Novels, short and sweet

Older novels tend to be shorter (recent writers appear to confuse quantity and quality). A lot of the English Victorian writers wrote short novels: Brontë, Dickens, Gaskill, Elliot, etc. Quite a bit of Modernist writing is concise: Hamsun, Woolf, Faulkner, Lawrence, James, Nabokov, etc. The angry young men, too, wrote while their hackles were up, which apparently didn't last long: Kingsley Amis, Braine, John Wain, etc.

Otherwise, go for the more recent "genre fiction" - pulp, thrillers, sf, crime, horror, and the like. A lot of this stuff is better than that produced by the self-professed "literary" novelists, who haunt the cafés of New York.

"the self-professed "literary" novelists, who haunt the cafés of New York."
They're the ones w/laptops in Starbucks?

The Crypto-Amnesia Club (110 pp!)

Perfect Tense (168 pp)

Only Jerry the Nipper can reveal how short Missing Margate is.

*Are you reading the Rebel Inc editions of the first two books above? I've got about 15 out of the first 20. They seem to be out of print now? *

Yeah, Rebel Inc was how I got into Brautigan, Dodge and John Fante - some great books there. Dunno about them being out of print - certainly some Rebel Inc editions are still available on amazon - but it seems like some (inc Stone Junction) are now published under the banner of RI's parent publisher, Canongate. See http://www.canongate.net/rebel/rip.taf for more...

And I have no idea what I meant by this:
and a play in print, but none of those are currently in print
I don't think the play is in print.

The Pidgeon is still in print in the UK as is the childhood story (which is far more satisfying that the awfulness of Perfume).

Jed OTM re Pornografia. Cosmos isn't that long either.

...is great. Vivid and compact, follows a dreamlike logic, quasi-autobiographical and sensuous.

I have read a lot of Barbara Comyns over the past few years, and each novel's pleasingly brief. I'd recommend "The Vet's Daughter" and "Who Was changed and Who Was Dead" over the more readily available "Our Spoons Came From Woolworths".

There are tons more and I'm having trouble bringing them to mind, but a fe follow: "Gardener To The King" by Frederic Richaud is v slim and v wonderful. "Silk" by Alessandro Baricco is tinier but less marvellous, still pretty good. "Sweetness" by Torgny Lindgren is fab. Also all of the Jean Echenoz I've read is well worth the short time necessary to read it (I've read "I'm Off", "One Year", "Double Jeopardy" and "Piano"). That's not supposed to be as backhanded a compliment as it sounds!

Michel Faber's two novellas "The One Hundred And Ninety Nine Steps" and "The Courage Consort" are his best work, I think.

I haven't read a book over 350 pages for ages. I'm a bit scared of Frank Kogan's tome, for that reason (while looking forward to it vey much, obv).

i wonder whether there might be reason not to call it a novel. i wonder whether someone more knowledgable than me could go through this thread and point out which ones might not 'really' be novels. also whether there are any that are 'lyric novels'.

"East is East" by T. C. Boyle
"Rich in Love" and "Dreams of Sleep" by Josephine Humphreys (but not her new one set in North Carolina, I forget its name)

https://media.tenor.com/Mrd9qXlspW8AAAAC/startrekconspiracy-picardandriker.gif

Oops! Wrong thread. Very wrong thread

Well, it's short...