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C.J. Hribal, the Louise Edna Goeden Professor of English, has a lifelong love of storytelling. At Marquette, he teaches creative writing and modern and contemporary fiction. In his spare time, he has penned five books of his own, the most recent being his novel The Company Car.

Hribal found it difficult to whittle down his list of favorite novels. "Limiting this to five is like asking somebody what are the five favorite moments in your life, so I'm cheating and giving you six (with a bonus seventh)," he says. 

1. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. "A love triangle, a murder and a suicide in small town Illinois in 1918 (as imagined by someone who was not a party to any of it, but who's suffered his own losses), this slender novel is actually a meditation on loss, compassion, forgiveness, and why fiction matters. I read this book every year, yet find new things in it every time out."

2. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. "Sprawling multi-generational family saga told in the intimate voices of various family members. Set in both a North Dakota Native American reservation and the underbelly of Minneapolis, this poetic novel is both lyrical and hard-hitting, with lots of dots the reader is invited to connect for herself."

3. Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls. "A woman who's recently lost a son and is dealing with a philandering husband falls in love herself —with a huge, green, humanoid amphibian who's recently escaped from a government science institute. And then things get complicated. Told in spare prose that lets you both believe it's all real and to question her sanity."

4. Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara. "One week in golden boy Cadillac dealer Julian English's life in 1930, when everyone is still trying to pretend the Crash was just a little dip in the economy. From multiple perspectives we watch Julian's life completely unravel. Mesmerizing. On a par with Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, only less romantic about money."

5. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. "A novel that's playful, inventive, and about thirteen books in one. Read a chapter, get engrossed in a spy novel. Only, no, wait, in chapter two you're actually reading a mystery. Or, in chapter three, a psychological thriller. Or chapter four, possibly a police procedural. Ultimately, you're reading a love story — not just between two characters, but between readers and books."

6. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. "Kundera's masterpiece. Part essay, part novel, two love triangles are set against the backdrop of living in a communist nation during the Prague Spring of 1968 and the brutal Soviet invasion that ended it. As the title implies, weighty matters await, but they're delivered by a charming, convivial narrator who manages to make you feel as though you're part of a conversation."

7. Light by Eva Figes. "A stunningly observed single day in the life of the painter Claude Monet and his family, rendered in the impressionistic style, only Figes does it with language rather than with paint. A slim novel you can easily get happily, dreamily, lost inside."