You can’t judge a book by its cover – or, it turns out, by its length. A pocket-sized paperback might feel light in your hands, but it can weigh on your mind for days and days. Here are twenty short books with a big impact.
The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
128 pages
It’s hard to separate the content and themes of The Old Man And The Sea from Hemingway’s own life and state of mind at the time. His previous novel had been savaged in reviews, his wife wasn’t speaking to him (because he’d fallen in love with his “muse”) and he was drinking his life away in Cuba. Feeling old and dejected and cursed, but holding onto hope for a silver bullet solution, pretty much sums it up – both Hemingway’s final years, and the book he wrote during them. Read my full review of The Old Man And The Sea here.
Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
107 pages
Of Mice And Men is a very short novel, but it’s brutal and terribly sad. It’s masterfully written but it’s far from enjoyable or lighthearted. It explores a lot of the same timeless themes as Steinbeck’s other work (like The Grapes Of Wrath) – class struggle, bonds, sacrifice, race, gender, loneliness – but does so in a much more compact way, and is all the more impactful for it. One of the characters sums it up well when he says: “A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got anybody. Don’t make any difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you.” Read my full review of Of Mice And Men here.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
272 pages
Fans of Susanna Clarke’s first novel, Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell, might have been disappointed upon the release of Piranesi to realise it was relatively meager in size. I hope they picked it up anyway, because although it’s no sweeping epic, it’s still a deeply philosophical novel set in a richly drawn world with remarkable insight. I challenge anyone to read this book and not find themselves captivated and deeply moved. Read my full review of Piranesi here.
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
163 pages
Convenience Store Woman might appear at first glance to be a short odd-couple rom-com, but nothing could be further from the truth. This short novel with a big impact is very satirical, almost dystopian, in tone – wry, matter of fact, and mournful, all at once. It’s a class commentary, in the sense that it looks at social problems caused by class and gender inequity in Japan. The story moves very fast, which is part of its appeal, and you’ll find yourself yearning to spend more in Keiko’s unusual mind. Read my full review of Convenience Store Woman here.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
96 pages
The Little Prince is a short but impactful novel for readers of all ages because it employs the logic of children, and celebrates their imaginative capacity, without getting bogged down in making things “realistic” for the grown-ups. It’s moving in a way that’s rare to find in children’s literature. Don’t go into it if you’re looking for something twee and lighthearted. Every copy, in all the languages across the world, should probably be sold with a big box of tissues. Read my full review of The Little Prince here.
An Artist Of The Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
206 pages
The title of An Artist Of The Floating World is taken from a literal translation of the Japanese word Ukiyo-e, referring to the art of printmaking, “an artist living in a changing world”. This refers to the narrator, Masuji Ono, an ageing painter who has lived through the seismic shifts of a world war and his struggle to accept responsibility for his past actions in post-war Japan. It’s one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s lesser-known novels, but undoubtedly one of his most impactful. Read my full review of An Artist Of The Floating World here.
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
208 pages
“Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.” It’s one heck of an opening line, and promises a fascinating story to come. The Vegetarian is “a beautiful, unsettling novel in three acts about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul”. It’s a short and compelling read, but also (at times) a horrifying one. Read my full review of The Vegetarian here.
Picnic At Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
224 pages
Picnic At Hanging Rock is “a masterpiece of intrigue”, and a classic of Australian literature. It has beguiled and fascinated readers for a century, transporting them to the heat of a rural Australian summer and simultaneously chilling them with its gothic horror. Inspiring countless adaptations and re-tellings, it’s one of the most impactful books in the Australian canon – not bad for seventeen short chapters.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
226 pages
The Bluest Eye is an iconic short novel about beauty, violent jealousy, and the source of racial self-loathing, first published in 1970. It can be read in a single sitting if you’ve got the peace and quiet you’ll need to really focus on it. You’ll need the brain space to think about it for days, too, as it’s become foundational text about the impact of Euro-centric beauty standards and internalised loathing for young Black girls. Read my full review of The Bluest Eye here.
