I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead right now and, to my surprise, loving it. That’s not usually my experience with Pulitzer winners; more often than not, I either loathe them or theoretically admire them from a polite but happy distance. But this one has its hooks in me, enough that I went back to look at the full list of past winners to see which other winners I’d enjoyed.
What struck me is how few Pulitzer novels I really liked. There are just a handful I still recall the characters and/or would ever want to read again. Of those, my list looks like this:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (my all-time favorite)
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
It made me curious about other readers’ lists. Which Pulitzer winners do you genuinely love?
I’d also love to hear which ones didn’t work for you at all. There’s no shame in admitting a prizewinner left you cold. (I really disliked Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and William Kennedy’s Ironweed.)
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. I loved the book even before it won the Pulitzer
I had to actually look at a list of winners to work out if I’d read any Pulitzer winners at all – I’m not sure it has the same traction in the UK, where we’re more likely to talk about the Booker Prize. But I’ve read 5 Pulitzer winners:
The Age of Innocence (Wharton)
Gone With the Wind (Mitchell)
The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
Foreign Affairs (Lurie)
None are recent winners though!
Demon Copperhead is on my TBR pile, as is All the Light We Cannot See. I should move them up. As for the rest of the list…
March by Geraldine Brooks was good and I’ve loved every book of hers that I’ve read, but I thought The March by E.L. Doctorow was better (they came out about the same time and both take place during the Civil War).
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon was a great read. As was A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is in a class by itself.
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara was one of the best books I’ve ever read. It looks at the Battle of Gettysburg from multiple points of view and really gives you an understanding of what went on and the personalities involved.
I’ve read a few Booker Prize winners too, but the only one I can remember off the top of my head was Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver may not have won the Pulitzer, but in my opinion it is her masterpiece.
I SO agree.
Agreed. That book is her best. With Demon Copperhead, it’s kind of like when you give a movie star an Oscar for just so-so work because they were robbed in a previous year.
That’s interesting. I’m at the 50% mark so I’ll reserve judgement until I’m done.
That’s kind of how I felt about March by Geraldine Brooks. Year of Wonders and People of the Book were magical reads. March was ok but not near as riveting. It is an interesting sidebar to Little Women by Alcott so there is that.
When my daughter was assigned to read The Poisonwood Bible for a college class, I thought I’d read it along with her. I started, and put it down, THREE times. I just could not get into it. I realize that makes me an exception to the many who loved it. Flight Behavior, on the other hand, was magical. I just loved it and don’t understand why more people haven’t “discovered” it.
It did take a little time to get into The Poisonwood Bible, but it picked up considerably towards to middle. Understand though, different tastes, etc. I stopped reading Moby Dick right in the middle of the book when I couldn’t get into it (the chapter on the different types of whales did it). Sometimes life is too short and there are so many other books out there.
Totally agree!
Does anyone actually like Moby Dick though?
That’s so interesting. I get shivers just thinking about it.
Moby Dick is, now, a bit like Joyce’s Ulysses. Everyone talks about it but no one has actually read it.
In the last few years I’ve read:
James – LOVED it (even though I am not a big fan of Huckleberry Finn)
Demon Copperhead – didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. I thought it was just too much trauma
The Goldfinch – I loved that book so much. I think it’s my favorite Pulitzer Prize winner
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – I liked it fine, but didn’t love it
I am a big fan of Huckleberry Finn so, thus far, am somewhat uninterested in James. I’m at the 40% of Demon Copperhead and thus far the trauma isn’t making me quit. The Goldfinch is perhaps the funnest Pulitzer I’ve ever read. A Confederacy of Dunces is also funny but much darker. Felt the same way you do about TBWLoOW.
I love the Goldfinch as well. Didn’t realize it won.
I agree, James is the best book I read this year and the only book everyone in my very diverse book club loved.
What did you love about it? (I’m looking to be convinced!)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon
Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
To Kill a Mockingbird
Emperor of All Maladies
Into Thin Air
The Sixth Extinction
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years
But I really like non-fiction, and so most of the books in that category tend to be decent.
The Wilkerson has been on my TBR for a while (I’m not a big non-fiction reader.) It’s one of my brother’s favorite books.
I found it quite life-affirming, and the deep affection she holds for these peoples shines through. i didn’t like her other book, Caste, nearly as much.
Some I liked but haven’t seen mentioned yet:
The Magnificent Ambersons (Tarkington) — a forgotten classic in my opinion
Angle of Repose (Stegner)
Lonesome Dove (McMurtry)
And for 2009, although I liked Olive Kitteridge by Strout, I liked Plague of Doves by Erdrich more.
In general non-fiction Dillard’s contemplative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is beautiful.
Lonesome Dove
The Killer Angels
To Kill a Mockingbirs
The only one I’ve read is ‘The Good Earth’ by Pearl S. Buck. I think the book did a good job conveying as much historical accuracy as possible, but let’s just say I’m in the ‘admire from afar’ camp. From the synopsis of the winners, the Pulitzer committee tended to pick grim stories – I’m convinced they’re in cahoots with Oprah’s book club. Yeah, no.
Edited to add: I did try to read ‘All the lights we can not see’ as part of a book club reading. I couldn’t finish it.
Less by Andrew Sean Grer, is one I haven’t seen mentioned here yet. It’s a M/M love story (2017). Less wants to get away after he gets an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding. He decides to attend literary events around the world that he has been invited to (he’s a writer) He travels to Paris, Morocco, Berlin, India and more and then runs into someone who is very special to him when he least expects it. I especially enjoyed the humor and thought this was a lovely story.
It sounds very un-Pulitzery!
I loved A Visit From the Goon Squad, The Sympathizer, Beloved, and The Road
To be completely honest, if a book has won a literary award, I avoid it like the plague. Life is too short and there are too many happy books for me to spend time on depressing ones. I don’t get any kind of catharsis from reading about sadness and pain. Even in the romance genre, if reviews say “this book torn out my heart and put it back together again” that’s a hard pass.
Hah – I often have a similar reaction, although not because they’re angsty; I like angsty books! But I will generally only read a prize-winner if I actually wanted to read it before it won anything.
It makes me crazy that since the 1950’s, we’ve let cultural critics convince us that the only critically valuable stories are those that show the worst of us.
If you’re on the fence about Demon Copperhead, you should read it in audio. The narration elevates it to a whole other level. That said, there were a couple of times I had to walk away from it for a few days because the trauma was too much.
I am halfway through and lagging. I do want to finish it but it is a stressful read.
I was surprised how few of them I recognized, going over the list. Of the three I’ve read, the old man and the sea is excellent and enjoyable, to kill a mockingbird is excellent and enjoyable, beloved is excellent but I did not really enjoy it.
Beloved is actually one of my least favorite Morrison books. I love Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Tar Baby but not Beloved.
Apart from To Kill a Mockingbird, which I slogged through at high school (mysteries and spy thrillers being more to my taste at the time) the only one I’ve read is The Shipping News. I loved the spiky prose and the sheer unexpectedness of just about everything in it.