I’ve been thinking about quiet novels ever since my conversation with author Susan Meissner in WSIRN #423: Quiet, compelling, and wildly popular novels. She wanted to talk about the quiet novel’s place in today’s literary landscape and whether there was still an audience for those kinds of books. To which I and so many listeners said a resounding YES, we want those books! We LOVE those books.
What is a quiet novel exactly? There’s no hard and fast definition. One person’s “devastating loveliness” is another person’s “bored to tears.” It’s incredibly subjective and yet I think we can find some helpful generalizations.
Quiet books aren’t particularly plotty; narrative drive takes a backseat to characterization. Many readers frame this kind of book as unlikely to keep them up reading until three in the morning but it is the one they’ll remember years later as a deeply meaningful reading experience. Quiet books invite the reader to savor the story, getting to know the characters intimately and as they meander wherever they’re going to go.
As a huge fan of emotionally resonant literary fiction, I find deep satisfaction in quiet stories that find emotional depths in quotidian drama. As humans, why do we do what we do? How might our lives or our hearts change in deceptively uneventful everyday moments? I am fascinated by these questions—and thus am drawn to quiet stories.
I’ve gathered this list of twelve quiet novels to share a representative range of what such a book might look like. The oldest book on this list was published in 1989, though the collection is weighted toward more recent releases: one just came out this month (and is featured in our Fall Book Preview) and two appeared in our 2024 MMD Summer Reading Guide.
I hope you enjoy perusing this list, and that it helps you reflect on the role that quiet novels do—or don’t—play in your reading life right now. Are you a fan of quiet novels? Please share your favorites in comments. Are you tempted to try a more character-driven story after reading about it here? Please tell us what caught your eye in comments!
Quiet novels
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Bel Canto
The story, loosely based on the 1996-97 Japanese embassy hostage crisis in Peru, opens at a state dinner in an unnamed South American country. The honored guests include a powerful Japanese businessman and an esteemed soprano who's been hired to perform. When militants swarm the dinner, their intention is to kidnap the president and leave within seven minutes. But he is absent, having begged off so he won't miss his soap opera, and his fixation keeps him from being taken hostage along with the 200+ guests. No one could have predicted what happens next. This deceptively quiet novel continues to delight and surprise with its thoughtful exploration of the transcendent nature of music and art, the vitality of translation and communication, and love in its many forms. More info →
The Last Year of the War
In the spirit of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, this novel centers on the friendship that blooms between two young American girls interned at a Texas camp during World War II, and the force that reconnects them decades later. Fourteen-year-old Elise lived her whole life in Iowa; her parents had been in the States twenty years before the war. Mariko grew up in L.A., but was sent to the camp with her Japanese family. I learned so much about this shameful period of American history from these pages. More info →
A Place for Us
Mirza's slow-burning debut about an Indian-American Muslim family skillfully probes themes of identity, culture, family, and generational change. "I am to see to it that I do not lose you," reads the epigraph (Whitman), and the story wonders if, despite our best intentions, one might nevertheless wound someone they love deeply enough to lose them forever. The story opens with the oldest daughter’s wedding: the bride scans the crowd for her beloved yet rebellious brother, hoping he'll appear despite being estranged from the family for years. Through a series of flashbacks, and in rotating points of view, Mirza examines the series of small betrayals that splintered the family, skillfully imbuing quotidian events—a chance meeting at a party, a dinner conversation about a spelling test, a seemingly run-of-the-mill sibling spat—with deep significance, showing how despite their smallness, they irrevocably alter the course of the family’s life. More info →
The Remains of the Day
If you crave a road trip through the English countryside or enjoy stories of upstairs-downstairs dynamics, this Booker Prize winner is for you. Stevens, longtime butler of an English country estate, takes a much-needed vacation to drive through the country and visit friends. Over the course of his trip, he reflects on his past, exposing his quiet and unseen role in history. Like many reserved novels, it’s what isn’t said that looms large on these pages. This novel is also fantastic on audiobook, as narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith. More info →
Transcendent Kingdom
Homegoing author Gyasi delivers another powerful family story about grief, faith, and the power of human connection. Gifty studies neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine, with a focus on depression and addiction. It’s no coincidence that she’s chosen to study illnesses that impact those she loves most: her brother, a gifted student and athlete, died of an overdose after developing an addiction to painkillers following a devastating knee injury; her mother stays in bed, battling depression and grief. As Gifty leans on her work to help her understand her family, she longs for understanding and faith. Quiet, introspective, and piercingly sad, but ultimately hopeful. Heads up for audiophiles: the audiobook is wonderfully narrated by Bahni Turpin. More info →
Brood: A Novel
