LitQueuelitqueue

After

How to Be Good

Nick Hornby2001

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • Nine Perfect Strangers

    Liane Moriarty2018

    Nine people gather at a remote health resort for a ten-day retreat. The unconventional methods of the director soon turn the stay into an ordeal.

    Same wry register, still satire

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Ulysses

    James Joyce1914

    Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.

    wry → playful

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • The Sound and the Fury

    William Faulkner1929

    The decline of a Southern family told through four perspectives, including a non-linear stream of consciousness from a man with a disability.

    wry → elegiac

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • 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.

    wry → dreamlike

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

To recover

wry → playful, still satire

3 more ↓

  • Lady Susan

    Jane Austen1925

    A widow uses letters to manipulate her social circle, seeking a husband for herself and a match for her daughter. It is an epistolary novella.

    Same wry register, still satire

    pace0·prose+1·bleak-1

  • The Importance of Being Earnest

    Oscar Wilde1893

    Two Victorian gentlemen use secret identities to woo women and avoid social duties. The story is told entirely through dialogue.

    Same wry register, still satire

    pace0·prose+1·bleak-1

  • On a Pale Horse

    Piers Anthony1983

    After accidentally killing the personification of Death, a man must take over the office. He navigates the bureaucracy of the afterlife.

    wry → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Get Jiro!

    Anthony Bourdain2012

    In a future Los Angeles, master chefs rule as warlords. A sushi chef who kills rude customers is caught between two warring food factions.

    wry → sardonic, still satire

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

  • Child 44

    Tom Rob Smith2008

    A Soviet security officer investigates a serial killer in a state that officially claims murder does not exist.

    wry → tense

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+1

  • 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.

    wry → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Slower

3 more ↓

  • The Pale King

    David Foster Wallace2011

    An unfinished, experimental novel about the mundane daily operations of an IRS processing center in 1985 Illinois.

    wry → sardonic, still satire

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

  • Umbrella

    Will Self2013

    A psychiatrist in 1971 treats a woman who has been catatonic for decades. The prose shifts between eras and consciousnesses without paragraph breaks.

    wry → clinical

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

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

    wry → bleak

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • Ethan Frome

    Edith Wharton1910

    A farmer trapped in a loveless marriage falls for his wife's cousin in a frozen New England town. A visiting engineer observes the aftermath.

    wry → bleak, still domestic fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • Dorian

    Will Self2002

    A modern retelling of Oscar Wilde's novel set in the London drug and art scenes of the 1980s. A video installation ages while the subject does not.

    wry → sardonic, still satire

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • I'll Go to Bed at Noon

    Gerard Woodward2004

    The Jones family spends a decade succumbing to alcoholism. The book tracks their physical and social disintegration in 1970s Britain.

    wry → bleak, still domestic fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2