recommend a short novel/ novela?

[SleepyWitch]

hi guys,
these days I find it hard to finish longer (literary) novels and I don't like short stories. Can you recommend any short novels or novellas? I've recently read A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe and Chronicle of a Death Announced by Gabriel García Márquez.
I'm looking for books of up to 200-250 pages and would prefer "literature" as I have no trouble finishing longer science fiction or fantasy books.
THANKS :)

[TheFifthElement]

Hi Sleepy :) nice to see you around.

Short novels are one of my areas of expertise :D

I'm going to recommend, because I recommend it to everyone, Lost Paradise by Cees Nooteboom because it's simply amazing and brilliant. As is his book Rituals which is less beautiful but quite ironically funny and clever. Both are around 150 pages long.

Of course you've already discovered Marquez. Did you enjoy him? I like Of Love and Other Demons the best. His short story collection Leaf Storm has a wonderful story in it about a drowned sailor, which is simply wonderful.

Any book by Angela Carter. He short stories are the best, but of her novels you might enjoy The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains or The Passion of New Eve, but to be honest they're all good. I just re-read Love which I was underwhelmed with the first time around, and this time found it just fantastic. She writes a fairly short book. I think most of them are less than 200 pages long. She is wicked and delicious, overblown and sometimes overdone and there is no one that writes quite like her. She's my hero, but definitely a one off.

What did you think of Oe? I'm not a fan, but if you like the Japanese fiction you might enjoy The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa, or Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. Or if you're looking for something a little more challenging but still short you might like Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata, or No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. The latter is a strange book, but quite compelling and more importantly short.

Richard Brautigan is always good for a bit of bizarre humour. You might enjoy The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, or Sombrero Fallout which is quite odd but quite beautiful.

I recently discovered a largely unknown British writer called Gabriel Josipovici whose short story collection Hearts Wings, and other stories I found incredibly moving. He's written a number of novellas, though I haven't read any of them yet. If they're up to the calibre of his short stories, they should be incredibly good.

And on the subject of fantasy, how could I part without mentioning the amazing Grendel by John Gardner. Perhaps the most perfect book ever written. I shall be reading it again, probably in about 2 weeks when I've finished reading Beowulf. One inevitably leads to the other, I'm sure.

Food for thought?

[stlukesguild]

You don't like short stories? Pity.

Among shorter novels/novellas you might consider:

Goethe- The Sorrows of Young Werther
Italo Calvino- Invisible Cities
Hermann Hesse- Siddhartha, Journey to the East
Cees Nooteboom- The Following Story
Machado de Assis- The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
Alejo Carpentier- Baroque Concerto
Gabriel Garcia-Marquez- Memories of my Melancholy Whores
Carlos Fuentes- Inez, Diana
Mario Vargas LLosa- In Praise of the Stepmother
Camus- The Stranger, The Fall
Voltaire- Candide
Balzac- The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Ivan Turgenev- On the Eve, Fathers and Sons, Torrents of Spring
Tolstoy- Hadji Murad, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata
Michel Rio- Dreaming Jungles
Joseph Conrad- The Heart of Darkness
Rudyard Kipling- The Man who Would be King
Henry James- The Turn of the Screw

[SleepyWitch]

thanks guys.
Fifth, I think I'll go for those Japanese books and Gabriel Josipovici. I'll add them to my list now and get them after I've worked the way through the stack of science fiction that is piled up in my bedroom.
stlukes, I'll look up your recommendations later. Thanks for recommending books from a various different cultures, that should help me discover something 'new'.

[kasie]

Last week's Book Club tv programme remonded me of a novella I've always meant to read - Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany's. Would that fit your bill?

[mortalterror]

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Heart of a Dog by Mikhael Bulgakov
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Lenz by George Buchner
The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Bear by William Faulkner
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The Dead by James Joyce
I am Legend by Richard Matheson
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Lazarillo de Tormes by Anonymous
Candide by Voltaire
Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevski
The Marquess of O by Heinrich von Kleist
The Lifted Veil by George Eliot
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal
The Princess de Cleves by Madame de Lafayette
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Casares
Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot
True Story by Lucian
The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun
The Scarlet Letter by Nathanael Hawthorne

[AbOvo]

See what you find in Paul Auster's New York Trilogy books: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room. For some reason people dislike him, but I found his novels immensely entertaining.

[hazelk]

Jennifer Johnston an Irish novelist tends to write short novels. She is a superb writer, I am sure that you would enjoy. Why not try with "The Christmas Tree" , another is "Captains and Kings".