Will and I thought about getting chickens for years but never went for it; it turns out chickens are really hard to keep alive. The nameless main character of this quirky 2021 novel manages to care for her brood of four chickens through a Minnesota winter, a summer tornado, and the random ailments that strike chickens down without explanation or warning. While pouring herself into her new hobby, she's also coping with heavy grief and disappointment due to a recent miscarriage and the possibility of a cross-country move. If you're in the mood for a placid and introspective book that's on the shorter side, this might be right for you. More info →
French Braid
In her 24th novel (and 2022 Summer Reading Guide selection), Anne Tyler offers a funny and wise meditation on the enduring imprint of one’s family of origin. The multigenerational story portrays life with the Garrett family of Baltimore over a sixty-year span, beginning with a rare vacation in 1959 and ending in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In vignettes set every ten years, the common thread is the little kindnesses and cruelties that characterize the family, along with their constitutional inability to share their true thoughts and emotions with each other. In the final pages, one character compares the indelible imprint of his family to his daughter’s French braid: “That’s how families work,” he says. “You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.” The family may be exasperating, but the book is anything but. I loved this. More info →
Search: A Novel
This book was an unexpected delight. It's a novel, written as a comic memoir (with recipes, even!), that opens with a fake preface to the second edition. The premise is this: successful food journalist and restaurant critic Dana Potowski has attended her progressive Unitarian Universalist church for more than two decades. Now the church needs a new pastor, and Dana is asked to serve on the search committee. She doesn't want to do it because it sounds like a giant pain, plus lately she's been opting for sleeping in over attending service more often than not. But she does need an idea for her next book, and realizes that a memoir about her time on the search committee—including the recipes her readers expect from her—could be perfect. And so she says yes. Whether you're drawn to the possible religious factor here or concerned about it, you should know Dana's church prides itself on being neither religious nor particularly spiritual; more than anything this is a story of finding your path and your people, plus a close-up look at the quotidian and yet delightfully maddening process of an all-too-human committee. More info →
Trust
This multi-layered Pulitzer Prize winner is told in four distinct parts, each one subtly—or, in the case of the final section, not so subtly—changing the meaning of what came before. Part I is a biographical novel based on the life of an infamous Wall Street trader who flourished after the stock market crash of 1929. Part II, an unfinished draft of the autobiography the trader began writing, with the help of a ghostwriter, to "correct" the novel's portrayal of his life. Part III is from the point of view of that ghostwriter, and Part IV ... no spoilers, but it blows the lid off the whole thing. Structure nerds like myself will find much to appreciate here. More info →
You Are Here
One Day author Nicholls delivers a quiet and unconventional post-pandemic tale in this 2024 Summer Reading Guide selection about two lonely middle-aged people falling in love as they trek through the English countryside. Geography teacher Michael and copyeditor Marnie, both still hurting in the aftermath of unhappy marriages that ended, meet for a group walk across the moors arranged by a bossy mutual friend. No one thinks they have anything in common—and yet when thrown together on the trail, they discover the sort of companionship they never dreamed they’d find again. Grammar nerds and Anglophiles will find a special pleasure in this bittersweet work of contemporary fiction that made me laugh so hard I shook the whole couch. More info →
Long Island
In this wistful literary standalone set in the 1970s and 2024 Summer Reading Guide selection, Tóibín returns to his beloved character Eilis Lacey from his 2009 novel Brooklyn. Now in her forties with two teenage children, Irishwoman Eilis is still married to Tony, and still feels like an outsider amongst—and sometimes a prisoner in—his large Italian family. When a stranger appears at her door with a staggering revelation about her husband’s life and choices, Eilis finds herself at a crossroads in her life and marriage, and escapes from Long Island to her small Irish hometown after a decades-long absence to contemplate her future. The neighborhood dynamics are both utterly prosaic and heavy with meaning: this is the kind of book where a bit of gossip whispered by one neighbor to another makes you gasp aloud. More info →
Small Rain
Talk about a quiet novel! This literary novel, Greenwell's third, just came out on September 3 and is featured in our 2024 Fall Book Preview. The fictional narrative is inspired by a sudden medical crisis the author suffered in the summer of 2020, the onset of which was signaled by debilitating pain that promptly landed him in the ICU wing of an Iowa hospital. In one sense, this is the story of a man who doesn't get out of bed. But it also has an expansiveness to it, because though he is laid flat by his illness, he can travel anywhere at all in his mind, and does. Thanks to a compassionate first person perspective we accompany the narrator as he is bewildered by the transpiring medical events—but, forced to stare the idea of death in the face, he is soon compelled to reflect on his past, his relationships, and the meaning of his small life. Because the narrator is an artist and music lover, he constantly thinks of books, poems, and pieces of music that he loves, and these reflections are a treat for those who share the same affinity. I read this quiet book in a single day, and expect it to land on my best-of-the-year list. A note to the sensitive reader: content warnings abound. More info →
Have you read any of these quiet novels? What else would you recommend along these lines? Please share in the comments.
