Some books I love are:
- A Short Stay in Hell – Steven L. Peck
- Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
- Circe – Madeline Miller
- Lapvona – Ottessa Moshfegh
- Earthlings – Sayaka Murata
- Replay – Ken Grimwood
- Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
Some books that areeee not quite my tempo:
- Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Armfield
- Tender is the Flesh – Agustina Bazterrica
- Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
- Bear – Marian Engel
Essentially, some of the qualities I really enjoy in books are heavy character study – especially when the character has a unique voice, weird/strange or disturbing vibes generally speaking, world building to the max in shorter books (i.e., less than 800 pages), and mysterious things happening that the main character is trying to figure out. Thank you in advance for any recs!!!
by SauceQueenTM
7 Comments
Once there were wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
Hey there!
I haven’t read most of the books you listed, but I did read Earthlings and greatly enjoyed it.
I think a novel you could enjoy is No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. The main character definitely had some “strange” vibes, he never feels like he belongs, just like the protagonist in Earthlings. However, this feeling leads him to a completely different life than that of Natsuki.
You could also enjoy Dostoevskij’s novels, “The Idiot” in particular also has similar themes of alienation and social ineptitude, but I’ve read it a long while ago and don’t remember it well so take my words with a grain of salt.
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Im
Laughing because my daughter had to read Never Let me Go and she HATED it.
I’d recommend reading Nathalie Haynes. She has written several books about Greek mythology that are really great. A Thousand Ships is a good place to start, where she explores the female characters from the Iliad
Here Goes Nothing by Steven Toltz – an odd and philosophical couple allow a stranger to lodge in their home. He is awaiting his illness to become terminal, but before then one of the couple dies and finds themselves in the land of the dead watching their partner and the stranger.
It reminded me of ASSIH by Peck and Piranesi by Clarke.
The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier – Another story about the afterlife (I went through a depressive patch reading novels about death) which chimed with Peck – the land of the dead is a city filling up, but the inhabitants only remain as long as someone living remembers them. As a plague sweeps the land, the city of the dead shrinks relying more and more on the few remaining living members of an isolated research station.
If you liked Piransei have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Clarke? And if you liked that then I’d suggest Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang.
Since I think you might like magical realism – try Jonathan Carroll – Land of Laughs or Mr Breakfast.
Finally – I’ll recommend Ned Beaumann – Venomous Lumpsucker if you like eco-speculation, Teleportation Accident if you want a pre-war horny, drunk idiot stumbling around in times of historical import and Boxer Beetle if you fancy reading about the trials of a pugilist in 1920s NYC (Although if you do like that, then read Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy by Sam Miller first)
Edit: While taking inspiration from your recommendations – Replay (which I’ve not read) reminds me of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.
House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig definitely has your mystery/unsettling vibes covered! I usually pitch it to my friends as if The Twelve Dancing Princesses was a gothic horror(ish) with the visual vibes of Crimson Peak
You had me until I saw Earthlings, ha. I found that the book Bunny by Mona Awad gave me that Earthlings feel. I can’t say that I loved either, but they felt the same to me.
For that Replay, Piranesi, Short Stay feel: The First 15 Lives of Harry August. A little bit of time travel, a lot of the character trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Great book with a great ending.
I read A Short Stay in Hell the same day that I read another short story called Open Throat. It’s a snapshot of humanity through the eyes of a mountain lion. I liked both equally though they are very different.
In Circe a woman is sent to a strange world where she has to learn to survive alone and find strength and happiness with that. It also has a satisfying ending. Project Hail Mary could not be a more different *setting* — a male character in SPACE. But is has the same journey and satisfying ending.