I’m currently reading Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy and couldn’t recommend it more. WWI fiction, deals with the psychological fallout of the war focusing on British soldiers sent home to be rehabbed so they can return to the French Front. First and final books both won the Booker Prize. Widely considered among the best fiction of the 20th c. and I have to agree.
Made me wonder what other literary series are about there. Not looking for genre, even brilliant paragons of horror, crime, fantasy, or sci-fi (ie Herbert, NK Jemison, Tolkein) because I feel those get plenty of coverage on the reddits.
Couple others i can think of are Marilynne Robinskn’s Gilead series, Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life and A God In Ruins, and Andrew Sean Greer’s Less & Less is More.
Literary (always subjective to define) doesn’t usually lead to sequels, but what else can yall recommend?
by Mybenzo
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Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain. A trio of very literary novels about young men in the American West. Beautiful writing, philosophical, devastating. Masterpiece.
Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy: Outline, Transit, Kudos. Three novels about a woman having conversations, basically. It’s slice-of-life, I guess, people talking about their hopes and dreams, and an absence of a protagonist that curates it.
The Thomas Cromwell trilogy, by Hilary Mantel
Loved The Regeneration Series. Other British literary fiction series to try:
A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell – this is 12 books long following the main character and all the people who ‘dance’ in and out of his life over more than 50 years beginning in the 1920s.
The Cazalet Chronicles – Elizabeth Jane Howard – 5 books – follows one upper middle class family before, during and after WW2. Multiple points of view and character arcs.
The Forsyth Saga – Goldsworthy – follows one upper middle class family from end of Victorian period through First World War
The Barchester Chronicles – Anthony Trollope
Wolf Hall trilogy – Hilary Mantel – superb historical fiction following Thomas Cromwell advisor to Henry VIII