After
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino1982
- pace
- prose
- structure
- bleakness
5 of 6 directions open — nothing to recover from
More like it
- pace0prose0bleak0
Loitering with Intent
Muriel Spark1981
A novelist takes a job editing memoirs for a strange society. She discovers that her employer is manipulating the members to mimic her fiction.
Same playful register, still metafiction
pace0·prose0·bleak0
- pace0prose0bleak0
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole1980
An eccentric, misanthropic man living with his mother in New Orleans is forced to find a job. He encounters various local subcultures.
Same playful register
pace0·prose0·bleak0
- pace0prose0bleak0
The Reivers
William Faulkner1962
An eleven-year-old boy and two employees steal his grandfather's car for a trip to Memphis in 1905. It is a comic picaresque adventure.
Same playful register
pace0·prose0·bleak0
- pace0prose0bleak0
Jitterbug Perfume
Tom Robbins1984
An ancient king seeks the secret to immortality through scent. The story follows several characters across centuries and continents.
Same playful register
pace0·prose0·bleak0
1 more ↓ ↑
- pace0prose-1bleak+1
Interior Chinatown
Charles Yu2020
Written as a screenplay, the story follows an actor playing minor roles in a police procedural while living in a Chinatown SRO.
Same playful register, still metafiction
pace0·prose-1·bleak+1
Denser prose
- pace-2prose+1bleak+2
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.
playful → meditative
pace-2·prose+1·bleak+2
- pace-1prose+1bleak+3
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.
playful → elegiac
pace-1·prose+1·bleak+3
3 more ↓ ↑
- pace-2prose+1bleak+2
The Pale King
David Foster Wallace2011
An unfinished, experimental novel about the mundane daily operations of an IRS processing center in 1985 Illinois.
playful → sardonic
pace-2·prose+1·bleak+2
- pace-1prose+1bleak+2
Autobiography of Red
Anne Carson1999
A novel in verse reimagines a Greek myth as a modern coming-of-age story about a red winged boy and his lover, Herakles.
playful → dreamlike
pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2
- pace-1prose+1bleak+2
The Vivisector
Patrick White1970
A painter uses the people in his life as raw material for his art. He observes their flaws and suffering to translate them onto canvas.
playful → cold
pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2
Faster
- pace+1prose-2bleak0
Dial A for Aunties
Jesse Q. Sutanto2021
A photographer accidentally kills her blind date. Her mother and aunties help hide the body during a massive luxury wedding.
Same playful register
pace+1·prose-2·bleak0
- pace+1prose-1bleak+2
Child 44
Tom Rob Smith2008
A Soviet security officer investigates a serial killer in a state that officially claims murder does not exist.
playful → tense
pace+1·prose-1·bleak+2
3 more ↓ ↑
- pace+1prose-1bleak+1
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.
playful → sardonic
pace+1·prose-1·bleak+1
- pace+1prose-2bleak0
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.
playful → propulsive
pace+1·prose-2·bleak0
- pace+1prose-2bleak0
The Martian
Andy Weir2011
A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.
playful → wry
pace+1·prose-2·bleak0
Slower
playful → elegiac
- pace-2prose0bleak+2
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.
pace-2·prose0·bleak+2
- pace-2prose0bleak+2
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong2019
A son writes a letter to his illiterate mother, recounting his family's history in Vietnam and his own experiences growing up in America.
pace-2·prose0·bleak+2
3 more ↓ ↑
- pace-2prose+1bleak+2
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.
playful → meditative
pace-2·prose+1·bleak+2
- pace-2prose0bleak0
Walden
Henry David Thoreau1854
A man lives in a small cabin by a pond for two years. He records his daily expenses, the local wildlife, and his thoughts on solitude.
playful → meditative
pace-2·prose0·bleak0
- pace-2prose0bleak+1
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson2004
An elderly preacher in 1950s Iowa writes a letter to his young son about their family history. He reflects on his father and grandfather.
playful → meditative
pace-2·prose0·bleak+1
Heavier
playful → bleak
- pace-1prose+1bleak+3
The Road
Cormac McCarthy2006
A father and son walk through a landscape of ash and scavengers toward the coast. They carry only what fits in a shopping cart.
pace-1·prose+1·bleak+3
- pace0prose0bleak+3
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead2016
Two slaves escape a Georgia plantation via a literal underground train system while being pursued by a slave catcher.
pace0·prose0·bleak+3
3 more ↓ ↑
- pace0prose0bleak+3
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood2003
A man survives a genetic apocalypse in a world of engineered creatures. He remembers his past with a scientist and the woman they both loved.
playful → sardonic
pace0·prose0·bleak+3
- pace-1prose0bleak+3
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara2015
Four friends in New York over thirty years. One of them is being destroyed, and the book does not look away.
pace-1·prose0·bleak+3
- pace0prose-1bleak+3
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut1969
Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time, experiencing his life out of order, from his chaplaincy in WWII to his abduction by aliens.
playful → sardonic
pace0·prose-1·bleak+3
