100 Books Like The Other Side of the Story

Sparky, fast-talking and addictive, I adored this book when it came out in the early 1990s. I enjoyed the subsequent film, too.

But you don’t hear much about it any more, though I think it’s probably still a relevant portrait of Black women’s lives in America. It’s about four friends, women in their thirties, each chapter told from the viewpoint of one of the friends.

The voice is so fresh and in-your-face, so funny and engaging. I love how teasing and chiding of each other they are when they’re together, but also so supportive and loving. Below the lighter-than-air surface of their conversations, the reader comes to realise what they mean to each other.

I re-read this book every couple of years.

I love most of Anne Tyler’s novels, but this is my favourite. It contains my all-time favourite boy-girl friendship in Barnaby and Martine, who work together. I completely recognise and relate to their colleague-type banter, full of inside jokes, winding each other up, and covering up for each other. I love that Martine is a bit moody - recognisably human - and that she has Barnaby’s back when no-one else does.

No matter how many times I’ve read this, when Barnaby finally realises how important Martine is to him, I always get tears in my eyes.

Scruffy, grumpy Billie is my favourite female character in all of literature, and she stars in this, one of my top five all-time books.

It’s novella-length, a series of overlapping short stories, with characters who are absolutely real, living, breathing people. The story is primarily about a love affair, but there is a fabulous friendship in it between Billie and her childhood friend, Penny.

When Billie goes back home for Penny’s wedding, they briefly ditch the reception by rowing out onto the lake as they did when children, Penny in her long white dress. It’s a scene that never fails to make me want to phone my oldest friend and tell her how much I value her.

Set in the past and based on real people, this is a gripping story about an unofficial relationship that crosses class divides.

The closeness between poet Elizabeth Barret and her maid, known by her surname, Wilson, is never properly acknowledged as a friendship. But that’s what it is, as Wilson gradually gets to know everything about her mistress, particularly her forbidden love for fellow poet Robert Browning, and Barret comes to increasingly rely on the dependable Wilson.

This book is a fabulous and creative imagining of these real lives, and of a deep friendship that is horribly betrayed when things go wrong.

It is a beautifully atmospheric, Blitz-era novel about passions and complex relationships in the noir blackout and who can be trusted in such times. 

Published just after the war, it captures the period in a way that those born decades later can only dream of doing. My mum was an un-evacuated child in London during the Blitz, and her school was bombed to the ground by the Luftwaffe—but luckily, on a Saturday.

England is flawed as a nation, then and now, but it’s important to remember the unique evil of the Nazis. Most individuals are flawed in much more minor ways. The novels I have chosen all contain imperfect people making mistakes. To me, that’s true life. It’s what I relate to.

On her thirtieth birthday, good girl and Manhattan attorney Rachel White sleeps with her best friend’s fiancé. To complicate matters, it’s not just a drunken mistake—Rachel realizes she’s always had feelings for him and learns that he too has feelings for her. With its messy, complicated relationships and deep dive into female friendship, I could not put this book down. This was one of the first “chick lit” novels I read about a single, urban professional woman navigating her career and personal life. And even while I was cringing at some of Rachel’s choices, I admired how honest and flawed the characters were in this story and loved Giffin’s smooth writing style, and have devoured all of her books ever since reading this one. 

This, Sally Rooney’s first novel, was greeted with widespread critical acclaim. Fresh, witty, knowing, and au courant in its exploration of present-day sexual and romantic entanglements, the novel was clearly the work of a major talent. 

Both Conversations and Rooney’s highly popular second novel, Normal People, have been adapted for television. Perhaps you’ve seen one or both and have read the novels as a result. If not, I urge you to do so, beginning with Conversations. 

I haven’t yet watched either adaptation, but I believe that watching and reading have different sorts of advantages. Against the immediacy and vividness of watching TV shows, reading the novel will allow you to move at your own pace, to savor Rooney’s verbal dexterity, to revisit earlier scenes, and to discover their added significance. Watch (if you haven’t already), read, enjoy!

Chris Cleave’s fourth novel was inspired by memories of his grandparents and their letters during the war. The novel follows the lives and relationships of four young people in Britain during the early years of World War II. It also follows action on the island of Malta, a part of World War II history not as well known. It’s also a story of love, friendship, and surprising choices. A warning: Do not read ahead. The novel has an incredible last scene and you don’t want to ruin it!

Daphne is a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl when her brother’s university friend (and secret lover) comes to visit, the minor poet Cecil Valance, modelled loosely on Rupert Brooke.

Daphne develops a crush and Cecil drunkenly kisses her, an event that means little in itself, except that his death in the First World War puts everything he did in his short life under the intense microscope of fame. As the novel shifts to subsequent generations, that brief visit starts to mean many different things to different people.

Hollinghurst explores the way that secrets, about love, and money, and sexuality, change shape over time. The events of our youth seem more vivid and real than anything that comes later, but that doesn’t mean we understand them better – or even that what really happened matters in comparison to how we make use of those memories. A beautiful book. 

Another classic—this one, from 1955, which was twice made into a movie, in 1958 and in the superior 2002 remake, with Brendan Frazier and Michael Cain. The Quiet American is described as many things—as a Vietnam war book, as a critique of American imperialist impulses. But at heart, it’s the story of a love triangle.

And the woman at the center of the love triangle, Phuong, is an all-time favorite character of mine. With watchful attention and subtle silences, she dictates the fate of the two men. More important than anything we ever see her say are the things we see her do and not do. 

I love the novel’s spare prose and its observations and asides, which are astute and oftentimes quite funny. And in the book’s pages, Vietnam, in the years just before the disastrous French then American wars, comes vividly to life. But Phuong is the reason… show more.