Epic Novel

2017 · John Boyne · 592 pages · Literary Fiction

John Boyne's sprawling, emotionally devastating novel follows Cyril Avery from his birth in 1945 to an adopted mother's shame in a small Irish parish through seven decades of Irish life. It's funny, angry, tender, and occasionally melodramatic, but the melodrama is earned by the depth of investment Boyne creates in Cyril's struggle to live honestly in a country that spent decades making honesty impossible for people like him. The coincidences pile up more than some readers can accept, but the emotional payoff is so substantial that most forgive the contrivances that get them there. This is a big, old-fashioned novel with a modern heart, and it's one of the best Irish novels of the 21st century.

1869 · Leo Tolstoy · 1225 pages · Historical Fiction

War and Peace is the book that earned its reputation. Tolstoy wrote something that defied classification when it was published and still does, a novel that contains some of the most psychologically precise character writing in any language alongside philosophical digressions that will try the patience of any reader who reaches for them. The length is real. The commitment is real. But so is the payoff: characters who feel more alive than most people you actually know, and a portrait of how individual lives intersect with the forces of history that nobody has matched since. It rewards the investment more completely than almost any other novel ever written.

2003 · Gregory David Roberts · 936 pages · Literary Fiction

Gregory David Roberts' mammoth autobiographical novel about an Australian fugitive who reinvents himself in the slums and underworld of 1980s Bombay is one of the most divisive reading experiences in contemporary fiction. When it works, which is often, it offers a visceral, sprawling portrait of a city and its people that feels deeply immersive. When it doesn't work, it indulges in philosophical monologues and self-aggrandizing prose that test even patient readers. At 936 pages, it's a commitment, and whether the payoff justifies the investment depends entirely on your tolerance for a narrator who is simultaneously fascinating and exhausting. For readers who click with its energy, there's nothing else quite like it.