Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy

Twins in Kerala carry for decades the weight of a single catastrophic summer -- a forbidden love, a child's death, and the caste laws that made both inevitable.

Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout

A retired schoolteacher from coastal Maine moves through the lives of her neighbours -- brusque, difficult, sometimes cruel -- and is the most fully human character in any of them.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Anne Tyler

A dying woman looks back on the family she raised alone -- and what she got wrong about every one of them.

Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh

An army officer remembers his friendship with the Flyte family -- their crumbling estate, their Catholicism, and the love that shaped everything that came after.

Crying in H Mart Michelle Zauner

A musician processes the death of her Korean mother through food -- and finds that cooking her mother's recipes is the closest thing to having her back.