Six More of My Favorite Literary Fiction Reads of the Year
- The Bossy Bookworm
- Apr 25
- 7 min read
Six More Great Bossy Literary Fiction Reads
I read so many read literary fiction books last year, this is my second best-of-the-year list; you can find my first list here.
For me, literary fiction focuses on realistic characters and themes, the author's writing style is showcased, plot takes a backseat, and you're never assured of a resolution or happy ending. A couple of these titles might stretch the definition, but I am Bossily including them.
If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite literary fiction reads?
01 Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Kennedy writes poignantly about the Irish Troubles through the point of view of Cushla, a young adult stretching her wings despite her limits--her mother's alcoholism, her father's death, and her small outer Belfast community, where violent Protestant-Catholic tensions are threatening to rule every act, thought, and dream.
Cushla is a young teacher (who also fills in at the family pub) living through growing violence outside of Belfast. Along with her alcoholic mother and her impatient barkeep brother, she grieves the loss of her father while going about her day and living her modest lifestyle.
But Cushla--along with many other citizens--is more and more astounded by the increasing conflict between Catholics and Protestants, and the violent acts stemming from the growing schism.
Kennedy draws the reader into the specific place and time of the story, vividly building the constant undercurrent of tension, the twinges of fear, the devil-may-care affair, the sickening reckonings. This is beautiful and heartbreaking, but Trespasses is never maudlin or too easy. Both the world and the characters' personal lives are complicated, messy, wonderful, and fragile.
I listened to Trespasses as an audiobook.
Click here for my full review of Trespasses.
02 Bear by Julia Phillips
The author of Disappearing Earth offers a story of bleak prospects, poverty and illness, a sister bond with fault lines ready to crack open, and a slow build to a destructive end.
Along with their ill, bedridden mother, young-adult sisters Sam and Elena struggle to get by on an island off the coast of Washington.
Frustrated by the challenge of supporting themselves on Sam's pay from driving the tourist ferry and Elena's job bartending, the sisters dream of escaping to somewhere new.
But when Sam spots a grizzly bear swimming alongside the ferry--a bear that then shows up near their home--she is terrified. Elena chooses to see the bear as a sign of something positive, and she begins drawing the bear in with food and believing she is safe in its presence.
The bear is a lumbering, drooling, stinking metaphor for the brutal truths set to implode Sam and Elena's lives. Sam has always believed she and Elena were a lifelong team, about to spring to freedom, whereas Elena never realized the half-truths and comfort she murmured to Sam when they were young have been taken as truth, against all evident clues to their grim financial status and how stuck Elena feels. Everything Sam has stubbornly understood to be true and real is suddenly coming unfurled and undone.
The bear does ultimately shift everything for their family, and the story is brutal in its climax, yet glimmers of hope do emerge.
For my full review, please see Bear.
I mentioned Julia Phillips's fascinating novel Disappearing Earth in the Greedy Reading List Six Chilly Books to Read in the Heat of Summer.
03 After Annie by Anna Quindlen
Young mom Annie's abrupt death leaves her four children, husband, and best friend reeling. Each of them must find a way back to themselves and back to each other without their key person in After Annie.
In Anna Quindlen's novel After Annie, the abrupt death of the titular young mother--which occurs in the kitchen in front of the family just before dinner--leaves her four children, husband, and best friend reeling.
Over the course of the next year, each of those who had been closest to her and who are left behind struggles and threatens to fall apart--both individually and also to collectively fall away from each other in a way that would have infuriated Annie.
The thing that saves each of them from bottomless grief and from giving in to their most desperate, despairing, hopeless impulses is Annie's frequent voice in their heads, reassuring them, loving them, sticking by them.
It was unsatisfying to see only glimpses of the pivotal figure of Annie--I found myself wanting more of these. She makes up the heart of the book and is the center of the wheel of characters rotating around her, yet little page time is spent with her directly because she dies so early in the novel.
The key characters make mistakes and stumble repeatedly before finding their way back to their new selves and their existence without Annie.
