Here is my list:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon - 2001
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides -2003
The Road by Cormac McCarthy - 2007
Empire Falls by Richard Russo - 2002
The Known World by Edward P. Jones - 2004
March by Geraldine Brooks - 2005
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (I have not read this book)
I could probably switch any of the first three.
hooboy… what a sad day when I realize I have not (yet?) read any of these…
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon - 2001
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides -2003
Didn’t read:
Empire Falls by Richard Russo - 2002
The Known World by Edward P. Jones - 2004
March by Geraldine Brooks - 2005
Tried and couldn’t get into it, which was strange since I like Robinson:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (I have not read this book)
Bad science fiction rendered as a religious allegory; finished only because it was so terrible:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy - 2007
The only one I’ve read is The Known World and I hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated it. This is the only book I’ve read to date that was so convoluted I had to make a flow chart to keep up with the characters, and I read Victorian novels for fun!
The rest of them are all on my list. I expect better, but I don’t hold out much hope. Fiction of that level is currently too involved in Making A Point to pay attention to such things as Having an Interesting Storyline.
Read only Gilead, and loved it, loved it, loved it. Probably my favourite novel ever. It’s epistolary and interior, not a lot of action, and the writing is superb. I read it because of Nick Hornby’s review of it in Housekeeping vs. The Dirt (where he said that if you don’t love it, you have no soul), and as a result, three-quarters of my friends and family got it for Christmas last year.
I usually avoid the prizewinners because I tend to (probably unfairly) assume I son’t like Serious Literary Fiction, and because I work it a bookshop and get tired of the mention of all the big winners.
The only one I’ve read is Kavalier and Clay, but I rank that as one of my very favorite books.
I’d rate them like this:
The Road
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Empire Falls
I’ve heard too many negatives about The Known World and Gilead. Might read Middlesex someday though.
I would suggest The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay it does make a few points, but really it just a fun read. Chabon has written a few things about he thinks all the fun has been taken out literature and it needs to be more thrilling. He has a new book essays coming out that cover this theme.