Hi, everyone!
I’ve been really drawn to what some people call “quiet novels, the kind of books that are introspective, gentle, and focused on small, internal lives. They help me a lot when I’m in a reading slump.
Some that I’ve loved are Stoner, A Whole Life, Gilead and Home, and The Remains of the Day.
Do you have any recommendations for similar quiet, reflective novels?
by StardustSyntax
1 Comment
Lucky for you there’s a huge profusion of such books. For better or worse, basically the entire canon of contemporary literary realism is founded on character-driven, contemporary settings where nothing much happens. Try Alice Munro, more Ishiguro, Murakami, Graham Greene, Lahiri, Julian Barnes, Coetzee. Some of these have more plot than others. You could also go down the autofiction rabbithole, which overlaps the suggestions above, but also includes people like Sebald, Rachel Cusk, Garth Greenwell, and Brandon Taylor. Or try some classics like Tolstoy or Woolf. It’s harder to find books not like this imho!