LitQueuelitqueue

After

Today I Am Carey

Martin L. Shoemaker2019

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

Same tender register

1 more ↓

  • Where the Crawdads Sing

    Delia Owens2018

    A young girl raises herself in a North Carolina marsh after her family abandons her. Years later, she is tried for the murder of a local man.

    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.

    tender → sardonic

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1

  • A Brief History of Seven Killings

    Marlon James2014

    A large cast of characters recounts the 1976 attempt on Bob Marley's life. The narrative spans decades and moves from Jamaica to New York.

    tender → propulsive

    pace+1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • 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.

    tender → dreamlike

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    tender → warm

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Everything Beautiful in Its Time

    Jenna Bush Hager2020

    The author reflects on the lives and deaths of her grandparents, including a former President and First Lady. It is a series of personal essays.

    tender → warm

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Love Comes Softly

    Janette Oke1979

    A widow on the 19th-century frontier enters a marriage of convenience with a widower to survive the winter and care for his daughter.

    Same tender register

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

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.

    tender → sardonic

    pace+2·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.

    tender → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    tender → wry

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak-1

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.

    tender → clinical

    pace-1·prose+2·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.

    tender → bleak

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • 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.

    tender → elegiac

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

Heavier

tender → bleak

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    tender → sardonic

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • 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.

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+2

  • 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.

    tender → sardonic

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+2