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After

The Optimist's Daughter

Eudora Welty1972

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More like it

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  • The Stone Diaries

    Carol Shields1993

    A woman's life is chronicled from her birth in 1905 to her death. The narrative uses letters, recipes, and lists to document her domestic history.

    Same meditative register

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Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    meditative → clinical

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • The Sea

    John Banville2005

    A widower returns to a coastal resort to reflect on a childhood summer and his wife's death. The narrator's memory is fluid and dense.

    meditative → elegiac

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • 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.

    meditative → sardonic

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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.

    meditative → warm

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

  • 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.

    meditative → warm

    pace0·prose-2·bleak-1

  • 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.

    meditative → tender

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Faster

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    meditative → sardonic

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak0

  • 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.

    meditative → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    meditative → wry

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

Slower

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    meditative → clinical

    pace-1·prose+1·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.

    meditative → bleak

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+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.

    meditative → elegiac

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

Heavier

meditative → elegiac, still southern gothic

3 more ↓

  • Bastard Out of Carolina

    Dorothy Allison1995

    A young girl grows up in poverty in 1950s South Carolina. She endures physical and sexual abuse from her stepfather while her mother looks away.

    meditative → bleak, still southern gothic

    pace0·prose0·bleak+2

  • 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.

    meditative → bleak

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+2

  • The Underground Railroad

    Colson Whitehead2016

    Two slaves escape a Georgia plantation via a literal underground train system while being pursued by a slave catcher.

    meditative → bleak

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+2