10 novels about families

The families in these novels are often short of money, patience or luck, and the books watch closely what people do for each other when that happens. In «Τα τρία φώτα», a girl sent away for a summer learns what steady care looks like, and in The Road a father and son push a shopping cart south through a burned country because stopping is not an option. You might want them for the plain, exact sentences and the sense that ordinary rooms and long walks can hold the whole weight of a life.

1.Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka, 1915

A salesman wakes as a vermin and his family slowly reorganises around the problem of keeping him. Read it for the flat, exact prose and the horror of ordinary rooms.

Was he an animal if music could captivate him so? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the unknown nourishment he had been yearning for. He was determined to make his way forward to his sister and tug at her skirt to show her she might come into his room with her violin, as no-one appreciated her playing here as much as he would.
2.East of Eden

John Steinbeck, 1952

Two generations of a California family, a retelling of Cain and Abel, and one Hebrew word that means 'thou mayest.'
3.Τρελαντώνης

Πηνελόπη Δέλτα, 1932

A lively summer among siblings, where small rebellions, shifting alliances and huge adventures fill the everyday.
4.Τα τρία φώτα

Claire Keegan, 2010

A young girl spends a summer away from home and discovers how much care can change the shape of a life.
5.The Outsiders

S. E. Hinton, 1967

A fourteen-year-old greaser narrates a Tulsa summer of class war, brotherhood, and the books and movies that make him feel like an outsider everywhere.
6.The Road

Cormac McCarthy, 2006

A father and son walk south through a burned America with a shopping cart, a pistol and the rule to keep going.
7.The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880

A father is murdered and his sons—sensual, intellectual, spiritual—argue over guilt, God, and whether anyone can love another person.
8.November 9

Colleen Hoover, 2015

A scarred former teen actress and a stranger who poses as her boyfriend make a pact to meet every year on the same date.

I was one of the fastest up-and-coming teen actresses just two years ago, and the moment the fire burned away my looks, the studio pulled my contract. I think he mourns the idea that he’s not the father of an actress more than he mourns almost losing his daughter to a fire that was caused by his carelessness.

Excerpt from November 9, Colleen Hoover 2015. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
9.The Godfather

Mario Puzo, 1969

A family saga about favors, loyalty and the cost of being owed—still the blueprint for every crime epic.
10.The Great Alone

Kristin Hannah, 2018

A girl, her fragile mother and a Vietnam-scarred father inherit forty acres of Alaska — a story about how far love will drive a family.