Holiday Gift Guide: Literary Fiction

Posted 8:54 p.m. Nov 10, 2021 — Updated 3:29 p.m. Nov 16, 2021

Amber Brown

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

From Mamie: “Three story lines tied together by the mythical quest of a man named Aethon: 1400’s Constantinople, present day Idaho, and a futuristic voyage of a ship called the Argos! Suspense and adventure! The beautiful writing we admired in All the Light We Cannot See! A great book for falling into and emerging in a fog of wonder! That gushing sound you hear? Not the waterfall of your dream vacation, but me continuing to talk about this amazing book. I’m telling you: this is one you must put on your list.”

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Sarah says, “If you loved The Overstory, prepare yourself for a very different Richard Powers story with a main cast of just three: father Theo, son Robin, and their memory of their wife and mother, Alyssa. But even with a small cast, Powers delivers an imaginative, ambitious story that spans galaxies, dives deep into the human brain, and makes one care deeply for this family that’s challenged on all fronts but willing to take big risks.”

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney

Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

The Every by Dave Eggers

When the world’s largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet’s dominant e-commerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous–and, oddly enough, most beloved–monopoly ever known: the Every. Delaney charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. Studded with unforgettable characters and lacerating set pieces, The Every blends satire and terror, while keeping the reader in breathless suspense about the fate of the company–and the human animal.

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

In Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own. A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis.

Matrix by Lauren Groff

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

The Magician by Colm Tóibín

From Mamie: “I was totally engrossed in the story of Thomas Mann as he endured the challenges of being German during WWII. Tóibín provides detailed portraits of the Manns as each of them found their place in the resistance to the Nazi rise in power. This is not a page-turner by any means, but a book to be savored with its beautiful writing and intimate look at this famous family. Mann’s relationships with his wife and children, his bisexuality, his continued commitment to his writing as the world fell apart around him, and the political turmoil of the era both abroad and stateside add up to a compelling read.”

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Sarah says, “Towles takes us on a road and rail trip across America in 1954, following a cast of characters that includes a precocious 8-year-old, a Korean war vet, prison escapees, an eccentric professor and many others who bring that period in America vividly to life. If you mash together Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Cool Hand Luke, and The Wizard of Oz with the cliff-hanging pacing of a Dickens' newspaper serial, you will get a flavor of The Lincoln Highway. And, please, hurry up and read - I can't wait to discuss the ending.”

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where they've come from—and what they've left behind. Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. "This is the way of life," Lucy says: "the many things we do not know until it is too late."

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich's latest novel asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone by Diana Gabaldon

Jamie and Claire were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same. It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser’s Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible. Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great, and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell’s teakettle. Jamie knows loyalties are split and it won’t be long until the war is on his doorstep.

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