21 Top fiction books like Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

Cover of Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

Learned by Heart

By: Emma Donoghue

3.51

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Eliza and Lister have never been this wide-awake in their lives, and the Slope, with its curtains d…

If you liked the fiction plot in Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue , here is a list of 21 books like this:

Cover of Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

1. Tom Lake

By: Ann Patchett

3.99

Format: 309 pages, Hardcover

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again prov… read more

Similar categories in Ann Patchett's Tom Lake book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • romance
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
"You can’t pretend this [Covid] isn’t happening,"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"In the summer the pear trees were fine. In the summer, all that is hideous about a pear tree is hidden by leaves and pears. But once those disguises were removed they were nothing but acres of murder…"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"Hazel, listen to me. I'm going to tell you something important, you need to be brave.' I then explained to the dog how I have told myself for so many years that my career fell apart because I wasn't …"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"It's as if someone bought all the diamonds at Tiffany's, and crushed them into dust, then spread that dust across the water so that it sifts down evenly, filtering through the shards of light that cu…"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

Cover of The Adversary by Michael Crummey

2. The Adversary

By: Michael Crummey

3.85

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

From the award-winning, critically acclaimed author of The Innocents (“Extraordinary”— Wall Street … read more

Similar categories in Michael Crummey's The Adversary book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
Cover of Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

3. Let Us Descend

By: Jesmyn Ward

3.70

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congres… read more

Similar categories in Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
"You must leap. You must do as your people did. You must sink in order to rise."

-Jesmyn Ward, Let Us Descend

Cover of The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt

4. The Librarianist

By: Patrick deWitt

3.41

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes the story of Bob Comet, a man who ha… read more

Similar categories in Patrick deWitt's The Librarianist book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
Cover of The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

5. The Wren, the Wren

By: Anne Enright

3.55

Format: 278 pages, Hardcover

An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of… read more

Similar categories in Anne Enright's The Wren, the Wren book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"It's not that I think about him constantly, he is my way of thinking. His mind is my compass, his eyes my only mirror."

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don’t walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don't walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

Cover of Normal Rules Don't Apply: Stories by Kate Atkinson

6. Normal Rules Don't Apply: Stories

By: Kate Atkinson

3.71

Format: 212 pages, Hardcover

A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author o… read more

Similar categories in Kate Atkinson's Normal Rules Don't Apply: Stories book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"Hello, Boy," Franklin said. He liked dogs, they were uncomplicated. "I'm a girl, actually," the dog said."

-Kate Atkinson, Normal Rules Don't Apply: Stories

Cover of North Woods by Daniel       Mason

7. North Woods

By: Daniel Mason

4.15

Format: 372 pages, Hardcover

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those … read more

Similar categories in Daniel Mason's North Woods book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
Cover of Day by Michael Cunningham

8. Day

By: Michael Cunningham

3.57

Format: 273 pages, Hardcover

As the world changes around them, a family weathers the storms of growing up, growing older, fallin… read more

Similar categories in Michael Cunningham's Day book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • lgbt
  • fiction
  • adult
  • queer
"Here, then, is the answer. A degree of cruelty is necessary because Garth, like most men, can only deposit his needs at her feet, can only declare his love—that romantic hallucination, which would be…"

-Michael Cunningham, Day

Cover of Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) by Colm Tóibín

9. Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2)

By: Colm Tóibín

3.82

Format: 294 pages, Hardcover

From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly movi… read more

Similar categories in Colm Tóibín's Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
Cover of The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

10. The Bee Sting

By: Paul Murray

3.96

Format: 656 pages, Hardcover

From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and … read more

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Cover of Absolution by Alice McDermott

11. Absolution

By: Alice McDermott

3.81

Format: 324 pages, Hardcover

A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War. In Saigon in 1963, two yo… read more

Similar categories in Alice McDermott's Absolution book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of The Fraud by Zadie Smith

12. The Fraud

By: Zadie Smith

3.30

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

The extraordinary first historical novel from bestselling author of White Teeth Zadie Smith It i… read more

Similar categories in Zadie Smith's The Fraud book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Eliza had long understood her cousin to be beyond the reach of editorial intervention."

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"What possesses people? Unhappiness, always. Happiness is otherwise occupied. It has an object on which to focus. It has daisies, it has snowdrifts. Unhappiness opens up the void, which then requires …"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"I know this country well. Well enough to understand that justice takes time, and that the freedoms of a minority are rarely self-evident to the majority. What is perfectly selfevident to God is – unf…"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"God preserve me from novel-writing, thought Mrs Touchet. God preserve me from that tragic indulgence, that useless vanity, that blindness! In a cold dormitory, two hundred miles away, three heartbrok…"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

Cover of The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

13. The Invisible Hour

By: Alice Hoffman

3.61

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

The latest New York Times bestseller from beloved author Alice Hoffman celebrates the enduring magi… read more

Similar categories in Alice Hoffman's The Invisible Hour book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • romance
  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"A book doesn't live when it's written. It lives when it's read."

-Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour

"Mia now understood that Joel was well aware that once a girl walked into a library she could never be controlled again."

-Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour

Cover of Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein

14. Study for Obedience

By: Sarah Bernstein

3.05

Format: 192 pages, Hardcover

A haunting, compressed masterwork from an extraordinary new voice in Canadian fiction. A young w… read more

Similar categories in Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"I try always to be good."

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"How, I wondered, might a person, a people, take root, roots and rootlessness, the preservation of what little remains of the past, such were thoughts that blew through me on any given morning, standi…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"In taking a side, I thought uneasily, perhaps I ought to take the long view, the survival of the species as a whole. That was my problem, I thought, I was always thinking at the level of the individu…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"I had hoped that here in the country I would experience the turn of the seasons differently, with less apprehension, I might come to see the form and plan of the world. Not to frame it within systems…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

Cover of Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

15. Learned by Heart

By: Emma Donoghue

3.51

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Eliza and Lister have never been this wide-awake in their lives, and the Slope, with its curtains d… read more

Similar categories in Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • romance
  • lesbian
  • literary fiction
  • audiobook
  • lgbt
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • queer
Cover of The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

16. The Vaster Wilds

By: Lauren Groff

3.77

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A taut and electrifying novel from celebrated bestselling author Lauren Groff, about one spirited g… read more

Similar categories in Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
"For what is a girl but a vessel made to hold the desires of men."

-Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

"O put the memory away, girl, she told herself sternly. For the sorrow could eat you entire."

-Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

"And humans were not made to be always alone; humans survive only in the company of other humans."

-Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

"Against the resistance of other minds, one's thoughts are pulled out of their comfortable shapes, and true thinking begins."

-Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

Cover of The Future by Catherine Leroux

17. The Future

By: Catherine Leroux

3.32

Format: 288 pages, Paperback

In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own k… read more

Similar categories in Catherine Leroux's The Future book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"It'll come back," Ulysses says again. "This place isn't made for disappearing, it's a place for resurrection."

-Catherine Leroux, The Future

"The exact opposite of the huge car factories she imagines as the city's womb, a uterus that makes automobiles the way others make promises, or laws."

-Catherine Leroux, The Future

Cover of The Bittlemores by Jann Arden

18. The Bittlemores

By: Jann Arden

3.87

Format: 384 pages, Hardcover

A heartfelt, comic, and deeply satisfying debut novel from the #1 bestselling author, singer-songwr… read more

Similar categories in Jann Arden's The Bittlemores book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • adult
  • fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of All the Colour in the World by C.S. Richardson

19. All the Colour in the World

By: C.S. Richardson

3.74

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

The story of the restorative power of art in one man's life, set against the sweep of the twentieth… read more

Similar categories in C.S. Richardson's All the Colour in the World book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • adult
  • audiobook
Cover of The Circle by Katherena Vermette

20. The Circle

By: Katherena Vermette

4.05

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

From the award-winning and #1 bestselling author of The Break and The Strangers comes a poignant an… read more

Similar categories in Katherena Vermette's The Circle book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • lgbt
Cover of Held by Anne   Michaels

21. Held

By: Anne Michaels

3.66

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A breathtaking and mysterious new novel from the beloved Anne Michaels, internationally bestselling… read more

Similar categories in Anne Michaels's Held book and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"Who can say what happens when we are remembered?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Do we really need our own misery to teach us to be kind?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Would he know the moment of his death or would it be like night falling."

-Anne Michaels, Held

15 Top adult books like Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

Transform Your Habits

Tom Lake

Ann Patchett

3.99

Transform Your Habits

The Adversary

Michael Crummey

3.85

Transform Your Habits

Let Us Descend

Jesmyn Ward

3.70

Transform Your Habits

The Librarianist

Patrick deWitt

3.41

View all the books

21 must-read fiction books like The Adversary by Michael Crummey

Transform Your Habits

The Adversary

Michael Crummey

3.85

Transform Your Habits

Moon of the Turning Leaves (Moon, #2)

Waubgeshig Rice

4.28

Transform Your Habits

The Librarianist

Patrick deWitt

3.41

Transform Your Habits

Rage the Night

Donna Morrissey

3.97

View all the books

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