Classic Family Sagas/Dramas

I've read all of these, and give 'em my highest recommendation:

East of Eden - John Steinbeck
The Town and the City - Jack Kerouac
The Human Comedy - William Saroyan
Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey

At the moment I'm halfway through Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw -- definitely a classic family drama -- and all I've gotta say is...so far, so good!

If you want something with a different cultural and historical setting, I highly recommend A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

Several works of Thackeray, primarily the Vanity Fair and The Newcomes, I suppose.

A metric ton of Émile Zola: as long as we're talking about family sagas, Zola is the man. I cannot give him enough credit for his Rougon-Macquart cycle. I haven't read all, but these are my favorites:
L'Assomoir
Nana
Au Bonheur des Dames
Le Ventre de Paris
They have been translated to English under various titles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Rougon-Macquart

Also:

The Foxes of Harrow by Frank Yerby
Mothers Cry by Helen Grace Carlisle (a tiny but heartbreaking book)
A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett (and by probably some of his other books that I haven't read)
Inventing Memory: A Novel of Mothers and Daughters by Erica Jong
Asta's Book by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)
Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger
Roots by Alex Haley
Queen by the same author

Vito said:

At the moment I'm halfway through Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw -- definitely a classic family drama -- and all I've gotta say is...so far, so good!

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I like that book too, and also the sequel, Beggarman, Thief, although it is somewhat different.

Shaw's Bread Upon the Waters might also be relevant. It hardly qualifies as a saga, but it is a family drama all right. Same goes for Lucy Crown.

Flowers in the Attic V.C. Andrews
The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan

Are these considered family sagas?

Since I got an eReader the other day, and just looked in the store with the label family saga, if I find a family saga I like I can contribute.^^

Canadian contribution: 'Jalna' by Mazo de la Roche, is the first of 16 novels about the Whiteoak family. First published in 1927, it covers 100 years of the family's history.

haven't read them, but I think they qualify:

100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton

Livilla said:

I like that book too, and also the sequel, Beggarman, Thief, although it is somewhat different.

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I'm planning to read Beggarman, Thief as soon as possible after I finish Rich Man, Poor Man. Looking forward to it, in fact!

It's a shame that Irwin Shaw seems to have fallen out of favor. His first novel (The Young Lions) and his early short stories are pretty amazing, I think.

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
White Teeth, Zadie Smith

Along with the list of books I recommended above, I'll also suggest two novels that I haven't read. The first is The Brothers K by David James Duncan. I started reading it a while back, and got maybe 150 pages into it before it was due at my local public library. It's about a large family living near Vancouver, Washington, spanning the 1950s through the 1970s.

The other is We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. I don't know very much about this book (I've avoided reading reviews of it, to keep away from spoilers) except that it charts the breakdown of an Irish-American family in upstate New York in the 1970s.

Going to throw these out there....

Hotel New Hampshire, The World According to Garp, & A Widow of One Year by John Irving

sharonapple said:

Going to throw these out there....

Hotel New Hampshire, The World According to Garp, & A Widow of One Year by John Irving

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Honestly, reading "Widow," the idea that it was a family saga never even crossed my mind. Although it's inter-generational, Irving is so focused on specific points in time between individual characters (Eddie as a young boy with Marion, Ruth as a writer, Ruth as an older woman) that I never felt like it came together entirely. A fun story, but I'm not sure if it fits with East of Eden, or 100 Years of Solitude. A family story, but the saga part is absent entirely in my mind.

Centennial- Michener- though it's probably more of a species saga than family
The Thorn Birds- which to me is the quintessential family saga

The Corrections by Jonathan Frazen
War and Peace Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
The Godfather by Mario Puzo

This list thing is kinda fun...

The novels of Susan Howatch:

The Rich are Different
Sins of the Fathers
Penmarric
Cashelmara
Wheel of Fortune.

They are all excellent, and I have read them several times.
Then she wrote a series of novels set in the Church of England, which are also excellent.

And btw, my own novel, see sig, is a family saga!