Holliday Grainger as Robin Ellacott and Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike in the TV series based on J.K. Rowling’s crime novels. (Photo by Steffan Hill.)

Some novelists do variations on a similar theme, book after book. Other novelists think pigeon-holing is “for the birds,” as the saying goes. This post will focus on the latter group of authors.

I’m currently reading Troubled Blood, the fifth in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott crime series written by J.K. Rowling under the alias Robert Galbraith. Rowling is a prime example of a novelist who has avoided being put in a box. She of course first created the insanely popular Harry Potter series, but, after those seven books were done, went on to pen The Casual Vacancy novel that was wizard-less and not aimed at kid and teen readers. Then she switched to crime fiction — creating the novels starring private investigators Strike and Ellacott that are almost as page-turning as the Potter saga, with the added bonus of adult romantic tension. 

(A note: I’m dismayed with Rowling’s recently expressed anti-transgender beliefs — an unwelcome surprise from the otherwise open-minded, philanthropic author.)

Another living author who avoided pigeon-holing in her books is Margaret Atwood. Her first few novels mostly focused on then-present-day women, with a welcome feminist approach. Atwood kept that approach while periodically branching out into speculative fiction (The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, etc.) as well as historical fiction (Alias Grace).

John Grisham? He made his name with riveting legal thrillers and such, including The Firm and The Client. But he occasionally diverges into other realms, with his baseball novel Calico Joe one example.

Among authors no longer with us, Alexandre Dumas’ adventure novels starred white protagonists even though Dumas himself had some Black ancestry. But he broke that mold once with Georges — still an adventure novel, but featuring characters of color in the main roles.

Also in the 19th century, much of Herman Melville’s fiction had a sea setting. Moby-Dick, of course, and also Typee, Redburn, White-Jacket, Billy Budd, etc. But Melville took another route with the compelling, controversial, land-based novel Pierre — and with the ultra-memorable short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” about an unusual Wall Street clerk.

Mark Twain’s work mostly starred boys and men, but his protagonist was female in the absorbing historical novel Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. Well, perhaps the co-protagonist — Joan’s story was told through the lens of a male character.

John Steinbeck set most of his work in the U.S., and, more specifically, California. But his World War II novel The Moon Is Down took place in a European town occupied by the Nazis. Also, Steinbeck’s most famous books — The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden — are nearly 100% serious, but the social-justice-conscious author also displayed a terrific sense of humor in the seriocomic Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, and Sweet Thursday.

Aldous Huxley is of course most known for his dystopian sci-fi classic Brave New World. But before that, he wrote more “traditional” novels such as Point Counter Point.

Obviously, many novelists have also varied their approach by writing short stories, poems, plays, nonfiction, and so on, but I mostly stuck with different approaches to novels in this post.

Any authors you’d like to mention who broke their own mold?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — which includes a post-mortem of a contentious Board of Education referendum as well as some potentially troubling library news — is here.

It’s been a while since I focused on a specific decade of literature, so today I’ll discuss…the 1980s.

At first thought, those 10 years don’t seem like an amazing period for fiction, but there were quite a few memorable novels published during that time. Just a coincidence? Maybe. Still, many ’80s authors were directly or indirectly influenced by that decade’s many political and cultural happenings — the conservative reigns of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the seismic changes in the Soviet Union, far-right evangelical involvement in U.S. politics, continued racism and patriarchy (“thanks” in part to those evangelicals), the sick “greed is good” mentality (not just in the ’80s of course), the AIDS pandemic, MTV, the rise of personal computers, etc.

I just finished The Alchemist, a seemingly simple short novel (just 167 pages) that’s actually quite profound. Paulo Coelho’s 1988-published saga of young Santiago’s epic journey probably could have been written in almost any decade, but it had a certain ’80s vibe in the way it emphasized self-fulfillment — while also tweaking materialism and conventionality.

Masterful novels such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits (1982), and Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1987) told tales almost any reader could relate to while taking sobering looks at racism, misogyny, and more.

One could also include Blood Meridian (1985) in the previous paragraph, as Cormac McCarthy depicted a gang of depraved white-male murderers in the 19th-century American West — with many of their often-female victims Native Americans and people of Mexican descent.

