LitQueuelitqueue

After

Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie2013

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

    Marianne Cronin2021

    A 17-year-old and an 83-year-old meet in a hospital terminal ward. They decide to create 100 paintings representing their combined years of life.

    wry → tender, still contemporary

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1

  • Don Quixote

    Kathy Acker1986

    A woman undergoes an abortion and adopts the persona of Don Quixote to pursue a quest in a fragmented, postmodern landscape.

    wry → sardonic

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+2

  • 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

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • My Roommate Is a Vampire

    Jenna Levine2023

    An artist moves in with a man who sleeps all day and speaks in an archaic style. She eventually discovers he is a vampire from the 1800s.

    wry → playful

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • It Happened One Summer

    Tessa Bailey2021

    A socialite is sent to a small fishing town to run a dive bar. She enters a relationship with a local sea captain who doubts her competence.

    wry → playful

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Bitten & Smitten

    Michelle Rowen2006

    Sarah is accidentally turned into a vampire and must rely on a grumpy, centuries-old vampire to teach her how to survive.

    wry → playful

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • 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

    pace+2·prose0·bleak+1

  • 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

    pace+2·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.

    wry → propulsive

    pace+2·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.

    wry → clinical

    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.

    wry → bleak

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • 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.

    wry → elegiac

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • 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

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • 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.

    wry → sardonic

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • 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

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+2