read them. The dystopian novels The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake are definitely on Kindle now; it would be surprising if they all weren't. Julian Barnes' novel The Sense of an Ending couldn't be better, and it is on Kindle (a psychological page-turner set in contemporary England; won the Booker prize).


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## journeymama (May 30, 2011)

Yeah, I loved the Tiger's Wife. Also, The Boy in the Suitcase was mystery/crime, but very literary in nature. Beautiful.


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## DH_Sayer (Dec 20, 2011)

Almost every Don DeLillo novel is available for the kindle, and you can't do much better than him.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

I must read Delillo. I love the books by a novelist called Joe Treasure and I remember him being hailed as the next Delillo when his first book came out. So if it's anything similar to Joe then I should take a look. Thanks for reminding me.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Adele Ward said:


> @James I really like Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day, and Nocturnes (short stories). I wasn't really keen on When We Were Orphans. I wasn't completely sure in that if it was all a delusion due to the narrator having a condition like Aspergers and only imagining he was a private detective as there were clues that people didn't view him the way he viewed himself. But at other times his 'delusions' seemed to be reality, so it didn't work too well for me. A similar kind of self deception does work in The Remains of the Day much better. It would ruin it to see the film first though, because the reader mustn't know what is really happening with the housekeeper until the end. The main character hasn't got a clue and neither should we.
> 
> @Tony. Some great suggestions. I keep meaning to read more Joyce Carol Oates and good to hear she's on Kindle.


Adele - I read Nocturnes and thought it was quite good... a bit slight though. I haven't read When We Were Orphans...

Oh and Joyce Carol Oates is brilliant - good call Tony. A 'best of' of her short stories called High Lonesome is like a little treasure chest of good stories.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

With Nocturnes I liked the way the stories worked together. I also liked the way music was used to show the kind of dreams we have for our lives and how it can be destructive to achieve our dreams, or to fail in them, or to sort of achieve them but not be the best in our art. Whether people succeeded or failed, being musicians destroyed them in one way or another. It did leave me with that pang that Ishiguro manages to inspire in me. His understanding of what it feels like to want success as an artist (in the book it's musicians rather than writers) is so well done. He achieved success so young and yet he really gets the feel of what it's like never to make it, or to have been famous and end up as a has-been. And those who have made it also lose out in other ways - particularly their relationships.

I saw Ishiguro at London Book Fair and he was so interesting - so incredibly intelligent. He was talking about work on his novel and how he starts from theme. The new novel was about the collective guilt of a nation, compared to the guilt of a person, when a country is guilty of some terrible historical act. And how it becomes time to move on from that, or when it's time to remember. His way of writing about memory creates that strange atmosphere. The new novel sounded fantastic and it was interesting to hear how long it takes him and how he was struggling to get the theme right.

He also said the important feature of a book was how the characters touch you as a reader, and that if they don't do that then it has failed (he didn't put it in such a banal way). It's his compassion that makes him one of my favourite authors.


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## Steve Silkin (Sep 15, 2010)

Adele Ward said:


> I must read Delillo.


I see that Body Artist and White Noise are both on Kindle. (Body Artist is very short. The first few pages are almost impossible to read. But the rest of the book explains them, putting the events described into context, and it's quite moving.) White Noise is a great book, that might be a good start, too.

But my recommendation would be to start with two of his early novels that are not on Kindle, Americana and Great Jones Street. (DeLillo was a young TV executive who walked away from his job in disgust, and Americana is his story of those days. I started reading Great Jones Street in a small bookstore on Charring Cross Road in London one day, and - standing up - I stayed for at least an hour, reading the first third, just couldn't put it down, didn't even want to pay and leave, just stood there reading it, it was that good.)


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Oh, I forgot to mention this one:

"De Niro's Game" by Rawi Hage. It's an astonishing book about two kids growing up in Lebanon - one who gets drawn into violence, and the other who keeps trying to rise above it, but it keeps pulling him back in. Really powerful stuff.

