The appeal of literary fiction by Joyce Saricks

Presented at the 2106 readers' advisory seminar

Appeal of Genres that Appeal to the Intellect (Literary Fiction, Mysteries, Psychological Suspense, Science Fiction):

• Complex puzzles, ideas, and relationships challenge a reader intellectually. Provocative issues and positions force readers to consider carefully, to view the world differently.
• Compelling pace drives these novels, sometimes more leisurely, sometimes adrenaline-fueled.
• Tone is often unsettling.

THE APPEAL OF LITERARY FICTION Style/Language:

• Critically acclaimed, often award-winning
• Lyrical language—language matters here
• Often experimental style
• Richard Flanagan (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), Geraldine Brooks (People of the Book), Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall), Kent Haruf (Our Souls at Night), David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas), Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time)

Characterizations:

• In-depth and introspective character-centered novels
• Protagonists not always sympathetic
• Even secondary characters are fully developed
• Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies), Stewart O’Nan (Last Night at the Lobster), Herman Koch (The Dinner), Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life), Arthur Phillips (The Egyptologist)

Story Line:

• Character-centered, complex, multi-layered, and provocative
• Wrestle with universal dilemmas and serious social issues
• Frequently open ended or with ambiguous endings
• Short story collections
• Ian McEwan (Atonement), Christina Baker Kline (The Orphan Train), Yann Martel (Life of Pi), Erica Swyler (The Book of Speculation), Alice Munro (Runaway)

Pacing:

• Leisurely paced. Densely written stories unfold at a stately pace.
• Complex characters and story lines plus imaginative language and style can slow reading pace.
• Generally more description than dialog.
• Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch), Emma Donaghue (Room), Haruki Murakami (IQ84)

Tone/Mood:

• Dark, gritty tone may reflect seriousness of issues
• Humor also abounds—light or satirical.
• David Wroblewski (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle), Cormac McCarthy (The Road), Richard Russo (Straight Man), Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated), Patrick DeWitt (Undermajordomo Minor)

Setting/Frame:

• Richly descriptive stories lend themselves to elaborate backgrounds.
• Many writers create a strong sense of time and/or place that frames the novel.

Literary Fiction Classics:

• Homer (Odyssey)
• Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
• Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
• George Eliot (Middlemarch)
• Thomas Mann (Buddenbrooks)
• Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)
• Gustav Flaubert (Madame Bovary)
• Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
• John Updike (Rabbit Run)
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

Authors to Know: Michael Chabon

• Genre-blender with elements of Fantasy, Adventure, Mystery, SF, and more
• Complex characters
• Layered stories
• Humorous, elegant style
• Fiction and nonfiction, also for teens and children

Ian McEwan

• Elegantly lyrical style
• Character-centered
• Psychological, often dark tone
• Unsettling
• Book discussion favorite

Toni Morrison

• Nobel prize winner, Oprah author
• African-American women, past and present
• Universal stories
• Serious issues
• Lyrical prose

Haruki Murakami

• Mundane and surreal blended in characters and story lines
• Serious issues and humor
• Spare, lyrical prose
• Dreamy mood and haunting atmosphere

Zadie Smith

• Entertaining and thought-provoking fiction and non-fiction
• Lyrical, witty prose
• Vivid characterizations
• Humorous, often satirical prose
• Complex, sprawling story lines

More Names to Know

• Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex
• Richard Ford’s Canada
• Joyce Carol Oates’s The Falls
• Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone
• Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn
• Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus
• Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men
• Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge
• Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic

Crossover with Fiction and Nonfiction

• Mystery (Ruth Rendell and James Lee Burke)
• Psychological Suspense (Ruth Rendell)
• Science Fiction (Neal Stephenson)
• Historical Adventure (Steven Pressfield)
• Thrillers (Daniel Silva)
• Horror (Mark L. Danielewski)
• Women’s Lives (Margaret Drabble)
• Fantasy (Gregory Maguire)
• Historical Fiction (Hilary Mantel)
• Western (Larry McMurtry)
• History and Biography (David McCullough, Ross King)
• Memoir (Annie Dillard, May Sarton)
• Travel (Bill Bryson)
• Science (Brian Greene, Dava Sobel, James Gleick)

Trends International writers

• Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America
• Nick Hornby’s About a Boy
• Emma Donoghue’s Room
• Kazua Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go,
• Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
• Kate Atkinson’s Life before Life
• Ha Jin’s A Free Life
• Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone

International Writers in translation

• Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses
• Jose Saramago’s Blindness
• Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist
• Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader
• Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog,
• Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Française
• Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat
• Carlos Ruis Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind
• Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master And Margarita
• Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red

Classics—re-issued, especially in audio and as graphic novels

• Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield
• Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (audio)
• The Trial (Graphic novel based on Kafka’s The Trial)

Popularlized on the big and small screens

• Alice Munro’s The Bear Came Over the Mountain/Away from Her and Bride and Prejudice

Classics Adapted and retold, sequels and prequels

• Cathleen Schine’s The Weissmann’s of Westport/Sense and Sensibility
• Colleen McCullough’s The Sensibility of Miss Mary Bennet/Pride and Prejudice,
• Geraldine Brooks’ March/Little Women
• Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele/Jane Eyre
• Jon Clinch’s Finch/Huckleberry Finn

Source of book discussion titles

• Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette,
• Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven
• M. L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans
• Kate Grenville’s The Secret River
• Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer
• Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Resources

• The New York Times Book Review (historical available on NYT.com)
• Indiebound (an online community of independent booksellers): http://www.indiebound.org/
• Any “Best Fiction” list from major newspapers, Amazon.com or BN.com
• Early Word (http://earlyword.com) keeps track of best lists in the right gutter.
• New Yorker magazine for up-and-coming Literary Fiction (and Nonfiction) authors http://www.newyorker.com/magazine

Awards

• Rusa’s Notable Books http://www.ala.org/rusa/awards/notablebooks
• Carnegie Medal http://www.ala.org/awardsgrants/carnegieadult
• Nobel Prize http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/
• Pulitzer Prize http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Fiction
• National Book Award http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2014.html#.VL1A4CcmAXg
• National Book Critics Circle Award http://bookcritics.org/awards/
• Man Booker Prize http://www.themanbookerprize.com/timeline

Fans of Literary Fiction:

• Follow awards
• Read all books by authors they appreciate
• Are adventurous, willing to try other books that offer similar appeal elements: character-centered, provocative books written in the complex style they enjoy
• May read literary end of genres but may not like to think of themselves as genre readers

Joyce Saricks / saricksj@gmail.com / March, 2016