It’s a tough time to have a brain. At every turn, screens and algorithms beg for our attention, so much so that an entire economy of anti-tech products – we’re looking at you, Brick – now exists to correct our skyrocketing screen times. It should be no surprise then that, after getting hooked on social platforms designed to be addictive, we now find ourselves in a literacy crisis, where influencers like Alix Earle cheerfully admit to having never read a book and nearly 40 per cent of fourth-graders in the US in particular read below the basic level.
Amid this grim backdrop, there’s perhaps never been a better, or more impressive, time than to commit oneself to reading a long book. At least that’s the bet that Marlon James and Min Jin Lee, authors of two of the year’s buzziest novels, seem to have made. James is the author of The Disappearers, a story about eight gay men in Jamaica that’s recently been shortlisted for The Booker Prize. Lee is the author of American Hagwon, an epic family novel exploring the obsession with education in the Korean Diaspora. Both novels surpass the 500-page mark, a fact that, despite my self-identification as a “big reader”, gave me pause. The warm critical reception of these books feels meaningful in a time when reading achievement continues to decline.
And of course, beyond bragging rights, there are more sentimental reasons for reading long novels, too – it’s quite special to stay with the same set of characters for weeks or months at a time, a wonderful experience that all books, but especially very long ones, can give you.
Below are five really long books to sink your teeth into this fall.
THE DISAPPEARERS, MARLON JAMES
Introducing the talk of the town: Marlon James’ The Disappearers. Recently hailed as potentially the novel of the century, the book follows a group of gay men in 1980s Kingston, Jamaica. The men cross paths by signing up to stage a queer play together, but one night, they are all but one brutally beaten for their sexuality, not an unusual occurrence for this place and time, and one man loses his life. What follows is the telling of how each of the survivors attempts to live on after what has happened to them.
AMERICAN HAGWON, MIN JIN LEE
Following the success of Panchinko, National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee is back with another epic about the Korean diaspora. Her recent American Hagwon chronicles the Koh family’s journey from Seoul to Sydney to Southern California, where they eventually settle in hopes of economic stability. The novel illustrates the effects of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and how an unwavering faith in education as a means of upward mobility can prove futile. Wrestling with the limits of ambition, community and the American dream, the novel belongs on the list of any fans of sweeping family sagas.
PUBLIC ACCESS AFTERWORLD, JANE SCHOENBRUN
In 1980s Texas, a weatherman references something called Public Access Afterworld before killing himself on live television. Years later, two teenagers meet to watch TV’s historic analogue-to-digital transition in 2009, and witness strange broadcasts from a network of the same name. Fast-forward to present day, and Bethany Peters, a trans content moderator who spends her days reviewing disturbing videos, notices a streamer begins to call out to Public Access Afterworld, too. Such is the setup of filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s debut novel, one of the most anticipated novels of the year, set to release on October 27. From the mind behind Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Public Access Afterworld is already being heralded as a spellbinding adventure that’s impossible to put down.
EAST OF EDEN, JOHN STEINBECK
What better way to curb brainrot than to challenge yourself to a (recently republished) classic? John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which was adapted into a Netflix series this month, feels like a timely place to start. Set in the farmlands of California, the novel introduces us to the Trasks and the Hamiltons, two families with overlapping fates. The twin Trask boys, Cal and Aaron, are raised alone by their father and serve as a retelling of the Bible’s own most iconic sibling rivalry, Cain and Abel. If you’ve already started the Florence Pugh TV version this fall, then it’s the perfect time to give the source material a go.
THE SONG OF STORK AND DROMEDARY, ANJET DAANJE
When the ultra-private fictional author Eliza May Drayden passes away, her single book takes on a life of its own, setting off hundreds of years of unpacking the Emily Brontë-esque writer and her work. Throughout Anejt Daanje’s The Song of Stork and Dromedary, different generations, with varying degrees of success, attempt to understand the literary figure. The result is an expansive body of work that interrogates the very purpose of storytelling and the complicated nature of one’s legacy.
THE SHARDS, BRET EASTON ELLIS
First released in 2023, Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards also got a second life this year, thanks to a Hulu adaptation by Ryan Murphy. Centred around a group of prep school teens in 1980s Los Angeles, the novel follows a protagonist named Bret as a serial killer dubbed “The Trawler” begins to terrorise the city and, soon enough, his friends. With Ellis’s trademark skill at capturing the young and elite, The Shards thrills at every turn.