Even Jean M. Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980) and its five “Earth’s Children” sequels — the first three of which came out in 1982, 1986, and 1989 — included strong references to racism (against Neanderthals) and sexism that were quite recognizable in the 1980s even though the series was set 30,000 or so years ago.

Getting back to misogyny in particular, Margaret Atwood put that on steroids with The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) — which seemed unbelievable in the way it depicted a harshly patriarchal/hypocritically “religious” future U.S. society. But how unbelievable was it?

And in another women’s-rights area, John Irving’s The Cider House Rules (1985) dealt frankly with the issue of abortion.

In the realm of “greed is good” (it isn’t), Mordecai Richler’s Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) included a problematic, ultra-wealthy family. (Is any ultra-wealthy family NOT problematic?)

Moving to the crime-thriller genre, Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park (1981) and its initial sequel Polar Star (1989) had a lot to say about the Soviet Union and what led to its coming apart. 

Among many other memorable ’80s novels were Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (both 1989), Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (1988), Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers (1987), and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist, and Tad Williams’ Tailchaser’s Song (all 1985).

Also, William Kennedy’s Ironweed (1983), W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe (the 1982 book that inspired the Field of Dreams movie), Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1980), Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping (1980), J.M.G. Le Clezio’s Desert (1980), and John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces (published in 1980 but written years earlier).

In addition, there was Barbara Kingsolver’s debut novel The Bean Trees (1988), various Stephen King novels such as Misery (1987), Sue Grafton’s first seven alphabet mysteries (starting in 1982), etc.

Of course, Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) is considered a quintessential ’80s novel, but I haven’t read it. Same with Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City (1984).

And a number of novels waited until after the 1980s to at least partly address started-in-the-’80s issues such as AIDS, with one example being John Irving’s In One Person (2012). On the flip side of that time line, a certain 1949 George Orwell novel was set in…1984.

Last but not least, 1986 was when playwright/novelist Wole Soyinka became the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature. (The 1957 recipient, Albert Camus, was born in Algeria but is mostly associated with France.)

I’ve named only some of the 1980s novels I’ve read. What are your favorites from that decade, whether I mentioned them or not?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about the welcome results of a contentious Board of Education referendum — is here.

Arthur Rackham’s “Cask of Amontillado” illustration from 1935.

Today is Halloween, so I’ve made the frightfully unoriginal decision to discuss novels and stories I’ve found scary or spooky or disturbing or whatever. They include general literature, horror fiction, ghost tales, mysteries, dystopian books, apocalyptic offerings, adventure sagas, sci-fi, etc.

When one thinks of horror writing, the first author names that come to mind — well, come to my mind at least — are Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, and Stephen King. I’ve read multiple works by all four, and the ones that most creeped me out by each were “The Cask of Amontillado” story (Poe), “The Colour Out of Space” story (Lovecraft), “The Lottery” story (Jackson), and the Misery novel (King).

MANY honorable mentions, of course, among them “The Pit and the Pendulum” story (Poe), the At the Mountains of Madness novella (Lovecraft), the We Have Always Lived in the Castle novel (Jackson), and the ‘Salem’s Lot novel (King). 

Then there are numerous dystopian and apocalyptic novels with multiple gut-wrenching moments — including Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, Albert Camus’ The Plague, George Orwell’s 1984, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, to name just five works.

Other novels that will haunt your dreams include Octavia Butler’s Kindred (a 20th-century Black woman is yanked back in time to the slave-holding U.S. South), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, H. Rider Haggard’s She, Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf, to again name only a few. Oh, and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian — all those sickening massacres perpetrated by white men in America’s Old West and the book’s big, pale, hairless, terrifying Judge Holden character.

I’m not a huge fan of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House or Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, but I’m sure many people would differ. 🙂 Those two novels just didn’t scare me much.

