It can be just about any genre—horror, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, thriller…I'll read just about anything. BUT:
– No classics, please. (e.g. don't recommend War and Peace or something)
– Nothing with homophobia. This can be triggering for me.
– No romance or erotica. That's basically all I've been reading for weeks and it's getting old.
– No YA or younger. I'm exclusively looking for mature, adult literature
I want some really good literary fiction that's going to make me really think. Something that's gonna stick with me for a long time. But I want it to be blended with genre fiction.
The Giver was a good example of this when I was younger (literary fiction asking us about the roll suffering has to play in our lives, and other great stuff to chew on in my mind—dressed up as a coming-of-age story in a science fiction setting). I'm not sure if I've ever read anything else that fits what I'm asking for here.
by yashen14
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Coulson Whitehead — The Intuitionist
Cormac McCarthy — The Crossing
Hilary Mantel — Wolf Hall, A Place Of Greater Safety, Beyond Black
Thomas Pynchon — Vineland (best one to start with IMO)
Violeta by Isabel Allende!
Horror:
Monstrilio – Gerardo Samona Cordova
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter & The Only Good Indians – both by Stephen Graham Jones
Western:
The Heart in Winter – Kevin Barry
Apocalypse (idk what genre that is?):
The Compound – Aisling Rawle
Burn – Peter Heller
Also no idea what genre but fucking weird and delightful:
Sky Daddy – Kate Folk
Death Valley – Melissa Broder
Kate Atkinson is phenomenal—a literary writer who plays with a lot of genre and high concepts.
Case History—her debut thriller, featuring detective Jackson Brody. Multiple cases across decades coverage in the present. It’s a thriller with exceptional writing and character.
Life After Life—A literary take on the Groundhog Day idea. A woman keeps reliving her life after dying, each time taking a slightly different path or decision that lets her live. Does not go in obvious directions (at least for me!).
She has written a lot, so these are just a couple to see if she is your cup of tea.
Basically all of Kazuo Ishiguro:
*When We Were Orphans* = detective novel
*Never Let Me Go* = British boarding school novel & scifi
*Klara and the Sun* = scifi
*The Buried Giant* = Arthurian fantasy
I’ll say Kathe Koja’s The Cipher is literary as the dickens. The prose is so good, a beer vomit disgusting beauty.
Also in before Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
Long Bright River by Liz Moore is billed as thriller/mystery but is such a great and harrowing story about a family affected by the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia. It stuck with me. Really great characters.
She has also written God of the Woods which I’ve heard is also literary but I have not yet gotten around to it.
Ted Chiang’s science fiction short stories. But science fiction is a limited term for his writing. The closest I can get is that he writes about alternative logical structures of various realities, and through that writing critically examines our own world. Stories of Your Life and Exhalation are two collections of his work.
Aubrey-Maturin series by O’Brian. Historical/Naval fiction that is really just a backdrop for 20 volumes of two of the best character studies I’ve ever read.
Dhalgren by Delaney might scratch the Giver itch in a much more bleak and adult way.
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway was a really surprising and well written book that takes a relatively standard near future sci-fi premise to some interesting and unexpected places.
The Peacock and the Sparrow is spy fiction that deals with the topic in a refreshingly honest way that doesn’t glorify its subjects. Great prose too. Punches well above its weight.
The Blind Assassin by Atwood. Novel within a novel within a novel. Contains a sci-fi story, but mostly about familial resentment, aging, and loss
some of val mcdermid’s stuff has felt more literary than mystery for me — however you might have to look up some tws for which books have homophobia because she has lesbian main characters with some very dark themes