86 books like What Are You Going Through

Imagine a novel with 80-year-old female protagonists!

And what history these friends have at their classic waterside community. They’ve seen it all – lifelong relationships, betrayals, the bonds of a hard marriage, and the challenges of children. Their commitment to each other is the glue that binds.

I have few friends from early childhood, so I was especially touched by their ability to read each other so well, with that kind of radar unique to old friends, even as late-life challenges threaten to tear them apart. 

Lucy and her ex, William, leave New York for a seaside house in Maine at the start of the pandemic.

Not much happens and a lot happens, which is Strout’s singular gift, to infuse the everyday with meaning. She touches on everything—slow dawning fears of the pandemic, missing her daughters, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent riots, the storming of the Capitol, her confusion about rekindling love with William.

I could relate to all of it, and I especially loved the reminder to embrace the life you’ve been given. 

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. 

This is a lesser-known book, and I wish more teens had it in their library. There is no shirking behind any kind of veil or safety as Vincent weaves his way through his suicidal ideations, finds friendships, and navigates his health back to safety. This is a quiet novel that’s brutally honest about how one continues on when they’re not sure why they should.

Bonus for animal lovers as Vincent spends a lot of time at the local animal shelter.

This novel is also about love, but draws its intense emotions including suicidal ideation from a different matter: being bound to a wheelchair after an accident.

It is a lot deeper than a normal romance novel. It dives into the topic of physical disablement and by that creates awareness about something the average person is not shedding any thought to. I personally appreciate this aspect, because creating awareness is also one of my goals in writing.

Also, the novel is thought-provoking, because it poses the dilemma of selfishly wanting someone to stay alive vs. selflessly respecting their wish to die. The book has left a lasting impression on me because I’ve been confronted with this dilemma several times in my life and had countless discussions on the topic.

Jamison writes about bipolar disorder as a professor of psychiatry and as a person who suffers from the illness. This dual vision allows us to see the disorder in multifaceted ways. Jamison is particularly adept at explaining why bipolar sufferers are so tragically prone to attempt and commit suicide. I suffer from Bipolar 2 Disorder with mixed features, meaning that I can be depressed and manic at the same time. This is a dangerous combination. A depressed person is more likely to have suicidal ideation and a manic person has enough energy to make suicidal plans and carry them out. Jamison's book is vital for me to understand and manage my suicidal ideation.

Betty Rollin is best known as the award-winning national correspondent for NBC. Writing about her personal life, she sure knows how to tell a story. Long before any state recognized a legal option for assisted dying, a few brave people navigated the risks of helping a loved one exit life on their own terms. Betty and her husband, Ed, were two such people, and they were especially courageous in publicizing what they did. Last Wish was a bestseller when it came out in 1985 and again in 1999. It became an ABC TV movie in 1992 starring Patty Duke and Maureen Stapleton. Both the story and the storytelling, are captivating. Betty’s mom got the peaceful death she desired, and we got a wonderful, even humorous story of love, loyalty, and international daring. 

Set against the backdrop of the sociopolitical turmoil of the 1960s, James Baldwin’s Another Country captures a diverse group of friends in cities both foreign and domestic (NYC and France) who are struggling with interconnected issues of race, sexuality, gender, and class.

As history repeats itself in the 21st century, there is wisdom in reviewing how people survived the last round of radical social upheaval. They did so without losing themselves, nor their opportunities to forge meaningful human connections in the melee.

How do you learn from ex-lovers? How do you make peace with the dead? How do you stay sane when the world is hassling you over unchangeable characteristics you’re working to embrace rather than despise? These characters are trying to build something real on shifting sands, and their stories are still relatable today.

McDermott writes about Irish-American people, and this novel is about nuns in Brooklyn who help out a young widow and her little daughter after the suicide of her husband.

I was a nun for eleven years, so loved the realistic portrayal of the nuns with all their human foibles and virtues! 

The young girl becomes the central character as she grows up helping the sisters in their work with the poor, even deciding she might like to be a nun herself until she has a disastrous encounter on a train. Beautifully written with humor and compassion.