We’ve compiled our favorite big books, historic as well as contemporary, into a literary tasting menu.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
What started as Steinbeck’s attempt to preserve the sense-memory of the Salinas Valley for his young sons became what he considered his greatest life work — he said everything he’d written previously was just practice for writing East of Eden. Like so many of Steinbeck’s works, the story centers upon two hardworking families in the farm country of Central California, showing how fate and flawed human nature dealt with their dreams, culminating in a finale that is somehow both tragic and transcendent. Critics at the time hated East of Eden for its graphic sex and violence, unsympathetic characters, inconsistent narrator, and unrestrained moral perspective. Audiences, however, loved it and still do. It was an instant bestseller in 1952 and even today, 50,000 copies of the novel are sold each year.
Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset
Written in the 1920s, this cult favorite is far from obscure. The author won a Nobel Prize for her epic trilogy depicting Scandinavian life during the Middle Ages. At the time of its publication, the trilogy made waves for its explicit characterization of sex (especially women’s sexuality), for refusing to sugarcoat the harsh realities of life during the Middle Ages, and for treating controversial situations without a moralistic slant, as readers typically expected from female novelists. Instead, the story reverses the trend of depicting the “fallen woman’s” life as a downward spiral of grief and shame. The protagonist makes choices with a sense of empowerment and lives a rich, full life while accepting their consequences, good and bad. Early translations from Norwegian are a bit clunky, so look for the 2005 translation by Tiina Nunnally if you want to get the full impact of Undset’s prose.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
You might want to find a book club, or at least a friend, to read this one along with you. This profoundly moving novel is routinely reviewed as “tragic,” “challenging,” “upsetting,” and “without a doubt the saddest thing I’ve ever read in my life.” The story of four university friends trying to make the transition from academia to the real world, A Little Life reveals how the trauma within our pasts can both deepen and darken our closest relationships. It’ll leave you wrecked, but it will also make you want to be a better person.
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
This 1967 novel is a fixture on “best of” lists around the world, thanks to how it more or less defined the “magical realism” genre and put Latin American literature on the map. The novel is centered upon the Buendía family, whose adventurous lives mirror the mythology that helps define the national identity of Marquez’s native Colombia. As they live through one tumultuous historical event after another (the introduction of the automobile, the government massacre of unionized workers), family members are repeatedly visited by ghosts who represent the inescapable consequences of personal and national history. Seductively beautiful and ripe with symbolism, Marquez’s novel shows how progressive ideology can ultimately sustain the effect of dependence and oppression when people fail to reckon with the harsh lessons of the past.
The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
This series has been compared to Lord of the Rings for complexity of story and richness of language and setting. Set on a new supercontinent in Earth’s distant future, the story deals with how the planet’s surviving communities band together to outlast a recurring series of natural disasters and rebuild civilization, over and over again. It’s a fantasy series constructed around the forces of geology, and while its frequent jumps in narrator perspective can be challenging, they also keep you directly in the protagonists’ shoes, so you can never look away. Unlike her fantasy forbears, Jemisin creates a world full of moral nuance, forcing her reader to grapple with the tension between individual and collective survival.
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
One of the longest books ever contained within a single volume, this 1997 novel was named on a host of “best of” lists during the 20th century’s final decade. Set in the early 1950s, just after India gained its independence, the story follows Lata, a young woman whose mother is hell-bent on finding her a husband. The strong-willed machinations of Lata and her family, as well as the families of her three suitors, offer a picture of a complex culture trying to simultaneously change for the better and stay grounded in its identity. Violence and social etiquette, prejudice and forgiveness, and satire and sincerity compete for dominance within the country at large as well as the lives of ordinary people.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Pay no attention to the snore-worthy subtitle, “A Study of Provincial Life.” This massive novel, written by a contemporary of Jane Austen, is a labyrinthine network of intersecting storylines and a fascinating look into the societal domino effect of individual choices. Driven by the parallel lives of two protagonists, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, the novel explores the muddy gray area between social conscience and personal ambition. Meanwhile, the dense crowd of subsidiary characters provides lots of local color as well as comic relief. Despite the antiquated manners and customs that rule the characters’ lives, the story feels uncannily relevant to life today.
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Where better than to start with history’s very first novel? The work is a depiction of the lifestyles of noblemen and women during Japan’s Heian period, focused on the son of an emperor and his changes of fortune. In some ways, it follows the tropes that we expect from ancient literature: Genji’s climb to power, his romantic exploits, and his success within Japan’s aristocracy. What’s surprising about it is the exploration into the psychology of the characters, something that hadn’t been seen in literature before this novel. It’s a tough read, due to the complexity of the ancient language; look for an annotated version that will help you navigate this seminal work.