Was just about to add the link when I saw it's not available for the Kindle. My backup was "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" and that's also unavailable for the Kindle.

How annoying.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Thanks for those. I'm definitely starting with some of these recommendations. It's also interesting how people choose different covers depending on genre, and what they choose to suggest a literary fiction novel.


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## DH_Sayer (Dec 20, 2011)

Steve Silkin said:


> But my recommendation would be to start with two of his early novels that are not on Kindle, Americana and Great Jones Street.


Totally agree on the Americana reco. One of his top 3 for me. I'm one of those weird people who love Ratner's Star (is that available for the kindle? checking... no.) But Underworld is purchasable for kindle and despite the fulsome hype, it is very, very good.


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## Todd Young (May 2, 2011)

John Fowles' "The Magus" is an incredible novel, slow at the start, but once you're into it it's impossible to stop reading.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

I remember reading everything by John Fowles when he was at his most popular, but I didn't really like them much. All my male friends did, so I think it's one case where it might feel different as a woman reader. On the other hand, Martin Amis is very masculinist and he's one of my favourites, with one or two of his books anyway. I just couldn't connect with John Fowles and his characters at all. But it does stay in my mind as he was so highly regarded so I should try again. It's funny how you can have a completely different reaction to some books at different stages in your life.

I'm going to keep all the suggestions from here, and some leap out at me as 'must be read immediately', including DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. This is partly because it has been at the back of my mind that I must read them for so long, and yet I haven't!


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Joyce Carol Oates too and Margaret Atwood. I keep buying their books and leaving them on the shelf. Now, in the Kindle they'd keep nagging at me each time I switch on.


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## red (Jan 11, 2012)

One of the newer literary authors I've been enjoying lately is Bryan Charles, although the book of his I loved most -- his contribution to the 33 1/3 series by Continuum -- isn't on Kindle (yet?). But Marisha Pessl is, and although I'd had some reservations about it at first I still think her debut is worth reading. And Tom Wolfe for sure. I Am Charlotte Simmons is a fantastic novel.

I think just about every author listed on this thread so far is trad published or with a trad small press . . . are there very many indie literary authors at this point? Has anyone compiled a list?

I haven't read her work yet, but I can name one other indie 'literary' author and that's Darcie Chan. She wrote The Mill River Recluse.

Actually, no, wait, I lied. Sam Torode's The Dirty Parts of the Bible is also an indie. There's got to be more . . .


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

Some oldies (not so old they're "classics", but "older") but goodies that I enjoyed were:


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## docnoir (Jan 21, 2011)

Here's another one to try: Ron Rash. He's really good. _Serena_ was excellent, and there's plenty more out there from him on Kindle.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

All of George Orwell's work is available on Kindle. People tend to only think of _1984_ and _Animal Farm_ and overlook the rest, but he is a genuinely great writer whose fiction works on every level.


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## tamaraheiner (Apr 23, 2011)

Everyone right now is talking about "On Tiny Wings." I haven't read it, but it's only $2.99 and supposed to be really good.


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## David Swinson (Dec 29, 2011)

Anything by John Banville.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

How lovely to see John Banville mentioned. He's another I keep meaning to read. It's also so nice to see all the covers people include. It's interesting to see what sort of cover design is chosen for literary fiction. There's such a subtle difference between genres when it comes to cover designs, and sometimes not so subtle. The publishers really know what sort of cover will appeal to readers of each type of fiction. Some of these are gorgeous.

I do love short stories and take part in a short story discussion group on Second Life (virtual world, free to use). I'll suggest some of these because most of the people read on Kindle.


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## DH_Sayer (Dec 20, 2011)

Michael S said:


> And Tom Wolfe for sure. I Am Charlotte Simmons is a fantastic novel.


I think you and I are the only ones on the planet who love that novel, man.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Well that makes it more intriguing! Must take a look!

