Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like The Goldfinch
The best books like The Goldfinch are American Pastoral, A Little Life, and The Things They Carried. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is about grief and loss, art and its consolation, belonging and displacement. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- American Pastoral
01
Philip Roth · Literary fiction
American Pastoral opens with a narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, learning at a high school reunion about the life and death of Seymour "the Swede" Levov — a man who embodied postwar American success so completely he seemed almost allegorical.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Little Life
02
Hanya Yanagihara · Literary fiction
A Little Life follows four men from college into middle age and beyond — Willem, an actor; JB, a painter; Malcolm, an architect; and Jude, a lawyer with a past that is revealed in increasingly devastating detail as the novel progresses.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Things They Carried
03
Tim O'Brien · Memoir
Tim O'Brien served as a foot soldier in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
04
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers · Memoir
Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Year of Magical Thinking
05
Joan Didion · Memoir
Joan Didion's account of the year following the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, is the most rigorous and unflinching memoir of grief in American literature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Lincoln in the Bardo
06
George Saunders · Literary fiction
Lincoln in the Bardo takes place over a single night in February 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln visits the crypt where his eleven-year-old son Willie has just been buried.
Both dig into grief and loss.
Read the summary → - Norwegian Wood
07
Haruki Murakami · Literary fiction
Norwegian Wood is Murakami's most straightforwardly realist novel and his most personal — a coming-of-age story set in late 1960s Tokyo, narrated by Toru Watanabe, who is recalling the year he was nineteen and the two women who shaped him.
Both dig into grief and loss.
Read the summary → - The Catcher in the Rye
08
J. D. Salinger · Literary fiction
Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from Pencey Prep — his fourth school — and is not ready to go home and tell his parents.
Both dig into grief and loss.
Read the summary → - The Inheritance of Loss
09
Kiran Desai · Literary fiction
The Inheritance of Loss unfolds in two interweaving strands set in the late 1980s.
Both dig into belonging and displacement.
Read the summary → - The Sound and the Fury
10
William Faulkner · Literary fiction
The Sound and the Fury is widely considered Faulkner's greatest novel, and it is genuinely one of the most formally radical works in American fiction.
Both dig into grief and loss.
Read the summary → - Firefly Lane
11
Kristin Hannah · Contemporary fiction
Tully Hart and Kate Mularkey meet in the summer of 1974 as fourteen-year-olds on Firefly Lane in rural Washington State, and their friendship spans three decades — through high school, college, careers in television journalism, marriages, and heartbreak.
Both dig into grief and loss.
Read the summary → - Happy Place
12
Emily Henry · Romance
Harriet and Wyn were the couple everyone else wanted to be.
Both dig into grief and loss.
Read the summary →
Books like The Goldfinch: quick answers
What are the best books like The Goldfinch?
The best books like The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt are American Pastoral by Philip Roth, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Goldfinch, such as grief and loss, art and its consolation, belonging and displacement.
What should I read after The Goldfinch?
A natural next read after The Goldfinch is American Pastoral by Philip Roth. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.
What books are similar to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt?
The Goldfinch centers on grief and loss, art and its consolation, belonging and displacement. Books with a similar feel include American Pastoral by Philip Roth, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
