Books like Ethan Frome
12 books with a reading profile close to Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
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1
Bless Me, Ultima
Also contemplative and thought-provoking · narrative, literary
Six-year-old Antonio Márez grows up in a New Mexico village in the 1940s, in a household divided between his father's wandering family and his mother's farming one.
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2
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
by Anne Brontë
Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, literary
Helen Graham arrives at a desolate Yorkshire estate under a shroud of secrecy, sparking intense local gossip and the unwanted attention of a neighboring farmer, Gilbert Markham.
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3
The Namesake
Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, literary
The narrative follows the Ganguli family, beginning with Ashoke and Ashima’s arranged marriage and subsequent relocation from Calcutta to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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4
Breath, Eyes, Memory
Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, literary
Sophie Caco is raised by her aunt Atie in a Haitian village until, at twelve, she is sent to New York to join the mother she barely knows.
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5
Galatea
Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, literary
In this short story, a statue carved from ivory is granted life by a goddess, becoming the wife of her creator, Pygmalion.
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6
Silas Marner
by George Eliot, John O'Connor
Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, literary
Silas Marner is a reclusive weaver living in the village of Raveloe after being falsely accused of theft by his religious community in Lantern Yard.
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7
Out Stealing Horses
Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, literary
Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man, has moved to a remote cabin in eastern Norway to live alone with his dog.
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8
Go Set a Watchman
by Harper Lee
Also thought-provoking · narrative, literary
Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch returns to Maycomb, Alabama, from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus.
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9
La tregua
Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, literary
Martín Santomé, a widowed Montevideo office worker, is nearing retirement.
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10
The Shipping News
by Annie Proulx
Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, literary
Quoyle, a socially inept and physically ungainly third-rate newspaperman, retreats to his ancestral home in Newfoundland following the death of his unfaithful wife and the discovery of his parents’ double suicide.
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11
The Mothers
by Brit Bennett
Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, literary
Set in a Black community in Oceanside, California, the story follows Nadia Turner, a grieving seventeen-year-old who begins a secret relationship with the pastor’s son, Luke Sheppard.
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12
Burial Rites
by Hannah Kent
Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, literary
Based on the true story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, this novel follows the final months of the last woman executed in Iceland.
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