This is no country for great novels. The novel form peaked in Europe in the 19th and early 20th’s centuries. It thrived in old homogeneous cultures, where a word, a gesture, even a table setting could convey meanings that placed every interchange in a context larger than itself.
The U.S., a nation of mutts and continual reinvention, never held still long enough to let a writer capture it fully on the page.
Still, there have been some wonderful novels written here.