I love literary fiction, especially what I call “meandering life stories”. I wanna be with a character for their whole life, if not a large chunk of it. Books like Demon Copperhead, The Goldfinch, The Heart’s Invisible Furies are some of my absolute favorites. I’ve been in such a slump for the past year, trying to find something similar and I just haven’t found one.
by First_Egg1681
19 Comments
Kane and Abel and As the Crow Flies, both by Jeffrey Archer.
You might like The Dutch House and Commonwealth, both by Ann Patchett, although both of them are about multiple characters over time. They’re both excellent.
C. E. Morgan, The sport of kings
One of my all-time favorites: **Memoir From Antproof Case**, by Mark Helprin
> An old American who lives in Brazil is writing his memoirs. An English teacher at the naval academy, he is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and has a little son whom he loves. He sits in a mountain garden in Niterói, overlooking the ocean.
> As he reminisces and writes, placing the pages carefully in his antproof case, we learn that he was a World War II ace who was shot down twice, an investment banker who met with popes and presidents, and a man who was never not in love. He was the thief of the century, a murderer, and a protector of the innocent. And all his life he waged a valiant, losing, one-man battle against the world’s most insidious enslaver: coffee.
> Mark Helprin combines adventure, satire, flights of transcendence, and high comedy in this “memoir” of a man whose life reads like the song of the twentieth century.
Ever read “East of Eden”?
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenes. Its actually not only his life but generations before.
Also, Stoner. It follows his whole adult life, just not as a child. It’s definitely what you would call meandering though.
Ken Follets Knightsbridge series.
All Men Are Mortal
The Surface of Earth by Reynolds Price. Dense, detailed, multigenerational meandering family immersion.
– Pachinko
– Snow flower and the secret fan
It’s split into multiple books, but John Updike’s *Rabbit* series would fit.
Stoner by John Williams
Augustus as well by John Williams
I Claudius
I will do it again. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s the story of a family that founds a town in South America. It follows the life of the family for a hundred years. I have read it four times and it never gets old.
Mill on the floss
Summer Sisters by Judy Blume
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
IT by Stephen King
A gentleman in Moscow.
Violeta by Isabel Allende – it follows her life from birth to death and spans a hundred years
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is a little bit like this. The main character is an older woman on a walk and reminisces about her past, so you get lots of flashbacks that occur during different phases of her life.
I think Remains of the Day might fit the bill as well. I think it is also not totally chronological, but you see the main character in multiple periods of his life.
The Sellout by Paul Beatty has the flashback format, and I think might align with your needs.
Prep focuses on a very short portion of the character’s life, but you do learn about her and other characters’ lives as they leave the prep school and become adults.
An interesting take on this is Homegoing. You don’t see the same character, but you see multiple generations of the first character.
Maybe Running With Scissors would work for your needs? It is non-fiction.
The novel that I think most closely aligns with your description is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Good luck! Hope you find what you’re looking for.