The 10 best classic novels I read in 2019

Most of my reading in 2019 has been among literary fiction from past years, so today I'm posting on the best books I read this year from among the classics (see my post from two days ago for my list of the 5 best contemporary novels I read this year). Here is the list, of the 10 best classic novels I read this year, in order of publication:

Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens (1857): Bleak House may be the more popular among Dickens's late, long novels (and Great Expectations is more popular than either), but Little Dorrit has some terrific comic pieces and character sketches as well as a powerful take-down of the inefficiencies and cronyism in English government and of the corruption of the financial system.

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866): I don't know how many times one can re-read this novel (this was my 3rd reading), knowing full well the outcome from the start, but it seems to me that every reading brings new understanding and appreciation, not only for some of the greatest scenes in literature but for insight into our present state.

The Country of the Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett (1896): However you classify this work - memoir, short stories, novel - even a century later it's still quite beautiful and of sociological significance, as well as a good piece of "reporting" on an isolated, highly independent culture, vanishing even then and rare but not unheard of today on the coast of the North Atlantic.

Dom Casmurro, by Joachim Maria Machado de Assis (1900): A terrific book start to finish - full of surprises that are credible rather than forced and gratuitous, guided by a witty and largely self-aware narrator, and presented as a series of about 150 short chapters, which gives us plenty of "breathing room," places to pause and reflect on the developing plot.

Lucky Per, by Henrik Pontoppidan (1904): Lucky Perk gives us all we'd want in a major novel: complex and fully rounded characters who interact with one another and grow over time, a well-realized socio-historical background, beautiful but not overwhelming passages of description, sharp and credible (for the most part) dialogue, and a moral compass against which to measure the strengths and flaws, deeds and misdeeds of the major characters.

A Death in the Family, by James Agee (1957): There's probably no better example in literary fiction of the unexpected death of a parent from the child's point of view, with all of the attendant sorrow, confusion, anger, and strange nuances, such as the use of the father's death to gain stature and credence among other children.

Tambourines to Glory, by Langston Hughes (1958): This novel is in part an expose of the corruption of the many of the storefront churches and street-corner preachers in Harlem whose sole purpose is to squeeze money from their followers, though Hughes's vision is tempered by his profound humanitarian sympathy even for his protagonists, two women who establish one of these exploitative churches.

Morte D'Urban, by J. F. Powers (1962): A portrayal, over the course of his entire life, of a rural priest who struggles with the internal politics of the daily business of running a remote parish, who longs for promotion to a post in Chicago, and who at the end of his life recognizes that he has missed the whole point of being a man of the cloth.

A Personal Matter, by Kenzaburo Oe (1964): In this novel that seems closely modeled on the events in Oe's life, a young man removes his infant son, born with a severe brain malformation, from the hospital and takes him to a shady clinic where he will be "put to sleep," so to speak - and then the man has second thoughts. 

The Heron, by Giorgio Bassani (1968): A day in the life of an Italian landowner in 1947, in the course of which he reflects on the moral compromises he made so as to co-exist with the Fascist forces and his guilt about turning his back on his Jewish faith in order to hold on to his property and privileges.