I think a good book should mess with your head. There should be enough in it to keep you speculating for a long time about the characters and their ideas.
Rites of Passage, by William Golding, takes a scalpel to early 19th century English ideas of class, seen through two very different prisms, both in journal form, both unreliable narrators.
It is set during a six month voyage to Australia in1812, on an ancient, unseaworthy Royal Navy warship converted for passenger use. 1/n
Edmund Talbot is the ridiculously snobbish godson of a Lord whose "distinguised brother" has a high position in government. For 'godson', I think we might infer his Lordship's bastard son. Edmund is going out to Australia to serve on the Governor's staff. He also has a secret mission, not explicit in the journal, which I'm guessing is probably bad news for the Aboriginal population. Edmund is blissfully unaware that the officers & sailors see right through his naive arrogance. 2/n
Edmund starts out as he means to continue by pulling rank on the Captain through his aristocratic connectiona. Captain Anderson is a proud, angry, stubborn man, but he's out-gunned in the class system, so he takes out his rage on another passenger, a hapless parson. James Robert Colley is a naive, foolish young man of humble origins who believes implicitly in the class system. He also completely believes in his faith & yearns to help others, according to his lights. A good man. 3/n
Captain Anderson socially humiliates Colley by denying him the right to walk on the quarterdeck where other 'ladies and gentlemen' are free to go. He's not allowed to preach, except when Edmund twists the Captain's arm, and it doesn't go well. This is not altruistic. Edmund is playing shipboard politics and wants to get one over on the Captain because he knows he hates Colley. Edmund despises Colley, a gentleman by profession, but so far beneath him with his rustic ways. 4/n
The other ladies and gentlemen, as well as the emigrants who have to berth wth the sailors, are portrayed in an equally unflattering light in Edmund's journal. Some deserve it. A drunken portrait painter ostensibly traveling with his wife and daughter, who may well be prostitutes, for example. By and large, they take their cue from the Captain and shun Colley. But there is much worse in store for him, and this is the heart of the developing tragedy. So far we've heard Edmund. 5/n
After the worse has happened, we hear from Colley, in his unsent letter to his sister in England. And the class system gathers protectively round itself to avoid a scandal. Edmund is chastened by his part in the proceedings, but still the arrogant bastard I detested at the beginning. And yet, I was half on board with his ignorant estimate of Colley, and half-cheering Anderson's dislike of the clergy. This is what I mean about a novel messing with your head. You should read it. 6/e