What Makes a Novel Memorable?

My opinion on what makes a memorable novel is that everyone has their own criteria, and NY Bestsellers list isn't a good guide. Stories that live in my mind have touched me in a special way, and it seems the reasons are wide and varied.  I'm most likely to be hooked by the author, but not always. I loved Mary Stewart's mystery-romance novels, also Georgette Heyer's Georgian and Regency historical romances, Sergeanne Golon's Angelique series, some Jude Deveraux and Roberta Gellis books, and in science fiction/fantasy I've enjoyed F.M. Busby Demo Trilogy, C.J. Cherryh's books, Anne McCaffrey's Dragons of Pern, Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series, among others. These worlds are very memorable and reinforced by the number of books in each one, but I seldom remember the specific characters and plot lines of each book.

I remember many single books, too. For instance, I remember the first book I read by myself start to finish, and I remember very well some of the youth oriented books I read as a child (or in turn read to my children). Dr. Seuss was kid-friendly. Currently I read about 55 fiction books a year and non-fiction books as needed. Of all those fiction stories, only a few stand out. One was How to Back a Perfect Life. It was about a women character I really identified with. She was a baker and used sour dough. So do I. She had family problems. I tend to find family situations with attendant misunderstandings or characters who have been abandoned most alluring.  However, of all those classics I was forced to read in high school, the only one I remember is Pride and Prejudice. (Me and a million other women—and, ahem, I have all those classics in a Harvard Classics collection on my bookshelf.) The funny thing about this story was it is now a historical romance, but when written was a contemporary romance. Go figure.

Most non-fiction books I read, though, are not start to finish, but more pick and chose what you want to read about. Currently I'm reading a book that goes through all the days of December 1941.While I'm reading this book for background for a story, but my Dad was at Hickam Field on December 7th, so Pearl Harbor is always a very interesting to me. The things I'm learning about what happened during that first month of war for the U.S. are astounding. For instance, a woman went to prison for a year for contributing to the delinquency of minors and her two sons became wards of the court because her boys didn't salute the flag in their classroom. Another man had a $200 fine for disorderly conduct for booing Roosevelt in a movie theater. Two hundred dollars was a lot of money then. Strange doings on the home front. And...women were told not to put too many lipstick prints on the mail being sent to their husbands and boyfriends in service. Those lip prints could be taken for secret code! This type of information demonstrates that no matter how strange some fiction seems, reality can trump it. So I'll remember this book for a long time.



While I read just about anything except horror or vampires, historical and historical romance novels are my favorite genres, but because I know a lot about history, any discrepancies with historical fact makes the story stand out as memorably bad. My favorite is Dorothy Dunnett's The Lymond Chronicles because the series was so historically accurate, along with having great characters, fantastic story lines, great descriptions and other overall qualities. It was a hard series to get into because the hero starts out an antihero and goes through phases between being a heroic and stellar man and an unscrupulous, nefarious malefactor. I never thought I get through with the first novel, but then absolutely had to read the next five. Understandable, as it was the 15th Century after all, so set in one of my favorite historical eras. 

I also love scifi/fantasy, but the plots have to be based on some sort of science or some other believable setting that has been well set up. When those are done right, the stories are hard to forget.

As always, check the following links for more views on this topic:

Judith Copek
Beverley Bateman
Skye Taylor
Dr. Bob Rich
Victoria Chatham
Helena Fairfax 
Marci Baun 
Rachael Kosinski
Connie Vines