Which books are told in the most interesting / creative/ mind bending ways? How does it add to the book overall?
My all time favourite is Ella Minnow Pea where the book is a series of letters. The characters have to think of more inventive ways to write their letters as an increasing number of letters are outlawed as the book progresses.
Honourable mentions include:
Maribou Stork Nightmares where the narrator is trying to suppress his dark past by allowing himself to slip into hallucinations of a whacky south African safari adventure.
Flowers for Algernon where the narrator becomes more articulate by taking part in a scientific experiment.
by Trashmonster93
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House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
The Complete Cosmicomics as well as Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. The random order of the books “routines” reinforces the novel’s hallucinatory quality.
The concept of “narrative pressure” as used by Pratchet.
Georges Perec’s La Disparition (the only time the letter ‘e’ appears is in the author’s name). I never read it in French because my French is less than basic but I did read the translation ‘A Void’. Also the unreliable narrator in Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
I loved the way Cloud Atlas was written. Really unique. I was turning those pages quickly so I could get to the next part.
*The Virgin Suicides* uses a first person collective POV — the story is told from the point of view of the neighborhood boys, but it’s never clear which one is speaking.