Novels with the best dialogue.

[krishna_lit]

What does it mean to have 'great dialogue' in a book/novel???

Can anybody name such works??

[PeterL]

There are many novels with good dialogue, but whether one would consider it great depends on the reader's preference in characters. Dialogue shows characters better than any other technique, but if a reader doesn't happen to like that sort of character, then it is lost.

[Helga]

Mist by Unamuno has almost only dialogue and is brilliant

[WyattGwyon]

William Gaddis's first four novels, The Recognitions, JR, Carpenter's Gothic, and A Frolic of His Own, consist largely of dialogue. All are brilliant.

What makes the dialogue great in these novels is that it is pitch perfect and realistic, especially the numerous examples of borderline incoherent speech.

[TheFifthElement]

I love the dialogue in Don DeLillo's work, because it makes ordinary conversation seem meaningless (which it largely is).

[Lokasenna]

Does it have to be novels? Pretty much anything by Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward has sparkling dialogue, ditto Wodehouse. Those are the names that immediately come to mind.

[Jackson Richardson]

Ivy Compton Burnett's novels are almost exclusively in dialogue. Whether it is great or not is a matter of taste. It is certainly idiosyncratic.

Jane Austen was wonderful at dialogue.Emma conveys character's inner life and their self deceptions almost wholly through dialogue. There is one chapter with two people, Mrs Elton and Mr Weston, talking at a party and are completly uninterested in each other. They both turn the conversation whenever they are talking round to their own interests and connections.

[mal4mac]

I'm reading John Braine's "Room at the Top" at the moment and am very impressed with the dialogue. The main character is a working class Northerner* on the make, and there are some wonderful modulations between "standard" English and Yorkshire dialect.

*i.e., from the North of England

[ennison]

Testament RC Hutchinson
The Heart of Midlothian W Scott
Anything by Gaddis
Several of Updike's novels and short stories
Anything by Ivy Compton Burnett

[SFG75]

I appreciate it when each character has their own speaking style, dialect, and thought process. when those differences are marginal, I tend to notice that very quickly and view the work as one of mediocrity. The use of slang and figures of speech are great ways to differentiate characters and some of the best writers are very adept at using them. Steinbeck is one who comes to mind most prominently in my opinion.

[ennison]

Yes I could have said Steinbeck too. He had a fine grasp of the colloquial, the demotic. And he used it well. Knowing it and using it well are two very different things. No novel is ever like real-life speech -- that'd be turgid, boring, inane.

[JBI]

For some reason I feel that Americans write better dialogue than Englishmen, but that may just be because my spoken language is far closer to North-American standard than it is to the British. Even so, the best dialogue is in cinema, with something like Pulp Fiction, or the like.

[hawthorns]

Faulkner
Wilde
Waugh
Steinbeck

The ones I enjoyed, anyway.

[ChicagoReader]

Hemingway and DeLillo immediately come to mind, but are polar opposites. Gaddis is extremely tiresome for me. Creating dialogue that literally translates how we talk in person is dull reading, especially considering the length of his major works. Hemingway is great for its suggestiveness and what is unsaid. DeLillo is great for drama and zeitgeist-like monologues.

[T.C. Seiko]

Elmore Leonard

[Ecurb]

The best Jane Austen film adaptations (and min-series) lift the dialogue directly from the novels, because it is so well done in the first place.

[ennison]

At the risk of appearing to contradict what I said above I would defend Gaddis against the accusation that he simply transcribes ordinary speech. I believe he is a master of driving character and plot through the creation of highly selective bits of realistic dialogue and speech patterns.

[Barnackian]

There is such a thing as objectively good dialogue, and it is found in Huxley's satirical novels.