More like 253
anchored on:literary & generalour worldbritish isleslate 20th centuryreflectivemultiple pov+4 more
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- Concrete Island
J. G. Ballardstandalone novel1974
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinessreflectiveour worldbig citybritish isles
Architect Robert Maitland crashes his car onto a stretch of wasteland trapped between three converging motorways -- visible from thousands of cars, reachable by none of them. Injured and unable to climb back to the road, Maitland adapts to life on what he starts calling the Island, scavenging food thrown from car windows, and discovers he isn't alone: a runaway sex worker hiding in a bunker, and a brain-damaged former circus acrobat, both long past expecting rescue. What begins as a survival story turns into a question of whether Maitland even wants to leave. A J. G. Ballard novel of urban isolation, grouped with Crash and High-Rise.
- Phases of Gravity
Dan Simmonsstandalone novel1989
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylate 20th centuryour world
Follows Richard Baedecker, an Apollo astronaut who walked on the moon, through his midlife crisis. He meanders through India, Glen Oak Illinois, the mountains of Colorado, and the coastline of Oregon, checking up on his son and his former Apollo crewmates.
- Black Swan Green
David Mitchellstandalone novel2006
similar byliterary & generalidentitylate 20th centuryreflectivebritish isles+2 more
Black Swan Green is a semi-autobiographical novel written by David Mitchell, published in April 2006 in the U.S. and May 2006 in the UK. The bildungsroman's thirteen chapters each represent one month—from January 1982 through January 1983—in the life of 13-year-old Worcestershire boy Jason Taylor. The novel is written from the perspective of Taylor and employs many teen colloquialisms and popular-culture references from early-1980s England.
- Moon Palace
Paul Austerstandalone novel1989
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylonelinesslate 20th centurybig city
Moon Palace is a novel written by Paul Auster that was first published in 1989.
- The Edible Woman
Margaret Atwoodstandalone novel1969
similar byliterary & generalidentitylate 20th centuryreflectiveour world
The Edible Woman is the first published novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, published in 1969. It is the story of a young woman, Marian, whose sane, structured, consumer-oriented world starts to slip out of focus. Following her engagement, Marian feels her body and her self are becoming separated. Marian begins endowing food with human qualities that cause her to identify with it, and finds herself unable to eat, repelled by metaphorical cannibalism. In a foreword written in 1979 for the Virago edition of the novel, Atwood described it as a protofeminist rather than feminist work.
- 1982 Janine
Alasdair Graystandalone novel1984
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinesslate 20th centurybritish isles+1 more
1982, Janine is a novel by the Scottish author Alasdair Gray. His second, it was published in 1984, and remains his most controversial work. Its use of pornography as a narrative device attracted much criticism, although others, including Gray himself, consider it his best work.
- Our Tragic Universe
Scarlett Thomasstandalone novel2010
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylonelinessbritish isles
'I was reading about the end of the universe when I got a text message from my friend Libby . . .' If Kelsey Newman's theory about the end of time is true, we are all going to live forever. But for Meg – locked in a dead-end relationship and with a deadline long-gone for a book that she can't write – this thought fills her with dread. Meg is lost in a labyrinth of her own devising. But could there be an important connection between a wild beast living on Dartmoor, a ship in a bottle, the science of time, a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe and the Cottingley Fairies? Or is her life just one long chain of coincidences? Smart, entrancing and buzzing with big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, and how a story might just save your life.
- Beautyland
Marie-Helene Bertinostandalone novel2024
similar byliterary & generallonelinesslate 20th centuryreflective+1 more
Beautyland is a novel by Marie-Helene Bertino. It was published on January 16, 2024, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book follows Adina, who is sent by aliens before birth to find out if they could live on earth and reports to them via a fax machine. The book starts with Adina's birth, which takes place in 1977 when Voyager 1 was launched.
- The Gum Thief
Douglas Couplandstandalone novel2007
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinessreflectivebig city
The Gum Thief is Canadian author Douglas Coupland's twelfth novel. It was published on September 25, 2007 , by Random House Canada in Canada and Bloomsbury Publishing in the United States.
- Speak
Louisa Hallstandalone novel2015
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylonelinessour world
Speak is a 2015 novel by Louisa Hall. It is her second novel, after The Carriage House. The novel was well received. The novel was inspired by a story in the New York Times.
- Turtle Diary
Russell Hobanstandalone novel1975
similar byliterary & generalreflectivelonelinessbittersweetbritish islesbig city
Two lonely Londoners plan to release the captive turtles from the London Zoo.
- Climbers
M. John Harrisonstandalone novel1989
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylate 20th centurybritish isles
Climbers is a literary novel by the British author M. John Harrison. First published in 1989 and apparently set several years earlier, the book had been out of print for several years but was reissued in paperback by Phoenix in 2004. It has attracted considerable critical acclaim and won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1989. It was not, however, universally popular with the British climbing public, and received at least one negative review in the popular magazine Climber.
- Wittgenstein's Mistress
David Marksonstandalone novel1988
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylonelinessour world
Wittgenstein's Mistress is a 1988 experimental novel written by David Markson. A highly stylized work in the tradition of Samuel Beckett, the novel is mainly a series of statements made in the first person. The protagonist is a woman named Kate who believes herself to be the last human on earth; though her statements shift quickly from topic to topic, the topics often recur, and often refer to Western cultural icons, ranging from Zeno to Beethoven to Willem de Kooning. Readers familiar with Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus will recognize stylistic similarities to that work.
- Beatlebone
Kevin Barrystandalone novel2015
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinessreflectivebritish isles
John Lennon tries to visit the island of Dorinish on the west coast of Ireland, which he bought intending to use as a retreat, but he has a hard time getting there.
