Loved itit's the big giant southern gothic masterpiece that everyone should aspire to
Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
Others: Positive The story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him."
- ISBN:
- 9798508883003
- Length:
- 378 pages
Genres: historical fiction
Lists: …
Similar books
1 of 6
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
2017 · 560 pages · 6 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveIn the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also historical fiction86%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations14%A Terrace in Rome
Pascal Quignard
2016 · 128 pages · 2 reviews
Others: PositiveA Terrace in Rome describes the tormented life of Geoffroy Meaume, a 17th-century engraver of encrypted shadows and erotic prints. After a passionate affair in his youth concludes with his face being burned by acid thrown by his lover's jealous fiancé, Meaume undertakes a lifetime of wandering, his psyche forever engraved by the memory of the woman who spurned him. With a face of boiled leather and a mind haunted by a nightmare of desire, he devotes himself to the black-and-white world of etchings and mezzotints, forsaking the paradise of color to engage in a science of shadows. This fragmented narrative of a man attacked by images is related in 47 short chapters which themselves act as engravings; a tale told by an antiquarian, full of fragmented vision and sexual hell. First published in French in 2000, A Terrace in Rome received the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie Française that same year, and went on to be translated into 19 languages. This is its first appearance in English. Pascal Quignard (born 1948) has written over 60 books of fiction, essays, and his own particular genre of philosophical reflection that straddles the personal journal, historical narrative and poetic theory. His books in English include Albucius, All the World's Mornings, The Sexual Night, Sex and Terror, On Wooden Tablets: Apronenia Avitia, and The Salon in Wurttemberg, as well as the multiple volumes of his ongoing book project The Last Kingdom, which, to date, includes The Roving Shadows, The Silent Crossing and Abysses.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also historical fiction86%Better Than Food loved bothPersonalize your recommendations14%Train dreams
Denis Johnson
2006 · 122 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveDenis Johnson’s Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions. Robert Grainer is a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also historical fiction86%Better Than Food loved bothPersonalize your recommendations14%Love medicine
Louise Erdrich
1984 · 367 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveA story of the intertwined fates of the Kashpaws and the Lamartines near a North Dakota reservation from 1934 to 1984.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also historical fiction89%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations11%The Women of the Copper Country
Mary Doria Russell
2019 · 354 pages · 2 reviews
Others: Positive"In July 1913, twenty-five-year-old Annie Clements had seen enough of the world to know that it was unfair. She's spent her whole life in the coal-mining town of Calumet, Michigan where men risk their lives for meager salaries--and had barely enough to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. The women labor in the houses of the elite, and send their husbands and sons deep underground each day, dreading the fateful call of the company man telling them their loved ones aren't coming home. When Annie decides to stand up for herself, and the entire town of Calumet, nearly everyone believes she may have taken on more than she is prepared to handle"--
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also historical fiction89%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations11%The Pagan Lord
Bernard Cornwell
2013 · 320 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveAs the Danes in the north, led by Viking Cnut Longsword, prepare to invade England, Uhtred, who is now out of favor with the new king, leads a band of outcasts north to recapture his old family home, but is soon drawn into the bloodiest battle yet that will decide the fate of the entire English nation.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also historical fiction90%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations10%
Loved it