Books like 'My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories'
Readers who enjoyed My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories by Frank O'Connor also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical psychological 20th century humor realistic literary-fiction
-
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAndy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book classics crime -
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWoman or man? This internationally acclaimed novel looks at the world through the eyes of Jess Goldberg, a masculine girl growing up in the "Ozzie and Harriet" McCarthy era and coming out as a young butch lesbian in the pre-Stonewall gay drag bars of a blue-collar town...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult book classics coming-of-age female-author -
Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFirst published in 1919, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swann’s Way to memories of his adolescence... -
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"This is a book about Heaven," says Jayber Crow, "but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell." It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the town's barber... -
-
The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA classic in the black literary tradition, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is both a comment on the civil rights problems in the United States in the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of black militancy.Dan Freeman, the spook who sat by the door, is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program... -
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA big, powerful saga of men in combat, written over the course of thirty-five years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran.Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones's The Thin Red Line...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics -
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAt the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage... -
Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the dim light of a basement apartment, six-year-old Claude Rawlings sits at an old white piano, picking out the sounds he has heard on the radio and shutting out the reality of his lonely world.The setting is 1940s New York, a city that is "long gone, replaced by another city of the same name... -
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsUpon its original publication in 1951, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was immediately embraced as one of the first serious works of fiction to help readers grapple with the human consequences of World War II... -
A Daughter's Sorrow by Cathy Sharp
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHeartache and hardship in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Orphans of Halfpenny StreetBridget has always been the one to take on the responsibility for looking after her family... -
A History of Loneliness by John Boyne
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsPropelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland when priests are highly respected, and Odran believes that he is pledging his life to "the good."Forty years later, Odran's devotion is caught in revelations that shatter the Irish people's faith in the Catholic Church...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe dons of Harriet Vane's alma mater, the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford, have invited her back to attend the annual Gaudy celebrations. However, the mood turns sour when someone begins a series of malicious acts including poison-pen messages, obscene graffiti and wanton vandalism. Harriet asks her old friend Wimsey to investigate... -
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century... -
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard’s magnum opus. Franz-Josef Murau—the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family—lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies classics comedy -
-
Remembrance of Things Past: Volume III - The Captive, The Fugitive, & Time Regained by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.55 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe third and final volume includes THE CAPTIVE, THE FUGITIVE, and TIME REGAINED...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies classics family fiction historical literary -
Keep Saying Their Names by Simon Stranger
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsInspired by historical events and by personal history, a shattering, exquisite double portrait of a Norwegian family savaged by World War II and of a man devoted to crimes against humanity, conjoined by an actual house of horrors they both call home...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book fiction historical historical-fiction -
Taking Care by Joy Williams
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsStories deal with a young divorcee, a shared summer home, a troubled family, a wedding, childhood fears, the death of a pet, a lying child, and enlightenment...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies family female-author fiction historical -
Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsStefan's Zweig's Letter from an Unknown Woman and other stories contains a new translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell of one of his most celebrated novellas, Letter from an Unknown Woman , the inspiration for a classic 1948 Hollywood film by Max Ophüls, as well as three new stories, appearing in English for the first time.A famous author receives a letter on his forty-first birthday... -
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," to the last, "I am haunted by waters," "A River Runs Through It" is an American classic...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook classics -
The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe collected stories of Stefan Zweig, one of the most popular writers of short fiction of the twentieth century This collection brings together twenty-three of Stefan Zweig's best-loved short stories. Written in his typically flowing and readable style, these tales are characterised by their pacing, their psychological insightfulness, and above all their pervading humanity...Categorized as:
literary-fiction fiction classics 20th-century anthologies psychological fantasy historical -
The Promise by Chaim Potok
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratings“A superb mirror of a place, a time, and a group of people who capture our immediate interest and hold it tightly.” — The Philadelphia InquirerYoung Reuven Malter is unsure of himself and his place in life. An unconventional scholar, he struggles for recognition from his teachers... -
The Seven-Percent Solution by Nicholas Meyer
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFirst discovered and then painstakingly edited and annotated by Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution relates the astounding and previously unknown collaboration of Sigmund Freud with Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Holmes's friend and chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book classics -
Collected Stories and Other Writings by John Cheever
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsJohn Cheever’s stories rank among the finest achievements of twentieth-century short fiction. Ensnared by the trappings of affluence, adrift in the emptiness of American prosperity, his characters find themselves in the midst of dramas that, however comic, pose profound questions about conformity and class, pleasure and propriety, and the conduct and meaning of an individual life...Categorized as:
literary-fiction fiction classics 20th-century postmodernism anthologies psychological historical -
Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAcclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House—classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe—Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers with her explorations of evil, madness, and cruelty... -
-
Random Harvest by James Hilton
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCharles Rainier, a prosperous Briton, loses his memory as a result of shellshock in the First World War...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult amnesia audiobook book -
Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs two pals wander the streets of Belfast in search of something better--a better pint, a better job, a better woman, a better now--readers are treated to their hilarious misadventures, political intrigues, and outlandish schemes... -
All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsScarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat... -
The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTwenty years have passed for Asher Lev. He is a world-renowned artist living in France, still uncertain of his artistic direction. When his beloved uncle dies suddenly, Asher and his family rush back to Brooklyn--and into a world that Asher thought he had left behind forever... -
Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist by Erich Kästner
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGoing to the Dogs is set in Berlin after the crash of 1929 and before the Nazi takeover, years of rising unemployment and financial collapse. The moralist in question is Jakob Fabian, “aged thirty-two, profession variable, at present advertising copywriter . . -
The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom the author of the beloved #1 national bestseller Crow Lake comes an exceptional new novel of jealously, rivalry and the dangerous power of obsession. Two brothers, Arthur and Jake Dunn, are the sons of a farmer in the mid-1930s, when life is tough and another world war is looming...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century audiobook betrayal book canada coming-of-age -
Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA landmark American drama that inspired a classic film and a Broadway revival—featuring an introduction by David MametA blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic faith in the U.S. legal system... -
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe classic novel, international sensation, and inspiration for the film starring Anthony Quinn explores the struggle between the aesthetic and the rational, the inner life and the life of the mind.The classic novel Zorba the Greek is the story of two men, their incredible friendship, and the importance of living life to the fullest... -
Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner—also available are Snopes, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!William Faulkner was a master of the short story... -
Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA Virago Modern Classic These stories - all powerful moral analyses - demonstrate the true professionalism of Edith Wharton...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult anthologies classics female-author fiction -
-
U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money by John Dos Passos
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the novels that make up the U.S.A.trilogy—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—Dos Passos creates an unforgettable collective portrait of America, shot through with sardonic comedy and brilliant social observation. He interweaves the careers of his characters and the events of their time with a narrative verve and breathtaking technical skill that make U.S.A... -
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlternate-cover edition for ISBN 0865470561 / 9780865470569 can be found here The wife of a successful lawyer in 1930s Kansas City, India Bridge, tries to cope with her dissatisfaction with an easy, though empty, life.Before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique there was Mrs... -
Vladimir Nabokov: Novels 1955–1962 by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis Library of America volume is the second of three volumes that contain the most authoritative versions of the English works of the brilliant Russian émigré, Vladimir Nabokov.Lolita (1955), Nabokov’s single most famous work, is one of the most controversial and widely read books of its time...Categorized as:
literary-fiction humor fiction classics 20th-century psychological politics historical -
Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsFrom the peerless author of 'The Lottery' and 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle', this is a spectacular new volume of unpublished and uncollected stories, essays, lectures, letters and drawings...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics female-author fiction -
Embers by Sándor Márai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAs darkness settles on a forgotten castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, two men sit down to a final dinner together. They have not seen one another in forty-one years. At their last meeting, in the company of a beautiful woman, an unspoken act of betrayal left all three lives shattered - and each of them alone...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics -
The Dead by James Joyce
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOften cited as the best work of short fiction ever written, "The Dead" is the final short story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce... -
Davita's Harp by Chaim Potok
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFor Davita Chandal, growing up in the New York of the 1930s and '40s is an experience of joy and sadness. Her loving parents, both fervent radicals, fill her with the fiercely bright hope of a new and better world...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century bildungsroman book classics coming-of-age communism -
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDespite the enormous success--both critical and popular--of her novel Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter's reputation as one of America's most distinguished writers rest chiefly on her superb short stories. This volume brings together the collections Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower as well as four stories not available elsewhere in book form.Go little book..Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult anthologies classics female-author fiction -
In Search of April Raintree by Beatrice Mosionier, Michaela Washburn
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTwo young sisters are taken from their home and family. Powerless to change their fortunes, they are separated, and each put into different foster homes. Yet over the years, the bond between them grows. As they each make their way in a society that is, at times, indifferent, hostile, and violent, one embraces her Métis identity, while the other tries to leave it behind... -
The Summer of Katya by Trevanian
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the golden summer of 1914, Jean-Marc Montjean, recently graduated from medical school, comes to the small French village of Salies to assist the village physician. His first assignment is to treat the brother of a beautiful woman named Katya Treville. As he and her family become friendly, he realizes they are haunted by an old, dark secret . . -
-
Forrest Gump by Winston Groom
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsMeet Forrest Gump, the lovable, herculean, and surprisingly savvy hero of this remarkable comic odyssey. After accidentally becoming the star of University of Alabama's football team, Forrest goes on to become a Vietnam War hero, a world-class Ping-Pong player, a villainous wrestler, and a business tycoon -- as he wonders with childlike wisdom at the insanity all around him...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook bildungsroman -
The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFollowing A Boy's Own Story (now a classic of American fiction) and his richly acclaimed The Beautiful Room Is Empty, here is the eagerly awaited final volume of Edmund White's groundbreaking autobiographical trilogy... -
The Vivisector by Patrick White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHurtle Duffield, a painter, coldly dissects the weaknesses of any and all who enter his circle. His sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion, the passionate illusions of the women who love him - all are used as fodder for his art... -
The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEdith Wharton’s full and glamorous life bridged the literary worlds of two continents and two centuries. Born in 1862 into an exclusive New York society against whose rigid codes of behavior she often rebelled, she lived to regret the passing of that stable if old-fashioned community and to appreciate the sense of personal identity its definitions provided...Categorized as:
literary-fiction humor fiction classics historical 20th-century female-author historical-fiction -
The Collected Short Stories by Jean Rhys
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsJean Rhys was one of the twentieth century's foremost writers, a literary artist who made exqusite use of the raw material of her own often turbulent life to create fiction of memorable resonance and poignancy. Here for the first time in one volume are her complete stories...Categorized as:
literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult anthologies classics female-author fiction -
Nights at the Alexandra by William Trevor
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFrom the award-winning author of Love and Summer: A short novel about coming of age in WWII-era provincial Ireland that “certainly lingers in the mind” (Harriet Waugh, Spectator). At fifty-eight, Harry is a lifelong bachelor who never left the Irish village where he was born...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies fiction historical historical-fiction male-author
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.