LitQueuelitqueue

After

The Glass Hotel

Emily St. John Mandel2020

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • The Folding Star

    Alan Hollinghurst1994

    An English tutor in a Flemish city becomes obsessed with his teenage student. He pursues other men while fixating on the boy.

    dreamlike → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    dreamlike → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

  • The Sea

    John Banville2005

    A widower returns to a coastal resort to reflect on a childhood summer and his wife's death. The narrator's memory is fluid and dense.

    dreamlike → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·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.

    dreamlike → sardonic

    pace0·prose+1·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    dreamlike → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

  • To Sir Phillip, With Love

    Julia Quinn2003

    Eloise Bridgerton travels to meet a widowed baronet she has only known through letters. They consider a marriage of convenience.

    dreamlike → warm

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

  • All Rhodes Lead Here

    Mariana Zapata2021

    A woman moves back to her Colorado hometown after a breakup and rents a garage apartment from a grumpy single father.

    dreamlike → warm

    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.

    dreamlike → sardonic

    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.

    dreamlike → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    dreamlike → wry

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

Slower

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    dreamlike → 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.

    dreamlike → meditative, still literary fiction

    pace-1·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.

    dreamlike → playful, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·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.

    dreamlike → 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.

    dreamlike → 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.

    dreamlike → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+1