Look Homeward, Angel vs The Newcomes: Which Should You Read?

Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe · 1929 ★★★★☆ 3.9 636 pages · ≈ 11 h 47 m · Challenging

“A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.”

An elaborate and moving coming-of-age story about Eugene Gant, a restless and energetic character whose passion to experience life takes him from his small, rural hometown in North Carolina to Harvard University and the…

The Newcomes William Makepeace Thackeray · 1853 ★★★★☆ 3.7 801 pages · ≈ 14 h 50 m · Demanding

“A CROW, who had flown away with a cheese from a diary window, sate perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him.”

The Newcomes is Thackeray's most essentially 'Victorian' novel, generous in its proportions, sharp in its criticism of the moral convolutions of the age, and encyclopaedic in its reference. Set in the 1830s and 1840s, a…