Harbach's 672-page follow-up to The Art of Fielding focuses on two female protagonists at the fictional Westish College as they figure out themselves, make missteps, forge new paths, and zigzag their way forward in messy young-adulthood. In this campus-set novel, Harbach explores the messy, tangled lives of disparate best friends Pella and Irma as they figure out who they are and what they're about as they prepare to emerge from college. Pella is 27 and a recent graduate of M

This 1000-page fantasy novel is intense, brutal (significant trigger warnings are warranted), extremely dark, and not at all a universal recommendation. I struggled with and was also fascinated by the fact that in its original form, the story was Harry Potter fan fiction about Hermione and Draco. The structure and timeline is intriguing and illuminating. This beast of a fantasy novel (it's 1040 pages) tracks a healer and alchemist suffering from significant memory gaps throug

Desai's first novel in decades is a 688-page tale that meanders through India, New York, family and romantic relationships, and career false starts, with missteps, mysterious, powerful magical realism elements, and an undercurrent of darkness and despair. The messy resolutions felt appropriately hard-fought after the characters' extended struggles. Sonia is living away from her Indian family while she studies writing in Vermont, and after growing up used to having multiple fa

I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie When I was compiling this list and double-checking page counts, I kept surprising myself with my own...