Any recommendations for good literary fiction on Kindle?

[Ann in Arlington]

Also, if you're feeling oppressed as a writer, you can always compare yourself to the main character in Bartleby the Scrivener, which is free at the Gutenberg Project. Things could always be worse. Except for the parts that are tragic, it's a weirdly funny novella.

I would prefer not to.

[Adele Ward]

Calling it 'weirdly funny' made it sound right for me! I'm intrigued, and it's free....

[Adele Ward]

I think it's going to turn into a Dickens year for me. With so much on TV about him for his anniversary, and so many free books. No matter how many horrible things they say about his personal character, he's still one of my favourite novelists. And I have a feeling he was just as critical of himself and used that to draw on when writing.

[anguabell]

Speaking of Dickens, there is a massive novel by Dan Simmons, Drood.

While the main protagonist is Wilkie Collins, Dickens is one of the major characters.  It is more than just another historical fiction - more like a hallucinatory dream (but also containing a huge amount of carefully researched, factual information about Collins, Dickens and life in Victorian London). I liked it a great deal.

[Thalia the Muse]

Speaking of Dickens pastiches, I loved this take on Great Expectations:

I have also really enjoyed:



Pretty much anything by Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood

[Sean Patrick Reardon]

This is free, at least today it has been. Could not recommend it more highly, and based on it's current ranking (US & UK) and reviews (especially in the UK), I am so glad it is catching on.

[Adele Ward]

Thanks for the free recommendation. I really want to read literary fiction that's doing well by lesser known or unpublished authors. Sometimes I can't get these offers if they're only in the US (yes I do get annoyed I can't buy Kindle books from amazon.com!)

Drood sounds absolutely wonderful. I love it when real literary characters turn up in a novel (like Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy with the war poets). I also like the idea of finishing an unfinished novel, left at the time of the author's death. The recent televised Mystery of Edwin Drood sort of worked with its new ending. Although I couldn't believe Edwin would suddenly have vanished to Egypt without telling anybody, so that was a weak point.

And also novels that follow on from a well-known novel, like Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.

[cheriereich]

My friend Michelle Davidson Argyle currently has her literary short fiction up for free on Amazon. It's called TRUE COLORS. Also Jessica Bell's STRING BRIDGE is literary fiction and a powerful, emotional read.

[Adele Ward]

@Sean, I've bought Tollesbury Time Forever and look forward to reading it. Thanks for the recommendation.

[Michael S]

I think you and I are the only ones on the planet who love that novel, man.

He does so much in it so perfectly that it's hard not to stand back & admire, but he also strikes hard on so many sacred idols that he got himself in trouble. They protest too much! But he really Zola'ed us with that book. I say that the last paragraph has all the same punch and power as the very end of Tender Is the Night.

[Sean Patrick Reardon]

@Sean, I've bought Tollesbury Time Forever and look forward to reading it. Thanks for the recommendation.

Adele- My pleasure. I am so glad to see it getting such excellent, deserved reviews, and people are starting to read it. I cannot get it out my head, and feel obligated to pass on the good word, but that is what it is all about, isn't it?  Nice to meet you by the way  

[Adele Ward]

By a spooky coincidence a published author friend of mine (Vanessa Gebbie) admitted on Facebook today that she never buys ebooks by unknown authors and asked if anybody did. Well a lot of us do, as it turns out! She likes to play it safe, but I could answer that, as it happens, I bought one today, and I also said which book I bought on my Facebook wall. All of the things she said that helped her decide to buy a better known book can help us choose an ebook. Reviews, including recommendations by people we can see we have some reading tastes in common with, a sample chapter or more, a plot and themes we like. And it's not really so terrible if we don't like the book because authors trying to make it are usually charging very little.

It was quite funny the conversation came up on Facebook just as I bought the book and after I'd been gathering recommendations here.

[Sean Patrick Reardon]

By a spooky coincidence a published author friend of mine (Vanessa Gebbie) admitted on Facebook today that she never buys ebooks by unknown authors and asked if anybody did. Well a lot of us do, as it turns out! She likes to play it safe, but I could answer that, as it happens, I bought one today, and I also said which book I bought on my Facebook wall. All of the things she said that helped her decide to buy a better known book can help us choose an ebook. Reviews, including recommendations by people we can see we have some reading tastes in common with, a sample chapter or more, a plot and themes we like. And it's not really so terrible if we don't like the book because authors trying to make it are usually charging very little.

It was quite funny the conversation came up on Facebook just as I bought the book and after I'd been gathering recommendations here.

And on that note, and based on your own novel description, I am off to read the sample. As you can tell by the kind of things I write, these more "literary" stories are way off genre for me, but truth be told they, they are so much more rewarding. If I may be so bold as to suggest BABY HUEY: A cautionary tale of addiction (.99), as a novel to take a look at (the reviews speak for themselves) TFF and Baby Huey are the 2 best novels I have read in the last 2 years, in any genre. Both self-pubbed, and both getting read by word of mouth. If there is any doubt about my sincerity / motives, the discovery /journey has been chronicled on my blog. Good luck!