It's good to know all of Orwell is on Kindle too. He's a big inspiration for me (as is Dickens so I'm loving his anniversary this year and so much on TV - I'll be reading his books on Kindle too).


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

How about Michael Ondaatje and Cormac McCarthy.  Both have very distinct styles and prose.  Not to everyone's tastes.  But I find them incredible writers and storytellers.


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## GGKeets (Jan 2, 2012)

I'll share my way for grabbing literary fiction! If I find the cover interesting I'll pick it up read the blurb and put it back down.   Then the next time I'm in the store or looking through virtual shelves, if it catches my eye again I write the name down. Then finally one day after repeating that last step several times I'll either pick up the book when I come across it or search it out. 

I'm currently reading 1Q84. I bought it in hard cover but then went and bought it for my ipad when I got sick of carrying the thing.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Well, it's good that a cover could tempt people to pick up a novel, even by a new author.

Ondaatje is interesting. There's also an Ondaatje Prize awarded each year for a novel that gets across a sense of place. I think it went to The Hare with Amber Eyes last year. I do love that kind of book, taking me to countries I haven't visited.


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## apbschmitz (Apr 22, 2011)

Given that it's the middle of winter, you could try Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. It's set in the Amazon and just about every page mentions heat, bugs or torrential rain — a great antidote to the cold, plus in plot-ish terms it races along.

Also, if you're feeling oppressed as a writer, you can always compare yourself to the main character in Bartleby the Scrivener, which is free at the Gutenberg Project. Things could always be worse. Except for the parts that are tragic, it's a weirdly funny novella.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

apbschmitz said:


> Also, if you're feeling oppressed as a writer, you can always compare yourself to the main character in Bartleby the Scrivener, which is free at the Gutenberg Project. Things could always be worse. Except for the parts that are tragic, it's a weirdly funny novella.


I would prefer not to.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Calling it 'weirdly funny' made it sound right for me! I'm intrigued, and it's free....


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

I think it's going to turn into a Dickens year for me. With so much on TV about him for his anniversary, and so many free books. No matter how many horrible things they say about his personal character, he's still one of my favourite novelists. And I have a feeling he was just as critical of himself and used that to draw on when writing.


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

Speaking of Dickens, there is a massive novel by Dan Simmons, Drood.

While the main protagonist is Wilkie Collins, Dickens is one of the major characters. It is more than just another historical fiction - more like a hallucinatory dream (but also containing a huge amount of carefully researched, factual information about Collins, Dickens and life in Victorian London). I liked it a great deal.


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

Speaking of Dickens pastiches, I loved this take on Great Expectations: 

I have also really enjoyed:



Pretty much anything by Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood


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## Sean Patrick Reardon (Sep 30, 2010)

Sean Patrick Reardon said:


>


This is free, at least today it has been. Could not recommend it more highly, and based on it's current ranking (US & UK) and reviews (especially in the UK), I am so glad it is catching on.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Thanks for the free recommendation. I really want to read literary fiction that's doing well by lesser known or unpublished authors. Sometimes I can't get these offers if they're only in the US (yes I do get annoyed I can't buy Kindle books from amazon.com!)

Drood sounds absolutely wonderful. I love it when real literary characters turn up in a novel (like Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy with the war poets). I also like the idea of finishing an unfinished novel, left at the time of the author's death. The recent televised Mystery of Edwin Drood sort of worked with its new ending. Although I couldn't believe Edwin would suddenly have vanished to Egypt without telling anybody, so that was a weak point.

And also novels that follow on from a well-known novel, like Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.


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## cheriereich (Feb 12, 2011)

My friend Michelle Davidson Argyle currently has her literary short fiction up for free on Amazon. It's called TRUE COLORS. Also Jessica Bell's STRING BRIDGE is literary fiction and a powerful, emotional read.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

@Sean, I've bought Tollesbury Time Forever and look forward to reading it. Thanks for the recommendation.


