LitQueuelitqueue

After

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara2015

5 of 6 directions open — nothing heavier

More like it

1 more ↓

  • Girls Burn Brighter

    Shobha Rao2018

    Two girls in India are separated by a brutal act of violence. They endure trafficking and labor across continents to find each other.

    Same bleak register, still literary fiction

    pace+1·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Don Quixote

    Kathy Acker1986

    A woman undergoes an abortion and adopts the persona of Don Quixote to pursue a quest in a fragmented, postmodern landscape.

    bleak → sardonic

    pace0·prose+1·bleak0

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

    Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

    Same bleak register

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

  • To the Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf1927

    A family and their guests visit a house in the Hebrides. The narrative follows their internal thoughts over two days separated by ten years.

    bleak → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Someday, Someday, Maybe

    Lauren Graham2013

    A young actress in 1990s New York City gives herself a three-year deadline to find professional success before her money runs out.

    bleak → playful, still contemporary

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-3

  • Wild Iris Ridge

    RaeAnne Thayne2014

    Lucy Drake returns to her small hometown to renovate an inheritance and encounters the widowed husband of her late best friend.

    bleak → warm, still contemporary

    pace0·prose-2·bleak-3

  • The Five-Star Weekend

    Elin Hilderbrand2023

    A widow invites four friends from different stages of her life to a weekend on Nantucket. They navigate old secrets and current life transitions.

    bleak → warm, still contemporary

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-3

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Candide

    Voltaire

    A naive young man travels the world while his tutor insists that everything is for the best. He encounters a series of global catastrophes.

    bleak → sardonic

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak-2

  • The Da Vinci Code

    Dan Brown2003

    A symbologist and a cryptologist flee the police while solving puzzles hidden in art. They search for a secret regarding the Holy Grail.

    bleak → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-3

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

    A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

    bleak → wry

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-3

Slower

3 more ↓

  • The English Patient

    Michael Ondaatje1992

    Four people shelter in a ruined Italian villa at the end of WWII. They care for a burned, anonymous man who recounts his past in the desert.

    bleak → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak-1

  • Moby Dick

    Herman Melville1851

    A sailor joins a whaling voyage led by a captain seeking revenge on a specific whale. Large sections digress into the mechanics of 1850s whaling.

    bleak → meditative, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

  • To the Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf1927

    A family and their guests visit a house in the Hebrides. The narrative follows their internal thoughts over two days separated by ten years.

    bleak → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1