100 Books Like The Hours

Dr. Irvin Yalom is a writer and clinical practitioner who is beloved by many in the field of mental health and therapy. I, like many, admire the way in which he tackles the most difficult human dilemmas through intimate stories highlighting the universality of many of these topics. It was difficult for me to pick which of Dr. Yalom’s books to recommend, as I have thoroughly enjoyed each one I’ve read. However, The Schopenhauer Cure is particularly about confronting mortality—the realization of the ephemerality of life and the limitations and acceptance of what we can achieve. Through Dr. Yalom’s adroit depictions of Philip Slate and Julius Hertzfeld, we see the blurred edges of philosophy and psychology, where some of our most basic questions may best be addressed by the melding of the two.

This book is an intensely philosophical novel that tackles big subjects, like the nature of love, the limits and desirability of freedom, the expression of sexuality, and the very nature of human existence, while at the same time being immersive and easy to read. The main characters, Tomas and Tereza, are full of love for each other but fail to truly connect because of their personal frailties, which I believe is true of all of us at one time or another.

There are concepts from this novel that have become part of my own philosophy, in particular, that responsibility gives meaning to life. 

This was probably one of the most intense experiences with non-linear storytelling I ever had, and that did something to me I could not have predicted.

In fact, while reading this book, I started to turn the story into something of a philosophical discourse in my head. 

I really like how this book is at the same time utterly insane in parts—and I do say that with the greatest respect, it‘s the good kind of insane—while at the same time, it explores themes of dealing with earth-shattering events on a very individual level.

For me, the icing on the cake is that Kurt Vonnegut manages to even mix in a little history lesson there, because that bombing of the prisoners in Dresden? That did happen. And I didn‘t even learn about it in school—I learned it from this novel!

Kaya Clark is the wild child I longed to be growing up. Although her family story is tragic and well-explored, how she inhabits her world of nature and allows it to inhabit her is stunning. Once again, she is a young woman who is an outcast who manages to rise above her limitations and those placed on her by society. 

Beyond the incredible storytelling and intriguing plot lines, I was mesmerized by the natural world of the North Carolina marshes, being as much a main character as Kaya herself. The intricate details of the lushness and cruelty of the natural world were incredible. In looking back at my favorite novels, one of the commonalities is the writing’s ability to come alive in my head and to take up a permanent space as much as my own lived memories. This novel is one of those.

This play is a total delight. Read it, of course, and then if it ever comes to a theatre anywhere near you, go see it!

It’s set in 1809 and the present-ish day, and features exuberant mathematical prodigy Thomasina Coverly, who definitely isn’t meant to be Ada Lovelace, says Tom Stoppard (but maybe she is a bit).

The dialogue is like the most invigorating dinner party conversation you ever had: it’s funny, it’s clever, it references fractals, Fermat’s Last Theorem, the silly competitiveness of academia, Lord Byron, landscape gardening, and a million other things. I love it. 

This is a big ambitious book with a huge literary and emotional payoff.

It’s set in Chicago, a town I don’t know well during the AIDS epidemic, an experience that has stayed with me. It’s also set in Paris, a place we all love to read about, in the art world, where I like to linger. I don’t always appreciate a multiple timeline structure; here, however, it really enriches the plot, heightens the stakes, and amplifies the theme of love within tragedy.

Every character is well-drawn and makes a lasting impression as you jump into not only a community in crisis, but also a world of visual art, found families, mortality, and memory. It’s a stunningly sublime story about the experiences and people who forever change us.

I love to read about artists in Paris in the 1930s. And this book is about a woman who tries to leave the world of modeling to become a photographer, and then she morphs again into one of the only WW2 journalists.

Lee Miller was a real person and she fell in love with Surrealist Man Ray in Paris. 

L’Origine by artist and writer Lilianne Milgrom is a unique, well-researched, and absolutely compelling book. Part history and part memoir, it tells the story of Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde, a painting known as “the world’s most erotic masterpiece,” along with its effect on a young woman (the author) who set out to be its official “copyist.”  Ultimately, it is the painting itself that liberates and transforms the protagonist—just as it will liberate and transform the reader! It certainly did that for me, cutting through all my ideas about the role of art and its depictions of the female body—in much the same way that Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings, and the nude photographs she posed for, liberates and transforms the protagonist of my own novel. 

Despite high school freshman Melinda’s refusal to speak, I was immediately drawn into this contemporary (1999) novel by the pitch-perfect, first-person voice in which she tells her poignant story.

Melinda isn’t abandoned on a desolate island like Karana or exiled to a barren cave like Ayla but shunned by her friends after busting an end-of-summer party by calling the cops; her refusal to speak renders Melinda similarly isolated and remote.

I especially admire the way Anderson’s deft narration plays out the paradox of silence giving voice to revelation. As Melinda comes to terms with her devastating secret—having been raped by an upperclassman—she finally speaks up and breaks her silence. 

This is probably the most powerful example of literary pastiche novels I’ve read, not just because it takes on one of the most beloved novels in English literature—Jane Eyre—but because it brutally turns that novel’s premises on their gentrified heads.

I am truly awed by how vibrantly Rhys inhabits Antoinette, Rochester’s doomed wife, weaving in themes of colonialism and gendered power into Charlotte Brontë’s Gothic romance and, in the process, making it a kind of subversive and gritty feminist and anti-colonial manifesto.

Rhys’s depiction of Antoinette’s descent into madness is so visceral and believable that you are (or at least I am) all but cheering as she literally burns the patriarchy to the ground. I also love that while it’s generally considered Rhys’s masterpiece, she wrote it in her seventies.