There is a specific type of reading that occurs at one in the morning, when your hands won’t shut the book even though your rational mind has already gone to sleep. Not all novels experience this. The majority of good ones don’t even experience it. However, the past ten years have produced an odd and unforgettable assortment of literary fiction that appeared to be designed specifically to ruin sleep schedules and postpone weekend plans—books that were, to be honest, impossible to put down.
When Sally Rooney’s Normal People came out in 2018, it accomplished something that literary fiction seldom does: it made a whole generation feel personally seen in a way that is difficult to describe without coming across as melodramatic. Connell and Marianne, two young people from the west of Ireland, are followed in the book as they go through college and the early stages of adulthood together. Their patterns of separation and reconciliation are almost physically recognizable. Rooney’s writing is remarkably restrained; there are no quotation marks, little decoration, and sentences that flow naturally. Nevertheless, the emotional impact that permeates each chapter is unrelenting. It’s possible that no other book from that decade circulated as fast through social circles, was passed from person to person, and was suggested over coffee in the same manner as records.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, which was released three years prior in 2015, is a different kind of compulsive read; it’s heavier, darker, emotionally taxing, and nearly impossible to put down. The book follows four college friends through decades of adulthood in New York, but it gradually and tragically focuses on Jude, a man who endures such severe childhood trauma that many readers have to put the book down, take a deep breath, and then pick it up again. It was named one of the decade’s defining novels by Literary Hub. Some critics claimed it was the most honest book about the long shadow of abuse written in a generation, while others thought its suffering was unbelievable in its extremes. The same truth is conveyed by both responses: it penetrates and remains there.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which was published in 2013 and won the Pulitzer Prize, is the type of book that captivates you with its first hundred pages and won’t let you go, even when it stumbles in its middle section—which it does, and noticeably. The opening scene, which depicts Theo Decker at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the morning his mother is killed in a bombing, is as vivid and powerful as any in contemporary literature. New York in the early 2000s is depicted with enough detail to evoke the chill of its streets. The novel eventually expands into Nevada and Amsterdam, losing some of its momentum along the way, but readers are drawn on by Theo’s broken life. flawed in ways that are truly annoying. It’s still difficult not to finish.
When Ling Ma’s Severance was released in 2018, it was subtly prophetic in ways that no one could have predicted. It centers on Candace Chen, a millennial publishing professional in New York, as the city around her gradually disintegrates due to an enigmatic pandemic—a fungal fever that causes its victims to repeat the same rote behaviors until they die. It’s not exactly the end of the world that makes it addictive. It’s the deadpan accuracy of Candace’s pre-disaster routine, the commute, the office, and the blog she consistently updates, and the immigrant narrative that permeates everything, including her complex relationship with her mother, her relationship with heritage, and her rootlessness. Two years later, Severance went from being subtly joyous to truly eerie when COVID-19 struck. Some novels seem to earn their readers twice.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh is the kind of book that makes you feel a little self-conscious for enjoying it. With the aid of a pharmaceutical concoction prescribed by a hilariously careless psychiatrist, its anonymous narrator—rich, attractive, recently orphaned, and completely disdainful of almost everyone around her—is attempting to sleep through a year of her life. The character is terrible. The writing is odd, chilly, and humorous. After finishing it in a single day, one reader reported feeling “completely nuts.” That is essentially the right answer. It takes place in the early 2000s and builds to September 2001 with a sense of dread that the reader undoubtedly feels but the narrator does not.
Despite starting a little before the decade’s edge, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels are worth mentioning. The four-novel series, which followed Elena and Lila from childhood in post-World War II Naples through decades of friendship, rivalry, love, and class struggle, was published in Italian beginning in 2011 and translated into English until 2015. It became a true cultural phenomenon. The first book moves slowly. It’s not the obsession it produces. After devouring all four in a matter of weeks, people wanted to talk to someone else who had read them right away. They needed to talk about Lila in the same way that you talk about someone you know but don’t understand.
It’s difficult to ignore how many of these books deal with women navigating unsuitable environments, friendship, class, and the unique weariness of contemporary life. The most popular literary fiction of the decade was almost always about something rather than being an escape. Because of the subject matter, the reading experience was intense. You didn’t pick up these books and forget about them. They were the kind of books that, like movies or records, made you remember where you were when you finished them. It’s an odd and unique thing for novels to do. They succeeded.
Alyssa Bennett as editor at vclib.org, oversees editorial coverage of literary criticism, cultural analysis, political commentary. Alyssa brings rigorous research discipline, in-depth knowledge, experience, and an approachable editorial voice to subjects that most readers find thought-provoking and culturally significant. Her career spans the intersection of literary journalism, political writing, and educational publishing.