Other great short stories perfect for Halloween? One is Richard Connell’s thriller “The Most Dangerous Game,” about a person being hunted like an animal (a theme later chillingly used by Richard Matheson in his novel Hunted Past Reason). Also, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s disorienting feminist tale “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Graham Greene’s macabre shocker “Proof Positive,” Edith Wharton’s unnerving dog-ghost tale “Kerfol,” Charles Dickens’ eye-opening “The Signal-Man,” and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s disquieting “The Sandman.” Also, various episodes of Rod Serling’s iconic Twilight Zone TV series were converted into stories collected in books — I have one!

I’ve obviously only scratched the surface here. Your favorite fiction appropriate for Halloween (whether works I mentioned or those I didn’t)?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about a significant election this Tuesday — is here.

I rarely reread novels these days because there are so many books I want to “visit” for the first time. I’m getting older and this blog needs to be fed, so it’s mostly in with the new (to me) and out with the old (to me).

But there was a time when I reread some favorites fairly often, and found many benefits to that. They included the sheer enjoyment of again experiencing great literary works, and the chance to perhaps better appreciate a novel the next time around because I was more mature and ready for it — certainly the case when I returned to such classics as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter many years after I first read them.

Of course we know what will happen in a novel when we reread it (if we haven’t forgotten everything in the book). That predictability is a drawback — much of the thrill of discovery is gone, especially with genres such as mysteries. But that’s replaced by a certain comfort, and not having to figure out from scratch what the author is doing. 

When it comes to series, there’s also the potential of experiencing a group of novels somewhat differently. For instance, I read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books one at a time as they were published — waiting until each was written and released. Then I consecutively reread all seven within a couple months, and felt a greater admiration for the foreshadowing, how the books were tied together, Rowling’s depiction of the young characters at different ages, etc. Yes, one can see things with new eyes when rereading.

Which novels have I reread the most? Number one is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, which I’ve enjoyed a half-dozen times — not surprising given that it’s my favorite book. I’ve read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings five times (I think). John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, Ms. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, Albert Payson Terhune’s His Dog, and Darryl Brock’s If I Never Get Back? Three times apiece. The last book is not widely known, but it’s a page-turner with a ridiculously entertaining time-travel/19th-century-baseball theme. His Dog is a bit over-sentimental, yet extremely heartwarming as we see the effect an amazing canine has on an unhappy farmer.

There are also many novels I’ve reread once. To name just a few: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, George Orwell’s 1984, Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

Also, The Pickwick Papers — by no means Charles Dickens’ best book, but his funniest. Sometimes that’s how rereading rolls; it can just be for sheer delight. Or rereading can mean again plumbing the depths of profound novels such as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov — both of which I’ve immersed myself in twice.

Getting back to my opening paragraph, a major reason why there are so many novels I want to read for the first time is because of the great recommendations from commenters here. 🙂 Thank you!

Which novels have you reread the most? Your thoughts on rereading?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about a seriously real referendum and some silly fictional referenda — is here.

The long and short of it is that I discussed long novels last week and will discuss short novels this week.

Literature’s best short novels pack a lot of plot, nuance, emotion, character development, and prose/dialogue mastery into a limited length. Then, you can quickly move on to the next title on your too-long reading list. 🙂

How short is a short novel? Part of that is in the eye of the beholder, but I think under 200 pages (or maybe a bit over) fits the bill — with page size and type size a factor. A short novel is often called a novella, of course, and a web search indicates that a novella is at least 10,000-20,000 words and less than 40,000. But I feel a short novel can extend to 60,000 words or so.

Obviously, there’s a blurring between a long short story and what’s on the short end of the novella spectrum. For instance, James Joyce’s very poignant “The Dead” is considered a story, but its nearly 16,000 words are on the lesser end of novella territory.

When one thinks of top-tier short novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is often the first title that comes to mind. So much packed into a small package, with some of the most beautiful writing…this side of paradise.

Another excellent short novel is Ethan Frome, in which Edith Wharton stepped outside the upper-class New York City milieu her books frequently frequented to tell the sad story of a rural Massachusetts man.

Other short 20th-century novels I’ve found compelling include Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye, Toni Morrison’s Sula, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, John Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down, and Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, to name just a few.

The best short novels written in the 19th century? Among them are Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (posthumously published in 1924), Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.

