LitQueuelitqueue

After

Apple and Knife

Intan Paramaditha2018

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • The Blind Assassin

    Margaret Atwood2000

    An elderly woman reflects on her sister's suicide in 1945. The book contains a novel-within-a-novel that mirrors their family history.

    Same sardonic register

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    Same sardonic register

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+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.

    sardonic → playful

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

  • 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

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Starter Villain

    John Scalzi2023

    A substitute teacher inherits his uncle's secret supervillain business, including a volcano lair and talking cats.

    sardonic → wry

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Playing with Fire

    Gena Showalter2006

    A barista gains elemental superpowers after being poisoned and must flee from a government agent. They eventually work together to escape.

    sardonic → playful

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Digital Fortress

    Dan Brown1998

    The NSA's code-breaking supercomputer encounters an unbreakable algorithm. A cryptographer and a professor race to find the kill code.

    sardonic → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Final Destination #1

    Natasha Rhodes2005

    After surviving a group tragedy, a group of people are hunted by death in the order they were originally meant to die.

    sardonic → tense, still horror

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak+1

  • Grunge

    Larry Correia2016

    A Marine killed in a bombing is resurrected to hunt supernatural creatures. He joins a private company that kills monsters for government bounties.

    Same sardonic register, still horror

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Intercepts

    T.J. Payne2020

    A worker at a government facility monitors human test subjects driven insane by sensory deprivation. The experiment enters his private life.

    sardonic → tense, still horror

    pace+2·prose-2·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.

    sardonic → clinical

    pace-1·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.

    sardonic → bleak

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • Invisible Cities

    Italo Calvino1972

    Marco Polo describes fifty-five imaginary cities to Kublai Khan. The book is a series of short, prose-poem meditations on urban existence.

    sardonic → meditative, still magical realism

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • The Summer that Melted Everything

    Tiffany McDaniel2016

    A boy claiming to be the devil arrives in a small Ohio town during a 1984 heatwave. His presence triggers a series of local tragedies.

    sardonic → elegiac, still magical realism

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1

  • 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.

    Same sardonic register, still horror

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • 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.

    sardonic → bleak

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1