This Is How You Lose Her

Time's Arrow

Martin Amis1991

A doctor's life is narrated in reverse chronological order, from death back to birth. The reversal reframes the events of the Holocaust.

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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.

sardonic → playful

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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.

sardonic → elegiac, still unreliable narrator

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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.

sardonic → dreamlike, still unreliable narrator

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Pillow Thoughts

Courtney Peppernell2016

A collection of short poems and prose pieces organized by emotional state. It focuses on themes of heartbreak, healing, and loneliness.

sardonic → tender

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Ayesha at Last

Uzma Jalaluddin2019

A modern Muslim retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in Toronto. A poet and a conservative man clash over their differing values.

sardonic → playful, still contemporary

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Rich People Problems

Kevin Kwan2017

An extended family gathers in Singapore as their matriarch lies dying. They scheme against one another to inherit a massive estate.

sardonic → playful, still contemporary

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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.

Same sardonic register

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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.

sardonic → propulsive

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The Martian

Andy Weir2011

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

sardonic → wry

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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.

sardonic → clinical

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Translated Accounts

James Kelman2001

Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

sardonic → bleak

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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.

sardonic → elegiac

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The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead2016

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

sardonic → bleak

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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.

Same sardonic register

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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.

Same sardonic register, still unreliable narrator

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