Books like 'Delicacy'
Readers who enjoyed Delicacy by David Foenkinos also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary romance 20th century drama humor classics literary-fiction university friendship
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My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsFifty years after its first publication, the multimillion-copy international bestseller is available again in English, sharing the heartbreaking tale of a gifted, mischievous, direly misunderstood boy growing up in Rio de Janeiro.When the precocious Zeze grows up, he wants to be a poet in a bow tie... -
100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAgainst the backdrop of Isla Negra - the sea and wind, the white sand with its scattering of delicate wild flowers, the hot sun and salty smells of the Pacific - the poet sets the poems in celebration of his love. The subject of that love is Matilde Urrutia de Neruda, the poet's 'beloved wife'... -
Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsLiving by their wits in the steamy slums of Bahia, a gang of orphans and runaways, led by fifteen-year-old "Bullet," spend their time stealing from Brazil's rich and privileged until public outcry demands their capture...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children -
These High, Green Hills by Jan Karon
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsIn These High, Green Hills we're once again in Mitford, a southern village of local characters so heartwarming and hilarious you'll wish you lived right next door. At last, Mitford's rector and lifelong bachelor, Father Tim, has married his talented and vivacious neighbor, Cynthia... -
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Selected Poems by E.E. Cummings
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe one hundred and fifty-six poems here, arranged in twelve sections and introduced by E. E. Cummings's biographer, include his most popular poems, spanning his earliest creations, his vivacious linguistic acrobatics, up to his last valedictory sonnets. Also featured are thirteen drawings, oils, and watercolors by Cummings, most of them never before published... -
A Light in the Window by Jan Karon
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratings- Readers will enjoy a story from the popular series-packaged bestseller!- Includes new Reader's Guide for group discussion or personal... -
Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA vivid chronicle of the solitary life of a peasant family in a harsh and unforgiving land, austerely told by a classic Brazilian writer... -
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsAlternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark... -
Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAn Oscar-winning story of a memorable mother and her feisty daughter who find the courage and humor to live through life's hazards and to love each other as never before. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove created two characters who won the hearts of readers and moviegoers everywhere--Aurora Greenway and her daughter Emma... -
Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsHer captivating bestseller of loss and the healing power of love now re-issued with a stunning new jacket look. Elfrida Phipps loves her new life in the pretty Hampshire village. She has a tiny cottage, her faithful dog Horace and the friendship of the neighbouring Blundells - particularly Oscar - to ensure that her days include companionship as well as independence... -
The Truce by Mario Benedetti
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratings'Perhaps that moment had been exceptional, but still, I felt alive. That pressure on my chest means being alive.' Forty-nine, with a kind face, no serious ailments (apart from varicose veins on his ankles), a good salary, and three moody children, widowed accountant Martín Santomé is about to retire. He assumes he'll take up gardening, or the guitar, or whatever retired people generally do... -
At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsEnter the world of Mitford, and you won't want to leave.It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable.Yet, Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge... -
Beaches by Iris Rainer Dart
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsLoudmouthed, redheaded Cee Cee Bloom has her sights set on Hollywood. Bertie White, quiet and conservative, dreams of getting married and having children. In 1951, their childhood worlds collide in Atlantic City. Keeping in touch as pen pals, they reunite over the years ... always near the ocean... -
The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsRicardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as 'Lily' in Llama in 1950, when she arrives one summer out of the blue, claiming to be from Chile but vanishing the moment her claim is exposed as fiction... -
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Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Fowler Snared by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThis story of distorted passion and behaviour reveals the unrequited love of a woman for a man who cares so little for her that he fails to recognize her as she obsessively pursues him. Also included is The Fowler Snared, sharing a similar theme, only it is the man whose passion is unrequited... -
Teresa Batista, Cansada de Guerra by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt thirteen Tereza is sold by her aunt to a ranch owner who treats her like a piece of property, and sexually abuses her. When caught in bed with her lover she defends herself against the ranch owner’s violence with a knife and ends up in jail. Freed by a long-time admirer, she eventually ends up in a brothel... -
Wild Chicks by Cornelia Funke
