Books like

Books like Small Things Like These

12 books with a reading profile close to Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; an easy read.

1

Please Look After Mom

by Kyung-Sook Shin, Chi-Young Kim

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, accessible

Sixty-nine-year-old Park So-nyo disappears in a crowded Seoul subway station after losing her husband’s hand in the rush.
2

Our Souls at Night

by Kent Haruf

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, accessible

In the small town of Holt, Colorado, Addie Moore, a widow in her seventies, visits her neighbor Louis Waters with a straightforward proposal.
3

The Joy Luck Club

by Amy Tan

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, accessible

Set in San Francisco, the narrative follows four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters who gather as the Joy Luck Club.
4

This One Summer

by Mariko Tamaki

Also inward-looking · narrative, accessible

Rose and Wind are childhood friends who reunite every July at a lakeside cabin in Awago Beach.
5

Long Way Down

by Jason Reynolds

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, accessible

Fifteen-year-old Will Holloman sits in an elevator with a gun tucked into his waistband, intending to kill the man who shot his brother, Shawn.
6

American Born Chinese

by Gene Luen Yang

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, accessible

Gene Luen Yang weaves together three distinct narrative threads to examine the internal conflicts of cultural assimilation.
7

Foster

by Claire Keegan

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, accessible

Set in rural Ireland during the early 1980s, the story follows a young girl sent to live with distant relatives, the Kinsellas, while her mother awaits the birth of another child.
8

The Berry Pickers

by Amanda Peters

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, accessible

In 1962, a four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl named Ruthie vanishes from a blueberry field in Maine while her family works the harvest.
9

The Spectacular Now

by Tim Tharp

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, accessible

Sutter Keely is a high school senior in a small Oklahoma town who lives for parties and drinking and thinks of himself as the life of every gathering.
10

Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, accessible

During the 2020 pandemic, Lara gathers with her three adult daughters on their family cherry orchard in Michigan.
11

Detransition, Baby

by Torrey Peters

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, accessible

The story centers on Reese, a trans woman in New York whose life is stalled by self-destruction and a lack of traditional domestic paths.
12

Red at the Bone

by Jacqueline Woodson

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, accessible

The narrative begins at a 2001 debutante ball in a Brooklyn brownstone, celebrating the sixteenth birthday of Melody.

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