Fingersmith

Rekt

Alex Gonzalez2025

A young man grieving his girlfriend's death descends into a subculture of gore videos and dark web footage. He questions his own sanity and memory.

Same tense register, still noir

pace0·prose-1·bleak+1

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 historical fiction

pace-1·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.

tense → playful

pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

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.

tense → dreamlike, still unreliable narrator

pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

Love Is Blind

Lynsay Sands2006

A clumsy woman removes her glasses to appear attractive to a suitor, resulting in physical comedy and accidents. They navigate a Regency romance.

tense → playful

pace0·prose-2·bleak-1

The case of the lucky legs

Erle Stanley Gardner1931

Defense attorney Perry Mason represents a woman accused of murdering a promoter who scammed her in a beauty contest.

tense → propulsive, still noir

pace0·prose-2·bleak-1

Artemis

Andy Weir2017

A porter and smuggler on a lunar colony takes a high-stakes sabotage job to pay off a debt. She uses technical knowledge to solve problems.

tense → propulsive

pace+1·prose-2·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.

tense → sardonic

pace+1·prose-1·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.

tense → propulsive

pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

The Martian

Andy Weir2011

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

tense → wry

pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

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.

pace-2·prose0·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.

tense → playful

pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

Lila

Marilynne Robinson2014

A woman with a traumatic, nomadic past settles in a small Iowa town and marries a minister. She struggles to reconcile her history with his faith.

tense → tender, still historical fiction

pace-2·prose0·bleak0

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.

tense → bleak, still historical fiction

pace-1·prose0·bleak+2

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.

tense → meditative, still historical fiction

pace-1·prose0·bleak+2

A Long Long Way

Sebastian Barry2005

A young Irishman joins the British Army to fight in the trenches of World War I while his home country moves toward rebellion.

tense → elegiac, still historical fiction

pace-1·prose0·bleak+2