Not every great book needs an elaborate plot. Slice-of-life literature finds significance in experiences that might otherwise seem ordinary. Sometimes, simply watching people work, eat, fall in love, grieve, make mistakes, talk to friends, or quietly wonder whether they’ve made the right choices can be every bit as compelling as a grand adventure.
Needless to say, this approach is more difficult to pull off, requiring a greater focus on character development and compelling prose. Yet a few writers have more than succeeded, turning seemingly mundane storylines into literary masterpieces. Here are a few of the best of them, ranked.
10
‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ (1999)
“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.” Adolescence can feel simultaneously completely ordinary and overwhelmingly important. Stephen Chbosky captures that contradiction beautifully in both the Perks of Being a Wallflower book and movie (which he also directed). It’s a coming-of-age story composed of letters written by Charlie, a shy high-school freshman trying to navigate friendship, romance, family, mental health, and the complicated process of becoming more actively involved in his own life. His circumstances aren’t fantastical, but to Charlie, every party, conversation, crush, and song can carry enormous emotional weight.
Chbosky observes these seemingly small experiences with nuance and warmth. Charlie goes to football games, participates in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, reads books, makes mixtapes, spends time with Patrick and Sam, and tries to understand the unwritten social rules operating around him. Ultimately, the book prioritizes character growth and everyday moments over a grand, plot-driven climax.
9
‘Stoner’ (1965)
“William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen.” The entire premise of Stoner could almost be summarized as “a man lives his life.” William Stoner grows up on a Missouri farm, attends university, discovers a love of literature, becomes an academic, marries, has a daughter, experiences professional conflicts, falls in love with another woman, grows older, and eventually dies. There are no extraordinary adventures waiting for him and no secret destiny to fulfill, yet the book still hits hard emotionally.
Stoner’s marriage becomes painfully unhappy, his relationship with his daughter is damaged, university politics make his professional life unnecessarily difficult, and one of his few genuinely fulfilling relationships cannot last. None of these events would make newspaper headlines. To the person experiencing them, however, they are the big things. Not for nothing, this book influenced later writers like Ian McEwan and Bret Easton Ellis.
8
‘Kitchen’ (1988)
“The place I like best in this world is the kitchen.” Grief can make ordinary places feel enormously important. In Banana Yoshimoto‘s Kitchen, Mikage Sakurai finds comfort in kitchens after the death of her grandmother leaves her effectively alone. The protagonist eventually moves in with her friend Yuichi Tanabe and his transgender mother, Eriko, forming an unconventional new household while attempting to rebuild her life.
However, rather than constructing an elaborate plot around Mikage’s loss, Yoshimoto concentrates on the rhythms through which people continue living after something fundamental has disappeared. Food becomes particularly important here. Mikage cooks, eats, studies culinary arts, and sleeps beside refrigerators, finding security in flavor and routine. These seemingly mundane activities become ways to heal. In this regard, the book is deeply rooted in the traditional Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware, wistful awareness of the impermanence of all things.
7
‘Convenience Store Woman’ (2016)
“A convenience store is a world of sound.” Most people probably wouldn’t consider working at a convenience store a calling. Keiko Furukura does. She’s a 36-year-old woman who has spent 18 years working part-time at a Smile Mart in Tokyo. Keiko has never felt particularly comfortable with society’s expectations, but the convenience store provides something wonderfully understandable. Every action has a purpose, employees have scripts to follow, products belong in specific places, and the sounds of the store tell her exactly what needs to happen next.
Put simply, the store gives Keiko a coherent role in an unstable world. The novel finds both comedy and genuine fascination in the routines of this environment. It helps that the main character is so perceptive. Through the glass windows of the Smile Mart, Keiko observes the changing seasons, the shifting habits of Tokyo workers, and the hidden details of the customers’ lives.
6
‘The Remains of the Day’ (1989)
“It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.” This was one of the early gems by Kazuo Ishiguro. In it, Stevens, an aging English butler, takes a trip through the countryside to visit former housekeeper Miss Kenton. Along the way, he remembers his decades of service at Darlington Hall, reflecting on his employer, his profession, his relationship with Miss Kenton, and his own commitment to the ideal of “dignity.”
