LitQueuelitqueue

After

Carry Me Down

M. J. Hyland2006

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • Swimming Home

    Deborah Levy2011

    A family on holiday in the French Riviera finds a stranger floating in their pool. Her presence forces their hidden resentments to the surface.

    Same tense register, still psychological fiction

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Study for Obedience

    Sarah Bernstein2023

    A woman moves to a remote northern country to care for her brother. The local community grows hostile as she observes them.

    tense → cold, still psychological fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • The Pale King

    David Foster Wallace2011

    An unfinished, experimental novel about the mundane daily operations of an IRS processing center in 1985 Illinois.

    tense → sardonic

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • 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.

    tense → sardonic, still unreliable narrator

    pace0·prose+2·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    tense → earnest

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Assistant to the Villain

    Hannah Nicole Maehrer2023

    A woman takes a job as an administrative assistant to a local villain to support her family. She manages his office while ignoring his evil deeds.

    tense → playful

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Walking Disaster

    Jamie McGuire2013

    This novel retells the events of 'Beautiful Disaster' from the perspective of Travis Maddox. It follows his college years and obsession with Abby.

    tense → propulsive

    pace+1·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.

    tense → sardonic

    pace+2·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.

    tense → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak-2

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    tense → wry

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak-2

Slower

3 more ↓

  • February

    Lisa Moore2009

    A widow in Newfoundland moves between her quiet daily routines and the memory of her husband's death on a sunken oil rig decades earlier.

    tense → elegiac, still psychological fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

  • The Wilderness

    Samantha Harvey2009

    An architect with Alzheimer's attempts to reconstruct his life story. The narrative fragments as his memory and sense of time dissolve.

    tense → elegiac, still psychological fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

  • Study for Obedience

    Sarah Bernstein2023

    A woman moves to a remote northern country to care for her brother. The local community grows hostile as she observes them.

    tense → cold, still psychological fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • The Lighthouse

    Alison Moore2012

    A recently separated man takes a walking tour of Germany while reflecting on his childhood abandonment and his failing marriage.

    tense → bleak, still psychological fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • Shuggie Bain

    Douglas Stuart2020

    A young boy grows up in 1980s Glasgow public housing. He tries to support his mother as she struggles with severe alcoholism and poverty.

    tense → bleak, still coming of age

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • The White Hotel

    D. M. Thomas1981

    A woman's life is told through poems, a Freudian case study, and a narrative. It moves from her sexual fantasies to her death in the Holocaust.

    tense → dreamlike, still psychological fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1