P.S. Literary fiction for beginners and 10 literary fiction audiobooks narrated by their authors, plus 14 introspective literary fiction books that are excellent on audio.
63 comments
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury and Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns immediately come to mind. 💛
I read Dandelion Wine (for the first time) outloud to my three teenage sons this summer. I loved it so much and found myself so deeply touched by the human and relational truths found in its pages. The writing was so evocative that on some chapters I could see the action play out like a movie. Loved!
The Mitford series by Jan Karon. Father Tim and his parishioners draw you in gently and before it’s done you find yourself wanting to move to Mitford in hopes of finding such a community.
Given how heavy the devastation in Western North Carolina is weighing on me I’ll be re-reading these immediately. Thanks for the reminder!
Dandelion Wine has become a new favorite of mine!
A teacher recommended Cold Sassy Tree to me when I was in the 8th grade. It sticks with me still.
What a great list, Anne! I, too, am all about the emotionally resonate novel. A Place For Us is one of my Top Five. I still think about it.
Remains of the Day, Bel Canto, and Trust- all very enjoyable! I still feel like I need to talk to someone about Trust; I really enjoyed it, though.
Yes, have read A Place for Us and Long Island and started French Braid and You Are Here. I would add Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri to this list.
I would add Theo of Golden by Allen Levi to this list. It is a lovely quiet book about community and friendship and conversation. I think it is a great book for everyone to read during this time where generosity and connection seem to be waning.
I loved that book and have gifted it to many people.
When I think of quiet novels, I think of Barbara Pym.
Yesterday my book club discussion was about Day by Michael Cunningham. It definitely is a quiet book. It’s written beautifully. I love a book where nothing much happens.
Thanks for some great-looking recs!
Try “Italian Shoes” and “After the Fire” by Henning Mankell. He is famous for the Wallender books, however he also writes beautiful quiet novels. These books take place on remote islands in Sweden and involve introspection, regrets and memories.
Kent Haruf’s Our Souls at Night opened my heart to quiet novels.
What a beautiful quiet story. While it is a very unusual convenience the characters devise, it is certainly an understandable one.
I think Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry (and maybe anything by Wendell Berry🤔) would go well on this list.
Absolutely! Jayber Crow is one of my all-time favorite novels–so beautiful and moving. Anne loves Wendell Berry 🙂
I absolutely loved Search. My youngest son recommended Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and it was really good. Also interesting is the quiet horror of his book Never Let Me Go. I still think about that one.
Never Let Me Go has stayed with me for years – haunting in a quiet way.
Pam C.
Never Let Me Go is an absolutely unforgettable book. Quiet horror indeed… I remember the realization dawning about what was going on. What a masterpiece.
One of my favorite types of books! All of the Elizabeth Strout books fall into this category for me. Some Luck by Jane Smiley. In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden. And the Kent Haruf books.
A quiet novel I loved was “Whale Fall” by Elizabeth O’Connor (2024)! I loved the taut and exquisite prose and the descriptions of the windswept, rocky island off the coast of Wales and the juxtaposition of the quiet, steady life of the island’s inhabitants against the churning unrest of the mainland (and the rest of the world) in 1938. Here’s the official description:
In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island’s shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can’t shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.
The arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture, then, feels like a boon to her—both a glimpse of life outside her community and a means of escape. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized.
With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person’s ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O’Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.
OMG! Thank you so much for reminding me of this one. I was getting mixed up with Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, a totally different book. This one sounds much, much better.
You know that I am going to have to recommend a couple titles in translation.
Marzchan, Mon Amour-Katja Oskamp (translated from the German)
Sweet Bean Paste-Durian Sukegawa (translated from the Japanese)
These are novels that I recommend again and again. These are the novels that are for every reader. I love them.
