What is Literary Fiction?

Joyce Saricks, a nationally recognized librarian, defines it this way:  "Literary Fiction is critically acclaimed, often award-winning, fiction.  These books are more often character centered rather than plot oriented.  They are provocative and often address more serious issues...these are complex, literate, multilayered novels that wrestle with universal dilemmas."

Literary fiction clearly calls for a substantial amount of effort and it provides more than entertainment.  That's a good thing: think of all the unsatisfying television shows that provide passive entertainment and nothing more.  Literary fiction calls on the reader to engage with the story, often working through layers of meaning, complex characters and moral dilemmas.  That makes it especially suitable for book clubs, whose members can share insights about the book and enjoy the satisfaction that comes from working together to achieve a deeper understanding of the author's intent.

Here are some comments about this type of fiction from professional writers:

Jay McInerney (in a review in the New York Times):  "The difference between literature and its imitations might be defined in any number of ways, but let's be reckless, even elitist, and propose that a literary novel requires new reading skills and teaches them within its pages, while a conventional novel -- whether it is about lawyers or professors or smart single girls -- depends on our ingrained habits of reading and perception, and ultimately confirms them as adequate to our understanding of the world around us."

Andrea Barrett (from an interview with Robert Birnbaum):  "While you are writing a book, while anyone who cares about it is doing it, the world makes sense.  It brings order to our perception, to our feelings.  It shapes and renders aesthetically pleasing that which is normally just chaos. . .   For people who read passionately and read in a participatory way where they really enter in to a contract with the writer, I think they get that too.  When you read creatively you also get that sense of solace and bringing order from chaos and reshaping the world and making the world make sense again."