Cleopatra and Frankenstein

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan2010

Interlocking stories follow a record executive, his assistant, and their circle across decades. One chapter is told entirely through PowerPoint.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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Gravity's Rainbow

Thomas Pynchon1973

During the end of WWII, an American lieutenant's sexual encounters seem to predict where German V-2 rockets will fall. The narrative is fragmented.

elegiac → sardonic

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A Brief History of Seven Killings

Marlon James2014

A large cast of characters recounts the 1976 attempt on Bob Marley's life. The narrative spans decades and moves from Jamaica to New York.

elegiac → propulsive

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Briefing for a Descent into Hell

Doris Lessing1971

A man is found wandering London and placed in a psychiatric ward. The narrative shifts between the hospital and his internal cosmic hallucinations.

elegiac → dreamlike

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Sundays at Tiffany's

James Patterson2008

A lonely woman is reunited with her childhood imaginary friend, who has returned to her life as a physical man.

elegiac → warm

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Play

Kylie Scott2014

A drummer for a famous rock band hires a woman to pose as his girlfriend to improve his public image. They live together to sell the lie.

elegiac → playful

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Final Offer

Lauren Asher2023

An alcoholic heir returns to his family's lake house to secure his inheritance. He finds his ex-girlfriend living there with a child he never knew.

elegiac → earnest

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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.

elegiac → sardonic

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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.

elegiac → propulsive

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The Martian

Andy Weir2011

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

elegiac → wry

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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.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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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.

elegiac → meditative, still literary fiction

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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.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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The story of a brief marriage

Anuk Arudpragasam2016

Two refugees enter an arranged marriage in a Sri Lankan camp during the final days of the civil war. It focuses on the physical details of survival.

elegiac → meditative, still literary fiction

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A Distant Shore

Caryl Phillips2003

A retired teacher and an African refugee form a quiet bond in a xenophobic English village. Their past traumas emerge through alternating stories.

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The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead2019

A studious black teenager in 1960s Florida is sent to a brutal reform school where physical abuse is systemic.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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