LitQueuelitqueue

After

St. Urbain's Horseman

Mordecai Richler1971

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • My Year of Rest and Relaxation

    Ottessa Moshfegh2018

    A wealthy New Yorker attempts to sleep for an entire year using a cocktail of prescription drugs to reset her life.

    Same sardonic register, still satire

    pace0·prose-1·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • As I Lay Dying

    William Faulkner1915

    The Bundren family travels by wagon to bury their matriarch. Fifteen different narrators describe the journey as the corpse decomposes.

    Same sardonic register, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose+1·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.

    Same sardonic register, still satire

    pace0·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.

    sardonic → dreamlike, still unreliable narrator

    pace0·prose+1·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • The Mane Event

    Shelly Laurenston2007

    A female cop reunites with a childhood friend who is now a lion-shifter. They navigate a romantic attraction while he pursues her in New York.

    sardonic → playful

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

  • The Lost Symbol

    Dan Brown2009

    Symbologist Robert Langdon follows a trail of Masonic puzzles through Washington D.C. monuments to save his kidnapped mentor.

    sardonic → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Redshirts

    John Scalzi2012

    Low-ranking crew members on a starship realize they are disposable characters in a sci-fi television show. They attempt to escape their fate.

    sardonic → playful, still satire

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Get Jiro!

    Anthony Bourdain2012

    In a future Los Angeles, master chefs rule as warlords. A sushi chef who kills rude customers is caught between two warring food factions.

    Same sardonic register, still satire

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

  • Child 44

    Tom Rob Smith2008

    A Soviet security officer investigates a serial killer in a state that officially claims murder does not exist.

    sardonic → tense

    pace+2·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.

    sardonic → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Blackouts

    Justin Torres2023

    A young man cares for a dying elder in a medical facility. They use a 1930s study on homosexuality to reconstruct their personal histories.

    sardonic → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak0

  • The Waters of Kronos

    Conrad Richter1960

    An elderly man travels back in time to his childhood Pennsylvania town, which in his present day is submerged beneath a reservoir.

    sardonic → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak-1

  • The story of a brief marriage

    Anuk Arudpragasam2016

    Two refugees enter an arranged marriage in a Sri Lankan camp during the final days of the civil war. It focuses on the physical details of survival.

    sardonic → meditative, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

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.

    sardonic → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace0·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.

    sardonic → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace0·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.

    sardonic → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+1