LitQueuelitqueue

After

The Hotel Nantucket

Elin Hilderbrand2022

5 of 6 directions open — nothing to recover from

More like it

1 more ↓

  • 74 Seaside Avenue (Cedar Cove, Book7)

    Debbie Macomber2007

    A woman living in a small Washington town balances her job at a salon with concerns about her husband's secretive behavior.

    Same warm register, still contemporary

    pace-1·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    warm → playful

    pace-2·prose+3·bleak+1

  • The Sound and the Fury

    William Faulkner1929

    The decline of a Southern family told through four perspectives, including a non-linear stream of consciousness from a man with a disability.

    warm → elegiac

    pace-1·prose+3·bleak+3

  • 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.

    warm → dreamlike

    pace-1·prose+3·bleak+2

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Dial A for Aunties

    Jesse Q. Sutanto2021

    A photographer accidentally kills her blind date. Her mother and aunties help hide the body during a massive luxury wedding.

    warm → playful

    pace+1·prose0·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.

    warm → propulsive

    pace+1·prose0·bleak0

  • Project Hail Mary

    Andy Weir2021

    A man wakes up on a spaceship with amnesia and two dead crewmates. He must use scientific experiments to remember his mission and save the sun.

    warm → propulsive

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak0

Slower

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    warm → clinical

    pace-2·prose+3·bleak+2

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

    Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

    warm → bleak

    pace-2·prose+3·bleak+3

  • 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.

    warm → elegiac

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • The Underground Railroad

    Colson Whitehead2016

    Two slaves escape a Georgia plantation via a literal underground train system while being pursued by a slave catcher.

    warm → bleak

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+3

  • Oryx and Crake

    Margaret Atwood2003

    A man survives a genetic apocalypse in a world of engineered creatures. He remembers his past with a scientist and the woman they both loved.

    warm → sardonic

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+3

  • Slaughterhouse-Five

    Kurt Vonnegut1969

    Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time, experiencing his life out of order, from his chaplaincy in WWII to his abduction by aliens.

    warm → sardonic

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+3