My Niche Literature Interests

On the things I look for in books and a few recommendations...

I was mapping all of this out before sitting down to write, and it turns out these themes and preferences I gravitate toward in fiction tend to blur and overlap in really satisfying ways. So let’s lay it out straight: I’m here for structure and character analysis, not really plot. I want the social commentary, not the extended make-out sessions. Give me dialogue or expansive, lingering description over relentless action any day. I want fiction that makes me feel seen, challenged, maybe a little wrecked — and if it manages to be enjoyable, too? Five stars, I guess!

That’s the energy I bring to fiction — both in what I read and what I seek out — and probably why I ended up doing an MA in modernist and contemporary literature. So, in that spirit, here are the core themes and ideas that guide me when I’m scouting for new reads.

Mother–Daughter Relationships

This one stands out the most, because I actively hunt for it. If there’s even a hint of a mother–daughter relationship in a book, I’m there. I find the dynamic endlessly complex and ripe for exploration — intimate, fraught, often painful. It’s a theme that’s not just a reading preference for me, it was dissertation-worthy. I literally wrote a whole thesis on it.

Even though this feels like a very specific niche, it tends to bleed into other relational terrain I’m equally interested in — motherhood in general, quasi-maternal or surrogate bonds, sisterhood, father–daughter dynamics, even intergenerational conflict more broadly. Basically, if it’s familial and emotional, I’m in.

Some perfect examples of books that deliver on this front:

• Frost in May by Antonia White

• The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

• I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait

Philosophical Novels

I don’t mean the obviously philosophical novels — not The Stranger or overt Camus territory (though I respect it). What I’m talking about is fiction that’s steeped in philosophical ideas without advertising it. Books where the themes are abstract — grappling with ethics, language, identity, existence — but woven organically into character, mood, and structure.

These novels often deal with knowledge and power, and there’s usually some epistemic violence running through them — someone not being believed, or knowledge being withheld, or a truth being systemically obscured. I love fiction that makes you sit with these tensions, that lets ideas breathe rather than resolve them neatly.

Often these novels are dystopian in nature.

Some instances include

• Julia Armfield novels

• Severance, Ling Ma