LitQueuelitqueue

After

Private Rites

Julia Armfield2024

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • Appleseed

    Matt Bell2021

    Three timelines follow a pair of brothers in the 18th century, a corporate employee in the near future, and a cyborg in a frozen wasteland.

    Same elegiac register, still climate fiction

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Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Sometimes a Great Notion

    Ken Kesey1964

    A family of independent loggers in Oregon refuses to join a local strike. The perspective shifts rapidly between characters, often mid-paragraph.

    Same elegiac register

    pace0·prose+1·bleak0

  • Empty Space

    M. John Harrison2012

    Three interlocking timelines follow a widow in London, a detective in a neon city, and a pilot in deep space. The prose is dense and surreal.

    elegiac → dreamlike

    pace0·prose+1·bleak0

  • Dhalgren

    Samuel R. Delany1975

    An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.

    elegiac → dreamlike

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • To Sir Phillip, With Love

    Julia Quinn2003

    Eloise Bridgerton travels to meet a widowed baronet she has only known through letters. They consider a marriage of convenience.

    elegiac → warm

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Everything Beautiful in Its Time

    Jenna Bush Hager2020

    The author reflects on the lives and deaths of her grandparents, including a former President and First Lady. It is a series of personal essays.

    elegiac → warm

    pace0·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Love Comes Softly

    Janette Oke1979

    A widow on the 19th-century frontier enters a marriage of convenience with a widower to survive the winter and care for his daughter.

    elegiac → tender

    pace0·prose-2·bleak-2

Faster

3 more ↓

  • All Systems Red

    Martha Wells2017

    A self-aware security android hacks its own governor module to watch soap operas while protecting a team of scientists on a distant planet.

    elegiac → wry

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Skin Game

    Jim Butcher2014

    Wizard Harry Dresden joins a team of villains to rob a vault in the Underworld. It is a fast-paced heist set in a modern fantasy Chicago.

    elegiac → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

  • The Kaiju Preservation Society

    John Scalzi2022

    A food delivery driver joins a secret organization that travels to an alternate Earth to care for massive, dinosaur-like creatures.

    elegiac → playful

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

    Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff1950

    An extraterrestrial being explains the history and strange behaviors of humanity to his grandson during a long space voyage.

    elegiac → meditative

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

  • Hav

    Jan Morris2006

    A travel writer describes the culture and history of a fictional Mediterranean city-state before and after a massive political upheaval.

    Same elegiac register, still literary

    pace-1·prose0·bleak-1

  • Gödel, Escher, Bach

    Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

    An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

    elegiac → playful

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-2

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • The Handmaid's Tale

    Margaret Atwood1985

    In a totalitarian state with a plummeting birth rate, a woman is enslaved as a reproductive vessel. She records her daily life and memories.

    elegiac → cold

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1

  • Doomsday Book

    Connie Willis1992

    A student travels to 14th-century England while a virus spreads in the present. She arrives during the Black Death due to a technical error.

    elegiac → bleak

    pace0·prose-1·bleak+1

  • Perdido Street Station

    China Miéville2000

    A scientist in a sprawling, industrial city agrees to help a winged refugee fly again. His research accidentally unleashes a psychic predator.

    elegiac → bleak

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1