LitQueuelitqueue

After

A Land Remembered

Patrick D. Smith1984

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

Same elegiac register, still historical fiction

1 more ↓

  • Dreams of Joy

    Lisa See2011

    In 1958, a young woman travels from Los Angeles to China to find her father. She becomes trapped in the famine of the Great Leap Forward.

    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.

    elegiac → sardonic, still historical fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • 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.

    elegiac → playful

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak-1

  • 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.

    elegiac → dreamlike

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

To recover

elegiac → warm, still western

3 more ↓

  • Going Cowboy Crazy

    Katie Lane2011

    A woman travels to a small Texas town to find her secret twin sister and is mistaken for her by the local residents and her sister's ex-flame.

    elegiac → playful, still western

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • A Veiled Deception

    Annette Blair2009

    A vintage shop owner investigates a murder during her sister's wedding preparations to clear her family's name.

    elegiac → playful

    pace-1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • It Starts with Us

    Colleen Hoover2022

    A single mother navigates a new relationship with her first love while managing a jealous ex-husband. The story alternates perspectives.

    elegiac → earnest

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

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.

    elegiac → sardonic

    pace+1·prose0·bleak-1

  • 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.

    elegiac → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    elegiac → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

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.

    elegiac → clinical

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • 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.

    Same elegiac register, still historical fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

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

    elegiac → bleak

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

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.

    elegiac → bleak, still historical fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • 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.

    elegiac → meditative, still historical fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • 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.

    Same elegiac register, still western

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1