SleepyWitch , I like yourself can not get to like short stories (except Annie Proulx) try as I may:sosp:

Please try Jennifer Johnston, I would love to hear your findings.

[simon239]

Going to be stealing some of these suggestions for my self ;) as i don't have the time to read anything remotley long with soo much uni reading (I bought Anna Karenina about two months ago and it's still in the Waterstones bag)

Also going to throw in a singular suggestion (mainly as i'm not qualified to offer more) - Heart of Darkness by Conrad, very short, only about ninety to a hundred pages I think (though I have heard it described as the longest shortest novel in the world if that makes any sense.)

[lunluochichu]

I've been reading David Lodge recently and found his work quite enchanting. Paul Auster always fits me with his mythical code beneath the text, try him:D

[Alexander III]

Pushkin's Tales Of Belkin

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'll second Conrad's Heart of Darkness (my all-time favorite piece of literature) and Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. I'll also throw in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying which I just read and loved.

[Emmy Castrol]

DH Lawrence - The Fox.

[Amit Shrivastav]

GIOVANNI’S ROOM by James Baldwin

THE UNNAMABLE by Samuel Beckett

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James Cain

THE STRANGER by Albert Camus

OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS by Truman Capote

THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler

HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad


Following are some famous novels ....

try to read it !!

[SleepyWitch]

thanks for all your recommendations, guys. I'll chck them out. Capote definitely fits my bill.
Might try to reread Heart of Darkness, bust last time I read it I couldn~t understand a single word of it. Dunno why.

[robotikitten]

I second The Postman Always Rings Twice. Fantastic read, at only about a hundred pages in length. It's crime fiction, which is always a good page turner.

This thread has lengthened and juiced up my to-do list just swimmingly.

[Tallon]

I've always recommended Breakfast At Tiffany's - Truman Capote, as my favourite novella, lovely writing.

[JamesRhodes]

Candide by Voltaire is brilliant and wonderfully condensed.

[Stellar]

I just finished 'Too Loud a Solitude' by czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. Only 93 pages, it is a little gem for bibliophiles. Also enjoyed 'The Virgin and the Gypsy' by DH Lawrence.

[bouquin]

Wide Sargasso Sea - less than 150 pages.

[Razeus]

Just read The Stranger. I'm floored. I'm looking forward to more books by that author.

[OrphanPip]

It doesn't really get better than The Stranger for Camus, but The Fall is good too.

Shame his life was cut short by a car accident.

[Ecurb]

Hadji Murat is a good introduction to Tolstoy -- and one of his few secular works written in the last 30 years of his life.

[Pecksie]

Among recent reads, I'd recommend Henry James's 'An International Episode' --- don't know if it qualifies as a novella or is a short story, though. It's about a young American woman and a British nobleman who are attracted to each other --- which leads to plenty of tart humor and cultural clashes, the kind James specializes in.

[FROADS]

Old man and the sea

[Armel P]

In Watermelon Sugar

[dfloyd]

excellent! Many on this forum are in school and many good reads are not recognized as such by academia. Therefore students don't read them unless thry discover them afer they graduate. Here are a few that seldom get read in college:

Goodbye, Mr. Chips - James Hilton
Lost Horizon - James Hilton
The Great Impersonation - E. Philips Openheim
Black Mischief - Evelyn Waugh
Scoop! - Evelyn Waugh
The Corsican Brothers - Dumas pere
Scaramouche - Rafael Sabatini
The Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope
Farewell My Lovely - Raymond Chandler
The Thin Man - Dashiel Hammett
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Goldfinger - Ian Fleming

[bouquin]

July's People by Nadine Gordimer.

[Big Dante]

Slaughterhouse 5 is a short novel that I love.

[hazelk]

Fly Away Peter - David Malouf

[IceM]

The more I reflect, the more I enjoy Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya. Excellent work, exceeding your maximum length by 12 pages. Solid.

Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky is much much shorter than 200 pages but is very well written as well.

Siddhartha is incredible. I second that nomination.

[PeterL]

The Aluminum Man by G. C. Edmondson was one of the best novels of the 20th century, and it is rather short.

[bouquin]

Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means.




____________________
Currently reading: HEART OF DARKNESS and Other Tales (Joseph Conrad)

[Big Dante]

As mentioned before Notes From Undergrounf - Dostoevsky and Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck.

[Venerable Bede]

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson would fit your requirement perfectly and is one of my favourite works of literature. I would highly recommend it if you haven't already read it.

[breathtest]

A Movable Feast - Hemingway.

It was brought to my attention again recently by a friend lit-netter, and i have again begun to realise how perfectly written it is.