- Generation X
Douglas Couplandstandalone novel1991
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylonelinesslate 20th century
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture is the first novel by Douglas Coupland, published by St. Martin's Press in 1991. The novel, which popularized the term "Generation X", is a framed narrative in which a group of youths exchange heartfelt stories about themselves and fantastical stories of their creation.
- Warp
Lev Grossmanstandalone novel1997
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylonelinesslate 20th century
A novel on a young man pursuing leisure. He is Hollis of Boston who graduated from Harvard, but doesn't feel like working. He lives in a world of imagination, sometimes a knight errant, sometimes a space warrior. A debut in fiction.
- Brazzaville Beach
William Boydstandalone novel1990
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitylate 20th century
Brazzaville Beach is a novel by William Boyd, for which he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 1990, and the McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. The book tells the story of a woman, Hope Clearwater, researching chimpanzees, and the circumstances that brought her to Africa. It is Boyd's first novel with a female protagonist and the first to be written, at least in part, from a first person female perspective. Boyd said that rather than try to consider how a woman, as opposed to a man, would respond to certain situations he focused on developing and understanding Hope's character and personality.
- Piranesi
Susanna Clarkestandalone novel2020
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinessreflectiveunderground & caves
A man lives in a huge isolated labyrinthine building partially submerged in an ocean, together with another man and 13 skeletons, which is the only world he recalls.
- In Milton Lumky Territory
Philip K. Dickstandalone novel1985
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinessreflective
In Milton Lumky Territory is a realist, non-science fiction novel authored by Philip K. Dick. Originally written in 1958, but rejected by prospective publishers, this book was eventually published posthumously in 1985 by Dragon Press. It was published in two editions. Fifty copies were bound in quarter leather and included a signature from one of the author's canceled checks but were not jacketed. Nine hundred fifty copies were published with a cloth binding and included a dust jacket. It was reprinted in paperback in 2006.
- The Thief of Time
John Boynestandalone novel2000
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveidentitybittersweetour world
Matthieu Zela's life is characterized by the fact that as he grows older through the 18th century, he discovers that his body has stopped ageing, and he is near immortal. At the end of the twentieth century, he looks back at a life lived as the thief of time..
- Observatory Mansions
Edward Careystandalone novel2000
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinessreflectivebritish islesbig city
"Easily the most brilliant fiction I've seen this year -- it proves the potential brilliance of the novel form."-- John Fowles, author of The MagusObservatory Mansions, once the Orme family's magnificent ancestral home set on beautiful grounds, is now a crumbling apartment block stranded on a traffic island, peopled with eccentrics.Thirty-seven-year-old Francis Orme lives in Observatory Mansions with his peculiar parents and a collection of misfits. By day he is a street performer, earning money as "a statue of whiteness" in the park, wearing white gloves to ensure that his skin never touches anything. He steals items for his museum of significant objects (996 in all), not for their monetary value but because they have been loved, often bringing grief to their erstwhile owners. His bedridden mother, Alice, who has created for herself an alternative time frame called "fiction," and his father, Francis, are among the occupants set apart from the rest of the busy city by their histories, their memories, and their relationships with the other seven inhabitants of the flats.Each of the house dwellers has his or her own story, as seen through Francis's eyes, and the careful routine and harmony of the house are shaken when along comes a new resident, the half-blind, vulnerable Anna Tap. She is sympathetic and resourceful, and slowly the desperately lonely residents begin to open up their long-closed hearts. As the delicate balance of Observatory Mansions begins to shift, Francis finds himself having to protect the secrets of his past and the sanctity of his collection, while growing emotionally closer to Anna.Hailed as no less than a tour de force, Observatory Mansions is a debut novel of immense originality--a strangely haunting landscape occupied by compelling and unforgettable characters.From the Hardcover edition.
- The Love Child
Edith Olivierstandalone novel1927
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinessreflectivebritish isles
Amazon: At thirty-two, her mother dead, Agatha Bodenham finds herself quite alone. She summons back to life the only friend she ever knew, Clarissa, the dream companion of her childhood. At first Clarissa comes by night, and then by day, gathering substance in the warmth of Agatha's obsessive love until it seems that others too can see her. See, but not touch, for Agatha has made her love child for herself alone. No man may approach her elfin creation of perfect beauty. If he does, the love which summoned her can spirit her away
- Mother London
Michael Moorcockstandalone novel1988
similar byliterary & generalreflectivelate 20th centurybritish islesbig citynonlinear narrativemultiple pov
Mother London is a novel by Michael Moorcock. Published in 1988, it was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Although the city of London itself is perhaps the central character, it follows three outpatients from a mental hospital—a music hall artist, a reclusive writer and a woman just awoken from a long coma —who experience the history of the city from the Blitz to the late eighties through chaotic experience and sensory delusions. The novel is a non-chronological compilation of episodes, snippets and sidelines, rather than a single cohesive narrative. A piece in The Guardian called it 'a great, humane document'.
- Mother Night
Kurt Vonnegut & Jr.standalone novel1962
similar byliterary & generalidentityreflectiveour world
Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American playwright who grew up in Germany, writes his memoirs from an Israeli prison cell awaiting trial for war crimes. As the Nazis rose to power, Campbell stayed on, married a German actress, and was recruited by an American agent to serve as a double agent, broadcasting Nazi propaganda over the radio while secretly passing coded intelligence to the Allies. The catch, as Campbell tells it, is that he became one of the war's most effective propagandists in the process, whatever his loyalties. Kurt Vonnegut's darkest novel asks what a person becomes when the mask he wears for a cause is indistinguishable from his face.
