After

Young Jane Young

Gabrielle Zevin2017

pace
prose
structure
bleakness

5 of 6 directions open — nothing to recover from

More like it

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All Fours
Miranda July2024
A woman abandons her cross-country road trip to stay in a motel near her home. She spends her time redecorating the room and pursuing a stranger.
Same wry register, still contemporary
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Good Material
Dolly Alderton2024
A struggling stand-up comedian tries to understand why his long-term girlfriend broke up with him. He stalks her social media and moves into a van.
Same wry register, still contemporary
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Margo's Got Money Troubles
Rufi Thorpe2024
A young mother starts an OnlyFans to avoid eviction. She uses her father's professional wrestling advice to build a persona and manage her life.
Same wry register, still contemporary
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Such a Fun Age
Kiley Reid2019
A white influencer tries to help her Black babysitter after a racial profiling incident. The plot explores the fallout of their differing reactions.
wry → sardonic, still contemporary
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1 more ↓

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Nothing to See Here
Kevin Wilson2019
A woman is hired to care for two children who burst into flames when they get upset. She tries to keep them safe and hidden from the public.
Same wry register, still contemporary
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Denser prose

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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.
wry → sardonic, still satire
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A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James2014
A large cast of characters recounts the 1976 attempt on Bob Marley's life. The narrative spans decades and moves from Jamaica to New York.
wry → propulsive
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3 more ↓

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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.
wry → 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.
wry → elegiac
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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.
wry → dreamlike
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Faster

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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.
wry → sardonic, still satire
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Dial A for Aunties
Jesse Q. Sutanto2021
A photographer accidentally kills her blind date. Her mother and aunties help hide the body during a massive luxury wedding.
wry → playful
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3 more ↓

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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
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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
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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.
wry → propulsive
pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

Slower

pace-2prose+2bleak+1
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·bleak+1
pace-2prose+2bleak+3
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner1936
The rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen is recounted through multiple, conflicting memories. The prose uses extremely long, complex sentences.
wry → elegiac
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3 more ↓

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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
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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.
wry → 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.
wry → bleak
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Heavier

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A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara2015
Four friends in New York over thirty years. One of them is being destroyed, and the book does not look away.
wry → bleak, still contemporary
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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.
wry → sardonic, still satire
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3 more ↓

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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+3
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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.
wry → bleak
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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.
wry → bleak
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