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Recommendations based on Outlineby Rachel Cusk
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Transit
by Rachel Cusk
A woman's journey of rediscovering herself after divorce, through encounters with others.
The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with, Outline, one of, The New York Times Book Review,’s ten best books of 2015 . In the wake of family collapse, a writer and her two young sons ... (Goodreads)
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An exploration of race, identity, and belonging as two Nigerian immigrants experience life in America and beyond.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to ... (Goodreads)
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
A grand narrative of life in a small English town, exploring the lives of its inhabitants.
Middlemarch centres on the lives of residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards – the years up to the 1832 Reform Act . The narrative is variably considered to consist of ... (Wikipedia)
The Days of Abandonment
by Elena Ferrante
An exploration of womanhood and psychological turmoil in the aftermath of a broken marriage.
The whole story is based on the sudden end of a seemingly solid, happy marriage. Olga, a stay at home mother in her late 30s, is told by her husband Mario that he is leaving her and their two ... (Wikipedia)
Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
A day in the life of a high-society woman, delving into her inner thoughts and feelings.
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about ... (Wikipedia)
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
by Elena Ferrante
Two friends navigate the changing relationships of their youth and adulthood, and the consequences of their choices.
In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her abusive ... (Goodreads)
The Flamethrowers
by Rachel Kushner
An exploration of art, politics, and identity in 1970s New York and Italy.
In 1975, a young art school graduate from Reno moves to New York City hoping to become a successful artist. She meets an older, more established artist, Sandro Valera, the heir of Moto Valera, an ... (Wikipedia)
My Brilliant Friend
by Elena Ferrante
A story of two friends' lives, exploring the intricacies of female friendship and life in a Neapolitan neighbourhood.
A modern masterpiece from one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante's inimitable style lends ... (Goodreads)
Stoner
by John Williams
An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.
William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (Wikipedia)
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
A powerful tale of four friends navigating life's hardships and the devastating effects of trauma.
The novel follows the lives of four friends in New York City from college through to middle-age. It focuses particularly on Jude, a lawyer with a mysterious past, ambiguous ethnicity, and unexplained ... (Wikipedia)
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
An escaped slave's daring escape to freedom, fighting against the brutality of slavery.
The story is told in the third person, focusing mainly on Cora. Scattered single chapters also focus on Cora's mother Mabel, the slavecatcher Ridgeway, a reluctant slave sympathizer named Ethel, and ... (Wikipedia)
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
A family drama exploring the complexities of relationships, aging and life’s choices.
The novel shifts back and forth through the late 20th century, intermittently following spouses Alfred and Enid Lambert as they raise their children Gary, Chip, and Denise in the traditional ... (Wikipedia)
Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid
Reflection on displacement and immigration as two refugees traverse the world in search of a new life.
Nadia and Saeed meet when they are working students in an unnamed city. Saeed is more conservative and still lives at home, as custom generally requires, but the more independent Nadia has chosen to ... (Wikipedia)
Oscar and Lucinda
by Peter Carey
A tale of two outcasts who find solace in each other's eccentricities.
Peter Carey's Booker Prize winning novel imagines Australia's youth, before its dynamic passions became dangerous habits. It is also a startling and unusual love story. Oscar is a young English ... (Goodreads)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
How to Be Both
by Ali Smith
Exploring duality and interconnectedness through the life of a girl and a Renaissance artist.
Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A true original, she is a one-of-a-kind literary sensation. Her novels consistently ... (Goodreads)
Howards End
by E.M. Forster
Exploration of the societal divides in early 20th century England, and the consequences of class prejudice.
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the ... (Goodreads)
The Overstory
by Richard Powers
Nine strangers are brought together by their love for trees, leading to a fight to save the last of the remaining forests.
Nicholas Hoel, Mimi Ma, Adam Appich, Ray Brinkman, Dorothy Cazaly, Douglas Pavlicek, Neelay Mehta, Patricia Westerford, and Olivia Vandergriff are people who had unique relationships with trees which ... (Wikipedia)
The Idiot
by Elif Batuman
A young woman's journey of self-discovery, learning to navigate the complexities of life.
Selin Karadağ is a freshman studying linguistics at Harvard University . She meets an older Hungarian mathematics student, Ivan, in a Russian language class and the two begin corresponding over ... (Wikipedia)
NW
by Zadie Smith
A story of a group of friends in London navigating love and identity in their complex lives.
Set in northwest London, Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragicomic novel follows four locals—Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan—as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their ... (Goodreads)
Leaving the Atocha Station
by Ben Lerner
A young poet's journey of self-discovery, struggling to find a sense of purpose in life.
Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. What is actual when ... (Goodreads)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
A woman's radical decision to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle, leading to unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
The Vegetarian tells the story of Yeong-hye, a home-maker who, one day, suddenly decides to stop eating meat after a series of dreams involving images of animal slaughter. This abstention leads her ... (Wikipedia)
Lincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders
A spiritual exploration of death, exploring the afterlife through the eyes of President Lincoln.
In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by ... (Goodreads)
The Book of Strange New Things
by Michel Faber
Intergalactic missionary journeys to an alien planet, facing challenges of faith and morality.
A monumental, genre-defying novel over ten years in the making, Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things is a masterwork from a writer in full command of his many talents. It begins with Peter, ... (Goodreads)
The Rings of Saturn
by W.G. Sebald
An exploration of the physical and metaphysical landscapes of the English coast.
The Rings of Saturn — with its curious archive of photographs — records a walking tour along the east coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is ... (Goodreads)
Super Sad True Love Story
by Gary Shteyngart
A darkly comic exploration of love in a technologically-driven world.
The son of a Russian immigrant , protagonist Leonard (Lenny) Abramov, a middle-aged, middle class, otherwise unremarkable man whose mentality is still in the past century, falls madly in love with ... (Wikipedia)
The Known World
by Edward P. Jones
A story of a former slave turned landowner navigating the complex social dynamics of Antebellum America.
One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, The Known World is a daring and ambitious work by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones. The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black ... (Goodreads)
Autumn
by Ali Smith
A novel about the friendship between an elderly man and a young woman, exploring themes of memory, time, and the changing of seasons.
Daniel Gluck, a 101-year-old former songwriter, lies asleep and dreaming in his care home. He is regularly visited by 32-year-old Elisabeth Demand, who had been his next door neighbour as a young ... (Wikipedia)
Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
A surreal exploration of war and technology, and their impact on the human spirit.
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its ... (Goodreads)
