LitQueuelitqueue

After

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

Robert Lewis Taylor1958

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • Mister Pip

    Lloyd Jones2006

    During a blockade on Bougainville Island, the only remaining white man reads Great Expectations to local children. The story shapes their reality.

    playful → elegiac, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    playful → sardonic, still historical fiction

    pace-1·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.

    playful → bleak

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2

  • 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.

    Same playful register

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

To recover

Same playful register

3 more ↓

  • Serpent

    Clive Cussler1999

    Kurt Austin investigates a conspiracy involving a sunken luxury liner and pre-Columbian artifacts. It is a fast-paced maritime adventure.

    playful → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Montana

    Debbie Macomber1997

    A single mother moves to her grandfather's Montana ranch and falls for a mysterious farmhand while investigating his past.

    playful → warm, still western

    pace-1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Montana Creeds

    Linda Lael Miller2009

    A professional bull rider returns to his family ranch to raise the young daughter he barely knows. He must transition from athlete to father.

    playful → warm, still western

    pace-1·prose-1·bleak-1

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.

    playful → sardonic

    pace+1·prose0·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.

    playful → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    playful → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·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.

    playful → clinical

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

  • 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.

    playful → elegiac, still historical fiction

    pace-2·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.

    playful → bleak

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • The Confessions of Nat Turner

    William Styron1967

    A fictionalized confession of the leader of an 1831 slave revolt while he awaits execution in a Virginia jail cell.

    playful → bleak, still historical fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • The Known World

    Edward P. Jones2003

    A black man who was once a slave becomes a slave owner in antebellum Virginia. The story follows the fallout on the plantation after his death.

    playful → meditative, still historical fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • The Crossing

    Cormac McCarthy1994

    A teenager makes three trips between New Mexico and Mexico, starting with an attempt to return a trapped wolf to the wild. The prose is dense.

    playful → elegiac, still western

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2