10 Great Novels You Can Read in One Sitting

Maybe it’s because our collective attention span is dwindling. Or maybe it’s because of the shorter journey to that hit of dopamine and the luxurious sigh that comes with reading the words: The End. Either way, there’s something immensely satisfying about starting and finishing a great novel in one sitting.

If you’re looking for your next short read, here are 10 of our favourite books you can devour in a day.

1.   Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Hailed as the modern master of the short novel, Claire Keegan takes us back to 1980s rural Ireland in this short novel. Following coal and timber merchant Bill Furlong in the weeks before Christmas, Small Things Like These explores the ripple effects of complicit silence in a small town community controlled by the Church. It’s a story about family, self, loyalty and quiet rebellion.

2.   My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

In Strout’s shortest novel, we meet Lucy Barton who is recovering from an operation in a New York City hospital when she is visited by her long-estranged mother. During the course of the book, Lucy is forced to confront the difficult childhood she’d tried to forget and unpick the person she is today and the life she has created for herself. My Name Is Lucy Barton is a compelling story of mothers and daughters and how the past, for better or worse, shapes the people we become.

3.   Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

In Murata’s quirky and endlessly charming novel, we meet Keiko, a 36-year-old woman in Japan who has never had a boyfriend and has been working in the same supermarket for almost 20 years. According to her family, friends and wider society, she is living an unconventional life. A life that people don’t understand, a life that makes people a little uncomfortable. Convenience Store Woman is ‘a feminist rallying cry and a must-read oddball comedy’ about subverting expectations and choosing happiness on your own terms.

4.   Animal Farm by George Orwell

First published in 1945, Orwell’s Animal Farm is one of the most famous examples of a small but mighty book. The story centres on a farm overthrown by its abused and overworked livestock. In this satirical fable, the animals set out to create a new world, a utopia of equality and fierce justice. With historical and modern-day parallels to revolution under tyranny, this book is a political masterpiece, a gruesome fairy tale for adults, that still holds weight and relevance today.

5.   Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021, Open Water is a tender story of love and what happens to love in the face of fear, racism and violence. It follows two young Black British artists trying to pave their way in a city that embraces them one minute and threatens their safety the next. Nelson’s masterful novel dives into vulnerability, resilience, masculinity and the importance of art to our sense of humanity.

6.   Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh

Women’s Prize longlistee Cursed Bread is a folkloric novel of obsession, desire, terror and the uncanny. The story follows baker’s wife Elodie who becomes a little too fascinated with a mysterious and intoxicating new couple in town. As strange things start to happen in their small community – horses dropping dead, widows seeing apparitions of their dead husbands and a teenager throwing himself into the flames of a bonfire – Elodie begins to understand her role in the dark hysteria gripping her town.

7.   The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Another short book for lovers of mystery and macabre is The Woman in Black. This novel centres on the young Mr Arthur Kipps, a solicitor sent from London to the remote and unnerving Eel Marsh House, to handle the estate of the deceased recluse who lived there. When he catches a glimpse of a young woman, dressed entirely in black, the unspoken lore and curse of the late Mrs Drablow comes to life.

8.   Sula by Toni Morrison

A modern classic by a formidable author, Sula follows two young, poor and inseparable girls, Nel and Sula, and the contrasting paths they take in adulthood. When Sula returns to her hometown a decade later, she receives a frosty reception from a community miffed by her choices and her way of life. She is reunited with childhood best friend, Nel, and they both must confront a terrible secret. This short but powerful book by Morrison is a must-read.

9.   In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

If you enjoyed Me Before You or One Day, this one’s for you. Serle’s short novel follows Dannie Kohan who treasures her carefully constructed 5-year life plan. Dannie knows what she wants out of life and nothing will stand in her way. On the same day, she has an amazing interview for a dream job and gets engaged. Everything is going perfectly. Until she wakes up the next morning and realises she’s now 5 years in the future, engaged to another man. In this book, Serle explores the idea of destiny, love and how much control we truly have over the course of our lives.

10.  We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

In Jackson’s final novel, we meet Merricat who lives in the Blackwood family home. Here, she has only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian left after the rest of the family was murdered. A crime Constance was accused but ultimately acquitted of. We Have Always Lived in the Castle centres on the Merricat’s mission to protect the family she has left. This short read is full of suspense and the complex intricacies of family relationships.