Stories Unusual for Their Authors

During his life, Charles Dickens experienced immense pressure to append his serialized works with happy endings. One of them stands out as an exception to this patently unfair rule. His story, "Hard Times", was a vivid, if too truthful account of common life in the newly industrialized England of that time.

As with so many of his memorable characters the Gradgrind family, willingly or not, lived up to its name by engaging in the mechanical and often heartless social contrivances of their era. True to form, Dickens provides a heartwrenching scene lifted directly from the same newspaper pages his stories so often filled. Louisa Gradgrind's teary confession of false superiority to Sissy Jupe can only fail to move the most flint-hearted among us.

Even more true to form is how this story, unlike the vast bulk of his work, had a clearly unhappy ending that characterized far too many relationships and biographies of that period. For all its unvarnished realism, "Hard Times" remains among my favorite of Dicken's works. However, that was then. This is now.

Fast foward some 150 years to the spymaster supreme, Ken Follet. His "Eye of the Needle" is a modern day counterpart to Graham Greene's older school of classic espionage scripts. How strange that one of Follet's finest works would have more to do with building up a gothic cathedral than tearing down the embattled Western Europe of World War II.

Nonetheless, Follet provides an accurate, if not, gritty account of 12th century life replete with blackguards, highway robbers, penniless peasants and the ever-in-distress fair damsel. His detailed elaboration upon cathedral architecture and evolution of the flying buttress all register an obvious love for what can only be termed as one of mankind's most inspirational building styles.

Please feel free to suggest your own literary candidates that have demonstrated an oddly contrary or unexpected writing style.

I've been trying to think of something to add to this, but haven't had any luck yet.

I'm bumping the thread in case someone else might spy it and think of something.

Fluke by James Herbert was definitely a change in subject matter for this author.

This tale about a man who thought he was a dog, or a dog who thought he was a man, was radically different from all his other books which were effective, but essentially trashy, horror stories.

I'm not very familiar with his works, but John Connolly is known for Stephen King-esque thriller/mysteries. Then he wrote The Book of Lost Things, a fantasy novel that's a cross between horror and Narnia.

Wibur Smith, best known for his adventure tales mostly set in Africa, has written several novels set in ancient Egypt. I read one, it might have been well-researched, etc., but it was pretty awful.

Stephen King, The Eyes of the Dragon.

Compared to what had come before - mostly supernatural thrillers, mostly horrifying, and mostly thick with gore and foul language - this book is a shocker: an ornate fairy tale, perfectly suitable for reading to an 8 year old.

The one that comes to my mind is Robert A. Heinlein's short story, The Man Who Traveled in Elephants. It's not completely outside of his normal realm for his stories, but it pushes a lot of the boundaries. I found it to be a charming, and bittersweet, story about a widower reflecting on his life.