There is a quality I look for in fiction that I've struggled to name and have finally settled on calling moral seriousness. It's not moralizing — moralistic fiction is usually irritating. It's not didactic content. It's the quality of attention that a novel brings to the question of what people owe each other and what they actually do.

The novels I place in this category: Marilynne Robinson's entire output. George Eliot. The novels of Toni Morrison. Kazuo Ishiguro. Elena Ferrante. What they have in common is not theme or setting or historical period but this: they take seriously the consequences of how people treat each other.

The novel that is technically accomplished and morally vacant — gorgeous sentences, no ethical imagination — strikes me as less complete than a plain novel with genuine moral seriousness. I'd rather have Stoner than a beautiful book about nothing.