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
