8. A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving (1989)

John Irving is the American Dickens, writing complex, twisty family sagas revolving around eccentric characters and often highly implausible (yet fabulously quirky) coincidences – which make them no less loveable nor poignant. His best-known is probably his fourth book, 1978’s The World According To Gap, also a classic, but Owen Meany, from 1989, pips it. Narrated by John Wheelwright and set during the Fifties and Sixties in a small New Hampshire town against the backdrop of social change and, later, Vietnam, his friend Owen Meany believes himself to be God’s instrument – and may well be. Impossibly moving, funny and gripping, will have you in tears by the end – in a good way. Look out for the armadillo.