Catch Up on the Best 21st Century Novels in 10 Books

This book is at the top of just about every list. There is no escaping it. While I have not read a Ferrante, I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll like My Brilliant Friend. This one falls into the camp of books I haven’t read because the intense hype has me worried they’ll disappoint, but I need to get over it and experience this literary sensation for myself. I mean, books that follow the progress of characters through decades are my catnip, and we’ve got a complicated friendship between two women? I honestly don’t know what I’ve been waiting for, and now I’m the last person on earth to read a Neapolitan novel.

This is one I’ve read and can’t shut up about. What a stunning work of depth and feeling—it makes me feel lucky to live in an era where we get speculative fiction that does so much work while being extremely readable. This was dark academia before it was TikTok viral. You could almost convince yourself you’re reading about kids coming of age in a boarding school if you couldn’t shake the feeling that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. This book has not stopped philosophically haunting me since I turned the last page—it does some incredible things with the speculative genre.

Another book I’ve read, yay! My mom did not appreciate this as a beach read recommendation during our trip to Aruba, but I was impatient for her to read it so we could discuss. The Underground Railroad marks a rare-for-me moment of reading a much-lauded book while it’s fresh. I was able to participate in the enthusiasm and awe Whitehead’s book generated. This novel, following a woman fleeing enslavement in a reimagined past where the underground railroad is an actual railroad, became an instant classic when it hit shelves eight (eight?!) years ago.

Okay, back to books I haven’t read, and this one’s a doorstopper. The last time I got really absorbed in English history it was while writing an essay on Eleanor of Aquitaine for a high school assignment. Mantel’s masterpiece transports us a few centuries later to wallow in the heady politics of 16th-century England and the court of Henry VIII through the ascendance of ambitious politician Thomas Cromwell. At 614 pages, I can assure you this book will take me an entire year to finish while getting through other books, but it feels worthwhile because few books of such hefty subject matter (and literal heft) have garnered as much broad popularity as Wolf Hall.

Also, nobody asked but I killed it on that Eleanor essay.

This is the first novel on the list that has not been adapted for the screen, although there was talk of a Scorsese adaptation of one book in this series last fall. As you can see from the cover, it won the Pulitzer for Fiction, so need I say more. I will admit that I do have this book on my shelf and I started to read it but struggled to stick with it. I’ve been meaning to try again—I wasn’t even all the way through the first chapter when I put it down. I want to know for myself why this father-son story about abolition, faith, family, and probably a whole lot more that I can glean from the publisher’s description is so enduring.

Nobody can decide which Zadie Smith novel is the best Zadie Smith novel, so I feel comfortable recommending any Smith novel. White Teeth was my introduction to Smith, but every book she produces seems to be met with applause and critical praise. White Teeth follows a sort of odd couple in Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, who come from very different backgrounds. We’re introduced to their families, history, and connection, and we watch sometimes mundane, sometimes unusual challenges coalesce into a moving story. You will almost certainly find complicated characters leading complicated lives and a thought-provoking question at the heart of a Smith novel.

You could similarly argue that any Jesmyn Ward novel is the right pick, but this one, following a woman struggling with drug addiction and visions of her dead brother as she drives across Mississippi with her young children, is the one I saw on most lists, so I’m sticking with it. Ward is a powerhouse who can’t stop won’t stop winning literary awards. She’s among the authors whose books I’d call Important without any irony, especially if we’re talking about books that speak to my country’s (the U.S.) fraught past, present, and future and how all three speak to each other. So many authors chase the dream of writing the next Great American Novel—Ward has accomplished this in multiples.

Rooney holds a special place in the hearts of book influencers. At least, that’s what my Instagram feed has been telling me. I’m wrestling with a hesitation to read this novel about two young adults in Dublin who can’t seem to stray from each other’s orbits. I think my hesitation comes from a place of feeling weary of stories about young love and being a certain age unless said stories are totally out there. I had to have one work of truly popular fiction on the list and couldn’t think of anything more quintessentially That Book, and I know I’ll have to read this book if I want to be truly dialed in. Hey, maybe it’ll surprise me.

I want to watch the series adaptation, but I cannot allow it until I’ve read the book. I don’t want to miss out on the reading experience, and I know I’ll deprioritize it once I see it on screen, even if I become aware of major differences between the adaption and the book. The novel begins with a young girl in Korea whose life and circumstances drastically change when she becomes pregnant with the child of a wealthy married man. I love a generational saga, and I’m bracing myself for big feels and exceptional storytelling.

I do feel like I missed an important moment with this one. I really, really wanted to get to There There when it hit shelves, but I had so much reading on my plate and missed out. This is a story following 12 characters, all Native, on their way to a powwow in Oakland, and so many of my bookish acquaintances LOVED this book. If anything, I can thank this exercise for reminding me of books I need to put back at the top of my TBR.