LitQueuelitqueue

After

The Gifted School

Bruce Holsinger2019

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • The Old Devils

    Kingsley Amis1986

    A group of aging friends in Wales reunites when a famous couple returns home. They spend their days drinking and revisiting old resentments.

    Same wry register, still satire

    pace-1·prose+1·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

3 more ↓

  • The Love Hypothesis

    Ali Hazelwood2021

    A biology PhD candidate enters a fake relationship with a young professor to satisfy a friend. They navigate academic politics and attraction.

    wry → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Beautiful Bastard

    Christina Lauren2013

    An MBA intern and her demanding media executive boss engage in a series of sexual encounters while competing at work. It is an erotic romance.

    wry → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Hating Game

    Sally Thorne2016

    Two executive assistants at a publishing house compete for a single promotion through a series of psychological games and mutual sabotage.

    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