Needed: Title & author of your favorite family saga. I have an idea for a family

[Nay]

saga, but I'm procrastinating in the outlining/writing of it because I'm not sure what approach I should take. I'd like to read some family sagas (I've read a good number) that you all have enjoyed and consider to be good examples of the genre. There are so many books out there that I know I've missed some good ones.

Thank you!

[mvccd1000]

1. Define "family saga?"

Are you talking about a series, or a single big book like Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth," which covers at least three generations of a family? (And that's the only family book I can think of off the top of my head, so there's my contribution.)

[Nay]

3. Sorry, it is a broad category -- but yes, "Pillars of the Earth" would be a good example. I loved

that book and was quite caught up in it.

I am even interested in family sagas that are classified first as science fiction, if there are any of those.

I had not considered any series books, although the "Outlander" series could certainly be considered a family saga spiced with a time-traveling mother! That set, to me, is partly a family saga, for sure. But I am more interested in one-book examples.

Thank you!

[Curmudgeoness]

2. I have only read a few family sagas that I enjoyed.

One was "A Woman of Substance" by Barbara Taylor Bradford. The other was "Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann.

What is funny about most family sagas is that I love the original character, the one who is from the older generation, the one who has to fight and scratch their way up. They are hard-working and are people to look up to. But as the books progress to the younger generation who have always had it all handed to them, I usually find that I can't stand them....they are shallow and greedy and have no redeeming qualities.

I would not have considered "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett (mentioned previously) as a family saga, but I do suppose that it is...and it is a magnificent book. One of my top five books I have ever read....and it doesn't have that problem with the younger generations that I usually find.

[Nay]

4. It's been years since I read "A Woman of Substance," but I remember truly enjoying it. It fits

very neatly into the family saga category as I envisioned it in my OP, and is the sort of book I'm looking for. I think I'll reread it, and more of Bradford's books, since it's been a while. I agree that most family sagas trash the younger generations as spoiled brats and the original character is the most interesting person.

A scary thought: Are family sagas out of style now? Are there no very recently written ones? Are they not considered the classic 'beach book' anymore?

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. I never considered family sagas to be "beach books"

since they are usually substantial....and I take quicker to read and lighter books to the beach. But I don't think that they are out of fashion as much as they are just not attempted much by writers. I personally would love to see a good family saga book.

I'm going to throw this out just for the fun of it, since you say you already have an idea. I would like to see a family saga where I love the original character. I want them to be admirable. I think that the younger generation can be spoiled brats. But at the end, since I would not like the brats, I want to see them come to ruin. (This is how Buddenbrooks goes.) I like when people get their just desserts at the end of a book (good or bad). I also find that I like when I learn something about a time in history from what happens in a novel.

[Mz Pip]

6. Forsyte Saga

by John Galsworthy is probably my all time favorite. The entire saga is 6 books covering the period 1879 - 1930, with another one of short stories that tell the stories of some of the elderly characters. There are another 3 that are about some cousins that are only mentioned briefly in the original books.

I started the Cazelet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard. It's 4 books total. I haven't finished them. The first one, The Light Years is pretty good. It is also set in England. It begins in 1937.

[Little Star]

7. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg...

I just wish there were more books about this family saga. One was not enough!

[Nay]

8. That was excellent, all right. The movie came out good, too.

[Rowdyboy]

9. One of my favorite from years ago was "The Whiteoaks of Jalna" by Mazo dela Roche

Set on Lake Ontario it chronicles the Whiteoak family for approximately 100 years IIRC. Made into a miniseries some years ago but I never saw that sadly.

Here's a bit.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazo_de_la_Roche

Her books became best-sellers and she wrote 16 novels in the series known as the Jalna series or the Whiteoak Chronicles. The series tells the story of one hundred years of the Whiteoak family covering from 1854 to 1954. The novels were not written in sequential order, however, and each can be read as an independent story.

