1994's Pulitzer Prize winning book The Stone Diaries is a book to return to

 

I have to get back on track and take pictures of the books I get from the library. This was the cover of the version I borrowed, anyway.

The best way in which I can describe this book is that it's a concept novel; a slice of life portrait, except that the slice just happens to be the entire cake (or pie, or pizza, or whatever it is that you're slicing).

Shields tells the story of Daisy, and it is the whole story, from the beginning of her life until the end, and all of the very average parts of her life in between.  She is born in the early 1900s, her mother dying during the birth, and she lives until somewhere near the end of the century - presumably to around the contemporary time of the book's writing. 

In no particular order, she works, she marries (once poorly, once well), has children, makes friends, loses touch with and outlives many, and dies as we are privy to her final thoughts and the immediate, somewhat trivial reactions to her passing. It's not that her friends and relatives are reacting cruelly, it's just that life is, as is shown throughout the novel, simply moving on.

I'll read this again in ten or so years, and maybe every ten or so years would be the appropriate schedule.