LitQueuelitqueue

After

To The Bright Edge of the World

Eowyn Ivey2016

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

Same meditative register, still historical fiction

1 more ↓

  • The Man Who Saw Everything

    Deborah Levy2019

    A historian travels to 1988 East Berlin while his memories of a car accident and his girlfriend begin to blur and repeat.

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

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.

    meditative → sardonic, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • Beloved

    Toni Morrison1987

    A mother in post-Civil War Ohio is haunted by the ghost of the daughter she killed to spare from slavery. The prose is dense and non-linear.

    meditative → elegiac, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • Let Us Descend

    Jesmyn Ward2023

    An enslaved girl travels from the Carolinas to New Orleans. She uses memories of her mother and spirits to survive the journey and the labor.

    meditative → elegiac, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Flip This Zombie

    Jesse Petersen2011

    A married couple runs a zombie extermination and 'flipping' business. They treat the apocalypse as a series of domestic and financial hurdles.

    meditative → playful

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

  • The Egg and I

    Betty MacDonald1945

    A memoir of a young woman's struggle to run a primitive chicken farm in the Olympic Mountains during the late 1920s.

    meditative → wry

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Shopaholic & Baby

    Sophie Kinsella2007

    A woman with a shopping addiction navigates pregnancy while discovering her celebrity obstetrician is her husband's ex-girlfriend.

    meditative → playful

    pace+1·prose-2·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.

    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 ↓

  • 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.

    meditative → playful

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

  • A Month in the Country

    J. L. Carr1980

    A WWI veteran spends a summer in a quiet village restoring a medieval mural in a church. He reflects on his trauma while observing local life.

    meditative → elegiac, still historical fiction

    pace-1·prose-1·bleak0

  • 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

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • A Fine Balance

    Rohinton Mistry1995

    Four people from different castes share a small apartment during the 1975 Indian Emergency. Their lives are upended by state-sanctioned violence.

    meditative → bleak, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose-1·bleak+2

  • 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.

    meditative → bleak, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose0·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.

    Same meditative register, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose0·bleak+2