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    1. failed_bildungsroman on

      Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

      The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham

      Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

    2. Independent_Nose_647 on

      Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

      Beach Music Pat Conroy

      East of Eden by Steinbeck

      Stoner is #1 for me and EoE is a close second

    3. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

      No Longer Human but Osamu Dazai

      The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton

      The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

    4. FramboiseDorleac on

      Richard Yates’ The Easter Parade and Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House.

    5. albertthealligator on

      Lots of great choices. First, obvs, John Williams’s two other mature novels, Augustus and Butcher’s Crossing; totally different from Stoner but still, after all, written by John Williams.

      But, more to your questiopn, here are a few beautifully written and somewhat heartbreaking novels:

      Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, and Mrs Dalloway. (Also, the tribute to Mrs Dalloway: The Hours, by Michael Cunningham.)

      Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

      Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

      George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

      Josephine Johnson, Now in November. (This is kind of a forgotten gem, 1930’s Pulitzer Prize winner. Johnson was primarily a poet and it shows. I love the opening line of this book, so simple and evocative: “Now in November I can see our years as a whole.”)

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