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe series that launched Cornelia Funke as one of the most beloved authors in German, THE WILD CHICKS is a middle-grades to YA series about a group of German girls who form the eponymous “Wild Chicks” gang... -
Shadowed Paths by Ivan Bunin
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe collection consists of the best of his early works - Sukhodol, The Last Rendezvous, Apple Fragrance, The Gentleman from San Francisco - and stories written in his last years - Leka, Sunstroke, Shadowed Paths, and others. They may be called stories about love and about the unforgettable Russian landscape. For here, Bunin writes about himself, in the hushed stillness of the fields..Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction historical-fiction -
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsPublished two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction university 20th-century adult alternate-history audiobook -
Ask the Dust by John Fante
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAsk the Dust is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young Italian-American writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . -
Los árboles mueren de pie by Alejandro Casona
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAlejandro Casona plays with fantasy and reality in his plays. Here we are in play within the play, not in the Pirandellian way but as orchestrating elements of the vaudeville. This work offers a world of fantasy and characters who exemplify a moral idea. They intended to show the viewer the good, beautiful life in its most genuine, kind and wonderful expression... -
Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsTalk about unlucky sevens. An hour ago, seventeen-year-old, seven months pregnant Novalee Nation was heading for California with her boyfriend. Now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change... -
1982: Maneater by Cambria Hebert, Crystal Bryant
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFrom three-time UTOPiA Award-winning author Cambria Hebert. Watch out, girls. Here she comes.There's always that girl. She's popular, beautiful, and has everything together. The one with the perfectly teased hair, arms full of colorful (but coordinated) bangles, and expertly painted bright-pink lips.A teacher's pet. Daddy's girl.Everyone loves her.Because everyone is afraid to challenge her...Categorized as:
friendship humor 20th-century anthologies contemporary fiction high-school historical-fiction -
The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA national bestseller, voted by Time as the #1 novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by Publishers Weekly, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award--a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance...Categorized as:
friendship literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction male-author -
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Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNineteen-year-old Harold Chasen is obsessed with death. He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a customized Jaguar hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life... -
Betty Blue by Philippe Djian
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThis is a full-fledged lovers' tragedy between a drifter-turned-writer and the fatally flawed Betty, his muse and obsessive promoter... -
Her Lover by Albert Cohen
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHandsome, worldly, and intelligent, Solal holds a position of enviable power in 1930s Geneva. But as Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations, he has become bitterly disillusioned by international affairs and the self-serving people who surround him...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary dark-academia fiction -
A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTennessee Williams’s sensuous, atmospheric plays transformed the American stage with their passion, exoticism and vibrant characters who rage against their personal demons and the modern world... -
São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPaulo Honório is a sometime field hand who has kicked and clawed and schemed his way to prosperity, becoming master of the decrepit estate São Bernardo, where once upon a time he toiled. He is ruthless in his exploitation of his fellow man, but when he makes a match with a fine young woman, he is surprised to discover that this latest acquisition, as he sees it, may be somewhat harder to handle... -
Către frumusețe by David Foenkinos, Daniel Nicolescu
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings„Dacă nu ar părea tocit de atâta folosire, aș fi ales drept motto al romanului meu acest adagiu al lui Dostoievski: «Frumusețea va salva lumea»“, mărturisea David Foenkinos într-un interviu... -
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWritten on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book... -
Swan Song by John Galsworthy
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratings1928. English novelist, playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932, Galsworthy became known for his portrayal of the British upper middle class and for his social satire. To readers of Galsworthy there is a special significance in this novel for it marks the passing of Soames Forsyte and brings the annals of the Forsyte family to an end... -
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsAnnie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, "Brokeback Mountain" is her masterpiece. Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line...Categorized as:
classics drama friendship literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Doctors by Erich Segal
