The question of what counts as literary fiction is one I've been having with friends for years and I've arrived at this: literary fiction is fiction that is interested in how it tells its story as well as what story it tells. This doesn't mean it's self-referential or experimental. It means the prose is doing work, the structure is doing work, the choices of what to include and exclude are doing work.

By this definition, Cormac McCarthy is obviously literary. But so is Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which is historical fiction. And so is Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, which is science fiction. And so, I'd argue, is Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, which is as formally interesting as anything shelved in the literary section.

The problem with the literary fiction label is not the concept but the shelving. It creates a hierarchy that doesn't describe the actual landscape of ambitious fiction.