Q: I feel I miss out on a lot of good fiction because I struggle to read longer books. Please could you recommend some excellent shorter novels?
Teacher, 44, Newcastle
A: Ayòbámi Adébáyò, author of Stay With Me, which was shortlisted for the Women’s prize for fiction and the Wellcome book prize, writes:
These books are all shorter than 250 pages and I chose them because of the remarkable characters that make them so unforgettable. While a couple can be categorised as novellas, all have an expansive vision that belies their length.
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin’s lodestar debut, is a perfect book to begin with. In this lyrical meditation on faith and family, John, a 14-year-old boy who has grown up under the oppressive influence of a preacher stepfather experiences a dual awakening while the social and psychological complexities that undergird the lives of his mother, aunt and stepfather are excavated with a precision that compels compassion for even the most villainous character.
In Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, Sarah Ladipo Manyika illuminates lives that are often stereotyped or rendered invisible in many societies. With lucid prose, the book creates a layered and complex protagonist in the indomitable Dr Morayo Da Silva – a Porsche-loving retired English professor who must balance her determination to live on her own terms with the realities of old age.
Kopano Matlwa’s Evening Primrose weaves the endometriosis and period pain of a young doctor called Masechaba into a fragmented yet cohesive narrative. Structured around her journal entries, the book blends the intimate and political to create visceral and poignant motifs about its narrator and post-apartheid South Africa.
“You, though, are as beautiful as light splitting through glass,” writes Janice Pariat in her poignant and exquisite The Nine-Chambered Heart, foregrounding the novel’s splintered yet luminous portraiture of one woman’s life through the perspectives of her lovers and would-be lovers. As the nine narrators recall their interactions with this woman, what emerges is a figure who is at once real and mythical, the pulsing heart of an enthralling book.
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