Loving Without Tears

by Gallix/François

Like Farrell's exploration of quiet resilience, Ishiguro traces how his protagonist has built an entire life around emotional restraint and duty—but where Farrell shows characters breaking through that constraint, Ishiguro examines what happens when someone never quite does. Both novels find their emotional power in what remains unspoken between people who care deeply for each other.

by Catherine Burgass

This is your surprise recommendation—it's a literary mystery wrapped in metafiction, but at its heart it shares Farrell's interest in how people (particularly women) forge meaningful connections despite circumstance and expectation. Byatt interweaves past and present relationships with the same attention to how love actually sustains us that Farrell brings to her domestic narratives.

by Abby Werlock

Shields constructs an entire life through fragments—letters, photographs, diary entries—showing how an ordinary woman's quiet determination shapes those around her, much like Tiddley's unexpected resolve in Farrell's novel. Both authors excel at finding the extraordinary within the domestic and the overlooked.

by Penelope Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald writes about a woman's solitary act of defiance with the same unsentimental clarity Farrell brings to her characters' struggles. Both novels understand that determination isn't always rewarded, but that the attempt itself—the refusal to surrender—constitutes its own kind of victory.

by James H. Maguire

Robinson's 1980 novel (giving you that cross-decade recommendation) examines how women navigate belonging and independence through the lens of two sisters and their unconventional aunt—similar to how Farrell explores the bonds between her characters and their unexpected ways of moving forward. Both writers treat domestic life as genuinely consequential.