In my continuing series of posts about various categories of novels that I review on this blog, I’m turning to Family Sagas. In the Family Saga category are novels focused on the lives of characters who are related to each other and who interact over a long period of time. Family Sagas also fall into my category of Historical Novels, since they span multiple generations. They tend to be lengthy novels, suitable for reading on a long weekend or a vacation trip.

Here are four Family Sagas, published between 2016 and 2019, that I especially loved. Click on the title to go to a full review.

Barkskins     Annie Proulx     (2016)  An expansive account of two French Canadian families and their relationship to the forests of North America over three centuries. Love all those trees!

Pachinko     Min Jin Lee     (2017)  A sweeping saga about the struggles of Korean immigrant families in Japan throughout the twentieth century.

Peculiar Ground     Lucy Hughes-Hallett     (2018)  A densely layered novel set on a fictional Oxfordshire estate in 1663, 1961, 1973, and 1989. Features walls—border walls, the Berlin Wall, walls of inclusion, walls of exclusion, and many others. 

The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna     Juliet Grames     (2019)   A boisterous Italian family’s 20th-century immigration saga, starring the women.  

And here is my brand-new review of a very recent Family Saga:

The Covenant of Water     Abraham Verghese     (2023) Take a deep breath and plunge into this sprawling, 715-page family saga. Don’t be daunted by the huge cast of characters and by the many words in the Malayalam language of southwest India. The river-rich, fertile Malabar coast is the glorious backdrop for the story of a girl who, in the year 1900, marries into a farming family in which, for centuries, someone has died from drowning every generation. The novelist is a physician who slowly uncovers the mystery of these drownings. He also weaves in numerous other medical matters by including among the characters a Scottish surgeon employed by the Indian Medical Service and a Swedish surgeon who oversees a colony of lepers. The narrative occasionally sags under its own weight, and under the weight of tragedies, but there’s also plenty of joy and love as the years roll on to 1977.