The Literary Blog Hop

I received an email today alerting me to the Literary Blog Hop at The Blue Bookcase, the "book review blog for bookish people.  To play along, you are encouraged to discuss the following:   Please highlight one of your favorite books and why you would consider it "literary.  Since most of what I read (with some exceptions) I would consider literary fiction, this seems to be right up my alley.  

My choice is Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room.  I would consider it as literary fiction -- it is a beautifully-constructed series of three smaller novellas encompassed within one book, and although each story is different, there are several unifying themes that link them all together. The titles of each novella not only reflect a role taken on by one of the characters in the context of the individual story, but as the narrator notes, they are the primary roles he's discovered exist in most relationships.   The tone established in the writing of the book as a whole is definitely understated, allowing the stories  to project the powerful emotion of the narrator across the novel.  As I noted in my review of the book, the narrator relates his story often as if he's watching himself from another vantage point,  so that sometimes he's speaking in the first person, and the telling changes to a third-person narrative, where "I" becomes "he."  It is a delightful reading experience and although not packed full of action, it's definitely a powerful novel.