I recently listened to the audio version of Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy. That would definitely fit into this category – I loved it.
Please no one get annoyed with me: coming into this post, I was extremely discouraged about my fall reading. Despite the MMD team’s hard work, the tremendous guide, Anne’s wonderful enthusiasm during the unboxing and the fact that I love reading during all seasons but fall and winter especially, nothing on the list excited me. THIS LIST, however, has gotten the juices flowing again. I do recognize a couple from the fall guide and for some reason, everything on this list makes me want to run to my indie bookstore and simply rip things from shelves! Phew. Maybe it’s just the context in which these were presented, maybe it’s just a different day/different mindset but this list just does it for me. 😍
I’ve abandoned my morning chores to read this post, add all those I have not read to my TBR, place holds at my library, and REPLY to this blog post I hardly ever do. I had no idea that Quiet Novels were a thing. I just know that some of my most favorite books/authors are listed in this post: Anne Tyler, The Remains of the Day, Bel Canto, & Bel Canto. Audio or print? Even Brooklyn, published in 2009, has a remarkable hold list at my library. I am 58 on 12 print copies. I’d be 64 on 11 audio copies but I’ve reached my hold limit on digital items. Reading through this list will slowly happen over the next year…unless I visit Libro.fm or Powells.
I loved Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession!
The Distance Between Us by Maggie O’Farrell starts out slowly without explanation of how the different stories are connected. As they merge and you get to know more about the characters, you will be left thinking about it long after you’ve finished the book.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett fo sure.
It has been many years but I remember March by Geraldine Brooks fitting into this category of quiet novels that resonate for months, if not years later.
Oh man that was such a great book! I thought about it for a long time afterwards…amazing story and character development.
Anxious People fits this list! 🙂
If I laughed out loud so often, can I still call it a quiet novel?
Definitely The Dutch House – really any of Ann Patchetts books.
Also, books by Maggie O’Farrell, Mary Lawson, and Claire Keegan.
I need more recommendations- I’ve read all but two from the list!!
I prefer nonfiction, but one book I loved that I think fits this category is The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. My sister who reads lots of novels recommended it to me.
Two of my favorite authors of quiet novels are, Elizabeth Strout and Ethan Joella. I also think Louise Penny’s Three Pines mysteries fall into this category. These are recent quiet books I’ve read and loved, Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy, The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl and The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
Yes, these are actually my favorite kind of books and I have read Transcendent Kingdom, Long Island, French Braid, and The Remains Of The Day (his best work in my opinion). I love Ann Patchett and Anne Tyler and have read them lots: definitely repeat authors for me. Just recently discovered Tolm Coíbín and belatedly read Brooklyn in preparation for Long Island. Absolutely brilliant!
I agree with Our Souls At Night along with all of Kent Haruf. Also Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead books.
Currently reading Elizabeth Strout’s latest and I think she fits nicely into this category.
I love this list of course! And so many of the other books mentioned in these comments are personal favorites. I would add Horse and A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, Cloud Cuckoo Land (which I gushed about on the podcast) and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
I do not recommend reading Long Island as a stand alone, although you could do. It is better to read Brooklyn first. I think Long Island is still the best thing I have read this year! Long Island is, in some ways, a sequel to Tóibín’s award-winning 2009 novel Brooklyn, which was adapted into an acclaimed 2015 feature film by the same name, starring Saoirse Ronan.
No Two Persons by Erica Bauermiester for sure fits here. I never had a term for “Quiet Novel”, but this describes the books that stay in my heart beautifully, and are always the books I wind up recommending to people. Thank you for this list!
My library book club just finished English Creek by Ivan Doig and I think it would definitely be considered a “quiet novel.” English Creek takes place in the summer of 1939 in Montana, just before war breaks out in Europe. The story is about the unraveling of a close-knit family when the elder son decides to abandon his parents’ dream of him going to college and instead he decides to be a cowhand and marry a local girl. The narrative is told through the eyes of the younger brother, who is struggling to understand what is happening to his family that pivotal summer. The Author’s prose is lyrical, heartfelt and haunting and it is book I will be thinking about for years to come.
This whole trilogy is great; I read them because my father’s ancestors DID homestead in Montana, and I loved seeing what it was like. The first book chronologically is Dancing at the Rascal Fair, even though I think English Creek was written first.
