This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Top Ten Tuesday: Novels with a High Page Count.”
There are plenty of these fat, chunky novels lying unread on my bookshelves. When it comes to choosing what to read next I usually skip over them, reasoning that I just don’t have the bandwidth to do them justice right then. Yet when I do read them, I tend to relish the opportunity to get very familiar with a set of characters, their predicaments and the worlds they inhabit.
These are ten that I’ve really enjoyed over the decades/years. The number of pages reflects the book’s listing on Goodreads though these are approximations since I can’t remember exactly which edition I read. Most of these choices were read long before this blog started so only a few contain links to reviews.
Let me know what you think of my recommendations. Anything I’ve missed?
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (1474 pages)
I think this might have been the first novel I read by an author from India. It’s a novel on a grand scale that is both a story of families and of a country in a state of flux.
Middlemarch by George Eliot (912 pages).
If I were ever to be a guest on Desert Island Discs, Middlemarch is the book I’d hope would be rescued from any shipwreck. It’s a novel that can be read in many different ways. As an exploration of marriage; as a commentary on ambition and unfulfilled hopes or simply as a form of soap opera entertainment.
The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope (890 pages)
Trollope considered that this book, the last in his Barsetshire Chronicles series, was “the best novel I have written.” It’s certainly a strong end to the series. Retribution awaits the Bishop’s wife Mrs Proudie who has meddled once to often in diocesan affairs and the ex warden Septimus Harding goes gentle into that good night.
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (883 pages)
Mantel surpassed all expectations with this final book in her Cromwell series. Though we know, because it’s a matter of historical record, that Cromwell loses all his hard won honours and status, Mantel still makes the ending shocking. A superb piece of historical fiction.
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (672 pages)
This was the first book by Collins i read and it remains a favourite. It’s cleverly plotted, reading almost as testimony by witnesses in a prosecution, and contains a magnificent anti hero in the form of Count Fosco.
Tombland by C J Sansom (865 pages)
This sadly was the last novel published by Sansom, bringing a premature end to a fascinating crime fiction series set in 16th century England. They’re entertaining to read but also informative — this book focuses on a rebellion by thousands of peasants in East Anglia who feel unfairly treated.
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Attwood (637 pages)
This is a complicated novel with three plot strands and multiple time frames. It purports to be the memoir of a woman who wants to put the record straight about her sister’s death. Interposed with these reminiscences are passages from the sister’s novel in which a would-be author writes a science fiction novel.
The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett (615 pages)
My first experience of Bennett’s fiction didn’t start well because the novel opens with a long description of the precise geographical location of his setting. Eventually iIrealised he was using a technique much favoured by film producers – of starting with a wide shot and then going in closer and closer, right into a family draper’s shop on the market square. The novel follows two women from their teenage years within the family, to their separate lives in adulthood and through to their reunion in old age.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (614 pages)
Another fantastic novel set in India showing four characters trying to navigate political turmoil and human rights violations in the 1970s.
Germinal by Emile Zola (592 pages)
Germinal set me off on a mission to read all of the novels in Zola’s masterful Rougon-Macquet series. He doesn’t pull punches in this hard-hitting narrative about a strike in a French mining community. Zola depicts abject poverty among the people who depend on the coal mines to put food on the table yet put their lives at risk every day they go underground