[Adele Ward]

I do also enjoy crime fiction. Good literary fiction can be page-turning too. Sometimes reading in a different genre can be good. It might not be quite how we thought it would be. I think I've had too much wine!

[Michael S]

By a spooky coincidence a published author friend of mine (Vanessa Gebbie) admitted on Facebook today that she never buys ebooks by unknown authors and asked if anybody did.

Here's a question then: does she ever try free ebooks from unknown authors?

[A.D.Seay]

@James I really like Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day, and Nocturnes (short stories). I wasn't really keen on When We Were Orphans. I wasn't completely sure in that if it was all a delusion due to the narrator having a condition like Aspergers and only imagining he was a private detective as there were clues that people didn't view him the way he viewed himself. But at other times his 'delusions' seemed to be reality, so it didn't work too well for me. A similar kind of self deception does work in The Remains of the Day much better. It would ruin it to see the film first though, because the reader mustn't know what is really happening with the housekeeper until the end. The main character hasn't got a clue and neither should we.

@Tony. Some great suggestions. I keep meaning to read more Joyce Carol Oates and good to hear she's on Kindle.

I have to admit, when I first read Remains of the Day, I wasn't all that impressed. ONLY because I was forced to read it for class (plus it was my last semester Senior year. lol). However, looking back on it, I can really appreciate what Ishiguro did with that novel. It really is a masterpiece.

[Adele Ward]

@Michael - No she only likes to get books that have been selected by a known publisher so that they have done the work of finding what she feels will be good. She doesn't feel she has the time to go through too much by unknown authors to try to find what she will like. Clearly she hasn't been on places like Kindle Boards where you can get a good indication of what you might like by starting a discussion like this one. It did lead to me buying a book by an unknown (and I'll be buying more but buy one at a time and finish each one first). I find that quite exciting.

@A.D. I can imagine that studying Ishiguro could ruin it. It's best read on your own and is incredibly emotional like that. I was on my own with this first person narrator who was struggling to find out how to socialise. I know I find loneliness and that inability to communicate very moving for some reason. I'm very sociable but I was a very shy and quiet child, so maybe that's why. Ishiguro conveys it so well. If you ever get a chance to go to a live event with him he's breathtakingly intelligent and talented, and the way he answers questions is an inspiration to authors.

By another strange coincidence (I hope I'm not repeating myself) I didn't discover Ishiguro until recent years, but we led parallel lives and still do. He went to the same university as me and left just as I was starting. He then did an MA in Creative Writing, which I then did, and he then moved to an area of London not known for having authors as residents, and at about the same time I moved here. We both still live here and I do see him sometimes, but only met him last year at the London Book Fair so we haven't spoken apart from that. Luckily he writes very slowly so I can catch up with all his books now I've discovered him.

The Unconsoled is the book he wrote after winning The Booker and I have it on my shelf to be read. He said it was the book he most wanted to write as he could do as he pleased after the Booker for one book at least. He said something that stuck with me - that novelists, even the top literary ones like him, do have to write for a market. A certain number of sales are expected. So that does demand some conformity. So I know The Unconsoled is different. Some people love it and some hate it.

Now that means it's another I must read. I have the print book but perhaps if I had the Kindle I'd read it sooner.

[anguabell]

Based on what Adele has written in this threat about the books that appeal to her and willingness to try something entirely new, there is another book I'd like to mention -Orhan Pamuk's Snow. While the writing here sometimes lacks a firm structure, and is very unlike the deliberate complex constructions of Ishiguro's works,  it is an interesting book that takes a reader to a world both familiar and entirely alien to what most of us know. I enjoyed it very much.

[Adele Ward]

I'll definitely take a look at that Anguabell. The title and cover draw me in too.

[James Everington]

Anguabell - I haven't read that one, but I have read a few Orhan Pamuk ones. 'My Name Is Red' is my favourite... it's quite similar to 'The Name Of The Rose' (another good recommendation, but that's another post) in that it's a murder mystery on the surface, but it's all tied into the philosophies and art of the times and setting.

It's narrated by a mixture of different narrators, including non-human ones. It's quite a slow read, as there's a lot to take in; but well worth it.

James

[olefish]

The line of beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst.  A booker prize winner for cheap on kindle.  At least on the us site, it is $2.51.  Cheap and good.  

[Adele Ward]

Oh I love literary fiction crime novels like The Name of the Rose. I always end up with a murder in my own writing somehow! And Hollinghurst is a great suggestion. Line of Beauty has been on my To Be Read list for way too long. I'll definitely get it. It's a pity some offers are in the US but not the UK.

I'm going to put a link to this discussion on the London Book Fair forum on Linkedin, where one person thought people wouldn't read literary fiction on Kindle. This will prove otherwise!