10 Literary Books With An Honourific In The Title

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This week, the prompt is for Books with Honorifics in the Title. This is a timely one for me because I’m in the middle of the process of changing my name after getting married, and both the new last name and the transition from Miss to Mrs are feeling very weird!

I struggled to think past the most obvious ones with this, so instead of spending the whole weekend trawling search results for appropriate titles, I turned to my friend ChatGPT to help me find some to explore. I asked it to suggest literary novels (my favourite genre) with honourifics in the title, then I picked the ones that sounded the most interesting to me and looked them up on Goodreads to see if I might want to read any!

1. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Heralded as Virginia Woolf’s greatest novel, this is a vivid portrait of a single day in a woman’s life. When we meet her, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party preparation while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house, she is flooded with remembrances of faraway times. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old.

Goodreads: 3.78 (340,656 ratings / 22,948 reviews)

Just get the one I think is the most obvious out of the way! I did read this for my English Lit. degree (19 years ago), and I thought it was interesting, but stream of consciousness is a bit painful to read! Though this one was a million miles more enjoyable than the torturous reading experience I remember with To The Lighthouse!

Like much of what I read 18-21, I wonder what I’d make of it now!

2. Mrs Bridge and Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell

These are two separate companion novels, each taking a different point of view

The wife of a successful lawyer in 1930s Kansas City, India Bridge, tries to cope with her dissatisfaction with an easy, though empty, life.

Before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique there was Mrs. Bridge, an inspired novel set in the years around World War II that testified to the sapping ennui of an unexamined suburban life. India Bridge, the title character, has three children and a meticulous workaholic husband. She defends her dainty, untouched guest towels from son Douglas, who has the gall to dry his hands on one, and earnestly attempts to control her daughters with pronouncements such as “Now see here, young lady … in the morning one doesn’t wear earrings that dangle.” Though her life is increasingly filled with leisure and plenty, she can’t shuffle off vague feelings of dissatisfaction, confusion, and futility. Evan S. Connell, who also wrote the twinned novel Mr. Bridge, builds a world with tiny brushstrokes and short, telling vignettes.

Goodreads: 4.06 average (7,607 ratings / 1,064 reviews)

While I do like a character study, I don’t tend to enjoy stories told through vingettes (see: everything I’ve tried to read by Gabrielle Zevin), and so it’s unlikely I’ll ever read either of these.

3. Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo

Seventy-four years old, Antiguan born and bred, flamboyant Hackney personality Barry is known for his dapper taste and fondness for retro suits.

He is a husband, father and grandfather.

And for the past sixty years, he has been in a relationship with his childhood friend and soulmate, Morris.

Wife Carmel knows Barry has been cheating on her, but little does she know what is really going on. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington has big choices to make.

Mr Loverman is a groundbreaking exploration of Britain’s older Caribbean community, which explodes cultural myths and fallacies, and shows how deep and far-reaching the consequences of prejudice and fear can be. It is also a warm-hearted, funny and life-affirming story about a character as mischievous, cheeky and downright lovable as any you’ll ever meet.

Goodreads: 4.19 (17,074 ratings / 1,901 reviews)

I read Girl, Woman, Other by this author for the book club I used to go to in 2019-2020, and I quite enjoyed it. I gave it 4 stars but I didn’t write myself any notes about it. This one sounds more interesting, actually! I’m going to add it to my watch list and see if it comes up on a deal!

4. Mr. Peanut by Alex Ross

David Pepin has been in love with his wife, Alice, since the moment they met in a university seminar on Alfred Hitchcock. After thirteen years of marriage, he still can’t imagine a remotely happy life without her—yet he obsessively contemplates her demise. Soon she is dead, and David is both deeply distraught and the prime suspect.

The detectives investigating Alice’s suspicious death have plenty of personal experience with conjugal enigmas: Ward Hastroll is happily married until his wife inexplicably becomes voluntarily and militantly bedridden; and Sam Sheppard is especially sensitive to the intricacies of marital guilt and innocence, having decades before been convicted and then exonerated of the brutal murder of his wife.

Still, these men are in the business of figuring things out, even as Pepin’s role in Alice’s death grows ever more confounding when they link him to a highly unusual hit man called Mobius. Like the Escher drawings that inspire the computer games David designs for a living, these complex, interlocking dramas are structurally and emotionally intense, subtle, and intriguing; they brilliantly explore the warring impulses of affection and hatred, and pose a host of arresting questions. Is it possible to know anyone fully, completely? Are murder and marriage two sides of the same coin, each endlessly recycling into the other? And what, in the end, is the truth about love?

Goodreads: 3.25 (5,586 ratings / 1,087 reviews)

So the most interesting thing about this book is that it was nominated for the Literary Review’s 2010 Bad Sex In Fiction Award, think of this as the Razzie for literature. I love this award, but I do caution against reading some of the nominated excerpts.. My favourite is still Morrissey (yes, that Morrissey!). If you want a laugh/to feel slightly revolted here is a list from The Independent of the Best/Worst.

I managed to find an excerpt from Mr Peanut that earned its nomination… and I am putting it behind a toggle for those sensitive to such things. I’ve read worse, but it still made me feel a little bit sick!

Having read that and a few of the more thoughtful reviews on Goodreads, I don’t think this is making my TBR!

