21 must-read literary fiction books like The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

If you liked the literary fiction plot in The Candy House by Jennifer Egan , here is a list of 21 books like this:

Similar categories in Hernan Diaz's Trust book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"Where there's a ventriloquist, there's a dummy."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"Chaos is a vortex that spins faster with each thing it swallows."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"Silence between 2 is always shared. But 1 of the 2 owns it and shares it with the other."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"Sleeplessness kept claiming her nights, and she used books as shields against the onslaught of her abstract terrors."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

Similar categories in Ann Patchett's Tom Lake book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• 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

Similar categories in Percival Everett's James book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

Similar categories in Emma Cline's The Guest book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"Younger men had to make everything mean something, had to turn every choice and preference into a referendum on their personality."

-Emma Cline, The Guest

"He assumed her attention when he spoke. He had his insecurities, his anxieties. But underlying it all was the certainty that the world would be generous in its orientation toward him."

-Emma Cline, The Guest

"All the women in the show hated each other, hated each other so much, just so they could avoid hating their husbands. Only their little dogs, blinking from their laps, seemed real: they were the wome…"

-Emma Cline, The Guest

Similar categories in Daniel Mason's North Woods book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

Similar categories in James McBride's The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• adult
• audiobook

Similar categories in Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"...wondering, not for the first time, when exactly she had become so technologically dependent that her first instinct in every unpredicted circumstance was to outsource her imagination to her phone."

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"Not at all,’ he said. ‘I was just going to remark that being a cliche can be very useful. You ought to consider it some time.’ ’Oh yeah?’ ’Yeah,’ he said. ‘It means people underestimate you. They thi…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"As his rhetoric and reading life matured, he grew intensely scornful of what passed at his high school for 'education' - the mania for testing; the intolerance of real dissent; and the conformist cel…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"... his future, had either been sold or laid to waste by his parents' generation, trapping him in a perpetual adolescence that was further heightened by the infantilising unreality of the Internet as…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

Similar categories in Ann Napolitano's Hello Beautiful book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"The child inside Julia lay wide-eyed in the dark, knowing that she was Jo, but only because Sylvie was Beth."

-Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

"You and your sisters have so many reference points, such a dense history," William said. "I never get used to it."

-Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

"She was Julia's wild hair, she was the lake her husband had once been carried out of, and no matter what happened next, she was love."

-Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

"You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy. I never trust those upbeat individuals who grin no matter what’s going on. Those are the o…"

-Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

Similar categories in Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Friendship,"

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"How I will miss the horses."

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"You try again. You fail better."

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"There are no ghosts, but up here"

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Similar categories in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Chain-Gang All-Stars book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• science fiction
• speculative fiction
• fantasy
• audiobook

"They were all humans, and yet they had completely different ideas about what humanity meant."

-Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

"My brother-in-law is an alien. I have a bunch of alien friends. I can't be racist," Randy Mac continued."

-Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

"An absurd thing for the murderous state to plead for, but, as always, the massive violence of the state was “justice,"

-Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

"...despite how hard it was, she wasn't afraid with love. She knew how to wield it, how to grow it, and how to receive it."

-Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• 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

Similar categories in Zadie Smith's The Fraud book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels
• 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

Similar categories in Tess Gunty's The Rabbit Hutch book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"On the opposite end of the sidewalk, a large woman in her sixties collapsed. Immediately, two people rushed to the woman's side, gingerly tending to her, touching her shoulders and face, speaking to …"

-Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

"· Las calles por las que caminas, el alimento que comes, el trabajo que haces, el medio de transporte que eliges, los productos de belleza que compras, los programas que ves, los enlaces en los que p…"

-Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

"Acaba de ponerse a llover. Estamos encantados de que se quede un rato más, si quiere. Milagroso. Joan recuerda que existen los perros, las tiendas de manualidades, los analgésicos, las bibliotecas pú…"

-Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

"—Estoy harta —dice Blandine— de la violencia contra las mujeres disfrazada de validación. —Lo siento —murmura James de manera automática, pero tiene el gesto de la mascota reprendida que no sabe qué …"

-Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

Similar categories in Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"I can still feel in my bones how being mad was the one thing holding me together."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"Counting on Jesus to save the day is no more real than sending up the Batman signal."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"life is a wild, impetuous ride. There could be good shit up ahead, don’t rule it out."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

Similar categories in Nathan Hill's Wellness book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"It's an altogether manic and ceaseless conversation, a conversation that feels sometimes like falling down stairs, barely keeping upright, taken by gravity, skipping, grasping, and then somehow landi…"

-Nathan Hill, Wellness

"Behind curtains, this, he thinks, is what lovers do—they are alchemists and architects; pioneers and fabulists; they make one thing another; they invent the world around them. So he says, ‘Yes I beli…"

-Nathan Hill, Wellness

Similar categories in Jennifer Egan's The Candy House book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• contemporary
• science fiction
• novels
• speculative fiction
• fantasy
• audiobook

"A new remote and unfamiliar place can make the prior remote and unfamiliar place seem like home."

-Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

"Mysteries that are destroyed by measurement were never truly mysterious; only our ignorance made them seem so."

-Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

"Nothing is free! Only children expect otherwise even as myths and fairy tales warn us: Rumpelstiltskin, King Midas, Handsel and Gretel. Never trust a candy house! It was only a matter of time before …"

-Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

Similar categories in Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• science fiction
• speculative fiction
• fantasy
• audiobook

"It seems like it’s been fairly well contained,"

-Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

"You should have told me my cat was a time traveler."

-Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

"There's a low-level, specific pain and having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones."

-Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

"What if one were to dissolve into the wilderness like salt into water. He wants to go home. For the first time, Edwin begins to worry about his sanity."

-Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

Similar categories in Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions for You book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

Similar categories in Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• science fiction
• adult
• audiobook

"Succulents would grow anew from a broken-off leaf, pushing roots out into the air, then down into the soil: a piece of its own body, transformed into its child."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"Evidence of his mother, out there, elsewhere, so worried about somebody else's children though she'd left her own behind. The irony of it leached into his veins."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"And we need their generosity to keep this place open. Or, just as likely, someone got nervous and got rid of it preemptively. Us public libraries--a lot of us just can't take the risk."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

Similar categories in Namwali Serpell's The Furrows book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

Similar categories in Claire-Louise Bennett's Checkout 19 book and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"Mimicry can be unkind, but at least it acknowledges that you’re there."

-Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19

"Yet in my heart I was bereft, grieving – homesick for a place I had never seen. For a place that doesn't exist, yet I belonged there nonetheless. Ridiculous really. Ridiculous, yet so acute and abidi…"

-Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19

"…the impulse for transgression and a taste for abasement is not so difficult to locate and arouse. Because of course it is thrilling to be astutely defiled. To have every revered trait and inimitable…"

-Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19

"an unbearably tense and disorienting paradox that underscores everyday life in a working-class environment—on the one hand it’s an abrasive and in-your-face world, yet, at the same time, much of it s…"

-Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19