Category: literary-fiction
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This novel is a true national treasure for those in the know. Set in the early 1930s in a small town in Mississippi, the brilliant and smooth storytelling, along with the wonderful characters you’ll meet—especially little Meg and Birdie—will have you turning chapter after chapter until you’ve lost all track of time. It may be…
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This literary novel is likely one of the first I have read regarding Pakistan’s caste system. It weaves a tale among four or five different people, all with different circumstances but ties to Pakistan. I liked the novel but found it lacking and incomplete in certain areas. While I have a limited understanding of Pakistan’s…
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What a shame. After having thoroughly enjoyed The Light Pirate and Good Morning, Midnight and singing its praises, Lily Brooks-Dalton returns with her next novel, Ruins. This novel is everything that The Light Pirate was not, and I mean that in a very, very bad way. How could this have happened? The disparity between the…
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A while ago, I had tried to read The Women, also by the same author, but I had to drop it at just around the 15%-20% mark. There was just something that bugged me. This turned out to be the flat and uninspiring writing. It just felt like a chore to read, and I was…
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For anyone looking for a feel-good story for their next read, Theo of Golden by Allen Levi should be right at the front of that list. As someone who rarely keeps up with new book releases, I only came across this novel, like so many others, by pure chance and randomness upon searching for a…
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The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a Russian literary novel first published in 1880. The version I’ve read, newly translated in 2024, is from Michael R. Katz. I first heard of this novel after having read The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong, in which the main character attempts to read the hefty novel.…
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The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong is a literary fictional novel set in a town called East Gladness in Connecticut. The novel depicts a boy on the verge of ending his own life by jumping off a bridge when he’s saved unexpectedly by an old lady. The story tackles issues such as poverty, drug…
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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is a coming-of-age fiction novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. It’s a wonderful novel but one that requires patience, being that it is over 700 pages long. It explores the grief and sadness of a young boy as he is forced to grow up having lost his mother…
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Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy is a literary novel set entirely on a remote island where a family of four has been tasked by the government to safeguard and protect the seeds of the many species of plants and flowers known to man. The idea is that with climate change getting worse, the planet…
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The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a refreshing new twist on the popular tale of Vlad Tepes, aka Dracula. It’s hard to believe that The Historian is the author’s debut novel, published in 2005. Right at around 700 pages, we can clearly see that she had huge ambitions for this project. Fortunately for us readers,…
The Mindless Catalog 