Novels Which Are Really Books Of Short Stories

[Serge]

As I mentioned in the 'What Are You Reading?' thread, I've just finished reading Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad, which Egan herself admits falls somewhere between being a novel and a book of short stories. Although there isn't an overarching plot as such, each of the chapters/stories is linked by using the same characters, with someone who plays a main role in one story being relegated to a supporting role in another, and then absent from many more. There are two main characters, Bennie and Sasha, who reoccur more than any others, but the story wanders all over the place, so you get snapshots of their life from different angles, from their youth up until the late middle age.

It reminded me of a couple of Elizabeth Strout's novels, Olive Kitteridge and Anything Is Possible, which have the same structure. The latter is also linked with the separate novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, which I half-suspect was originally meant to form part of the other novel, but got too long and was turned into a book in its own right. MNILB is about a writer who has moved away from the small Midwestern town she grew up in to go and live in New York, where, during an illness, her mother visits her, and they reminisce about her life in that small town. AIP is a series of stories about the characters who live in that small town, and Lucy Barton makes an appearance in one of the stories.

Olive Kitteridge is a series of short stories set in another small town, this time in New England, mostly centred on the elderly woman whose name is the title of the book, although in a couple of the stories, she basically makes a walk on appearance, and I seem to remember that in one, she is merely namechecked. They're not told in chronological order (something shared with Goon Squad), and also include an interlude in New York City.

Off the top of my head, the only other novel I can think of that fits this pattern is Trainspotting, which doesn't have a linear plot as such, is told from multiple viewpoints, theoretically has a handful of main characters, but they often disappear entirely from the book when a chapter is about an acquaintance of theirs and some aspect of their life.

I've enjoyed all of these books and wondered if there were any more out there that you could recommend?

[drdad]

Last Exit to Brooklyn

[Captain Crunch]

I recently read Sandpiper by Ahdaf Soueif.  God it was dreary, like reading an end of term project from  an HR Advisor doing a course in creative writing after a holiday to Tunisia.  Not recommended. 

[Porter Dimi]

I got this impression from David Foster Wallace's The Pale King.

[Talulah, really!]

An obvious one would be Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, which ranges all through history, starting off with a chapter/story narrated by a wood worm that has smuggled itself aboard Noah's Ark and ending up in a portrait of the afterlife, there are numerous threads tying things together, boats and ships are heavily involved and one chapter is really an essay on the painting, The Raft of the Medusa.

More recent and more in keeping with the writers you have mentioned is Ann Patchett's Commonwealth it concerns two American families and a series of events that occur to them as the narrative moves back and forth from the early 1960s to the present day. Each chapter tends to focus on one member of the family in particular and a particular situation they find themselves in as well as their relationships to the others, so you see the same people and events from different perspectives even as their smaller story unspools. As a writer, I'd say she was just a touch off Strout and Egan yet close to them in her ability to evoke a sense of place and people, the opening chapter is exemplary in this.

And I assume we are leaving David Mitchell to the 'Novels Which Are Really Books of Novellas' thread. ;0)

[Serge]

Ha, yeah, good point with David Mitchell!

Ann Patchett is someone who's been on my 'to read' list for years, so might give Commonwealth a go sometime in the new year. The next book I've got lined up is Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, which I didn't realise until I looked into it online is actually structured so that each chapter is about the descendents of the characters in the chapter before. (Paul Beatty did a similar thing, though massively condensed, within the first chapter of The White Boy Shuffle.)

[BritishHobo]

In last year's Booker list you also had All That Man Is, which I really couldn't figure out how they were calling it a novel. I only spotted one reference, and that only linked two of the stories. It came early in the last story, so I was expecting that last story to reference all of the others, tying it all together. But it didn't happen.

[easytarget]

Off the top of my head, the only other novel I can think of that fits this pattern is Trainspotting, which doesn't have a linear plot as such, is told from multiple viewpoints, theoretically has a handful of main characters, but they often disappear entirely from the book when a chapter is about an acquaintance of theirs and some aspect of their life.

