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In reply to the discussion: Do you have a favorite "obscure" 20th Century novel/novelist? [View all]PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,816 posts)He's been fairly prolific, and doesn't seem well known. His book The Good Wife, which has zero resemblance to or connection with the TV series by the same name, is one of my favorites. It's about a woman whose husband has been robbing houses, and in one robbery things go horribly awry and the homeowner dies. He winds up serving 25 years to life, although it's never clear if he or his partner in robbery was the one who killed the old lady. Meanwhile, the wife remains true to him, despite her family's insistence she divorce him. She also raises their son (she was pregnant when the robbery occurred) alone. It's a powerful book.
Others of his I like include Last Night at the Lobster and Emily Alone.
Another little known book I like is Time on My Hands by Peter Delacorte. A travel writer meets a mysterious man while visiting an obscure museum in Paris. The man says he has a time machine and would like our hero to go back in time and keep Ronald Reagan from becoming President. The book came out in 1997, when many of us agreed that Reagan had been our very worst President ever. I read it back then, and have re-read it several times over the years, and what with W, and now Trump, Reagan just doesn't seem so bad. Our hero decides not to do something so boring as kill Reagan; instead he travels back to 1938 with the intention of getting Reagan a better career. I had thought Delacorte was writing a sequel, but alas none has shown up yet.
Another largely unknown alternate history is Making History by Stephen Fry. By putting a contraceptive into a well in the town where Hitler's parents lived, he's never born. Alas, an even worse person emerges to head the Nazi party and things are worse than ever. Quite good.