Books like 'The Optimist's Daughter'
Readers who enjoyed The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary 20th century psychological classics literary-fiction gothic southern-gothic family historical-fiction realistic
-
For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsIn celebration of its highly anticipated Broadway revival, Ntozake Shange’s classic, award-winning play centering the wide-ranging experiences of Black women, now with introductions by two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Broadway director Camille A. Brown...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama literary-fiction politics university 20th-century audiobook -
![Another Country by James Baldwin]()
Another Country by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadSet in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics realistic university 20th-century -
![The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy]()
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsPAT CONROY has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama family gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic -
![I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb]()
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThis powerful, heartwrenching drama draws on the deepest human emotions - the need to know oneself, the responsibility to the family, and the influence of hidden history. The result is a highly acclaimed novel of survival and great sensitivity...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century -
-
![The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever]()
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHere are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and "The Swimmer," Cheever tells us everything we need to know about "the pain and sweetness of life...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
![The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck]()
The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Grapes of Wrath / The Moon Is Down / Cannery Row / East of Eden / Of Mice and...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies -
![Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó]()
Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen Ettie's husband dies, her daughter Iza insists that her mother give up the family house in the countryside and move to Budapest. Displaced from her community and her home, Ettie tries to find her place in this new life, but can't seem to get it right...Categorized as:
classics family grief historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Suttree by Cormac McCarthy]()
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsArguably the masterpiece of a novelist as highly praised and scarcely read as any living writer, the Vintage Contemporaries reprint of Suttree should help to bring McCarthy the readers to match his many awards and voluminous reviews...Categorized as:
classics drama family gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction southern-gothic 20th-century -
![Self-Help by Lorrie Moore]()
Self-Help by Lorrie Moore
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe publication of "Self-Help" introduced readers to Lorrie Moore's refined blend of humor and insight, and made her one of the best-loved writers of her generation. These stories, told in a voice that is at once witty, melancholy, and bravely honest, paint a tableau of lovers and family, of loss and pleasure, desire and memory...Categorized as:
classics family literary-fiction realistic university 20th-century adult anthologies -
![What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver]()
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... -
![Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher]()
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...Categorized as:
classics drama family grief historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century -
![Fear by Stefan Zweig]()
Fear by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFinding her comfortable bourgeois existence as wife and mother predictable after eight years of marriage, Irene Wagner brings a little excitement into it by starting an affair with a rising young pianist. Her lover’s former mistress begins blackmailing her, threatening to give her secret away to her husband. Irene is soon in the grip of agonizing fear... -
![Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Fowler Snared by Stefan Zweig]()
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...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee]()
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 35 ratings"Twelve times a week," answered Uta Hagen when asked how often she'd like to play Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the same way, audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albee's masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic university 20th-century -
-
![A Clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway]()
A Clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway, first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1933; it was also included in his collection Winner Take Nothing (1933).James Joyce once remarked: "He [Hemingway] has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place'?... It is masterly...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction realistic university 20th-century audiobook book contemporary -
![What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges]()
What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsJust about everything in Endora, Iowa (pop. 1,091 and dwindling) is eating Gilbert Grape, a twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving. His enormous mother, once the town sweetheart, has been eating nonstop ever since her husband's suicide, and the floor beneath her TV chair is threatening to cave in...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama family literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure -
![A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood]()
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, determined to persist in the routines of his daily life...Categorized as:
classics drama grief historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic university 20th-century -
![Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov]()
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 family historical-fiction literary-fiction university 20th-century adult -
![The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath]()
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 94 ratingsSylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanityEsther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic university 20th-century -
![Crave by Sarah Kane]()
Crave by Sarah Kane
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave charts the disintegration of a human mind under the pressures of love, loss and desire.Produced by Paines Plough and Bright Ltd (Guy Chapman and Paul Spyker), Crave premiered at the Traverse Theatre for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. It received its English premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London in September 1998... -
![The Progress of Love by Alice Munro]()
The Progress of Love by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2013A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents' confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes the fragility of the trust between children and parents... -
![Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro]()
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband's past - and instead discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies -
![Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai]()
Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe novella that first propelled Dazai into the literary elite of post-war Japan. Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them--a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century book contemporary -
![The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir]()
The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThree long stories that draw the reader into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises... -
-
![Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi]()
Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsFrom her prison cell, Firdaus, sentenced to die for having killed a pimp in a Cairo street, tells of her life from village childhood to city prostitute. Society's retribution for her act of defiance - death - she welcomes as the only way she can finally be free...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics realistic university 20th-century -
![World of Wonders by Robertson Davies]()
World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsHailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult -
![The Joke by Milan Kundera]()
The Joke by Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe authoritative version of the brilliant first novel by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A great novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried, in a completely revised translation that is nothing less than the restoration of a classic...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult -
![A Heart So White by Javier Marías]()
A Heart So White by Javier Marías