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## red (Jan 11, 2012)

DH_Sayer said:


> I think you and I are the only ones on the planet who love that novel, man.


He does so much in it so perfectly that it's hard not to stand back & admire, but he also strikes hard on so many sacred idols that he got himself in trouble. They protest too much! But he really Zola'ed us with that book. I say that the last paragraph has all the same punch and power as the very end of _Tender Is the Night_.


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## Sean Patrick Reardon (Sep 30, 2010)

Adele Ward said:


> @Sean, I've bought Tollesbury Time Forever and look forward to reading it. Thanks for the recommendation.


Adele- My pleasure. I am so glad to see it getting such excellent, deserved reviews, and people are starting to read it. I cannot get it out my head, and feel obligated to pass on the good word, but that is what it is all about, isn't it? Nice to meet you by the way


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

By a spooky coincidence a published author friend of mine (Vanessa Gebbie) admitted on Facebook today that she never buys ebooks by unknown authors and asked if anybody did. Well a lot of us do, as it turns out! She likes to play it safe, but I could answer that, as it happens, I bought one today, and I also said which book I bought on my Facebook wall. All of the things she said that helped her decide to buy a better known book can help us choose an ebook. Reviews, including recommendations by people we can see we have some reading tastes in common with, a sample chapter or more, a plot and themes we like. And it's not really so terrible if we don't like the book because authors trying to make it are usually charging very little.

It was quite funny the conversation came up on Facebook just as I bought the book and after I'd been gathering recommendations here.


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## Sean Patrick Reardon (Sep 30, 2010)

Adele Ward said:


> By a spooky coincidence a published author friend of mine (Vanessa Gebbie) admitted on Facebook today that she never buys ebooks by unknown authors and asked if anybody did. Well a lot of us do, as it turns out! She likes to play it safe, but I could answer that, as it happens, I bought one today, and I also said which book I bought on my Facebook wall. All of the things she said that helped her decide to buy a better known book can help us choose an ebook. Reviews, including recommendations by people we can see we have some reading tastes in common with, a sample chapter or more, a plot and themes we like. And it's not really so terrible if we don't like the book because authors trying to make it are usually charging very little.
> 
> It was quite funny the conversation came up on Facebook just as I bought the book and after I'd been gathering recommendations here.


And on that note, and based on your own novel description, I am off to read the sample. As you can tell by the kind of things I write, these more "literary" stories are way off genre for me, but truth be told they, they are so much more rewarding. If I may be so bold as to suggest BABY HUEY: A cautionary tale of addiction (.99), as a novel to take a look at (the reviews speak for themselves) TFF and Baby Huey are the 2 best novels I have read in the last 2 years, in any genre. Both self-pubbed, and both getting read by word of mouth. If there is any doubt about my sincerity / motives, the discovery /journey has been chronicled on my blog. Good luck!


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

I do also enjoy crime fiction. Good literary fiction can be page-turning too. Sometimes reading in a different genre can be good. It might not be quite how we thought it would be. I think I've had too much wine!


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## red (Jan 11, 2012)

Adele Ward said:


> By a spooky coincidence a published author friend of mine (Vanessa Gebbie) admitted on Facebook today that she never buys ebooks by unknown authors and asked if anybody did.


Here's a question then: does she ever try *free* ebooks from unknown authors?


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## A.D.Seay (Dec 24, 2011)

Adele Ward said:


> @James I really like Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day, and Nocturnes (short stories). I wasn't really keen on When We Were Orphans. I wasn't completely sure in that if it was all a delusion due to the narrator having a condition like Aspergers and only imagining he was a private detective as there were clues that people didn't view him the way he viewed himself. But at other times his 'delusions' seemed to be reality, so it didn't work too well for me. A similar kind of self deception does work in The Remains of the Day much better. It would ruin it to see the film first though, because the reader mustn't know what is really happening with the housekeeper until the end. The main character hasn't got a clue and neither should we.
> 
> @Tony. Some great suggestions. I keep meaning to read more Joyce Carol Oates and good to hear she's on Kindle.


