love stories through the ages, part 3
some book recommendations for my favorite sub-genre (literary fiction about relationships)
Welcome to part 3 of my book recommendations series!
In case you missed it, part 1 covers all novels up to the 20th century (the classics) and part 2 covers the 20th century.
While I am not a big romantic and tend to be very cynical when it comes to romance, I do love well-written stories and novels about love and relationships. Here is my big list of literary fiction books about romance that I enjoyed, and books that are on my immediate to-read list (that are highly recommended by my friends, so I have no doubt that I will enjoy and love). There are about 30 recommendations for part 3!
These books are not ‘romance’ books, but rather novels about love, marriage, and relationships—good, romantic, bad, messy, toxic, obsessive, insane, nostalgic. They range from Austen classics to contemporary fiction! After all, we have been writing about love and its variants for a very long time.
This is a continuation of my Instagram post, and the list is organized by date of publication. This is part 3 of the series: books published in the 21th century.
You’ll need to view this on the app or site because the email gets cut off!
Dept, of Speculation by Jenny Offhill (2014)
They used to send each other letters. The return address was always the same: Dept. of Speculation. They used to be young, brave, and giddy with hopes for their future. They got married, had a child, and skated through all the small calamities of family life. But then, slowly, quietly something changes. As the years rush by, fears creep in and doubts accumulate until finally their life as they know it cracks apart and they find themselves forced to reassess what they have lost, what is left, and what they want now. Written with the dazzling lucidity of poetry, Dept. of Speculation navigates the jagged edges of a modern marriage to tell a story that is darkly funny, surprising and wise.
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (2015)
Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.
Mr Salary by Sally Rooney (2016)
My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.
Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable.
Sally Rooney is one of the most acclaimed young talents of recent years. With her minute attention to the power dynamics in everyday speech, she builds up sexual tension and throws a deceptively low-key glance at love and death.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017)
PROBLEM:
You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes--it would all be too awkward--and you can’t say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.
QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?
ANSWER: You accept them all.
If you are Arthur Less.
Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face. What could possibly go wrong?
Well: Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Sahara sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and arrive in Japan too late for the cherry blossoms. In between: science fiction fans, crazed academics, emergency rooms, starlets, doctors, exes and, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to see. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. The second phase of life, as he thinks of it, falling behind him like the second phase of a rocket. There will be his first love. And there will be his last.