For my full review, please see After Annie. If you're interested in books about mortality, you might like the books on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality and Six More Powerful Books about Facing Mortality.
04 Grey Dog by Elliott Gish
Grey Dog begins as an immersive historical fiction story of a young teacher with a shocking past in 1900s rural England, but it becomes a haunting feminist, magical realism story about taking back power and letting go of restrictive expectations.
It's 1901, and Ada Byrd has accepted a teaching position in a rural community following a scandal and abrupt departure from her last post. Her cruel, controlling father is high up in the school board, so while he lords over her this "favor" of allowing her to serve a new role, he also forces her to be a teacher in the first place.
Ada boards with a staid, kind, slightly boring couple and also befriends the minister's wife. She's determined not to make any waves. But a young, half-feral female student and a shockingly unorthodox widow both seem to hold mysterious secrets--and both intrigue Ada.
Ada begins to learn delicate secrets of those in the community even as she protects her own scandalous past.
A haunting power seems to swirl through the small village, both disturbing and intriguing Ada. And the more often she encounters it, the more difficult it becomes for Ada to check her temper, her opinions, her yearning for freedom, and her desire to speak her mind.
This is a feminist historical fiction story in which women--long kept quiet and still, supervised to prevent their freedom, and dismissed and condescended to--strike back, lash out, and reject the constraints put on them. Magical realism allows the force that haunts, challenges, and pushes them to take the form of a beast, whose presence only the bravest women embrace and accept.
I loved the setting and detail of the historical fiction story, but I became fully hooked as the tale morphed into something wonderfully eerie and unusual. I couldn't wait to find out how it ended.
Click here for my full review of Grey Dog. If this book sounds appealing to you, you might also be interested in my Bossy reviews of other historical fiction books set in the 1900s or my Bossy reviews of Gothic stories.
05 Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
The tone of Martyr! was tough for me to get a handle on for much of the book. The story is dark, nerve-racking, irreverent, tragic, and poignant. Late in the story a fateful connection made the story really take off and feel meaningful.
Cyrus Shams is an orphaned young adult, the child of Iranian immigrants, and a recovering addict and alcoholic. He is also a self-doubting poet.
Cyrus seeks meaning in art, in a close, sometimes-sexual friendship, and in the idea of trying to craft his book.
For the majority of the novel I felt as though I appreciated the story more than I was taken in by it or enjoyed it.
The book really took off and intrigued me once Cyrus traveled to New York to visit an artist whose final exhibit was made up of living in the Brooklyn Museum and having conversations with visitors until her death. The ripples of their meeting and connection reached farther than I could have imagined, and this portion of the book was fascinating.
I listened to Martyr! as an audiobook.
Click here for my full review of Martyr!
06 Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout examines the range of characters from her many books and their intersecting stories, their imperfections, and their explorations of the meaning of life.
In small town Crosby, Maine, acclaimed writer Lucy Barton and attorney Bob Burgess walk and talk about everything under the sun--their pasts, their missteps, what they wonder about, and their dreams.
Bob is defending a man accused of a terrible crime: killing his mother, a mean, reviled lunch lady long perceived as an enemy of the town's young children. But the young man, a self-taught artist, is counting on Bob and an unorthodox approach to figuring out who really killed Bob's mother.
Tell Me Everything digs into secrets and lies, revenge, forgiveness, resignation, heartbreak, second chances, abuse, and addiction. And the story weaves in characters from other Strout books, including Olive Kitteridge.
But the story is primarily about human connections. Bob and Lucy explore the complexities of life, revealing more and more about their own inner selves as they take their weekly walks and become more dear to each other. And Olive and Lucy share stories from their own lives and those they've encountered, trying to come to terms with the meaning of life and the human condition.
Please click here for my full review of Tell Me Everything. You can also check out my Bossy reviews of Strout's Lucy by the Sea, Anything Is Possible, Olive, Again, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and Oh William! Elizabeth Strout is also the author of Olive Kitteridge.
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