Victorians! discussion

As much as I love the Victorians, they're not writing anything new these days. And what I love about them isn't necessarily the period, but the style--so I'm not craving new books set in Victorian times, I'm craving books that are more societal than introspective, books with a sweeping cast of characters, books that are literary and well-written but wildly interesting at the same time!

I find Robertson Davies and John Irving to be Victorian-ish ... who else should I be reading that evokes the feeling of a Middlemarch, a Bleak House, a Vanity Fair?

Ashley

May I suggest The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles? It is one of my favourite novels. There is the movie, of course, with Meryl Streep, but the book is so perfectly Victorian and yet so essentially modern. And not one, or even two, but three endings.

Donna Tartt has been likened to Dickens before. She has colorful characters and a pitch perfect sense when it comes to creating unsavory or ridiculous minor characters.

If you are looking for sprawling modern novels, no one can sprawl quite like Stephen King. Granted, his work is very uneven, but try one of his monsters like The Stand or It.

Not necessarily recent, but Alexander Theroux sounds a lot like the near-modern authors—I'm thinking mostly of George Eliot. (His sentences are beautiful, always, to the point of almost ridiculousness. Every word matters, just as in Eliot.) But one thing about him I don't know if you'd be apprehensive about is that he stays really true to the period he's writing about, with an attentiveness to being unabashed in description: racism will come into it, in the same fashion as, say, nativism comes into play in Hardy's Return of the Native or in Eliot's Middlemarch, only it comes in a lot more boldly and pronouncedly. Not quite the Victorian etiquette of quietly raging and quietly stinging dialogue and paragraphs, and in that sense Theroux is a lot more modernist than Victorian. I personally would try Darconville’s Cat, but you'd have to scour the net or the libraries because it's not in print anymore, I don't think. Give him a try though: maybe you'll like him.

Peter wrote: "Ashley

May I suggest The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles? It is one of my favourite novels. There is the movie, of course, with Meryl Streep, but the book is so perfectly Victorian and ye..."

Excellent suggestion, Peter!

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles?

Read it and loved it (the movie too!)

A Suitable Boy

Read it and loved it--that's pretty much exactly what I'm going for--I think it's slightly more Gone With the Wind-ish than Victorian-ish, but that's a tiny quibble as GWTW is quite Victorian-ish itself!

Donna Tartt or Stephen King

I hadn't thought about King that way, but of course he fits (when in that mode, e.g. Needful Things ... I read Tartt's The Secret History and liked it, but haven't read more--guess I shall add her to the list.

Not necessarily recent, but Alexander Theroux sounds a lot like the near-modern authors—I'm thinking mostly of George Eliot.

I haven't read him, so I look forward to that, thank you--and recency is not a particular requirement for me. I'm basically thinking "I love those Victorians, who's been writing like them since them, whenever?"

The Crimson and the Rose. Set in Victorian times, but also reads Victorian

Deborah wrote: "The Crimson and the Rose. Set in Victorian times, but also reads Victorian"

Can't find this one ... is it possible you have the name slightly incorrect?

Ashley wrote: "Deborah wrote: "The Crimson and the Rose. Set in Victorian times, but also reads Victorian"

Can't find this one ... is it possible you have the name slightly incorrect?"

Ashley I'm out of town and working from memory. It's on my bookshelf at home in Massachusetts. You will have to wait until January when I get back

Katie wrote: "Perhaps you mean The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, Deborah? That's set in the Victorian period."

Katie you are a star! Yes, that's it...

Written in the Victorian style, set in the USA, and pushing the definition of satire, try A Bloodsmoor Romance. Just thinking about it, I think it is time for my 4th read of this book.

A Bloodsmoor Romance

Sounds very interesting! I'll pick it up at the library (I'm lucky--I work at a university, and while the city's public library doesn't have it, the university library certainly does).

The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (prequel to Jane Eyre in a postcolonial key)
Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones, Havisham by Ronald Frame, Jack Maggs by Peter Carey, all rewriting aspects of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde by Peter Ackroyd
Affinity, Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Possession and Angels&Insects by A.S. Byatt
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
Carry Me Like Water by Benjamin Alire Saenz
The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan
The Dervish House by Ian MacDonald

Other authors that come to mind include Isabel Allende and Jeanette Winterson. I've been getting into Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine books which follow a group of connected Ojibwe families through the 20th century, starting with Tracks.