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After

The Baron in the Trees

Italo Calvino2019

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • North Woods

    Daniel Mason2023

    The story of a single house in the Massachusetts woods told through the lives of its inhabitants over four hundred years.

    playful → elegiac, still magical realism

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    playful → sardonic, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • 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.

    playful → dreamlike, still philosophical fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • Beloved

    Toni Morrison1987

    A mother in post-Civil War Ohio is haunted by the ghost of the daughter she killed to spare from slavery. The prose is dense and non-linear.

    playful → elegiac, still magical realism

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Split Infinity

    Piers Anthony1980

    A man travels between a high-tech world of games and a parallel world of magic. He must master both systems to avoid being assassinated.

    Same playful register

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

  • That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon

    Kimberly Lemming2021

    A spice trader saves a demon while intoxicated and joins his quest to kill a witch. The story features frequent sexual content and humor.

    Same playful register

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

  • Fantasy Lover

    Sherrilyn Kenyon2002

    A Spartan warrior cursed to be a love-slave inside a book is summoned by a modern woman. She takes him into the world to live as a man.

    playful → earnest

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Child 44

    Tom Rob Smith2008

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

    playful → tense

    pace+2·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.

    playful → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    playful → wry

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Elizabeth Costello

    J. M. Coetzee2003

    An elderly novelist travels the world giving academic lectures on animals, realism, and evil. The book is structured as a series of formal speeches.

    playful → meditative, still philosophical fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

  • 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.

    playful → clinical

    pace-1·prose+1·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.

    playful → elegiac, still historical fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • Schopenhauer's Telescope

    Gerard Donovan2003

    Two men stand over a grave in a war-torn village, debating history and philosophy. One is the prisoner digging; the other is his executioner.

    playful → tense, still philosophical fiction

    pace0·prose0·bleak+2

  • A Fine Balance

    Rohinton Mistry1995

    Four people from different castes share a small apartment during the 1975 Indian Emergency. Their lives are upended by state-sanctioned violence.

    playful → bleak, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose-1·bleak+2

  • 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.

    playful → bleak, still historical fiction

    pace0·prose0·bleak+2