Must-Read
Best Modern American Doorstops Worth the Length
Sometimes the answer to a reading question is a seven-hundred-page novel. The maximalist American literary novel earns its length in ways that shorter books cannot. These eight are the modern doorstops our editors recommend when readers say they have time and they want it spent well.
8 books on this list.
A Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara
4.0“A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.”
The Goldfinchby Donna Tartt
5.0“The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 2013 review. Theo Decker, thirteen, survives a Metropolitan Museum bombing that kills his mother and ends up with a stolen painting that defines the next decade of his life. Pulitzer Prize 2014.”
Demon Copperheadby Barbara Kingsolver
5.0“Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 2022 review. A Dickensian retelling of David Copperfield in the opioid-crisis Appalachia of the 1990s and 2000s. Pulitzer Prize and Women's Prize 2023 and Kingsolver's defining late-career novel.”
The Bee Stingby Paul Murray
5.0“The Bee Sting by Paul Murray 2023 review. A four-POV Irish family novel about the slow collapse of one car-dealer family in the post-2008 recession. Booker Prize shortlist 2023.”
The Covenant of Waterby Abraham Verghese
5.0“The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese 2023 review. Three generations of a Christian family on the Malabar Coast of Kerala, connected by a generational drowning condition. Verghese's second major novel.”
Cloud Cuckoo Landby Anthony Doerr
4.0“Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr 2021 review. Five characters across three timelines connected by a fictional ancient Greek novel. Doerr's follow-up to All the Light We Cannot See.”
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
5.0“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
All the Light We Cannot Seeby Anthony Doerr
5.0“All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 2014 review. A blind French girl and a German orphan radio specialist meet briefly in occupied Saint-Malo at the end of World War II. Pulitzer Prize 2015 and the canonical contemporary World War II novel.”