Books like

Books like The Bonesetter's Daughter

12 books with a reading profile close to The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan. Inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

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.
2

Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

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

Mikage Sakurai is a young woman struggling with the isolating vacuum of grief after her last living relative dies.
3

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.
4

The Namesake

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · 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.
5

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.
6

Galatea

by Madeline Miller

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

In this short story, a statue carved from ivory is granted life by a goddess, becoming the wife of her creator, Pygmalion.
7

The Accidental Tourist

by Anne Tyler

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

Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates traveling.
8

Crossing to Safety

by Wallace Stegner

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

Wallace Stegner’s final novel tracks the lifelong bond between two couples, Larry and Sally McKelvey and Charity and Sid Lang, beginning in 1937 Madison, Wisconsin.
9

Ethan Frome

by Edith Wharton

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · 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.
10

Breath, Eyes, Memory

by Edwidge Danticat

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · 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.
11

Silas Marner

by George Eliot, John O'Connor

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · 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

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

by Anne Brontë

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

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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