The 18th century was known for fairly long fictional works, but Voltaire’s scintillating Candide is rather concise.

Your favorite short novels?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about a League of Women VOTERS branch being against VOTING for Board of Education members, and about a visit to my town by Vice President Kamala Harris — is here.

Don Quixote with a lance less lengthy than the book in which he stars.

I mentioned The Winds of War in last week’s post but will mention it again today because it’s a long novel that I’m still reading. But what theme can I think of that would warrant giving that 885-page book a second consecutive mention? Hmm…how about a post discussing long novels I’ve read and liked? 🙂

Herman Wouk’s World War II-themed novel is certainly holding my interest — and part of the reason is its length. All those hundreds of pages are helping me get to really “know” the characters and see how they mature and react to things as time goes by. Plus it can be wonderful to get totally absorbed in a novel’s world for a couple weeks — and a reader can’t help but be impressed by the time, research, and prodigious effort that go into writing a doorstop book.

Of course, there are also downsides to long novels. They can drag in spots (though this is not always the case) and they take time away from other books. You’ll spend about the same number of hours reading a 1,000-page novel as four 250-page novels, if my math is correct. 🙂

The title that most comes to mind when thinking of fiction “tomes” is Leo Tolstoy’s iconic War and Peace, which clocks in at 1,440 pages in at least one edition. Fortunately, it’s a very readable novel.

Also very readable, and often quite funny, is Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote — 1,056 pages in an edition I saw listed online. Victor Hugo’s mesmerizing Les Miserables? 1,232 pages. Stephen King’s apocalyptic The Stand? 1,152 pages.

Among other in-the-vicinity-of-1,000-page novels I’ve read are Alexandre Dumas’ scintillating The Count of Monte Cristo and James Clavell’s breathtaking Shogun.

In the 700-plus or 800-plus-page realm? Fyodor Dostoevsky’s tour de force The Brothers Karamazov, George Eliot’s masterful Middlemarch, Charles Dickens’ compelling David Copperfield, Herman Melville’s whale of a book Moby-Dick, W. Somerset Maugham’s memorable Of Human Bondage, William Thackeray’s vivid Vanity Fair, Donna Tartt’s riveting The Goldfinch, Eleanor Catton’s eye-opening The Luminaries, Henry Fielding’s colorful Tom Jones, Don DeLillo’s uneven Underworld, etc.

Of course, trilogies (such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings) and longer series (such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books) can stretch over a thousand or several thousand pages, but I’m focusing on stand-alone novels in this blog post. There ARE individual novels within a series — such as Diana Gabaldon’s eight-volume-soon-to-be-nine-volume Outlander saga — that are each 1,000-plus pages.

Then there’s Marcel Proust’s seven-volume In Search of Lost Time, which goes on for a whopping 4,000-plus pages. I only read part of it before giving up, so I really shouldn’t discuss it much here. I found the writing beautiful but also kind of tedious at times.

This blog post has mentioned only a short list of long books. Your favorite doorstop novels?

Speaking of long, here’s my favorite song by the hugely underrated band Renaissance. The “Ashes Are Burning” version I linked to is 12 minutes, but the band extended it to about 30 minutes (!) at some concerts.

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about an impressive women’s march for reproductive rights, a raise for teachers, and more — is here.

Characters from “The Winds of War” miniseries.

When novelists write about war and other major events, a way to build maximum reader interest is to focus on a limited number of characters. That approach personalizes those major events as they get filtered through the characters’ eyes. Very effective and very relatable.

The limited number of characters can be one person, one family, a few families, a few other people — that sort of thing. And the novels they appear in are of course usually in the historical-fiction genre.

One great example of this approach is The Winds of War, which I’m currently reading. Herman Wouk’s massive/impressive novel periodically offers a wide focus on World War II, including the lead-up to that huge conflagration. But Wouk mainly concentrates on how WWII affects the Henry family: stoic U.S. Navy officer Victor, his oft-dissatisfied wife Rhoda, and their three young-adult children: high-achieving Warren, less-driven Byron, and feisty Madeline. A handful of prominent secondary characters are also featured.

