100 books like Fellowship Point

I love this book because it is not afraid to look at deep sadness and disappointment in an honest and complex way. This novel is a collection of short stories that all take place in a coastal Main town and are connected by the large presence of Olive.

Olive is intelligent, acerbic, and abrasive. She is anything but easy. I appreciate the compassion Strout gives her imperfect characters as they struggle with their messy lives. I grew to care more for Olive as I traveled her rocky path with her, even as she was often the one to throw down the rocks before her.

This is a quiet book, which I read in a quiet way. It brought me comfort in its illumination of uncomfortable things. 

This book inspired me to write my own account of dealing with my mum’s Alzheimer’s.

This darkly comic yet gripping novel reveals the humorous aspects of the disease. Maud, an eighty-year-old who grapples with forgetting even the cup of tea she just made or recognising her own daughter, surprisingly unravels a seventy-year-old mystery.

The story delicately weaves warm and uplifting moments with touches of comedy, anxiety, and sheer terror that arise when one realises the advancing years and the struggle to be heard in a society that often overlooks the elderly. The portrayal of dementia in this novel is both sympathetic and profoundly moving, capturing the emotional complexity of the experience.

Maud's character is both exasperating and compelling, embodying the kind of older protagonist I yearn to encounter more in literature.

This novel, by Meg Wolitzer, offers such a twist at the end, I’m not sure how to write about it as an example of a woman writer finding her voice without giving too much away.
The Wife is the story of a Noble Prize-winning author, Joe Castelman, and his wife, Joan, who have kept a terrible secret for all the years of their marriage. Because you know the topic of my selections here, you can surmise that Joan is also a writer, though she hides that fact. Her character tells the story, and we only slowly see the facets of their strange and deceptive marriage. It becomes clear that Joan is a very good writer indeed, and she’s tired of keeping her secret.

This clever tale will make you think about what it means to invent a life both on and off the page. And that there’s no stopping a… show more.

Elizabeth Strout is perfecting a practice I’m sold on–the literary recasting of characters from one novel to the next.

In this book, I got to return to Lucy Barton and her ex-husband, William, who were thrown together in a cabin in Maine due to the pandemic. Writing the novel from the first-person perspective of the protagonist, Strout includes this pragmatic character’s interior musings, specifically the things we increasingly noticed as time slowed down during COVID.

I could so relate to Lucy’s quirky character: give me ornery, critical, and desperate any day! Weren’t we all?  

While many novels about female friendship focus on young women, The Weekend follows three women in their seventies, whose decades-long friendship has sustained them through illness, infidelity, divorce – and recently the death of their fourth close friend, Sylvie.

Drawn together over a weekend to clear out Sylvie’s house, the remaining women must grapple with their shared past and uncertain future. I loved this glimpse into the lives of older women – a reality not often portrayed in fiction – and admired Wood’s ability to make each of her three narrators flawed, relatable, and human.

If you like immersive character-driven novels, this book won’t disappoint.

Lillian is an 84-years old woman walking around New York City on New Year’s Eve.

She loves the city, made her way there as a young woman in advertising in the 30s, became well-known as a poet of light verse. She alternately reminisces about her life and encounters people you would not expect.

She remembers her life in pieces, the way one does, so the reader puts together the mystery.

I found her to be a delightful and refreshing character. The book is a beautiful lacing of the past with the promise of unexpected things to come. 

The narrator of this story is a writer whose friend is dying of cancer.

The friend asks the narrator to accompany her through her final days, including the contemplation of suicide. The writer reluctantly agrees.

One unusual thing about this novel is that none of the characters have names; they’re referred to as the daughter, the ex, or the friend. This jarred me at first, but I grew used to it.

The narrator takes mental excursions about many topics, musing as a writer. While this sounds like a depressing set-up, I found this story to be a thoughtful and tender statement about connection.

The two women become surprisingly close while sharing this intimate part of life. 

James McBride has an enormous gift for evoking the goodness in characters whose lives are perceived to be beyond redemption. 

They inhabit the down and out realms of addiction, impoverishment, life on the streets, in housing projects rife with crime. And yet, he also reveals the faith and spirituality that binds them with love and humor, and provides them with the endurance for facing the ugliness and miracles in everyday life.

What I love most about Deacon King Kong is the surprising affection I feel for the characters that James McBride describes in hilariously creative ways, revealing the depths of their souls as well as the sins they rectify or try to cover up.

Never pious or self-righteous, these characters offer the heart of change and give us love!

I love love love this book by Delia Ephron. It packs in all my favorite themes and things—heartbreak, hope, a real life rom-com flavor, family bonds, hilarity, grief, and giddy humor.

Delia Ephron is well celebrated for her novels, essays, and screenplays, but this? Wow! When I read her memoir about illness and love, I felt connected to her work in a brand-new way. Deftly weaving life's darkest moments with hope and humor—this book ultimately reminds us to believe in miracles, love our people, live fully, and find joy.

There’s something special about Kate Bowler. At 35, diagnosed with cancer, she started questioning our culture of positivity that emphasizes can-do achievement.

Her insights are beautiful, and her buoyant humor is icing on the cake. I feel like we’re soul sisters, my friend Kate and me (we’ve never met). Her words resonate with my belief that life is a mix of beauty and bummers, and sometimes there is even beauty within the bummers. I believe we should show up for life and appreciate all of it. So, I’m drawn to Kate Bowler’s account of how her hard-won uncertainty has shifted her perspective.