↓
 

Late Last Night Books

because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours

Late Last
Night Books
because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours
Since 2013
Gary Garth McCann, founder and managing editor
an ad-free magazine about fiction by authors Terra Ziporyn * Sally Whitney * Eileen Haavik McIntire * Gary Garth McCann * Peter G. Pollak * Garry Craig Powell * Jenny Yacovissi * Lily Iona MacKenzie * Todd S. Garth * Daniel Oliver
Menu
  • Home
  • Book Reviews
  • Insights
  • Interviews
  • Authors
  • Guest Bloggers
  • About
  • Tag Cloud

Post navigation

← On V.S. Naipaul–Do Novelists Need to be Nice?
What’s On Your Bucket List of Books? →

Moving Beyond Auto-fiction to the Epic: Three Novel Recommendations

Late Last Night Books
Avatar photo
SYBIL BAKER

Author of While You Were Gone,  Immigration Essays, Into this World, Talismans, and The Life Plan.

1 SEPTEMBER 2018 Moving Beyond Auto-fiction to the Epic: Three Novel Recommendations

The English publication of the volumes of Karl Ove Knausgard’s My Struggle coincides with a renewed interest in “auto-fiction,” also known as the autobiographical novel. While I have read and enjoyed several of these works of auto-fiction, my favorite is Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, which seemed to draw on some auto-fiction elements, but also used other literary devices such as image patterning and developing character arcs, while incorporating motifs of class, politics, art, motherhood, friendship, and feminism.

Since finishing the Neapolitan series I’ve found myself wanting to read more novels that span generations, placing themselves in historical context, in which history itself (just as Ferrante’s working class post-war Italy) becomes a character. Three recent novels fit this bill, and I recommend them to anyone desiring epic historical novels that educate as well as entertain.

The first novel I recommend is Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016). Shortlisted for the Booker and winner of both of Canada’s top literary awards, The Giller Prize and the Governor’s General Award, Thien’s novel spans generations of several Chinese families from before the Revolution to the present day—the nexus of the novel being the lead up to and the aftermath of Tiananmen Square. Successfully ambitious on all levels, the novel is well deserving of all its accolades.

Min Jin Lee’s breakthrough Pachinko (2017) covers a generation of a South Korean family living in Japan during the twentieth century. Although the novel, a National Book Award Finalist, is going to be made into a TV miniseries by Apple, I encourage you to read this riveting novel about the hardships Koreans faced in Japan before then.

Finally,  Richard Powers’ The Overstory (2018) is an epic novel of trees and the people transformed by them. Intricately plotted—like the complex root system, this novel (currently longlisted for the Booker Prize) also spans more than a hundred years, and is my favorite novel of the year so far.

If you are looking for stories that take you out of the mundane world and instead challenge and expand your own understanding, I recommend any or all three of these powerful novels.

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
Avatar photo

Sybil Baker

Sybil Baker’s most recent novel While You Were Gone was published in June 2018 by C&R Press. Immigration Essays, (C&R Press, 2017) will be The University of Tennessee’s Chattanooga’s Read2Achieve selection for 2018-2019. She is also the author of The Life Plan , Talismans, and Into This World . She is a UC Foundation Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and teaches at the Yale Writer’s Workshop. She has received two Make Work Artist Grants and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission.

  • Web
  • |
  • Twitter
  • |
  • Facebook
  • |
  • LinkedIn
  • |
  • More Posts(7)

Post navigation

← On V.S. Naipaul–Do Novelists Need to be Nice?
What’s On Your Bucket List of Books? →
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
banner photo copyright Dervish_design - Fotolia.com
Log in
©2023 - Late Last Night Books - Weaver Xtreme Theme Privacy Policy
↑