I have to admit, when I first read Remains of the Day, I wasn't all that impressed. ONLY because I was forced to read it for class (plus it was my last semester Senior year. lol). However, looking back on it, I can really appreciate what Ishiguro did with that novel. It really is a masterpiece.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

@Michael - No she only likes to get books that have been selected by a known publisher so that they have done the work of finding what she feels will be good. She doesn't feel she has the time to go through too much by unknown authors to try to find what she will like. Clearly she hasn't been on places like Kindle Boards where you can get a good indication of what you might like by starting a discussion like this one. It did lead to me buying a book by an unknown (and I'll be buying more but buy one at a time and finish each one first). I find that quite exciting.

@A.D. I can imagine that studying Ishiguro could ruin it. It's best read on your own and is incredibly emotional like that. I was on my own with this first person narrator who was struggling to find out how to socialise. I know I find loneliness and that inability to communicate very moving for some reason. I'm very sociable but I was a very shy and quiet child, so maybe that's why. Ishiguro conveys it so well. If you ever get a chance to go to a live event with him he's breathtakingly intelligent and talented, and the way he answers questions is an inspiration to authors.

By another strange coincidence (I hope I'm not repeating myself) I didn't discover Ishiguro until recent years, but we led parallel lives and still do. He went to the same university as me and left just as I was starting. He then did an MA in Creative Writing, which I then did, and he then moved to an area of London not known for having authors as residents, and at about the same time I moved here. We both still live here and I do see him sometimes, but only met him last year at the London Book Fair so we haven't spoken apart from that. Luckily he writes very slowly so I can catch up with all his books now I've discovered him.

The Unconsoled is the book he wrote after winning The Booker and I have it on my shelf to be read. He said it was the book he most wanted to write as he could do as he pleased after the Booker for one book at least. He said something that stuck with me - that novelists, even the top literary ones like him, do have to write for a market. A certain number of sales are expected. So that does demand some conformity. So I know The Unconsoled is different. Some people love it and some hate it.

Now that means it's another I must read. I have the print book but perhaps if I had the Kindle I'd read it sooner.


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

Based on what Adele has written in this threat about the books that appeal to her and willingness to try something entirely new, there is another book I'd like to mention -Orhan Pamuk's Snow. While the writing here sometimes lacks a firm structure, and is very unlike the deliberate complex constructions of Ishiguro's works, it is an interesting book that takes a reader to a world both familiar and entirely alien to what most of us know. I enjoyed it very much.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

I'll definitely take a look at that Anguabell. The title and cover draw me in too.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Anguabell - I haven't read that one, but I have read a few Orhan Pamuk ones. 'My Name Is Red' is my favourite... it's quite similar to 'The Name Of The Rose' (another good recommendation, but that's another post) in that it's a murder mystery on the surface, but it's all tied into the philosophies and art of the times and setting.

It's narrated by a mixture of different narrators, including non-human ones. It's quite a slow read, as there's a lot to take in; but well worth it.

James


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## olefish (Jan 24, 2012)

The line of beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst.  A booker prize winner for cheap on kindle.  At least on the us site, it is $2.51.  Cheap and good.


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

Oh I love literary fiction crime novels like The Name of the Rose. I always end up with a murder in my own writing somehow! And Hollinghurst is a great suggestion. Line of Beauty has been on my To Be Read list for way too long. I'll definitely get it. It's a pity some offers are in the US but not the UK.

I'm going to put a link to this discussion on the London Book Fair forum on Linkedin, where one person thought people wouldn't read literary fiction on Kindle. This will prove otherwise!


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## Marius Hancu (Aug 28, 2012)

Thomas Pynchon's books have gone electronic recently.
I can vouch for "Vineland" or for "The Crying of Lot 49":




Great stylist, great imagination at work.


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