Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan2010

Interlocking stories follow a record executive, his assistant, and their circle across decades. One chapter is told entirely through PowerPoint.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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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.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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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.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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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.

elegiac → sardonic

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Wild Iris Ridge

RaeAnne Thayne2014

Lucy Drake returns to her small hometown to renovate an inheritance and encounters the widowed husband of her late best friend.

elegiac → warm, still contemporary

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The Five-Star Weekend

Elin Hilderbrand2023

A widow invites four friends from different stages of her life to a weekend on Nantucket. They navigate old secrets and current life transitions.

elegiac → warm, still contemporary

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This Girl

Colleen Hoover2013

A husband retells the story of his early relationship to his wife. It uses dual timelines to revisit events from the first book in the series.

elegiac → earnest

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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.

elegiac → sardonic

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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.

elegiac → propulsive

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The Martian

Andy Weir2011

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

elegiac → wry

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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.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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Moby Dick

Herman Melville1851

A sailor joins a whaling voyage led by a captain seeking revenge on a specific whale. Large sections digress into the mechanics of 1850s whaling.

elegiac → meditative, still literary fiction

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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.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

pace-1·prose+1·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.

elegiac → meditative, still literary fiction

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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.

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The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead2019

A studious black teenager in 1960s Florida is sent to a brutal reform school where physical abuse is systemic.

Same elegiac register, still literary fiction

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