100 Books Like The Death Of Ivan Ilych

Why include on this list the diaries of a secular Jewish woman who is in the grip of self-centered anxieties and an unusual, if not bizarre, relationship with her analyst? Because spiritual transformation begins and evolves in uncanny ways, leading one to find transcendence where one never would have expected it. Etty’s diaries and letters allow us to follow the process by which she became so profoundly lucid and open-hearted that she was able to see the humanity even in the Nazis organizing extermination.

I love this pre-social-media collection of moral quandaries and relationship-based solutions presented in story form. Much of it is about addiction to substances, but it applies to all kinds of addictions, undermining our ability to deal with dangerous subjects.

I’ve told stories from these pages, and most of my ideas come from reading stories that inevitably remind me of a perfect story from my own life. Stories about release, gratitude, humility, tolerance, and forgiveness offer antidotes to the kind of problems that linear mechanical reasoning can’t solve.

For me, investing in a constant stream of moral stories supports the vital behavioral norms we need as groundwork for developing trusting relationships.

A cruise ship is, perhaps, the least likely of all possible venues for the beginning of a spiritual breakthrough. But this is where spiritual transformation starts for Avey Johnson, the 64-year-old African American woman who is the central character in this Marshall novel. Breakthroughs are often set in motion deep down inside us, below the surface of our ordinary awareness. In fact, a real breakthrough can’t happen unless it goes all the way down in us. I know of no book that conveys this truth more effectively.

Because Lear is a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, his book has a more academic flavor than the others on my list. But because he’s a philosopher and psychoanalyst attentive to lived experience, his book draws us into the devastating loss suffered by the Crow Nation, and especially by Plenty Coups, their last great chief, when their culture was stripped from them. This was, of course, an irreparable trauma from which it was impossible to recover. But instead of trying to retrieve what was unrecoverable, Plenty Coups turned to the unknowable, unprecedented future with the “radical hope” that it could be charged with transcendent meaning for his people. Perhaps the spiritual life, especially in these crisis-ridden days, consists in learning how to practice such hope.

Though this book was first published in 1971, its message of courage in the face of tyranny and forgiveness in response to evil remains stunning to this day.

I have read this book twice, twenty years apart, and both times I came away with a sense of awe that because of their strong faith, Corrie ten Boom and her family were willing to risk their own lives to protect those who were being hunted down by the Nazis.

Even when caught and sent to a concentration camp where they endured unspeakable cruelty, Corrie ten Boom and her sister, Betsie, did not lose their faith but instead ministered to the women around them.

I can only hope that I would have the same courage if I were in Corrie’s shoes.   

Yes, it’s a Victorian novel but it’s also the slenderest and sweetest one, by my lights.

Cast out from his narrow religious community by the acts of a dishonest friend, Silas Marner flees to a new village and resolves to live a life apart, money his only security. Then along comes a tiny child in need and Silas cannot help but help—even though this new challenge comes on the heels of a devastating robbery.

The man’s generosity has the effect of opening him up to the generosity of others until, little by little, he becomes a part of the community he has lived apart from for so long. There is never a bad time to read this lovely, hopeful little novella about the worst and best of human nature. 

This is probably my favorite book of all time! It is a roller coaster of highs that make me so happy and then lows that break my heart. It’s definitely a “just one more chapter” story—I just had to see what would happen to Edward next. I wanted to jump into there to give that Rabbit a hug, take him home with me. Edward changes so much throughout his heart-warming journey.

It is my go-to book for kids ready for chapter books because it pulls them in and doesn’t let go. Edward is lost from the little girl who loves him for most of the book, but then, that miraculous ending… it doesn’t matter how many times I read it, I cry. Every. Single. Time.

I love this story because it portrays people choosing to die to themselves in order to live for God.

These Benedictine sisters are not running away from the world. Each woman faces her past, present, and future through the lens of devotion to God. Centering their lives around worship has cost them dearly but, as I read, I began to grasp its worth with greater clarity. I’ve seen myself that believers in Christ who die to themselves, paradoxically, seem more alive.

This House of Brede made me reflect on the concept of losing your life to save it. It reminded me that losing my life is tragically inevitable, but saving it is gloriously possible.

This book is brimming with themes that are super meaningful to me—love, loss, healing, the nature of reality, time travel, spirituality, faith, and redemption. He does this through language that waxes poetic in a formal, archaic voice, dropping into and out of time, occasionally lapsing into a hilarious, modern tone. Laurus, the protagonist, reminds me of myself, a holy fool, who believes in the healing power of mercy and compassion. As well, he keeps one foot in this world and the other in a mystical realm to which he longs to return.   

When I was in college, I told my writing teacher I wanted to write about my father’s death, which had happened when I was very little. My teacher, a famous writer, lost his father when he was very little too, but he told me he never wrote about it directly. I looked for examples in literature of someone writing autobiographically about a loss in early childhood and I only ever found one: Tolstoy’s debut novel, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth. Tolstoy’s mother died when he was 2, his father when he was 8, and he writes about it with unparalleled power across his oeuvre, but never so directly and autobiographically as in Childhood, Boyhood, Youth. He made it OK for me to write my own autobiographical novel about childhood loss.