Books With Discrete internal narratives

[Christine]

I really like it when a story has original songs or stories in it: stories or songs told or sung by a character, but which are original creations of the book's author. A great movie example is The Secret of Roan Inish. I wonder if anyone has any relevant book recommendations.

[Petra]

Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood has original poetry, which in the book are hymns (rather folk song-y). They can be heard on the audio of the book or on CD (http://yearoftheflood.com/the-music-s...).

That's the only one I can think of off-hand.

[Kandice]

Never Let Me Goby Kazuo Ishiguro takes it title from a song in the book that does not exist in our world and is an excellent book to boot!

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King contains a song written and performed by King and someone else. The name doesn't spring to mind.

[gathering feather]

George MacDonald a Scottish author from the 20th century has stories poems and songs interlaced through his novels. These are usually spoken by various protagonists. They are very effective because they bring the characters alive to the reader.

[Abigail]

At the risk of stating the obvious, the works of Tolkien.

[Jackie]

Christine, are you specifically looking for HF or are other genre recommendations okay?

[Christine]

Jackie wrote: "Christine, are you specifically looking for HF or are other genre recommendations okay?"

HF or SF are my preferred genres, with some tolerance for fantasy. Someone aptly named Tolkine as an example. Thanks for other recommendations too. I've read Never Let Me Go, and have vowed never to read Steven King ever again after I was unable to stop reading The Stand even though I found it horrible and it gave me nightmares.

[Libbie Hawker]

It's not really historical fiction (technically fantasy but without any magic), but it feels like historical fiction: Maia. TONS of wonderful stories and songs contained within!