Well-Written Literary Fiction

Try these books if you're looking for:

• good writing style
• good content
• emotion
• searching for truth and meaning
• character depth
• thought-provoking
• clean reads

The Awakening of Miss Prim 
Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera
F SANMARTI FENOLLER (currently a New Book)
"Prudencia Prim is a young woman of intelligence and achievement, with a deep knowledge of literature and several letters after her name. But when she accepts the post of private librarian in the village of San Ireneo de Arnois, she is unprepared for what she encounters there. Her employer, a book-loving intellectual, is dashing yet contrarian, always ready with a critique of her cherished Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott. The neighbors, too, are capable of charm and eccentricity in equal measure, determined as they are to preserve their singular little community from the modern world outside."-- Provided by publisher. This sounds like it is going to be a cheesy romance, but, trust me, it isn’t. It turns out to be a very interesting look at the benefits of living a simplified life.

La’s Orchestra Saves the World 
Alexander McCall Smith
F MCCALL SMITH
It is 1939. Lavender--La to her friends--decides to flee London, not only to avoid German bombs but also to escape the memories of her shattered marriage. Settling in a small town, she boosts morale by organizing an amateur orchestra from the village and the local RAF base--and falls in love with one of her prized recruits. McCall Smith has a very soothing writing voice (I find his books particularly fun to listen to) and is best at character creation. His plots are not usually action-packed, but his characters are exceptionally vivid and his writing is beautifully philosophical, with a good dose of dry wit.

The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother’s Milk 
Edward St. Aubyn
F ST AUBYN
Follows the life of Patrick Melrose, a member of an upper class English family, through his traumatic childhood with an abusive father, drug addiction, fatherhood, and the possible loss of his family home. St. Aubyn’s books provide a grim look into the life of a decadent aristocracy and explore how emotional health can be achieved even from a difficult childhood. Mother’s Milk, the first in the series, was nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize.

The Blind Man’s Garden 
Nadeem Aslam
F ASLAM (currently a New Book)
Jeo and Mikal are foster brothers from a small town in Pakistan. Though they were inseparable as children, their adult lives have diverged: Jeo is a dedicated medical student, married a year; Mikal has been a vagabond since he was fifteen, in love with a woman he can't have. But when Jeo decides to sneak across the border into Afghanistan--not to fight with the Taliban against the Americans, rather to help care for wounded civilians--Mikal determines to go with him, to protect him. This is an emotionally difficult book to read, but the writing is exquisite. There are violent things that happen, but the writing itself does not ever lean toward the graphically violent. This is not an easy book, but it is an important one, and one that will make you think about the ambiguity that is the situation in Afghanistan.

The Enchanted April 
Elizabeth von Arnim
F VON ARNIM
The four women at the center of The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other--and the castle of their dreams--through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon. The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don't anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy. I enjoyed watching these four very different women come to learn about themselves and each other through von Arnim’s beautiful prose. (Also, it really made me want to spend a month in Italy.)

Angle of Repose 
Wallace Stegner
F STEGNER
Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is the story of four generations in the life of an American family. A wheelchair-bound retired historian embarks on a monumental quest: to come to know his grandparents, now long dead. The unfolding drama of the story of the American West sets the tone for Stegner's masterpiece. Four generations in the life of an American family are chronicled as retired historian Lyman Ward, confined to a wheelchair, decides to write his grandparent's history. The Pulitzer Prize-winning classic has been selected by the board of the Modern Library as one of the best hundred novels of the 20th century. I read this several years ago and the prose still haunts me. A gorgeous book all around.