5. Dr Rat by William Kotzwinkle

This World Fantasy Award (1977) winner in the vein of Animal Farm delves into a lab worthy of a mad Nazi scientist—but run by a brilliantly sadistic rodent. In the annals of American literature, there has never been a character quite like Doctor Rat, PhD. From one of the most indispensable storytellers in speculative fiction, this biting satire introduces a narrator of learned charm and humor, and a twisted logic that is absolutely chilling.

Doctor Rat is a credit to his species. A survivor of the most refined scientific experiments, now removed from the maze, he has become a valued and productive member of the academic community. When he must administer a lethal dose, he comforts his fellow rats with his compassionate “Death is freedom.”  

But everything changes when animals worldwide begin to rebel, refusing to accept their proper places in the natural order of as test subjects, pets, or food. And only Doctor Rat has the courage to defend mankind from the ungrateful animal kingdom.  

Goodreads: 3.71 (91,049 ratings / 140 reviews)

A little bit of weird speculative satire! I have to say the reviews intrigue me, and it is only 200 pages, so it crosses my path somehow, I’d give it a go.

6. Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

It all starts with the radio. Dorothy’s husband, Fred, has left for work, and she is at the kitchen sink washing the dishes, listening to classical music. Suddenly, the music fades out and a soft, close, dreamy voice says, “Don’t worry, Dorothy.”
 
A couple weeks later, there is a special interruption in regular programming. The announcer warns all listeners of an escaped sea monster. Giant, spotted, and froglike, the beast—who was captured six months earlier by a team of scientists—is said to possess incredible strength and to be considered extremely dangerous.
 
That afternoon, the seven-foot-tall lizard man walks through Dorothy’s kitchen door. She is frightened at first, but there is something attractive about the monster. The two begin a tender, clandestine affair, and no one, not even Dorothy’s husband or her best friend, seems to notice.
 

Goodreads: 3.74 (12,206 ratings / 2,083 reviews)

This one is from 1982, and only 128 pages, which greatly increases my likelihood of wanting to read it! Magical realism, surreal and satirical… I am interested!

7. Miss Garnet’s Angel by Sally Vickers

After the death of her longtime friend and flatmate, retired British history teacher Julia Garnet does something completely out of character: She takes a six-month rental on a modest apartment in Venice. She befriends a young Italian boy and English twins who are restoring a fourteenth-century chapel. And she falls in love for the first time in her life with an art dealer named Carlo.

Juxtaposing Julia’s journey of self-discovery with the apocryphal tale of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael, Miss Garnet’s Angel tells a lyrical, incandescent story of love, loss, miracles, and redemption and of one woman’s transformation and epiphany.

Goodreads: 3.70 (4,016 ratings / 483 reviews)

I love Venice, but historical fiction and spiritual, whimsical stories are not really my vibe.

8. Mr Palomar by Italo Calvino

Mr Palomar is a delightful eccentric whose chief activity is looking at things. He is simply seeking knowledge; ‘it is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath’. Whether contemplating a fine cheese, a hungry gecko, a woman sunbathing topless or a flight of migrant starlings, Mr Palomar’s observations render the world afresh.

Goodreads: 3.90 (9,793 ratings / 887 reviews)

This is a translated 1985 Italian novel (the original Italian title was apparently just “Palomar,” but I am counting it!). ChatGPT seems to love Italo Calvino; I’d never heard of him before, but this is the second recommendation after Invisible Cities for books that feature travel. This one focuses on the title character making philosophical observations about the world around him, with a deliberate triadic thematic structure.

9. Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

It’s an ordinary afternoon in 1938 for the celebrated American novelist St John Fox, hard at work in the study of his suburban home – until his long-absent muse wanders in. Mary Foxe (beautiful, British and 100% imaginary) is in a playfully combative mood. “You’re a villain,” she tells him. ‘A serial killer . . . can you grasp that?”

Mr Fox has a predilection for murdering his heroines. Mary is determined to change his ways. And so she challenges him to join her in stories of their own devising, and the result is an exploration of love like no other.

It isn’t long before Mrs Daphne Fox becomes suspicious, and St John is offered a choice: a life with the girl of his dreams, or a life with an all-too-real woman who delights him more than he cares to admit. Can there be a happy ending this time?

Goodreads: 3.57 (11,449 ratings / 1,837 reviews)

This sounds like it could be fun – magical realism, fairy tale – but it does have quite middling reviews, though I often find with the weirder books that I love, they tend to average 3.5, so that doesn’t put me off!

10. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines

“This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has  lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a  witness to the black militancy of the 1960’s. In this  woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure,  a woman equipped to stand beside William  Faulkner’s Dilsey in The Sound And The  Fury.” Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has  ‘endured,’ has seen almost everything and foretold the  rest. Gaines’ novel brings to mind other  great works The Odyssey for the way  his heroine’s travels manage to summarize the  American history of her race, and Huckleberry  Finn for the clarity of her voice, for  her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years  and things to find the one true story in it all.”  — Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek.

Goodreads: 4.18 (14,098 ratings / 662 reviews)

It’s funny to read the 1 star reviews from all the people who didn’t realise this was fictional! It isn’t terribly long at 280ish pages, so I might give it a try one day, though this type of narrative structure isn’t usually my favourite. It might be one I’m more likely to enjoy as an audiobook.