What Are Your Favorite Realistic Fiction Reads?

[sapling]

I haven’t read many, but I like what I have read and am planning to read some Fredrick Backman soon. So I would love to hear your favorites.

ETA: the following paragraphs are just what I was personally looking for, and can be ignored if you just want to share your favs.

I would love anything emotional and character driven, with a fair amount of plot (not necessarily plot heavy but it has to be there) with very intentional writing instead of using big or poetic words if it is just for the sake of it. I would like the content not to be too graphic as well.

Bonus points if you can list some w/out passive prose. Passive prose can work but it usually makes the POV feel too distant in the wrong way for my taste. E.g., “The cup was raised,” vs the more active “he raised the cup.”

 

[Randy M.]

Well, realistic has it's degrees of realism ...

Raymond Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely; The Long Goodbye; The Big Sleep, but I'd point out there is an unresolved sub-plot in this one, his first novel. Mysteries have plots, sometimes too much so, and also violence. I think, with Chandler, there's a decent balance between them. He has a distinctive prose style that propels his novels.

Ross Macdonald: The Chill; The Underground Man; The Goodbye Look; The Zebra-Stripped Hearse; pretty much anything he wrote after about 1960. Macdonald in some ways was better than Chandler. I think his insight into character was stronger, and he carved out his own hard-boiled niche by observing and reporting on how the easy wealth accumulated in southern California the 1950s and '60s affected families, especially children.

I'll think about this some more and see if I can list a few other writers, maybe more recent writers.

 

[sapling]

Well, realistic has it’s degrees of realism ...

Thanks so much for your reply!

 

[Raf]

A couple that I've liked are:

Rosamunde Pilcher - A lot of her work takes place in Scotland. And you can read her love of the locale in her fiction. "Winter Solstice" and "September" are a couple of favorites. Her characters are quirky and you can't help but embrace the story.

Christopher Scotton - "The Secret Wisdom of the Earth". Takes place in Kentucky as a bereaved daughter & her young son comes home to stay with her parents after losing another child. There are POV's in play, the daughter and her son. Who begins a coming of age scenario and also begins to know his grandfather. Good story.

If you like Historical Fiction, I can recommend these.

Noah Gordon - "The Physician". A young boy loses his parents in England circa 1100AD or so. Is apprenticed to a traveling Barber. Barbers were the middle age equivalent of a Nurse or PA. Traveling from town to town lancing boils, pulling teeth and hawking cure-alls. Rob Cole learns the basics of his craft, but wants to learn more. At that time, the best Physicians in the known world were trained in Persia. So begins a journey across Europe and the middle east to become something more. Outstanding read.

M.M.Kaye - "The Far Pavilions". I re-read this back in 2022 after a 30 yr hiatus. Still a personal favorite. The mini-series does not do justice to the book. A young British boy in India on trek with his father, a noted botanist, sees everyone he loves taken from him due to a cholera outbreak. Adopted by an Indian woman and raised as Indian, he eventually makes it back to England to be educated. But then returns to serve in the military. It is a both a love story and a study of imperialism and racial division in India during the Gurhka Revolution era.

 

[sapling]

A couple that I've like are…

Thanks for all the recommendations!

 

[kennychaffin]

ANYTHING by Anthony Doerr!

 

[kennychaffin]

P.S. I'm not sure I even understand what 'realistic fiction' is....seems to be anti-genre, but in googling it it seems it's a genre itself..... oh well... writin' is writin' eh?

 

[kennychaffin]

What about Cormac McCarthy?

 

[sapling]

P.S. I'm not sure I even understand what 'realistic fiction' is....seems to be anti-genre, but in googling it it seems it's a genre itself..... oh well... writin' is writin' eh?

I always thought of it to be fiction in any, but not every genre that seems like it could plausibly happen in real life even if it is unlikely.

 

[sapling]

ANYTHING by Anthony Doerr!

Definitely will check his books out!

 

[sapling]

What about Cormac McCarthy?

I kind of wanted to read his book entitled “As Lay Dying,” but then I heard a fairly detailed review of “Blood Meridian” by Matt’s Fantasy Book Reviews on YouTube, and I guess I just figured I wouldn’t like any of his works.

 

[Randy M.]

As I Lay Dying was by William Faulkner. It's often used in college courses as an introduction to Faulkner's work, some of which is more stylistically challenging. It's a great book, and though it may not seem like it on first reading, it's a comedy. A dark comedy.

Other writers/books from around that time that you might find of interest:
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (interconnected short stories; very influential in 20th century American writing)
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men; The Grapes of Wrath

 

[sapling]

As I Lay Dying was by William Faulkner. It's often used in college courses as an introduction to Faulkner's work…

That is true!
I think I meant The Road, but I had that in my head because Faulkner comes up a lot in school.
Anyways, thanks for all the recommendations. I am definitely going to try to read more as an author than just a reader, so I think classics are good to analyze what techniques work and what hasn’t aged well.

 

[EricJ]

David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series, really spoke to me as a Soldier and the like, and inspired me to write my own stories eventually, and so on. Other than the powerguns (which scientifically sound), which I thought were a little hokey, I though the stories were great though, really inspiring stuff.

Also the Sentenced to War series is a good series that I'm reading right now, which is pretty realistic when it comes to the military and what it entails to serve, even if it is the future.

 

[Fryan]

Some of my favorite literary fiction novels that come to mind:

Stoner by John Williams
Sing, Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Also recommend anything by Toni Morrison and Rachel Cusk. Even their “not great” novels are better than 99% of the stuff in print.

 

[Cicero]

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Caine
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
The Oxbow Incident by Walter Sam Tilberg Clark
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
The Black Dahlia by James Elroy
Alls Quite On The Western Front by Erich Marie Remarque