If you liked
Books like Suttree
by Cormac McCarthy
Suttree is the warmest, funniest, most human book Cormac McCarthy ever wrote: a man who has walked away from a comfortable life to drift among the outcasts of 1950s Knoxville. The prose is dense and glorious. If you want more McCarthy or more richly written novels of the American margins, read on.
The shortlist
What to read next
Blood Meridianby Cormac McCarthy
“Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 1985 review. A nameless teenager joins a band of Indian-hunters along the Texas-Mexico border in 1849. The most violent American novel of the late twentieth century and the rare McCarthy book that demands the prose attention it requires.”
The Roadby Cormac McCarthy
“The Road by Cormac McCarthy 2006 review. A father and son walk south across a burned-out post-apocalyptic America toward an uncertain coast. Pulitzer Prize 2007 and one of the great American novels of the twenty-first century.”
No Country for Old Menby Cormac McCarthy
“No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy 2005 review. A Texas welder finds a satchel of cash at a drug-deal massacre, and the man who comes for it does not stop. Late McCarthy in his cleanest thriller mode.”
The Passengerby Cormac McCarthy
“The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy 2022 review. A New Orleans salvage diver investigates a submerged private-jet wreckage. The first of McCarthy's two final novels.”
Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier
“Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 1997 review. A wounded Confederate deserter walks across the Civil-War-era Carolinas to return home. National Book Award 1997 and the basis for the 2003 Minghella film.”
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Storeby James McBride
“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 2023 review. A 1972 skeleton found at the bottom of a Pottstown, Pennsylvania well sends the novel back to a 1930s neighborhood where Black, Jewish, and immigrant families lived alongside each other. The most important American novel of 2023.”
FAQ
Common questions about Suttree read-alikes
- I want more Cormac McCarthy.
- Blood Meridian is the towering, violent masterwork; The Road is the spare, devastating one; No Country for Old Men is the lean thriller. Suttree is the outlier, the human comedy, so any of these shows you a different side of him.
- I want late McCarthy.
- The Passenger, published the year before he died, is the strange, grief-soaked companion to Stella Maris. Nothing like Suttree on the surface, but the same intelligence runs underneath, older and sadder.
- I want gorgeous prose about the American margins.
- The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride finds warmth and community among the outcasts of a mid-century neighborhood, in a register closer to Suttree's humanity than to McCarthy's darker books.
- I want beautiful historical-literary fiction.
- Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier takes its language as seriously as McCarthy does, a Civil War novel with prose worth slowing down for. A good pick if the writing, not just the story, is what draws you.
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