I’ve been reading lots of mainstream literary (ish) fiction the past few years. Stuff like The Nightingale, All the Light We Cannot See, Underground Railroad, Where the Crawdads Sing, etc. I’m looking for something to ‘break the mold’ a little bit, something exciting, fresh, bizarre, and unorthodox. An alternative to a standard book.
Basically, I’m looking for books whose format, structure, and/or writing techniques defy the norms of a normal story arc expressed in the standard sentences and paragraphs of exposition and dialogue, arranged in chapters.
For what little I know about these types of books, here are some examples of what I mean, to help illustrate the question:
* Format: told as a series of letters: ‘Epistolary’ novels
* Structure: a crazy web of seemingly impossible to relate sub-stories, that end up being related (>!Cloud Cuckoo Land!<)
* Techniques: Fight Club, Slaughterhouse Five, etc.
by ezeeetm
10 Comments
I’d typically suggest Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves here, but something about the titles you’ve mentioned in your post makes me think you may get something more out of one of Danielewski’s other works, “Only Revolutions”, so that’s where my recommendation will land for you.
Steve Erickson – Our Ecstatic Days
Joshua Chaplinsky – The Paradox Twins
ella minnow pea by mark dunn would be perfect for you!!
Vurt by Jeff Noon.
Bats of the Republic by Zachary Thomas Dodson hits a lot of the exact things you’re looking for, definitely a memorable and unique reading experience
{{If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller}} by Italo Calvino.
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
“Hopscotch” by Julio Cortazar is one of the craziest books structurally.
You can read it one of two ways: Straight through chapters 1 to 56 and ignore the rest of the book, or you can read it according to the “Table of Instructions” which tell you which chapter follows the one you just read.
Book by Robert Grudin
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu blends a novel with a screenplay format