The fictional Victor “Pug” Henry ends up meeting and observing many major real-life WWII players: FDR, Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, etc. 

Another WWII novel that takes the small-scale/large-scale approach is Elsa Morante’s Rome-set History, which tells the memorable story of the hapless Ida and her two charismatic sons as they navigate the horrors of war and fascism. Each of the book’s sections starts with a detailed list of a year’s real-life events — some of which are then experienced by the fictional characters. Hence the novel’s title, and a literal way of combining the personal and the universal.

The latter-1930s Spanish Civil War was humanized by Ernest Hemingway in his Spain-set For Whom the Bell Tolls via American dynamiter Robert Jordan and other characters in what is my favorite Hemingway novel. (My wife’s Michigan father was a volunteer fighting the fascists in Spain as a member of what’s often called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s absorbing Half of a Yellow Sun tells the story of the late-1960s Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Biafran War) from the perspective of a small number of characters such as Olanna, Ugwu, and Richard. They are individuals, but also represent the way different classes, genders, nationalities, etc., experienced the heartbreaking conflict.

Geraldine Brooks’ intense novel March views the U.S. Civil War from an interesting angle — that of the father from Louisa May Alcott’s beloved Little Women. He goes through a LOT while trying to aid the Union cause, and his harrowing experiences shed lots of light on war, slavery, and more.

Speaking of war novels, Erich Maria Remarque masterfully did the humanizing thing in a number of books — including All Quiet on the Western Front, Arch of Triumph, The Night in Lisbon, and A Time to Love and a Time to Die.

The hellishness of American slavery is brought home on a personal level in novels such as Alex Haley’s Roots — subtitled “The Saga of an American Family.” The famous book starts with a focus on the captured-from-Africa Kunta Kinte, and a number of the other major characters are his descendants. Yet there’s also a wider lens on the brutal system of slavery.

Julia Alvarez’s compelling In the Time of the Butterflies looks at the Dominican Republic’s Trujillo dictatorship through the eyes of four sisters — Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and Dedé — who oppose the murderous regime. A very risky proposition for three of them.

John Steinbeck set The Grapes of Wrath during the days of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and mass migration to California — and has the sympathetic Joad family go through it all. Meanwhile, the riveting book includes a number of Joad-less chapters focusing on the social conditions of that 1930s time.

Your favorite novels that fit this post’s theme?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about four community organizations that may sadly lose their free office space when their building is sold — is here.

Rachel Ward as Meggie and Richard Chamberlain as Ralph in “The Thorn Birds” miniseries.

When I think of sweeping, two things come to mind: brooms, and multigenerational novels in which a number of decades pass.

Many of those literary works are ambitious, impressive, and poignant. Characters grow older, many good and bad things happen, we see how similar or different their children and grandchildren turn out to be, we see those family members interact, we see settings change as characters relocate, we see societal and cultural norms shift, etc.

All of which can be challenging for authors — who obviously have to do lots of research, thread real-life events into story lines, juggle many characters, make those characters speak differently at different ages and during different eras, and so on. When novelists pull all that off, it’s a thing to behold.

I beheld The Thorn Birds last week, and found that novel riveting and often heartbreaking. Among the most memorable things about Colleen McCullough’s book was the way she took her characters from 1915 to 1969 and from New Zealand to Australia to Europe — mixing in then-current events along the way. But the most fascinating element was seeing Meggie Cleary depicted as a kid, then as a teen, then as a young adult, and then as a middle-aged woman — including her interactions with her parents, her many brothers, her two out-of-the-ordinary children, and her nasty, conniving, ultra-rich aunt. Plus Meggie’s compelling, complicated relationship with charismatic priest Ralph de Bricassart. 

Other multigenerational novels of note?

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden covers a time span from roughly America’s Civil War to the end of World War I. Parts of the book are semi-autobiographical, with a young Steinbeck himself even making a cameo. The novel might not be quite as famous as The Grapes of Wrath, but in some ways is even more ambitious — certainly occupying a much longer stretch of years than Steinbeck’s 1930s-set tale of the Joad family.