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure -
![The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin]()
The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn an evening in late summer, the great financier Harry Wainwright, nearing the end of his life, arrives at a rustic fishing camp in a remote area of Maine. He comes bearing two things: his wish for a day of fishing in a place that has brought him solace for thirty years, and an astonishing bequest that will forever change the lives of those around him...Categorized as:
coming-of-age drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult -
![Birdy by William Wharton]()
Birdy by William Wharton
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHailed upon its publication as "a classic for readers not yet born" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel about friendship and family, dreaming and surviving, love and war, madness and beauty, and, above all, "birdness...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult -
![Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti]()
Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Auto-da-Fé" is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Vienna between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction... -
![Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro]()
Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic university 20th-century adult -
![The Reason You're Alive by Matthew Quick]()
The Reason You're Alive by Matthew Quick
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAfter sixty-eight-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard - that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline...Categorized as:
drama family grief historical-fiction literary-fiction politics realistic 20th-century -
![Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor]()
Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA world away from Brewster Place, yet intimately connected to it, lies Linden Hills. With its showcase homes, elegant lawns, and other trappings of wealth, Linden Hills is not unlike other affluent black communities. But residence in this community is indisputable evidence of "making it...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century black-mc -
-
![The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore]()
The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings'The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne' launched Brian Moore's distinguished literary career and also – because of his sensitive portrayal of her – enshrined Judith Hearne in the gallery of literature's unforgettable women. A penetrating, comic, tragic tale of a plain woman, it is a novel that occasionally sings with the lilt of the Irish greats...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult book -
![In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass]()
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIN THIS SUITE of five short pieces -- one of the unqualified literary masterpieces of the American 1960s -- William Gass finds five beautiful forms in which to explore the signature theme of his fiction: the solitary soul’s poignant, conflicted, and doomed pursuit of love and community...Categorized as:
classics family literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
![A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing]()
A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOne of Doris Lessing's most important novels -- here beautifully repackaged This is the second volume in Doris Lessing's renowned quartet of novels tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in Africa to an imagined post-nuclear Britain. A Proper Marriage sees twenty-something Martha beginning to realise that her marriage has been a terrible mistake... -
![The Clown by Heinrich Böll]()
The Clown by Heinrich Böll
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAcclaimed entertainer Hans Schnier collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he won’t marry her within the Catholic Church. The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his life—the loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisies of his mother, who first fought to “save” Germany from the Jews, then worked for “reconciliation” afterwards...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics realistic 20th-century adult -
![Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig]()
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSometimes they talk all night long. In the still darkness of their cell, Molina re-weaves the glittering and fragile stories of the film he loves, and the cynical Valentin listens. Valentin believes in the just cause which makes all suffering bearable; Molina believes in the magic of love which makes all else endurable...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics realistic university 20th-century -
![Proof by David Auburn]()
Proof by David Auburn
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsProof is the winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.One of the most acclaimed plays of the 1999-2000 season, Proof is a work that explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of science.It focuses on Catherine, a young woman who has spent years caring for her father, Robert, a brilliant mathematician in his youth who was later unable to function without her help... -
![Rabbit at Rest by John Updike]()
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWinner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In John Updike's fourth and final novel about ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the hero has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild. His son and daughter-in-law are acting erratically, his wife Janice wants to work, and Rabbit is searching his soul, looking for reasons to live... -
![The Women's Room by Marilyn French]()
The Women's Room by Marilyn French
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe bestselling feminist novel that awakened both women and men, The Women's Room follows the transformation of Mira Ward and her circle as the women's movement begins to have an impact on their lives...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics realistic university 20th-century -
![Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams]()
Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKerr, in the NY Herald-Tribune, describes: "This, says Mr. Williams through the most sympathetic voice among his characters, 'is a true story about the time and the world we live in.' He has made it seem true-or at least curiously and suspensefully possible-by the extraordinary skill with which he has wrung detail after detail out of a young woman who has lived with horror...Categorized as:
classics drama gothic literary-fiction southern-gothic university 20th-century adult -
![Light Years by James Salter]()
Light Years by James Salter
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach... -
-
![The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue]()
The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAlternative cover edition here.The Hunting Gun, set in the period immediately following WWII, follows the consequences of a tragic love affair among well-to-do people in an exclusive suburb of the great commercial cities of Osaka and Kobe. Told from the viewpoints of three different women, this is a story of the psychological impact of illicit love...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary -
![A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood]()
A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this celebrated novel, Margaret Laurence writes with grace, power, and deep compassion about Rachel Cameron, a woman struggling to come to terms with love, with death, with herself and her world.Trapped in a milieu of deceit and pettiness – her own and that of others – Rachel longs for love, and contact with another human being who shares her rebellious spirit...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult book contemporary -
![Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion]()
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsA ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic university 20th-century adult -
![Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook]()
Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWake In Fright was first published in 1961 and the film version, The Outback, starring Donald Pleasance was released in 1971. Both the book and the film have achieved a cult status as the Australian answer to US and UK novels and films of 1960s youthful alienation...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction university 20th-century adult audiobook -
![God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.]()
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 53 ratingsSecond only to Slaughterhouse-Five of Vonnegut's canon in its prominence and influence, God Bless You, Mr...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics realistic university 20th-century -
![The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant]()
The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNorman Moonbloom is a loser, a drop-out who can't even make it as a deadbeat. His brother, a slumlord, hires him to collect rent in the buildings he owns in Manhattan...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.
