LitQueuelitqueue

After

Shelter

Jung Yun2016

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

Same tense register, still literary fiction

1 more ↓

  • Ghost Wall

    Sarah Moss2018

    A girl and her parents join a university reenactment of Iron Age life. Her father's obsession with historical authenticity turns dangerous.

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1

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.

    tense → sardonic

    pace-1·prose+1·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.

    tense → bleak

    pace-2·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

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

To recover

tense → playful

3 more ↓

  • Tall, Tatted and Tempting

    Tammy Falkner2013

    A tattoo artist who communicates through sign language falls for a woman who enters his shop. The story follows their domestic courtship.

    tense → tender

    pace0·prose-2·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.

    pace-1·prose-2·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.

    tense → earnest

    pace0·prose-2·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+1·prose-1·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+1·prose-2·bleak-2

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    tense → wry

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

Slower

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    tense → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose0·bleak0

  • Moby Dick

    Herman Melville1851

    A sailor joins a whaling voyage led by a captain seeking revenge on a specific whale. Large sections digress into the mechanics of 1850s whaling.

    tense → meditative, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

  • To the Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf1927

    A family and their guests visit a house in the Hebrides. The narrative follows their internal thoughts over two days separated by ten years.

    tense → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • A Distant Shore

    Caryl Phillips2003

    A retired teacher and an African refugee form a quiet bond in a xenophobic English village. Their past traumas emerge through alternating stories.

    tense → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

  • A Little Life

    Hanya Yanagihara2015

    Four friends in New York over thirty years. One of them is being destroyed, and the book does not look away.

    tense → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

  • The Nickel Boys

    Colson Whitehead2019

    A studious black teenager in 1960s Florida is sent to a brutal reform school where physical abuse is systemic.

    tense → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1