Trainspotting, IIRC, has one chapter called Bad Blood which doesn't feature any of the main characters (and possibly isn't even set in Edinburgh?) but covers, HIV, revenge, brutal poverty etc_{It's still written in Richard Herring Scotch}. It was great and stands alone as a short story.

[Serge]

Yeah, that was one of the ones I was thinking of. I just double-checked, it is set in Edinburgh, but doesn't seem to have any characters who cross over into other chapters (it's possible one of them might get mentioned briefly elsewhere, but I'm not looking through the whole book!) The other one I remembered was 'Victory On New Year's Day', which starts with the main character, Stevie, at a party with Begbie, but is mostly not connected to the rest of the book.

[Bhazor]

AE Van Vogt did several. Voyage of the Space Beagle being the only one I read and I remember it being a pretty fun little pulpy 50s sci fi adventure.

The Red Dwarf books would also probably count.

[Jockice]

Yeah, that was one of the ones I was thinking of. I just double-checked, it is set in Edinburgh, but doesn't seem to have any characters who cross over into other chapters (it's possible one of them might get mentioned briefly elsewhere, but I'm not lookijg through the whole book!) The other one I remembered was 'Victory On New Year's Day', which starts with the main character, Stevie, at a party with Begbie, but is mostly not connected to the rest of the book.

I'm not at home at the moment so can't check but isn't the narrator of that chapter one of the mourners at Matty's funeral? And isn't one of the people at the HIV support group he attends (Wee Something) mentioned by Spud in another chapter?

I'll have to read the whole thing again now. It's been at least a year.

[Jockice]

And the bloke who the narrator (Mitch?) gets revenge on is also mentioned in another chapter for beating up his girlfriend in front of Tommy and Spud and when the former intervenes she attacks him.

I also think that Mitch is the one who shits himself and vomits in his girlfriend's bed on the book, a scene given to Spud in the film.

[Jockice]

I'm not at home at the moment so can't check but isn't the narrator of that chapter one of the mourners at Matty's funeral? And isn't one of the people at the HIV support group he attends (Wee Something) mentioned by Spud in another chapter?

I'll have to read the whole thing again now. It's been at least a year.

Wee Goagsie! It's been annoying me since yesterday that I couldn't remember. And the bad guy in that chapter is called Alan Venters. Apparently there's been a short film made of Bad Blood. Wouldn't mind seeing that.

[Absorb the anus burn]

The Quantity Theory Of Insanity. (short stories I think of as a novel)

[NoSleep]

Don Quixote.

[Isnt Anything]

Asimov's original Foundation trilogy of course and boy does it show cannot recommend

[Neville Chamberlain]

Asimov's original Foundation trilogy of course and boy does it show cannot recommend

I think MoonDust is reading that right now (or has finished it). Unfortunately, it was my contribution to the "books you've stalled on" thread.

[Isnt Anything]

Yes haha I saw that after I posted the above, was most amusing.

It was originally a magazine serial so not actually quite the same thing as a novel made up of short stories. It was always intended to be different parts of one long story even if not originally designed to be published as such.

The preface or introduction or whatever says that when it was put into book form some repetition was removed but Oh God not nearly enough.

Despite what I said earlier it is worth persevering with if you can if only because the later novels in the series, the ones that were actually written as novels, take it some interesting places and then when it all ties up with the story lines from his other series ..... but Ive said too much.

Was amazing though and the sheer hit from that almost made the trudge through the original three ' books ' worthwhile.

[Sin Agog]

Dan Simmons' Hyperion is pretty much the space opera equivalent of The Canterbury Tales, with a Priest, a Knight, and other fine fellows all being brought together at the eponymous planet, where they swap stories about their various interactions with the giant narcissistic monster god that lives there.

