Books like

Books like Kitchen

12 books with a reading profile close to Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. Inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; an easy read.

1

The Bonesetter's Daughter

by Amy Tan

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Ruth Young, a ghostwriter in San Francisco, struggles to communicate with her mother, LuLing, whose behavior becomes increasingly erratic due to dementia.
2

The Mothers

by Brit Bennett

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

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.
3

The Namesake

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

The narrative follows the Ganguli family, beginning with Ashoke and Ashima’s arranged marriage and subsequent relocation from Calcutta to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
4

The Summer Book

by Tove Jansson

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

Six-year-old Sophia and her elderly grandmother spend their summer months on a tiny, granite island in the Gulf of Finland.
5

Ethan Frome

by Edith Wharton

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

Set in the frozen landscape of Starkfield, Massachusetts, the story follows Ethan Frome, a farmer trapped in a hollow marriage to his sickly, suspicious wife, Zeena.
6

Breath, Eyes, Memory

by Edwidge Danticat

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

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.
7

The History of Love

by Nicole Krauss

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

The story follows Leo Gursky, an elderly locksmith in New York who avoids solitude by making himself seen in public, unaware that a manual he wrote in Poland sixty years ago survived the Holocaust.
8

Rubyfruit Jungle

by Rita Mae Brown

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Molly Bolt grows up in impoverished rural Florida and York, Pennsylvania, refusing to conform to the expectations of her adoptive mother or the social dictates of the mid-twentieth century.
9

The Red Pony

by John Steinbeck

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

Jody Tiflin is a young boy growing up on his father’s California ranch, where he learns the rigid realities of life and death through his relationship with a red pony named Gabilan.
10

Stone Butch Blues

by Leslie Feinberg

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Jess Goldberg grows up in the 1940s and 1950s in Buffalo, New York, a working-class child who does not fit gender expectations.
11

Silas Marner

by George Eliot, John O'Connor

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

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.
12

Out Stealing Horses

by Per Petterson

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

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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