Books like

Books like The Marriage Plot

12 books with a reading profile close to The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. Deep, inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Jake Barnes, an American journalist living in Paris, lives with a physical wound from the Great War that leaves him impotent.
2

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

by Thomas Hardy, Margaret R. Higonnet

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Tess Durbeyfield, a young woman living in the rural English countryside, discovers her family descends from the aristocratic d’Urberville line.
3

The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Set in a ruined Tuscan villa during the final stages of the Second World War, the narrative centers on four fractured lives brought together by circumstance.
4

A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

John Wheelwright narrates the life of his best friend, Owen Meany, a boy with a high-pitched voice who accidentally kills John’s mother with a foul ball during a Little League game in 1953.
5

Leaf Storm and Other Stories

by Gabriel García Márquez

Also deep and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

This collection centers on the titular novella set in the fictional town of Macondo, narrated through the perspectives of a colonel, his daughter, and his grandson.
6

A Streetcar Named Desire

by Tennessee Williams

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Blanche DuBois, a displaced schoolteacher with a fragile mental state, arrives at the cramped New Orleans apartment of her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski.
7

A Thousand Acres

by Jane Smiley

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

In 1979, aging Iowa farmer Larry Cook decides to divide his namesake farm among his three daughters: Ginny, Rose, and Tyra.
8

The Stone Diaries

by Carol Shields

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Daisy Goodwill Flett is born in 1905 in a Manitoba limestone quarry town, her mother dying in childbirth without knowing she was pregnant.
9

The Edible Woman

by Margaret Atwood

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

Marian McAlpin works at a consumer research firm, methodically cataloging the tastes of the public while maintaining a predictable relationship with her fiance, Peter.
10

Villette, a novel

by Charlotte Brontë

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Lucy Snowe, a young woman without family or financial security, travels to the fictional Belgian city of Villette to become a teacher at a girls’ boarding school.
11

Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

Also deep and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Set in New York City during August 1974, the narrative centers on Philippe Petit’s unauthorized tightrope walk between the Twin Towers.
12

On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

Also deep and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

The narrative center of the novel is the Belsey family, led by Howard, a white British art historian living in a fictional Massachusetts college town.

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