I think I figured out my favorite reading lane lately.
Short, really weird novels that feel unsettling but not full horror.
Not super violent. Not heavy gore. Just strange and memorable.
Some recent ones I liked:
• Piranesi
• A Fair System, Probably
• The Employees
All of them were quick reads and had that quiet off feeling that sticks with you after.
Would love anything else that fits this same lane.
Short, weird, and memorable.
by matthew_rowan
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We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley Jackson
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
The City & the City by China Miéville
Convenience Store Woman- Sayaka Murata
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
American Hippo by Sarah Gailey is two novellas and a short story as a bind up. It’s an exquisitely weird alternate history hippo riding cowboy heist story.
Hunchback – Saou Ichikawa
Behold The Man by Michael Moorcock
*The Third Policeman* by Flann O’Brien
“*The Third Policeman* is a surreal, darkly comic novel by Irish author Flann O’Brien, following an unnamed narrator who commits a botched robbery and murder, leading him into a bizarre, logic-defying world inhabited by eccentric policemen obsessed with bicycles and the theories of a fictional philosopher, de Selby.”
Yellow wallpaper.
Monstrilio by Gerardo Samano Cordova.
Ooh I just recommended *Open Throat* by Henry Hoke in another thread. It’s short and bizarre and really, really good. It’s narrated by a queer mountain lion who lives in the hills above LA near the Hollywood sign. It’s actually quite touching but super nuts. I loved it and I am not always a fan of weird books. I read it last year and I still think about it.
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
The Cook by Harry Kressing
Not sure how short you want it but:
Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks
Chlorine
Eat The Ones You Love
Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck (short stories, but the overall collection is also short)
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval
Mariana Enriquez’s short story collections, like The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Very weird and off feeling.
Lincoln in the bardo. I recommend this one a lot. It’s so strange. It’s so unforgettable.
Temporary
Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon
Nothing to See Here, Brian Wilson
Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia
The crying of lot 49, Pynchon
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
So unsettling.