18 books like Of time and the river

What to read after Of time and the river — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Mystic river Dennis Lehane · 2001 · ★ 4.2 · 496p · ≈ 16h · Moderate When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever. Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to… Shares: Community pick

Prayers for rain Dennis Lehane · 1999 · ★ 4.1 · 478p · ≈ 15h · Moderate The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane delivers a shattering tale of evil, depravity, and justice that captures the dark realism of Boston’s gritty blue-collar streets.Private Investigator Patrick Kenzie wants to know why a former client, a perky woman in love with life, could, within six months, jump naked from a Boston landmark -- the final fall in a spiral of self-destruction. What he finds… Shares: Community pick

Red Dragon Thomas Harris · 1981 · ★ 4.1 · 415p · ≈ 13h · Moderate Red Dragon is a novel by American author Thomas Harris, first published in 1981. The plot follows former FBI profiler Will Graham, who comes out of retirement to find and apprehend an enigmatic serial-killer nicknamed "The Tooth Fairy". The novel introduced the character Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial-killer, whom Graham reluctantly turns to for advice and… Shares: Community pick

Presumed Innocent Scott Turow · 1987 · ★ 4.0 · 431p · ≈ 14h · Moderate The novel that launched Turow's career as one of America's pre-eminent thriller writers tells the story of Rusty Sabicch, chief deputy prosecutor in a large Midwestern city. With three weeks to go in his boss' re-election campaign, a member of Rusty's staff is found murdered; he is charged with finding the killer, until his boss loses and, incredibly, Rusty finds himself accused of the murder. Shares: Community pick

The Line of Beauty Alan Hollinghurst · 2004 · ★ 3.8 · 501p · ≈ 16h · Moderate It is the summer of 1983, and twenty-year-old Nick Guest has moved into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby--whom Nick had idolized at Oxford--and Catherine, highly critical of her family's assumptions and ambitions, who becomes both a friend to Nick and his uneasy… Shares: Community pick

Bicycle days John Burnham Schwartz · 1989 · 253p · ≈ 8h · Moderate 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, Bildungsromans

Why are we in Vietnam? Norman Mailer · 1967 · ★ 3.7 · 208p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Narrated by Ranald ("D.J.") Jethroe, Texas's most precocious teenager, on the eve of his departure to fight in Vietnam, this story of a hunting trip in Alaska is both brilliantly entertaining and profoundly thoughtful. Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

The cloud atlas Liam Callanan · 2004 · ★ 4.0 · 360p · ≈ 12h · Moderate 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, Bildungsromans

Reef Romesh Gunesekera · 1994 · ★ 3.4 · 192p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Triton is a young chef who was forced to leave his father's house to work for Mr. Ranjan Salgado, a marine biologist obsessed by swamps, sea movements, and a Sri Lankan island's disappearing reef. Almost immediately, thanks to his master's obsessions, Triton works hard to please him with his carefully prepared delicacies. But neither of them know that the political unrest threatening Sri Lanka… Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts Joseph von Eichendorff · 1864 · ★ 3.3 · 150p · ≈ 5h · Challenging Der Taugenichts ist Sohn eines Müllers und durch und durch Romantiker. Mit den elenden Philistern und der engen Welt, in der sie leben, will er um keinen Preis etwas zu tun haben. Als sein Vater ihn aus dem Haus wirft, damit er endlich lernt, für sich selbst zu sorgen, zieht er mit seiner Geige zu Fuss durchs Land bis nach Italien und lebt seine Freiheit. Auf einem Schloss hatte er sich in eine… Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

Number9Dream David Mitchell · 2001 · ★ 3.9 · 416p · ≈ 13h · Moderate At age twenty, Eiji goes to Tokyo to search for the wealthy father he's never known. He stumbles upon the hidden power centers of the Japanese underworld and instead of finding his father, finds himself. Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

Sophie's Choice William Styron · 1979 · ★ 4.2 · 624p · ≈ 20h · Moderate The gripping, unforgettable story of Stingo, a 22-year-old writer; Sophie, a Polish-Catholic beauty who survived the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz; and Nathan, her mercurial lover. The three friends share magical, heart-warming times until doom overtakes them as Sophie's and Nathan's darkest secrets are revealed. Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

Kipps H. G. Wells · 1900 · 224p · ≈ 7h · Challenging Partly based on Wells’ own experiences as a young man this novel centres on an orphan who becomes apprenticed to a draper. Bored with his humdrum existence of living and working in a drapers, Kipps’ life changes radically when he inherits a fortune from a previously unknown relative. However more troubles occur when he attempts to emulate the people he encounters in upper class society. Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

Go John Clellon Holmes · 1952 · ★ 4.0 · 311p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Go is a 1952 semi-autobiographical novel by John Clellon Holmes. (Holmes referred to the book as a roman à clef.) It is considered to be the first published novel depicting the Beat Generation. Set in New York, it concerns the lives of a collection of characters largely based on the friends Holmes used to hang around with in the 1940s and 1950s in Manhattan. An underworld of drug-fueled parties,… Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius Dave Eggers · 2000 · ★ 3.7 · 400p · ≈ 13h · Moderate From Wikipedia: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (ISBN 0-330-48455-9) is a memoir by Dave Eggers released in 2000. It chronicles his stewardship of younger brother Christopher "Toph" Eggers following the cancer-related deaths of his parents. The book was an enormous commercial and critical success, reaching number one on The New York Times bestseller list and being nominated as a… Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

The turmoil, a novel Booth Tarkington · 1914 · 139p · ≈ 4h · Challenging Booth Tarkington grew up in Indianapolis, and attended Princeton University. He set much of his fiction in Indiana. Tarkington was one of the more popular novelists of his time, and in 1921 booksellers rated him in a poll as the most significant contemporary American author. -Wikipedia entry for Tarkington Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

Ben, in the World Doris Lessing · 2000 · ★ 3.3 · 192p · ≈ 6h · Moderate "Ben Lovatt can never fit in. To those he meets, he seems awkward: too big, too strong, inhumanly made. He baffles and he terrifies: those who do not understand him want him locked up.". "His own mother locked him up; then, guilty, she liberated him. But her unyielding love for him corroded their family; this fifth child broke the home into bits. And now he has come of age and again finds… Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

Demian Hermann Hesse · 1919 · ★ 4.1 · 171p · ≈ 5h · Challenging A young man awakens to selfhood and to a world of possibilities beyond the conventions of his upbringing in Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s beloved novel Demian. Emil Sinclair is a quiet boy drawn into a forbidden yet seductive realm of petty crime and defiance. His guide is his precocious, mysterious classmate Max Demian, who provokes in Emil a search for self-discovery and spiritual… Shares: Young men, Bildungsromans

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