Here are a couple of novels I read recently:

Freedom is a kind of family saga, covering three generations in the USA from the 1960s to about 2008.  Walter is the slightly nerdy son of a beer-swilling motel owner whose room-mate at college, Richard, becomes a reluctantly successful rock star.  Walter's wife, Patty, finds it difficult to choose between him and Richard, and never really manages to do so.  Meanwhile, Walter works for an environmental organisation and tries to save a species of bird by destroying an entire mountain.

Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino contains three novellas.  My favourite is "The Baron in the Trees".  The twelve-year-old son of a baron hates being told what to do by his parents, runs outside, climbs a tree and declares he's never coming down.  He doesn't: he spends his entire life in the branches of the trees which are close enough to climb between, and numerous enough to cover most of northern Italy and southern France. He eats, sleeps, washes, goes to the toilet in the trees; he hunts for his food, and eventually organises battles and finds a girlfriend up there.