The Skinny on Slender Novels [1]
There are great big novels—some simply long [War and Peace, Les Misérables], some long and hard [The Recognitions, Ulysses]. [Skipping, for now, the books that take an extraordinary commitment to decipher, to finish, to take pleasure from—Finnegan's Wake and others. I'll take up Big Hard Novels in a future post.]
And there all the regular novels—Commonwealth, Hamnet, Normal People, All the Light We Cannot See.
And the short novels. But when I go back and check, I find that some of the books I remember as "short" only seemed short (or spare/terse or compact or streamlined) in memory: Department of Speculation, Winter's Bone, Ironweed, Fat City, Housekeeping, Sula, Ninety-Two in the Shade, To the Lighthouse . . .
But today's books are the truly slender novels—most from 80-125 pp. The first batch below are ones you're most likely to have read or know of.
But, first, what's the appeal of the slim novel?
Reading a massive novel takes such a hunk of time that when my inner scorekeeper whispers, You could knock off four little ones instead, I want to be able to answer, No, this one's important, I really want to put in the time. Which means, usually, I know more about the work, I've done some due diligence. The skinny ones take less of this prior investment. It's more like, Hmm, this looks kinds tasty, let's take a bite (a lick? a swallow?). And, where Big Novels rely on breadth/depth, subplots, full-scene development, etc., slim novels—like prose poems or flash fiction—typically rely on subtlety, suggestion, image, intensity of focus. They also tend to give us a startling revelation toward the end. If you've read fifty pages and your sense of the book is up in the air and you have another 750 pages to go, you may throw in the towel; at p. 50 of a 112-page novel, you're more likely to stick around for the transformative thing in the closing.
Some of the novels in the lists below are Slim Heartbreakers. They stay with me the way certain short, end-loaded poems do (James Wright's, "Lying in Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"; Robert Frost's, "Design"; Robert Hass's, "A Story About the Body"; Elizabeth Bishop's, "The Art of Losing"). Hanne Ørstavik's, Love, is nearly unbearable in its poignancy. Ditto Edith Wharton's, Ethan Frome, Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier, and Bernard MacLaverty's Cal. Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach is another slim heartbreaker; it's also an example of how an opening sentences can contain an entire book:
They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.
Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates' brief re-telling of the Mary Jo Kopechne/Chappa-quiddick story, is more of a gut-punch than any of the several dozen nonfiction accounts. The narrative voice in John Hawkes' Travesty is uniquely nasty, squirm-inducing, but impossible to stop listening to.
Finally, there are a few one-offs, narrative experiments that wouldn't be sustainable at great length: Lincoln in the Bardo, The Fan Man, This Is Not Novel, Invisible Cities.
Ten Slim Novels I Love:
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders, 2017
Tinkers, Paul Harding, 2009
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan, 2007
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson, 1992
Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates, 1992
A Month in the Country, J. L. Carr, 1980
So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell, 1980
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino, 1972
The Stranger, Albert Camus, 1942
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton, 1911
Twelve Slim Novels I Love, in Translation:
Ti Amo, Hanne Ørstavik, (trans. by Martin Aitkin), 2020 [Norway]
Two Sherpas, Sebastián Martinez Daniell [trans. Jennifer Croft], 2018 [Argentina]
Tram 83, Fiston Mwanza Mujila (trans. by Roland Glasser), 2014 [Democratic Republic of Congo]
Eastbound, Maylis De Kerangal (trans. by Jessica Moore), 2012 [France]
Elena Knows, Claudia Piñeiro (trans. by Frances Riddle), 2007 [Argentina]
The Waitress Was New, Dominique Fabre (trans. by Jordan Stump), 2005 [France]
Love, Hanne Ørstavik (trans. by Martin Aitkin), 1997 [Norway]
Ghosts, César Aira (trans. by Chris Andrews), 1990 [Argentina]
The Lover, Marguerite Duras (trans. by Barbara Bray), 1984 [France]
Closely Watched Trains, Bohumil Hrabal (trans. by Paul Wilson), 1965 [Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic]
Aura, Carlos Fuentes (trans. by Lysander Kemp), 1962 [Mexico]
Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo (trans. by Margaret Sayers Peden), 1955 [Mexico]
Ten more, in English:
Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, Max Porter, 2015
Foster, Claire Keegan, 2010
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’Nan, 2007
Hunger, Elise Blackwell, 2003
This Is Not Novel, David Markson, 2001
Cal, Bernard MacLaverty, 1983
Sleepless Nights, Elizabeth Hardwick, 1979
Travesty, John Hawkes, 1976
Night, Edna O’Brien, 1972
A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes, 1929
The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West, 1918
Part Two coming soon.
Birth Year Project: A standing invitation
You supply your birth year [in a comment]; I'll respond with a short list of books published that year—the popular/well-known titles first, then some books I'd recommend. If your year's already been used, fret not; I'll do a fresh one.
Extra credit: You read one of the books (ideally one you're unfamiliar with), then tell me what you thought. If we get enough of these, I'll aggregate and post.
And finally . . .
Help me scare up more subscribers!
Thank you for sharing this list of reads; I am looking forward to part 2! I like how short works wield so much power in a relatively limited number of words, and often in very tight time frames. This is perhaps also due to the fact that the endings of these stories are often startling revelations, as you put it.
I find too that these works are often easy to read, while still delivering very impactful, almost shocking, messages.
I’d like to put forward two of my recent short reads:
Come rain or come shine by Kazuo Ishiguro — a light and comical read with a strong hit of nostalgia.
Indelicacy by Amina Cain – one of those reads that never make a reference to the location nor time period of the story, and is all the more intriguing because of it.