It is interesting to note the similarities and differences in the experiences of the Whiteoak family and de la Roche's. While the lives and successes of the Whiteoaks rise and fall, there remained for them the steadiness of the family manor, known as Jalna. De la Roche's family endured the illness of her mother, the perpetual job searches of her father, and the adoption of her orphaned cousin while being moved 17 times. Her family did work a farm for a few years for a wealthy man who owned the farm for a hobby. Several critics believe that Finch Whiteoak who majors in Finch's Fortune (1932) is a reflection of de la Roche herself. He was a somewhat tortured concert pianist with overtones of gayness.[3] The names of many of the characters were taken from gravestones in a Newmarket, Ontario cemetery.

The Jalna series has sold more than eleven million copies in 193 English and 92 foreign editions. In 1935, the film Jalna, based on the novel, was released by RKO Radio Pictures and, in 1972, a CBC television series was produced based on the series.

[SheilaT]

10. Take a look at the Town House series by Norah Lofts.

The Town House, The House at Old Vine, and The House at Sunset. It's a bit of a different take on the family saga idea, in that it's actually the story of a house over a period of about 900 years. Three books in all. Each one contains several different stories in it. What I love so much about the way Norah Lofts constructed it, was that each section is narrated by someone, and sometimes, you get one person telling his or her story about what happened when young, and then the next one is told from the point of view of someone who only knew that first person as an old man or woman, and so you get two very, very different versions of things.

Norah Lofts is simply one of my all time favorite novelists. There's also a two-part one that is likewise not exactly a standard kind of family saga, but excellent. Those books are titled Gad's Hall and The Haunting of Gad's Hall. Twentieth century people buy a lovely old home somewhere in England, and get the sense that it's haunted. Then the story flips back over a hundred years to the 1840's. the people that lived in the house then, and what happened to them. At the end, the story comes back to the present. Very, very good.

She also wrote a novel about the Donner Party, which I think was just about her very first novel.

My current copies of the above two series are old enough that they are getting ready to fall apart. I should go on line and see if I can get better copies.

I was quite sorry when she died, because she'd been writing a book a year (and I kind of think she may have published under other names) and it was a loss to not have anything new from her.

[TuxedoKat]

16. These sound really interesting

I read some of her books years ago and enjoyed them. I don't know why I stopped reading her. Too many other things to read I guess. Thanks for posting these as these sound like books I would really enjoy.

[raccoon]

11. R.F. Delderfield wrote several good ones. nt

[raccoon]

12. Gwen Bristow: Deep Summer, The Handsome Road, This Side of Glory ( a trilogy).

You may have to get these on interlibrary loan. They were published some decades ago.

[SheilaT]

18. Oh, yes. I'd temporarily forgotten about those.

What I like best about them is that they were written long enough ago that the author was enough closer in time that she probably spoke to any number of people who were around not long after the Civil War. There's an authenticity that rings through those books, the kind that I think comes from personal experience. Or, more likely, reports of personal experience.

[Nay]

13. Thanks so much, everyone! I have gotten some excellent suggestions for books I've never even

heard of, so I'm going to be busy reading for a while!

[dmallind]

14. The first great modern one is a worthy exemplar - Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. nt

[TuxedoKat]

15. Here are a few

Susan Howatch wrote some. The first one I read of hers was Penmarric when I was a teen. It was very good and I was amazed at some of the things she wrote about back then that I hadn't read in any other book. A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich, wow I'm going way back, I read that one when I was a child. It's about pioneers in NE. It's a quick read, a lovely little book, and one I've reread several times. Francis Parkinson Keyes wrote some too, although I can't remember the title of the one I read. Have you read any of these authors? What are some of your favorites? There are probably some more, but these are the first that come to mind. If I think of some other good ones I will post them too.

[Nay]

17. Yes, I remember reading a number of Howatch's books and liking them -- I'll have to reread

some. I've read Keyes but it's been ages. Never heard of Aldrich -- thanks for the new name!