18 books like Everything Is Illuminated
Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve (Library of Wales)
Widely acclaimed for its warm humor, lyricism, and honesty, this accurate evocation of the 1930s has become a classic. In this delightful autobiographical novel, Dannie Abse skilfully interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backdrop of the times: unemployment, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War.
Shares: Jewish families, Young men
Fathers; a novel in the form of a memoir
Shares: Jewish families, Domestic fiction
Gravity's Rainbow
Winner of the National Book Award"The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II." —The New Republic“A screaming comes across the sky. . .” A few months after the Germans’ secret V-2 rocket bombs begin falling on London, British Intelligence discovers that a map of the city pinpointing the sexual conquests of one Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop, U.S. Army, corresponds…
Shares: Americans, World War II, History
Martin Chuzzlewit
The greed of his family has led wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit to become suspicious and misanthropic, leaving his grandson and namesake to make his own way in the world. And so young Martin sets out from the Wiltshire home of his supposed champion, the scheming architect Pecksniff, to seek his fortune in America. In depicting Martin's journey – an experience that teaches him to question his…
Shares: Grandfathers, Young men, History
Bicycle days
When Alec Stern arrives in Japan, he discovers a land of opportunity. For only in Tokyo could an impressionable young man fresh out of college find, in one stroke, a new job, a new family, and a society that lavishes attention on Japanese-speaking gaijin. Yet, even as Alec claims a place in this new world, he is haunted by memories of the one he left behind—a world once infinitely secure but…
Shares: Young men, Americans
Bag of Bones
Bag of Bones is a 1998 horror novel by American writer Stephen King. It focuses on an author who suffers severe writer's block and delusions at an isolated lake house four years after the death of his wife. It won the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, the 1999 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 1999 Locus Award for Best Dark Fantasy/Horror Novel. The book re-uses many basic plot…
Shares: Grandfathers, Novelists
Portnoy's Complaint
Though is caused outrage and controversy at the time of its publication Roth’s comic novel of sexual obsession and frustration is now widely regarded as one of the best novels of the twentieth century.
Shares: Jewish families, Young men
The cloud atlas
Set against the magnificent backdrop of Alaska in the waning days of World War II, The Cloud Atlas is an enthralling debut novel, a story of adventure and awakening--and of a young soldier who came to Alaska on an extraordinary, top-secret mission...and found a world that would haunt him forever.Drifting through the night, whisper-quiet, they were the most sublime manifestations of a desperate…
Shares: Young men, World War II
Other Kingdoms
In 1918, wounded WWI American soldier Alex White has a frightening encounter in the forest near the pastoral English village of Gatford. His encounter leads him into the arms of Magda Variel, an alluring red-haired widow rumored to be a witch. She warns him to steer clear of the wood and the perilous faerie kingdom it borders, but Alex cannot help himself. Drawn to its verdant mysteries, he finds…
Shares: Americans, History
Mr. Churchill's Secretary
"London, 1940, and Maggie Hope has graduated at the top of her college class, but her gender qualifies her only to be the newest typist at No. 10 Downing Street. Her indefatigable spirit and remarkable gifts for code breaking, though, rival those of even the highest men in government, and Maggie finds that working for the prime minister affords her a level of clearance she could never have…
Shares: Americans, World War II
The Chosen
It's about two jewish boys from different jewish sects with very differing doctrine. The kids meet in the unlikely circumstance of a baseball game, and a terrible accident, that leads them to be lifelong friends
Shares: Jewish families, Domestic fiction
The Wonder Spot
Follows the quest of Sophie Applebaum for her own identity--who she is, what she loves, whom she loves, and occasionally whom she feels others should love--over the course of 25 years.
Shares: Jewish families, Domestic fiction
Adrian Mole
He's back. Aged 30¼.
Twenty-first century Mole.
Now in his thirties, Adrian's still worrying: Can he be a good father? Is Viagra cheating? Why won't the BBC produce 'The White Van', his serial killer comedy?
Will he find the fulfilment he seeks as a celebrity offal chef, single parent and celibate novelist? Is there a place for Adrian Mole in Blair's Brave New Britain?
'Thank goodness for his…
Shares: Young men, Domestic fiction, Humorous stories
A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast is a 1964 memoir belles-lettres by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously.[1] The book details Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson and his associations with other cultural figures of the Lost Generation in Interwar France.
The memoir consists of various…
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The Ambassadors
Chad Newsome has gone to Paris. He is charmed by Old World fascinations and caught up in the leisurely craft and bohemian direction of European worldliness. An older woman of rank and adventurous but subtle skill, Madame de Vionnet, strokes his ego and does her best to keep Chad in Paris indefinitely. Chad's mother lives in Woollett, Mass., and wants her son to return to run the family business.…
Shares: Young men, Americans, History
Shining Through
"Laced with heartbreak, drama and thrills...Marvelously readable."--THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
It's 1940, and Linda Voss, legal secretary extraordinaire, has a secret; she's in love with her boss the pride of the Ivy League, John Berringer. Not that he'd take a second look at her, a German-Jewish girl from Queens who spends her time taking care of her faded beauty of a mother, and following the…
Shares: Americans, World War II
Lunar Park
Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is a writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father. After a decade of decadence a chance for salvation arrives; the chance to reconnect…
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Weir of Hermiston
In Stevenson's tale of father - son confrontation, the father, Adam Weir, is modelled on Lord Braxfield, the eighteenth-century 'hanging judge'. Weir, a 'risen man' who has married a wealthy but weak woman, is both feared and respected, not least by his own son, Archie. At a public hanging, Archie speaks out against capital punishment, knowing that it was his own father who sentenced the man.
He…
Shares: Young men, Domestic fiction