Gradually, however, those polite recollections reveal the enormous emotional consequences of a life spent suppressing almost everything personal. Stevens is a perfect slice-of-life protagonist because routine is effectively his worldview. Likewise, the heart of the book is found in quiet interactions: brief conversations in hallways, shared evening cocoa, and years of wordless glances between Stevens and Miss Kenton. It’s in such moments that life can pass us by.
5
‘Gilead’ (2004)
“I told you last night that I might be gone sometime.” In 1956, Reverend John Ames learns that his heart is failing and begins recording his thoughts for his seven-year-old son. What emerges isn’t a conventional autobiography but something more intimate and wandering: memories, family history, theological reflections, observations about everyday life, and thoughts Ames hopes might someday allow his child to know the father he lost. The writing is unhurried, often stream-of-consciousness.
This is a book that very much believes in the power of paying attention to the world. Ames watches sunlight and observes his wife and son. He considers his own frailty and thinks back to experiences with his father and grandfather. The protagonist’s faith informs practically everything he sees, but Gilead is less interested in preaching than in how sustained attention can make ordinary existence appear extraordinary. The novel was widely acclaimed, taking home several awards and making plenty of ‘greatest novels’ lists.
4
‘My Struggle’ (2009)
“For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can.” Beginning with My Struggle: Book One, Karl Ove Knausgård‘s six-volume autobiographical novel series examines his own existence with a remarkable degree of attention, not to mention honesty. The first book’s center of gravity is the author’s difficult relationship with his alcoholic father and the aftermath of his death, but there are also countless seemingly mundane scenes and internal reflections.
This is epic hyper-realism, devoting extended sections to buying groceries, making coffee, changing diapers, writing, smoking cigarettes, cleaning houses, attending children’s parties. However, there’s real depth to the book, and Knausgård is not afraid to delve into ugly emotions and the kinds of flaws most people keep permanently out of sight. The result is one of the 21st century’s greatest self-portraits: messy, obsessive, sometimes mundane, frequently brilliant, and strangely hypnotic.
3
‘Olive Kitteridge’ (2008)
“Olive Kitteridge hated mornings.” This book won the Pulitzer, and rightly so. It’s a nuanced, thoughtful collection of 13 interconnected stories set around Crosby, Maine, with retired schoolteacher Olive Kitteridge sometimes taking center stage and sometimes appearing only briefly at the edges of somebody else’s life. Marriages strain, children disappoint their parents, loneliness settles into homes, people fall in love, people contemplate death, and countless private dramas unfold behind a quiet community’s closed doors.
All of the characters are three-dimensional and believable, and author Elizabeth Strout treats them all with empathy. Rather than condemning them and dividing them into neat boundaries, she understands that life is difficult and complicated. Likewise, the storylines feel organic, flowing naturally, never shoehorned into conventional narrative structures. There are no big resolutions here; only acceptance and the messiness of moving forward even in the absence of clear answers.
2
‘Middlemarch’ (1871)
“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.” Set in a 19th-century English town, this classic moves among a vast ensemble of characters, looking at marriages, careers, money, politics, medicine, religion, social status, disappointed ambitions, and the countless ways individual choices ripple through a community. Major figures include the idealistic Dorothea Brooke, the ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate, and the bitter scholar Edward Casaubon.
There is no single enormous event holding Middlemarch together because the town itself is the story. Indeed, writer George Eliot treats a bad marriage or financial embarrassment with the seriousness another novelist might reserve for the fall of an empire. It’s an ambitious gambit that she pulls off with style. Nowadays, Middlemarch is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of all time, and it’s frequently studied in literature courses the world over.
1
‘Ulysses’ (1922)
“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” One day. One city. A handful of people. From those ingredients, James Joyce created Ulysses, one of the most formally ambitious novels ever written. Almost the entire book takes place in Dublin on June 16, 1904, primarily following Leopold Bloom through an ordinary day whose humdrum events loosely parallel the enormous mythological journey of Homer’s Odyssey. That contrast is fundamental to the novel.
Odysseus confronts monsters and gods; Bloom attends a funeral, eats lunch, walks through Dublin, visits a pub, and worries about his wife Molly’s affair. Stylistically, Joyce pioneered several narrative techniques to capture the way the human mind experiences daily reality. Through Bloom, we experience the chaotic, drifting nature of thought, rendered in striking, stream-of-consciousness prose.