Even more ambitious is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which chronicles SEVEN generations of the Buendia family amid much magical realism. Here, the book’s title obviously provides a sense of the story’s decades-long scope.

While One Hundred Years of Solitude is mostly set in one place, many other multigenerational novels take readers to far-flung locales — with immigration often an element. For instance, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex starts in 1922 near the border of Greece and Turkey with the grandparents of protagonist Cal/Calliope before things eventually move to the U.S. and Michigan. There, the novel’s story of complex gender identity unfolds.

In many cases, it requires a series of novels for a multigenerational saga to be chronicled. One example is Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books, the first of which begins the time-travel love story of 20th-century nurse (later doctor) Claire and 18th-century Scottish warrior Jamie. Eventually, their daughter and grandchildren are among those added to the family/extended-family mix. 

Your favorite multigenerational novels and series that take place over a number of decades?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about my town being a welcoming place for LGBTQ people — is here.

The Three…um…Four Musketeers.

When a novel’s title features names of people, they’re sure to be the stars of the book, right? Think Jane Eyre, Anne of Green Gables, David Copperfield, Don Quixote, Madame Bovary, Ethan Frome, Eugenie Grandet, Evelina, Lelia, Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Bridge, Agnes Grey, Life of Pi, Emma, Heidi, Carrie, Camille, Suttree, Pierre, Lord Jim, Sister Carrie, Hadji Murat, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, etc.

But this is not always the case. Occasionally, the people in a title are secondary (albeit significant) characters, or they share top billing. Why? Maybe the titular secondary character is particular charismatic or mysterious. Maybe the chosen title just has a nicer ring to it. Maybe the author intends a bit of misdirection or surprise.

One example is Sir Walter Scott’s historical novel Rob Roy. While the Scottish outlaw has a major role in the 1817 book, the most prominent character is narrator Frank Osbaldistone. Rob Roy is of course a more interesting fella, and who would want to read a novel called Frank Osbaldistone? 🙂 Anyway, it’s logical that those behind the 1995 film version of Scott’s novel made Rob Roy (Liam Neeson) the main guy.

Four years after Scott’s novel was published, James Fenimore Cooper came out with The Spy. But Revolutionary War agent Harvey Birch is not the main player in the book; he’s part of an ensemble of about a half-dozen characters who get roughly equal time. Still, Birch is the novel’s most intriguing creation, and faces some memorably dangerous situations.

Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers? Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are of course a big part of that swashbuckling 1844 novel, but the younger D’Artagnan — who becomes essentially the fourth musketeer — is really the star of the show.

The true star of R.D. Blackmore’s 1869 novel Lorna Doone is John Ridd. But John falls in love with Lorna, much of the story stems from that romance, and Lorna IS a major player in the book, so the title is understandable. Plus who would want to eat a cookie called “John Ridd”? 🙂

Daniel Deronda is the linchpin of George Eliot’s 1876 novel of that name, but a case can be made that the fascinating arc of Gwendolen Harleth’s life makes her at least equal as a character in that book.

Jumping nearly a century, we have Toni Morrison’s 1973 novel Sula, whose protagonist is actually Sula’s best friend Nel. But Sula — while occupying less of the book than Nel — drives the plot with her charisma, her unconventionality, and (at times) her selfishness and not-niceness.

Any other novel titles that might fit this theme?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about my town belatedly becoming eligible for federal disaster relief after Hurricane Ida — is here.

Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus

My wife’s latest semester as a French professor has begun, and my younger daughter started high school this past Thursday — meaning I have education on my mind. So I thought I’d offer an updated, edited amalgam of my 2015 post about teachers in literature and my 2012 post about professors in literature.

Many educators in fiction are smart, hardworking, and compassionate — like most real-life educators we and our children have had.

One of my favorite classroom characters is Anne Shirley in Anne of Avonlea, the first sequel to L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. Anne becomes a teacher while still a pre-college teen — and predictably things don’t always go smoothly. But she is kind and imaginative, and earns the love and respect of her Canadian students.

