Yellowface

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Ottessa Moshfegh2018

A wealthy New Yorker attempts to sleep for an entire year using a cocktail of prescription drugs to reset her life.

Same sardonic register, still satire

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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.

sardonic → playful

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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.

sardonic → elegiac, still unreliable narrator

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

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.

sardonic → dreamlike, still unreliable narrator

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The Hating Game

Sally Thorne2016

Two executive assistants at a publishing house compete for a single promotion through a series of psychological games and mutual sabotage.

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Redshirts

John Scalzi2012

Low-ranking crew members on a starship realize they are disposable characters in a sci-fi television show. They attempt to escape their fate.

sardonic → playful, still satire

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The Score

Elle Kennedy2016

A college senior has a one-night stand with a hockey player to get over a breakup. They continue the arrangement as graduation approaches.

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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.

Same sardonic register, still satire

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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.

sardonic → playful

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Behind Closed Doors

B.A. Paris2016

A woman is held captive by her husband in a high-security home. She must find a way to escape before her sister moves in with them.

sardonic → propulsive, still psychological thriller

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The Pale King

David Foster Wallace2011

An unfinished, experimental novel about the mundane daily operations of an IRS processing center in 1985 Illinois.

Same sardonic register, still satire

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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.

sardonic → clinical

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Translated Accounts

James Kelman2001

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

sardonic → bleak

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We need to talk about Kevin

Lionel Shriver2003

A mother writes letters to her husband after their teenage son commits a school shooting. She examines her own coldness and their family history.

sardonic → cold, still psychological thriller

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Dorian

Will Self2002

A modern retelling of Oscar Wilde's novel set in the London drug and art scenes of the 1980s. A video installation ages while the subject does not.

Same sardonic register, still satire

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The Road

Cormac McCarthy2006

A father and son walk through a landscape of ash and scavengers toward the coast. They carry only what fits in a shopping cart.

sardonic → bleak

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