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWriting with all the passion of "Love Story" and power of "The Class," Erich Segal sweeps us into the lives of the Harvard Medical School's class of 1962. His stunning novel reveals the making of doctors--what makes them tick, scheme, hurt . . . and love...Categorized as:
classics drama friendship literary-fiction university 20th-century bildungsroman book -
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Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe story of friendship between four African American women who lean on each other while "waiting to exhale": waiting for that man who will take their breath away... -
Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs the civil war rages in 1980s Mozambique, an old man and a young boy, refugees from the war, seek shelter in a burnt-out bus. Among the effects of a dead passenger, they come across a set of notebooks that tell of his life. As the boy reads the story to his elderly companion, this story and their own develop in tandem...Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book contemporary -
Closer (Methuen Modern Plays) by Patrick Marber
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Closer, Patrick Marber has created a brilliant exploration into the brutal anatomy of modern romance, where a quartet of strangers meet, fall in love, and become caught up in a web of sexual desire and betrayal... -
To the Wedding by John Berger
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWith the sensuous eye and profound sense of history that have made him one of the most acclaimed living novelists, John Berger, author of G., tells the story of a wedding that takes place in a Europe that is approaching the end of the century, a place where everything has changed - and not even the certainties of love are exempt... -
A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsEugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sequel to his autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, as Jim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight... -
Bonjour Tristesse and A Certain Smile by Françoise Sagan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsComplete and Unabridged... -
The Centre of My World by Andreas Steinhöfel
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSeventeen-year-old Phil has felt like an outsider as long as he can remember. All Phil has ever known about his father is that he was Number Three on his mother's list - third in a series of affairs that have set Phil's family even further apart from the critical townspeople across the river...Categorized as:
drama friendship literary-fiction europe western-central-europe germany romance young-adult -
A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAll about love, lust, and loneliness, the book introduces Vic Brown, a young working-class Yorkshireman. Vic is attracted to the beautiful but demanding Ingrid, and as their relationship grows and changes, he comes to terms the hard way with adult life and what it really means to love...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century book contemporary fiction historical-fiction literary -
Tea and Destiny: Tea and Destiny\Light the Stars by Sherryl Woods, RaeAnne Thayne
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDoes she have anything left to give? Ann Davies was always giving away her heart—to her therapy patients, and to the dolphins she used to help them. For any stray kid that needed a home, she opened her arms in welcome. She never hesitated to give herself to anyone who asked. Until Hank Riley. The big contractor demanded everything—her body, her heart, her life... -
On Love by Alain de Botton
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life" we are told at the outset of Alain de Botton's On Love, a hip, charming, and devastatingly witty rumination on the thrills and pitfalls of romantic love. The narrator is smitten by Chloe on a Paris-London flight, and by the time they've reached the luggage carousel, he knows he is in love... -
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Riders by Jilly Cooper
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSet against the glorious Cotswold countryside and the playgrounds of the world, Jilly Cooper's Rutshire Chronicles, Riders, Rivals, Polo, The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, Appassionata and Score!, offer an intoxicating blend of skulduggery, swooning romance, sexual adventure and hilarious high jinks... -
The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran, جبران خليل جبران
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis is the exquisitely tender story of love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces Selma into marriage with another man... -
Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne of the most important works of gay literature, this haunting, brilliant novel is a seriocomic remembrance of things past -- and still poignantly present. It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene... -
The Abortion by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA reclusive young man works in a San Francisco library for unpublishable books. Life's losers, an astonishing number of whom seem to be writers, can bring their manuscripts to the library, where they will be welcomed, registered and shelved. They will not be read, but they will be cherished. In comes Vida, with her manuscript. Her book is about her gorgeous body, in which she feels uncomfortable... -
The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDavid Leavitt's extraordinary first novel, now reissued in paperback, is a seminal work about family, sexual identity, home, and loss. Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man... -
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsNow a major motion picture from Touchstone Pictures.Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved...
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