Another beloved teacher is Charles Chipping — of James Hilton’s novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips — who’s a rather rigid, conventional educator until he warms up over the course of a many-decade career at an English public boarding school.

Also in England, innovative teacher Ricky Braithwaite wins over his at-first-unmotivated students in E.R. Braithwaite’s autobiographical novel To Sir, With Love — later made into the famous movie starring Sidney Poitier.

Jane Eyre was briefly a teacher, and a good one, after fleeing Thornfield Hall in Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel. (Previously, she instructed one kid — Edward Rochester’s ward Adele — while governess at Thornfield.) Jane’s teaching approach was undoubtedly inspired by the wonderful Maria Temple at the initially miserable Lowood institution Jane was forced to attend as a girl.

In American fiction, among the many excellent educators is drama teacher Dan Needham of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Great teachers abound in children’s books, too, with one of the most memorable the ingenious, enthusiastic Ms. Frizzle of The Magic School Bus series written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen. Also a popular animated TV series.

Of course, not all teachers are terrific. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, for instance, educators range from admirable (think Minerva McGonagall) to incompetent (think Gilderoy Lockhart).

Then there are teachers somewhere in the middle of the competence spectrum. Ida Ramundo means well in Elsa Morante’s novel History, but her classroom performance deteriorates as she becomes overwhelmed by various disasters while trying to survive in Nazi-occupied Rome.

The teacher title character in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is charismatic but unfortunately has fascist sympathies.

On the irresponsible side is young teacher Aimee Lanthenay, who has an affair with the student star of Claudine at School. But almost everything is played for laughs in Colette’s first novel, so the major ethical breach seems somewhat muted.

Moving to higher education, we have professor protagonists — a number of them quirky. There can be drama in their interactions with students, in their competitive relationships with fellow profs, in their sometimes-fraught encounters with university administrators, in their quests for tenure, and in the whole publish-or-perish thing. All that makes up for the fact they are (usually) not the heroic, adventurous sorts who make readers turn pages faster than tuition payments drain a bank account.

Alison Lurie’s Foreign Affairs tells the alternating stories of a professor (Virginia Miner) and junior faculty member (Fred Turner) from the same Ivy League university. Both Americans are (separately) in London, where they do research and soon find themselves in opposites-attract liaisons — i.e., “foreign affairs.” But the highlight of this Pulitzer-winning novel is “Vinnie” Miner herself — a 54-year-old specialist in children’s lit who Lurie describes as “small, plain, and unmarried.” She’s polite, reserved, resentful, self-deprecating, and REALLY smart.

There’s also Tony Fremont in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Robber Bride, which focuses on three middle-aged friends dealing with the reappearance of a scheming, supposedly dead woman who had wreaked havoc on their lives. One thing that makes Tony such an original character is that she’s a somewhat timid woman whose academic specialty is…the macho history of warfare!

Marine biology is Professor Humphrey Clark’s specialty in Margaret Drabble’s novel The Sea Lady, which co-stars Clark’s ex-wife Ailsa Kelman. One interesting thing about this novel is the contrast between the low-key, scholarly Humphrey and the flamboyant Ailsa, who’s a TV personality (among other things).

Then there’s Michael Chabon’s seriocomic Wonder Boys, about a Pittsburgh prof with a rather chaotic life. Grady Tripp’s wife walks out on him, his lover (the college chancellor!) is pregnant, one of his students commits a weird crime, and he’s writing a way-too-long mess of a book after enjoying success with a novel. That last situation is sort of a goof on how some academics don’t write with the average reader in mind.

Seventy years earlier, Willa Cather penned one of her lesser-known novels, The Professor’s House — which focuses on history prof Godfrey St. Peter’s midlife crisis as he moves into a new home, becomes an empty-nester, and worries about where society is heading.

Also, there are the unlikable academic rivals Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and the unsympathetic prof Gauri in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland.

In May of this year, you might remember me raving about John Williams’ bleak novel Stoner starring a Missouri farm boy-turned-professor who endures a mostly heartbreaking life but finds some solace in a love of learning and literature.

Who are the fictional educators you remember most?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” local topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about Hurricane Ida’s remnants slamming my town — is here.