I recently re-read Nicholson Baker's "A Box of Matches," and one of the things I loved about it is how… plain it is. The prose is nothing flashy, the plot's pretty minimal, but part of its charm, for me at least, is that it's content just to present this small, closely-observed, slice of life with minimal fuss.
All of which is a long way of asking, what else can you suggest along those lines?
by TheFirst10000
29 Comments
Stoner
Pets by bragi olaffson. The MC is hiding under a bed the entire time.
Maybe the blade itself by Joe abecrombie. He’s pretty open that he forgot to include a plot but stuff is happening in the world.
Well, it certainly is not minimal nor is the prose simple, but nothing really happens: James Joyce’s Ulysses is what I am referring to. A single day in Dublin, very little plot, yet one of the most careful and complex works of fiction ever produced. My personal favorite novel of all time. Here is a few others, along the similar lines of being not simple at all but lacking a general ‘plot’ or motion.
Virginia Woolf — Mrs Dalloway, The Waves, To the Lighthouse.
Samuel Beckett’s The Trilogy
J.D. Salinger — The Catcher in the Rye
Henry Miller — Tropic of Cancer
Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession:
> a debut novel about two gentle, thirty-something Irish men who live with their parents and find contentment in quiet lives, board games, and their jobs, challenging societal norms of success.
Stoner by John Williams
After dark by Haruki marukami : it’s about a few people’s night in Tokyo.. a book where very little happens yet it feels like there is something happening or about to. Nice quick odd little read. Definitely my favorite of his.
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Look into Korean/ Japanese cozy fiction! My favs are goodnight Tokyo, the kamogawa food detectives, welcome to the hyunam dong bookshop and the restaurant to another world
I read Proust, In Search of Lost Time. Nothing happens.
More serious, you might like Rental Person Who Does Nothing.
Stoner
Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Tom Lake, Anne Pratchett
Pretty soothing, a little bit of plot but mostly just musings on moments in time
I might get some push back on this but I think The Road is a really good example of this. There are some big moments but the isolation, desolation, and lack of a broader world are really what makes the story what it is. Even the big moments are ultimately inconsequential.
Beartown by Fredrik Backman
So much background/characters/setup for a whole lotta nothing.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Chocolat- absolutely nothing
Invisible Cities by Calvino
A Psalm for the Wild-Built and the follow up to that A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
Orbital
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
A Month In The Country by JL Carr. Short and sweet too.
Sarah Plain and Tall
The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway
Plainsong, by Kent Haruf
*Legends and Lattes* by Travis Baldree
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich byAleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Cozy LitRPG like Heretical Fishing and Beware of Chicken. Fun and easy books, not much happening, still a little bit of action and good story.
*The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet* by Becky Chambers.
I finished this but the slow pacing and lack of any action drove me nuts. YMMV though, because I’ve heard from plenty of redditors about how much they love this book.
Almost anything by Anne Tyler fits this description. She’s been one of my favorites for years. She won the Pulitzer for Breathing Lessons, but some of her lesser known works are equally satisfying. St. Maybe, Morgan’s Passing, and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant are wonderful.