A good novel does something no other book can: it lets you live a while behind someone else's eyes. This is our fiction shelf, eighteen books deep and organised the way we'd walk you round it - the prize-winners first, then the contemporary voices everyone's discussing, then the modern classics that started it all.
Editor's Picks
- The Remains of the Day - the perfect novel, quietly devastating
- The God of Small Things - a once-in-a-generation debut
- Life of Pi - the impossible survival story
Prize-Winners
The Bookers, the Pulitzers and the ones that earned the fuss.
01Shuggie Bain
Stuart's Booker-winning debut follows a boy loving his mother through addiction in 1980s Glasgow. Bleak on paper, but so tender and precisely observed that it becomes, somehow, a book about devotion. Not a quick read emotionally, so give it space, and follow it with Young Mungo if it lands.
02Girl, Woman, Other
Twelve mostly Black British women, their lives braided across a century in a loose, rushing free-verse. Big-hearted, funny and formally daring without ever feeling like hard work. Joint Booker winner in 2019.
03Hamnet
O'Farrell imagines the short life of Shakespeare's son and the grief that follows. Sensuous, aching and quietly furious about mothers and loss - the historical novel that convinced everyone who tried it. Pair it with the Maggie O'Farrell backlist, and note that it reads far lighter than its subject suggests.
04The Remains of the Day
A butler drives to the coast and reckons, too late, with a life of perfect service. The nearest thing English fiction has to a perfect novel - restrained, and quietly devastating. Under three hundred perfect pages.
05The God of Small Things
Twins, a forbidden love and a family tragedy in 1960s Kerala, told in prose that seems newly invented. A once-in-a-generation debut that still stuns. Her only novel for twenty years.
06Life of Pi
A boy, a lifeboat and a Bengal tiger, adrift on the Pacific. An impossible survival story that doubles as a sly argument about storytelling itself. The final twenty pages are the whole argument, so resist skipping ahead.
Contemporary Voices
What everyone's reading now - and will still be reading in ten years.
07Normal People
Marianne and Connell circle each other from school to university, forever misreading what the other needs. Rooney writes intimacy and class with a cool, addictive precision. Divisive, but you'll finish it in a sitting. Short enough to finish in a day, and best read before watching the adaptation.
08Klara and the Sun
An artificial friend watches the human world with tender, uncomprehending devotion. Classic Ishiguro: deceptively simple, quietly devastating, and full of questions you keep turning over for days. Gentler than Never Let Me Go.
09Small Things Like These
A coal merchant in 1980s Ireland makes a small, enormous moral choice one Christmas. Barely a hundred pages, not a word wasted - the most quietly powerful thing we've read in years. An hour to read, weeks to shake.
10Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Two friends build video games and a lifelong, complicated love that isn't romance. The word-of-mouth phenomenon of its decade - and it earns the hype. No gaming knowledge required whatsoever.
11Demon Copperhead
David Copperfield reborn in opioid-era Appalachia, narrated by a boy you'll root for on every page. Furious, funny and enormous-hearted. Pulitzer winner, and deservedly so.
12Open Water
Two young Black artists fall in love in south-east London, told in a close, musical second person. Short, lyrical and completely contemporary. Barely a hundred and fifty pages, and it reads closer to a long poem than a novel.
Modern Classics
The post-war landmarks every reader gets to eventually - start here.
13Never Let Me Go
Students at a strange English boarding school slowly learn what they're for. The saddest science fiction ever written - and barely science fiction at all. Go in knowing as little as possible; the slow reveal is the point.
14Atonement
A child's lie in a 1935 country house echoes across a lifetime and a war. McEwan's masterpiece - and an ending readers argue about for years. The first section is deliberately slow, and it pays off completely.
15Beloved
A mother haunted - literally - by the daughter slavery took from her. The great American novel of memory and survival; demanding, and worth everything it asks. Demanding but never obscure, and the audiobook, read by Morrison herself, is a fine way in.
16The Kite Runner
Two boys, a kite tournament and a betrayal that shadows a life from Kabul to California. The modern book-club classic that actually deserves the status. An easy recommendation for a group, and one of the few bestsellers that earns its reputation.
17White Teeth
Two unlikely wartime friends and their tangled families across multicultural north London. Smith's exuberant debut - funny, sprawling and bursting with life. Funniest in its first half, and a good introduction to Smith before the later, quieter novels.
18Cloud Atlas
Six nested stories from a Pacific voyage to a post-apocalyptic future, each in a different voice. A virtuoso performance that's also, somehow, a page-turner. Stick with the first section's archaic voice; it makes sense once the second story begins.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the best literary fiction to start with?
Small Things Like These if you want something short and perfect; Shuggie Bain or Hamnet if you're ready to be wrung out. All three repay the trust.
Which prize-winner is actually the most enjoyable?
Life of Pi reads like an adventure novel; The Remains of the Day is the one readers finish and immediately hand to someone else.
I want something written this decade - where do I start?
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the modern word-of-mouth hit, and Demon Copperhead is the big prize-winner that reads like a friend telling you a story.
What is the difference between literary and commercial fiction?
Broadly, where the emphasis falls: literary fiction foregrounds language, character and ambiguity, commercial fiction foregrounds story and pace. The line is blurry and getting blurrier, and the best books on this shelf refuse to sit on either side of it.
Shelf 02Crime & Mystery
Cosy crime, gritty thrillers and a good whodunnit for a wet afternoon.
Browse →
Shelf 03Nature & Countryside
Nature writing, walking, farming and the wild places - our house speciality.
Browse →
Shelf 04History
Popular history, biography and the stories behind the stories.
Browse →
Shelf 05Cookery
Seasonal cooking, baking and the kitchen books worth the shelf space.
Browse →