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
224 pages
I’m really not sure how I feel about child abuse being used as a “big twist” in a novel, but… for all its problems, I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards. Charlie’s story really got under my skin. Of course, this should serve as a huge stinky trigger warning, but for those of us who can stomach it, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is a short book but it’s a book that will stay with you, whether you like it or not. Read my full review of The Perks Of Being A Wallflower here.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
219 pages
Zora Neale Hurston’s short novel Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a classic of the Harlem Renaissance. It was written in just seven weeks(!), though you wouldn’t know it from the clever, insightful prose and rich characters and plot. It’s a story about a woman’s search for respect, disguised as a woman’s search for love. Read my full review of Their Eyes Were Watching God here.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
176 pages
Wide Sargasso Sea is “a masterpiece of modern fiction”, a prequel of sorts to Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre. It depicts the perspective of Brontë’s ‘madwoman in the attic’, Mr Rochester’s first wife (and primary obstacle to his romance with Jane). It turns out, there’s much more to her than madness and alcoholism, and Rhys manages to convey a rich history in relatively few pages.
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
188 pages
A Single Man is a short novel that tells the story of – you guessed it – a single man, George. He’s a middle-aged professor at a Los Angeles university, still grieving the recent loss of his partner, Jim. He is, in effect, a closeted widower, unable to express the extent of his loss in a society that never accepted his love to begin with. Darkly funny and surprisingly insightful, this novel’s length belies the depths that it contains. Read my full review of A Single Man here.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
244 pages
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s only novel, published just weeks before her suicide – and that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the tone of this short book. Readers widely regard it as a roman à clef, because the main character’s descent into mental illness so closely mirrors Plath’s own struggles. It touches on many major themes and issues, but not in a way that feels Loftily Literary(TM) – it all just emerges naturally from the story. Read my full review of The Bell Jar here.
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
192 pages
Before it was an Angelina Jolie movie, Girl, Interrupted was a short memoir with a big impact. Susanna Kaysen was brave enough to commit to the page her experiences in the ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital. Between vivid portraits of her fellow patients and the professionals charged with safeguarding their well-being, she evokes the “parallel universe” found behind the hospital’s locked doors.
Amongst Women by John McGahern
192 pages
Amongst Women is a slim and unassuming novel, but it’s also the best-known work of Irish author John McGahern. It is widely considered to be his masterpiece, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in the year of its release (1990). In it, he depicts the story of a traumatised veteran abusing and manipulating his whole family until the day he died – a heart-breakingly familiar and relatable narrative. Read my full review of Amongst Women here.
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
224 pages
From the pen of poet and memoirist Patricia Lockwood comes No One Is Talking About This, a short novel that created a big buzz. Her poetic prowess is on full display in this story, told in fragments, of a life lived online. She combines the surreal and the tangible, with hauntingly beautiful similes, that reflect how our digital and lived realities merge. Read my full review of No One Is Talking About This here.
Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
223 pages
Tender Is The Flesh is a short novel with an eerily pertinent premise: a virus has ripped through the entire animal population, wild and domestic, making all meat entirely poisonous to humans. Companies and governments conspire to legalise and legitimise the breeding and consumption of humans for food. Yes, it’s a book about cannibalism, and you might get a few funny looks reading it in public. Read my full review of Tender Is The Flesh here.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
224 pages
Colson Whitehead has a unique talent for making the horrific feel compelling. In The Nickel Boys, he turns this talent to a Jim Crow-era segregated reform school, one that the Pulitzer Prize judges called “ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption” when they awarded him the 2020 Prize for Fiction (his second win, making him only the fourth writer to get the gong twice). Read my full review of The Nickel Boys here.
Carrie by Stephen King
208 pages
You can’t deny the big impact of a short novel when it becomes so pervasive and widely read that it’s almost a cultural shorthand for a lived experience. That’s what Stephen King achieved with Carrie, his short horror novel about an abused young woman who discovers she has telekinetic powers and uses them to exact her revenge. Not a bad outcome for a book that the author’s wife rescued from the waste-paper basket!
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