[Sin Agog]

Oh and Jack London's extremely underrated sui generis masterpiece The Jacket/Star Rover about a prisoner who forces his body to endure extreme discomfiture so he can project himself into several of his past lives.  London actually got the idea for the premise by extensively interviewing a particularly moon-eyed inmate who insisted, so long as he was ensnared in the tightest, most painful straitjacket, that he could retreat deep enough inwards to locate the most heavily veiled racial memories otherwise inaccesible.  London has some really insanely imaginative writings set in post-apocalyptic wastelands and the like, but this one is particularly unique, and far more deserving of recognition than his books about doggies.

(Just now realised how much Assassin's Creed cribbed from him).

[Astronaut Omens]

Lazlo Krasznakorkai's Seiobo There Below uses this format to invite you to create a web of analogies and associations that you can live inside for a bit. The same themes reoccur, most of the stories are about people reaching for the transcendent, though as the book goes on what they are reaching towards is as much hell as it is heaven. The stories are split about 50/50 between Europe and Asia, and both Christianity and Buddhist ideas are dealt with. The opening story, which begins with a heron trying to catch a fish, ends in a direct address to the reader that reads like a, well, like a manic street preacher trying to convince you that your soul is in danger. The lengthy sentences and long mediations on both beautiful and horrific scenes do get exhausting to read at times: it's a demanding, relentlessly serious book that doesn't have any of the Joycean pleasures of humour or allusion-spotting, but the ambition is amazing.

[Pepotamo1985]

I'm not at home at the moment so can't check but isn't the narrator of that chapter one of the mourners at Matty's funeral? And isn't one of the people at the HIV support group he attends (Wee Something) mentioned by Spud in another chapter?

Tommy is also mentioned in that chapter.

[purlieu]

Yeah, I can't remember the specifics, but every story in Trainspotting is linked to the rest of it, although sometimes incredibly tenuously.

It's hard to say whether Skagboys quite fits the mold. It's far less plotty than Porno, but not anywhere near as much as Trainspotting.

I'll second A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters as mentioned by Talulah, Really further up, as it's bloody tremendous.

[thraxx]

I'm not at home at the moment so can't check but isn't the narrator of that chapter one of the mourners at Matty's funeral? And isn't one of the people at the HIV support group he attends (Wee Something) mentioned by Spud in another chapter?

I'll have to read the whole thing again now. It's been at least a year.

I love the way Trainspotting does this, nearly every chapter stands on it's own as a short story. You've also got the one with the young lass whose uncle dies in bed, with the heated blanket and the one with the waitress who gets her revenge on the wanker businessmen. Finally the one with the card school and the xmas club money, of which Renton's brother is a part. All in the orbit of the main characters.

Fucking love Trainspotting.

[Jockice]

I love the way Trainspotting does this, nearly every chapter stands on it's own as a short story. You've also got the one with the young lass whose uncle dies in bed, with the heated blanket and the one with the waitress who gets her revenge on the wanker businessmen. Finally the one with the card school and the xmas club money, of which Renton's brother is a part. All in the orbit of the main characters.

Fucking love Trainspotting.

Best novel ever!

[Icehaven]

Aleksander Hemon's first few books, The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man, are like this (and possibly his later stuff too but I haven't read that yet) and are also spectacularly funny and sad and worth a read.

[kngen]

A few chapters in Trainspotting had already been published as short stories in Rebel Inc's magazine, and then were used in the book, so it's not totally inaccurate to say that the book is - in part - a collection of short stories. Not sure how much Welsh rewrote to mesh them into the overall narrative, but I'm guessing not a lot.

[Serge]

That's pretty much the same thing that Elizabeth Strout did with Olive Kitteridge - many of the chapters had been published previously as standalone short stories, though whether they were substantially rewritten in any way, I'm not sure. Olive only appears briefly in some of the stories, so her bits could very easily have been inserted when Strout decided to turn them into a novel. I seem to remember the stories were originally published over a long period of time - something like 10-15 years - as well.

Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad also started life like this, though I suspect she had more of an intention to publish them as one book eventually in the first place.