A favorite series from awhile ago is the books by Jan Karon. I always loved the series and found them to be relaxing to read.
I have read several of these and would recommend Amor Towles’ books. Any and all of them!
Great list! Quiet novels are my favorite reads. I would add all of Sue Miller’s novels to the list. Thanks for all the wonderful recommendations.
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner belongs on this list – one of the best “quiet novels”. I’d also recommend the Plainsong trilogy by Kent Haruf. I think of these as well-written, character-driven novels where place (or community) is almost a character, my favorite kind of writing and so hard to find in more recent literature. It’s probably not quite a “quiet novel” but in the genre of place-based, character-driven novels a favorite is “The Milagro Beanfield War” by John Nichols. I would love a list of character-driven, place-based literary fiction that encompasses older and newer fiction – just don’t tell me “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” belongs on that list, what a terrible book that was.
I would absolutely add The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall to this list. Thanks to everyone for the posts……my kind of reading!
I am fond of books by Elizabeth Goudge who wrote between the 40’s and 60’s. I especially like The Dean’s Watch. Quiet, gentle reads with wonderful characters and lots of life lessons.
I adore quiet novels and just a few I have loved: Orbital by Samantha Harvey – Atmospheric, Cli-fi, space novel. Clear by Carys Davies – A historical, spiritual account of clearing the Scottish Highlands of its native people. The Weeds by Paul Murray – A feminist botany appreciation love story yet not a love story. Stolen by Ann-Helen Laestadius – Tragic bigotry in an artic Sweden reindeer herding community.
I have been reading and enjoying “The Berry Pickers” by Amanda Peters and I think it would definitely fall into this category.
I enjoyed “Trust”. Surprise ending!!
Love this list! Bel Canto and Remains of the Day are two of my all time favorite books. I just finished Charming Billy by Anne McDermott—a beautiful quiet book that I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson, is one of my favorite quiet books – a slim but wise, cranky, funny and magical read. Likewise, A Christmas Memory, a beautiful short story by Truman Capote. Both bear re-reading.
What a great post! I would add anything by Mary Lawson to this list. She finds a way to bring beauty and meaning to everyday tasks and interactions for her characters. Also, Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark is brilliantly character driven.
I would add “What You Are Looking For is in the Library” by Michiko Aoyama (translated from Japanese)
These all sound so good! I guess I must be a fan of quiet novels without realizing it. I think the books of Amanda Dykes would fit in this category. They’re categorized as Christian fiction, but they are not preachy or heavy handed, and the religious aspect is touched upon lightly. I recently read Born of Gilded Mountains when I was going through a rough patch in my life, and it was full of healing comfort. It’s about two women who became pen pals at age 10, and continued their relationship into adulthood. The mountains of Colorado feel like a character in their own right, and when I finished the book, I felt like I had to regretfully leave a place I loved. Her first novel, Whose Waves These Are made me cry so hard I couldn’t stop for quite a while afterward. It’s about a man who is building a lighthouse in memory of his twin brother, who died in the war. Word gets out, and people from all over send rocks to add to the lighthouse in memory of their lost loved ones. Her books are so beautiful!
I did not know I was a reader of quiet, compelling novels until I listened to this episode with Susan Meissner. I now realize that many of the 5-star books I love fall into this category. While I still tend to grab adventure, fantasy, and mysteries first, I take more time to explore these deeply moving stories.
My first picks from this list are The Last Year of the War and You Are Here with several others added to my TBR list. I will be reading The Berry Pickers with my book club next month which I believe also falls into this group.
Thanks so much for expanding my reading life!
bel canto is one of the most beautiful books i’ve ever read.
Anything by Rosamunde Pilcher! My favorite is The Shell Seekers, but all her sweeping novels are excellent.
Winter Solstice is mine, with Shell Seekers a close second! They are both so good
I love quiet books, and specially appreciated them at times when life is fast and loud.And one of the quietest most memorable ones I’ve ever read is The Greenhouse by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir.
This was so enjoyable, I love a quiet book, which doesn’t mean, (for me), that a lot isn’t going on. Barbara Pym’s older, short books with curates, spinsters, companions, academics, & small village life with jumbles & horrible sounding dinners are the best. Elizabeth Strout’s wonderful books fit this genre. And “Clear,” a more current book was so moving. Alex. McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street & #1 Ladies Detective Series are full of ordinary lives playing out. September by Rosamund Pilcher fits this genre also. Will re-listen to the episode with Ms. Meissner. Thanks!
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