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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler2013

6 of 6 directions open

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  • The Death of Vishnu

    Manil Suri2001

    A handyman lies dying on a staircase in a Bombay apartment building. The narrative explores the internal lives and conflicts of the residents above.

    Same wry register, still domestic fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • The Conservationist

    Nadine Gordimer1974

    A wealthy white industrialist buys a farm outside Johannesburg. He struggles to maintain control over the land and the people on it.

    wry → cold, still psychological fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • Study for Obedience

    Sarah Bernstein2023

    A woman moves to a remote northern country to care for her brother. The local community grows hostile as she observes them.

    wry → cold, still psychological fiction

    pace-2·prose+2·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.

    wry → sardonic, still unreliable narrator

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Assistant to the Villain

    Hannah Nicole Maehrer2023

    A woman takes a job as an administrative assistant to a local villain to support her family. She manages his office while ignoring his evil deeds.

    wry → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • The Marriage Bargain

    Jennifer Probst2012

    A bookstore owner enters a one-year contract marriage with a billionaire to save her family's land. They must follow a set of rules to stay platonic.

    wry → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • A Quick Bite

    Lynsay Sands2005

    A vampire who faints at the sight of blood finds a psychologist tied to her bed as a gift. They navigate his kidnapping and her family dynamics.

    wry → playful

    pace0·prose-1·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.

    wry → sardonic

    pace+1·prose0·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.

    wry → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    Same wry register

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

Slower

3 more ↓

  • February

    Lisa Moore2009

    A widow in Newfoundland moves between her quiet daily routines and the memory of her husband's death on a sunken oil rig decades earlier.

    wry → elegiac, still psychological fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

  • The Wilderness

    Samantha Harvey2009

    An architect with Alzheimer's attempts to reconstruct his life story. The narrative fragments as his memory and sense of time dissolve.

    wry → elegiac, still psychological fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

  • The Next Big Thing

    Anita Brookner2002

    A seventy-three-year-old man in London contemplates his few remaining options for the future. He considers travel, marriage, and his isolation.

    wry → meditative, still psychological fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • No Longer Human

    太宰 治2024

    A man describes his life through three notebooks, detailing his inability to connect with others and his social alienation.

    wry → bleak, still psychological fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • The Lighthouse

    Alison Moore2012

    A recently separated man takes a walking tour of Germany while reflecting on his childhood abandonment and his failing marriage.

    wry → bleak, still psychological fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • The White Hotel

    D. M. Thomas1981

    A woman's life is told through poems, a Freudian case study, and a narrative. It moves from her sexual fantasies to her death in the Holocaust.

    wry → dreamlike, still psychological fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1