Literary fiction is a strange category because it names a mode rather than a subject. It means the language is doing work beyond conveyance of plot, that the novel is interested in what it means to narrate an experience rather than just narrating one. This definition includes science fiction novels, fantasy novels, detective fiction.

The books that changed me this year: A Visit from the Goon Squad (Egan), which I'd been avoiding for a decade and should not have. Trust (Díaz), which uses structural instability as content. And a reread of Gilead (Robinson), which I think might be the most quietly devastating American novel of the century so far.

What connects them is that they reward rereading in a way that plot-driven fiction doesn't. On a second pass, knowing the outcome, you see the architecture. That's what I now use as my working definition of literary fiction: it gets better when you already know what happens.