I’m looking for book recommendations, and was hoping somebody could help me. What I’m looking for, specifically, are novels that are about a family or town, or whatever, over the years, like Michener did, or Rutherfurd does, or John Jakes in his “Kent Family Chronicles”. Any suggestions?
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
100 years of Solitude?
I think that’s what you’re looking for.
I, Cladius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves stretch over five generations of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
Little, Big by John Crowley spans several generations of the Drinkwater family, moving from the early 1900s to sometime in the near future.
East Of Eden by Steinbeck.
A Winter’s Night by Valerio Massimo Manfredi starts in an almost feudal village in the north of Italy in the early 20th century and follows a family through to the emergence of modern Italy after the chaos following the 2nd World War.
Heinleins series of books about Lazarus long start in an alternate 1950s and go into the far far future. Lazarus doesn’t die as he is basically the wandering jew in scinfinform but many many other characters do . You go through a lot of generations by the time you get to Friday and to sail into the sunset.
Top of The World by Hans Ruesch, generational story of Eskimo families.
Came in to say 100 Years Of Solitude. Glad a couple people beat me to it.
Similar to Michener and Rutherford? Ken Follett did that with Pillars of the Earth and the follow-up (forgot the title, haven’t read it).
I really liked The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy, and if you like the books, there have been excellent film adaptations.
How about The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough? I don’t remember how many generations were involved, but it was sort of epic.
There’s also Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano – immigrants from Greece and Italy to America.
A Horseman Riding By about the “Edwardian afternoon” and social change after WWI.
Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans “traces the genealogy, history, and psychological development of members of the fictional Hersland and Dehning families.” It’s a million pages long, extraordinarily repetitive, and has been sitting on my bookshelf for years, unread.
But you’ll probably have better luck with a book called 100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The Roselynde Chronicles by Roberta Gellis (Roselynde, Alinor, Joanna, Gilliane, Rhiannon, Sybelle, Desiree), starts in 1189. Although not formally part of the Chronicles *The Sword and the Swan * covers Alinor’s grandfather, Ranulf Sire, during the unrest of King Stephen’s last days. Ms. Gellis’ writing is meticulously researched.
Heinlein also wrote a book called Orphans of the Sky, actually two stories, about a generation ship…that is, a space ship which was intended to have generations of people live on it while it traveled to another star system. There have been other generation ship stories since then, as well.
The Aurora Teagarden mystery series by Charlaine Harris. Not exactly generational but spreads out in a span of ten years, give or take, and has a town full of interesting characters.
I wouldn’t consider the Teagarden mysteries generational in any sense. In most series, the characters do age and change as they have adventures. Janet Evanovitch’s Stephanie Plum series (One for the Money, etc.) is remarkable in that even though the characters have adventures, they don’t seem to age or change much. In just about any other series that I can think of, though, what happens to the characters in the early books will affect how they act and react in later books.
Evan Hunter’s Mothers and Daughters is one of my favorites.
Not quite generations, but A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett covers a family over the course of several decades.