The best time-jumping novels with multiple protagonists

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always loved “big books,” novels that are described as sagas and chronicles yet whose primary focus is on singular, nuanced characters. I like seeing the ways that lives intersect and reflect each other across decades, and I enjoy being immersed in one world and then dropped, with the turn of a page, into another equally engrossing one. I am the author of the novel Rebellion as well as numerous short stories and essays. Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, I spent several years living in China and a year as the Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. I now live in Wisconsin, where I write and teach creative writing.


I wrote...

Rebellion

By Molly Patterson,

Book cover of Rebellion

What is my book about?

Two sisters at the end of the nineteenth century embark on very different journeys, one to China as a missionary, the other to the flat landscape of Illinois as a farmer’s wife. Six decades later, a daughter fights to maintain control of the farm in the aftermath of her husband’s untimely death. As the twentieth century turns to the twenty-first, a young woman finds her Chinese town rapidly changing, even as she feels frozen in place. Each woman, constricted by the expectations of family and society, faces a choice whose consequences reverberate through the years. A vibrant story set against a century of complicated relations between China and America, Rebellion portrays with compassion and complexity those who pursue their own thrilling fate.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of White Teeth

Molly Patterson Why did I love this book?

Zadie Smith published this novel when she was only twenty-five, a fact that fills me with envy and awe—it’s too good to have been written by someone so young! I first met it when I was about the same age, have returned to it many times, and only love the book more each time I read it. The voice is big and daring and outrageously funny. The characters are real in both the loveliest and cringiest of ways. The novel spans centuries and at least three continents, but what I love most about the book is its verve: you never know where the narrative is going to take you next. 

By Zadie Smith,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked White Teeth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the most talked about fictional debuts of recent years, "White Teeth" is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book.


Book cover of The Hundred-Year House

Molly Patterson Why did I love this book?

Some time-jumping novels take you all over the globe. Others unearth the history of a single place. Rebecca Makkai’s novel takes the latter approach and pushes it to the extreme: its setting is a house in a suburb of Chicago, which, as a Midwesterner, I am bound to be excited about. Moving backward through time, the book is a masterpiece in terms of construction, but Makkai’s touch is so light she makes it feel easy. I stayed up late several nights in a row rereading this book recently, and given that I’ve got three kids under the age of five, that should tell you everything you need to know.

By Rebecca Makkai,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Hundred-Year House as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the acclaimed author of The Great Believers, an original, mordantly witty novel about the secrets of an old-money family and their turn-of-the-century estate, Laurelfield.

Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents' wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there's Violet Devohr, Zee's great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and…


Book cover of China Men

Molly Patterson Why did I love this book?

I first read Maxine Hong Kingston in college, but I can’t remember if I was assigned China Men or The Woman Warrior (the more famous counterpoint to China Men). All I know is that whichever one I read, I loved it so much that I immediately sought out the companion piece, which I also loved. In China Men, Kingston weaves together fiction and nonfiction, history and myth, story and memory. Is it a novel? A tapestry? I’m not quite sure what to call it, and that’s part of what I love about the book. Brief interludes of two or three pages present a single scene; longer stories narrate entire sagas. I love that this volume covers so much literal ground but ultimately feels incredibly personal.

By Maxine Hong Kingston,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked China Men as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The author chronicles the lives of three generations of Chinese men in America, woven from memory, myth and fact. Here's a storyteller's tale of what they endured in a strange new land.


Book cover of Build Your House Around My Body

Molly Patterson Why did I love this book?

Not many books are both frightening and funny, but Kupersmith’s debut novel certainly checks those boxes for me. Like Winnie, a young American in Vietnam, I taught English abroad for a couple of years in my early twenties, and I laughed in recognition of her experiences and outlook early in the novel. But as I turned the pages, I found myself more and more spooked by the hauntings and possessions (not to mention the snakes), and ultimately very moved by the characters and plot. Kupersmith lays out several narratives and then plaits them together, but it’s so gradual that you don’t see how enmeshed all the characters are until you’re neck-deep in the book. It’s horror and humor and history, all rolled into one.

By Violet Kupersmith,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Build Your House Around My Body as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Part puzzle, part revenge tale, part ghost story, this ingenious novel spins half a century of Vietnamese history and folklore into “a thrilling read, acrobatic and filled with verve” (The New York Times Editors’ Choice).
 
FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews

“Fiction as daring and accomplished as Violet Kupersmith’s first novel reignites my love of the form and its kaleidoscopic possibilities.”—David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

Two young women…


Book cover of The Plague of Doves

Molly Patterson Why did I love this book?

I can never decide which of Erdrich’s books is my favorite, but The Plague of Doves is definitely a major contender. Erdrich’s novelistic style is more like a chorus than a solo: she presents various stories involving different characters in different times, but the stories are in orbit around the central conflict, in this case, a pair of horrific crimes committed long ago. Yet even when the content is dark, her writing is so beautiful that my primary feeling reading it is joy. For me, the title of this book perfectly captures that contradictory experience. 

By Louise Erdrich,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Plague of Doves as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time, and winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2012

Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Here, everybody is connected - by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history.

Growing up on the reservation is Evelina Harp, witty and ambitious, and prone to falling hopelessly in love. Listening to her grandfather's tales, she learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites. Nobody understands it better…


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Book cover of The Spanish Diplomat's Secret

Nev March Author Of The Spanish Diplomat's Secret

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author History lover Scriptwriter Reader Nature lover

Nev's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

An entertaining mystery on a 1894 trans-Atlantic steamship with an varied array of suspects, and a detective who must solve his case in six days to prevent international conflict.

Retired from the British Indian army, Captain Jim is taking his wife Diana to Liverpool from New York, when their pleasant cruise turns deadly. Just hours after meeting him, a foreign diplomat is brutally murdered onboard their ship. Captain Jim must find the killer before they dock in six days, or there could be war! Aboard the beleaguered luxury liner are a thousand suspects, but no witnesses to the locked-cabin crime.

Fortunately, his wife Diana knows her way around first-class accommodations and Gilded Age society. But something has been troubling her, too, something she won’t tell him. Together, using tricks gleaned from their favorite fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, Captain Jim, and Diana must learn why one man’s life came to a murderous end.

By Nev March,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Spanish Diplomat's Secret as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In The Spanish Diplomat's Secret, award-winning author Nev March explores the vivid nineteenth-century world of the transatlantic voyage, one passenger’s secret at a time.

Captain Jim Agnihotri and his wife Lady Diana Framji are embarking to England in the summer of 1894. Jim is hopeful the cruise will help Diana open up to him. Something is troubling her, and Jim is concerned.

On their first evening, Jim meets an intriguing Spaniard, a fellow soldier with whom he finds an instant kinship. But within twenty-four hours, Don Juan Nepomuceno is murdered, his body discovered shortly after he asks rather urgently to…


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