There's no particular reason why I'm the right person to talk about intrusive narrators. I studied math, not literature, in school, though variables can be as tricky as any imaginary character. As an unpopular child, I read a developmentally unhealthy number of books, but tragic backstories are a dime a dozen. I pepper my life with ironic asides to the Reader, but anyone with a devoted Reader (better yet, a dozen of them) can do that. To be honest, you'd probably have come up with a better list than I did. You should give it a shot.
The original metafiction narrator, postmodern before there was a modern to be post about, Tristram Shandy bumbles his way through his pseudo-biography, unreliable to family and readers alike. He doesn't even manage to get born by the end of the first volume. And yet his innumerable faults only make me like him more.
I can't help but admire the chutzpah of a man who interrupts the story to offer the reader the chance to buy their way into the dedication–and for the bargain sum of only fifty guineas!
Endlessly digressive, boundlessly imaginative and unmatched in its absurd and timeless wit, Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is edited with an introduction by Melvin New and Joan New, and includes a critical essay by Christopher Ricks in Penguin Classics.
Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first 'postmodern' novel. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter,…
You know why this maddening, captivating book is on this list. Where else would you find it? Where could your chapter-by-fragmentary-chapter search have brought you but to this repository of titles?
Perhaps you will discover a deeper meaning waiting for you in these linked disconnections. You offer Ludmilla a glass of wine. The story awaits.
"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a…
From Pulitzer Finalist Laurie Sheck (A Monster's Notes), a new speculative literary fiction in the spirit of Italo Calvino, Umberto Ecco and Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto that enacts an incisive and moving exploration into what it means to be human in the age of AI and increasing inhumanism.…
This book lives in my Brain rent-free, ironic since my brain is also not a space in which anyone should take Up residence.
I love the layers of narraTors, Johnny, Zampanò, and Navidson, all of Them unreliable, telling lies from cOnscious design, from iNability to face the truth, from shifting realities. Maybe one day I'll find my way through to someone who loves my ironieS.
“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations,…
When a younger version of myself fell in love with the movie version of The Princess Bride, she was very happy to discover it was based on an equally loveable, quotable book.
There's a special place in my heart for an author brilliant enough to write the swashbuckling romance of Westly and Buttercup and self-deprecating enough for one of his fictional personas to take the mickey out of another persona’s writing ability.
William Goldman’s beloved story of Buttercup, Westley, and their fellow adventurers.
This tale of true love, high adventure, pirates, princesses, giants, miracles, fencing, and a frightening assortment of wild beasts was unforgettably depicted in the 1987 film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Fred Savage, Robin Wright, and others. But, rich in character and satire, the novel boasts even more layers of ingenious storytelling. Set in 1941 and framed cleverly as an “abridged” retelling of a centuries-old tale set in the fabled country of Florin, home to “Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest…
Award-winning writer Laurence Klavan's newest collection of stories features twenty darkly comic and largely speculative tales.
People deal with aging parents, a world out of kilter, and their own arrested development today and in the near future, as Klavan weaves together threads of humanity and strangeness to dizzying and heartfelt…
When I first read this series as a child, I was surprised and delighted to find the pseudo-author Lemony Snicket breaking the fourth wall to comment on the pathos of the action, the meaning of obscure words, and the telling of stories.
Behind a veil of whimsy, Lemony gave my child-self a dark metaphor I didn't (yet) realize I needed and a new literary language. I wouldn't be the person I am without him.
Lemony Snicket's The Bad Beginning is the first book in the globally bestselling series A Series of Unfortunate Events. This exclusive gold foiled 20th anniversary hardback gift edition commemorates the miserable fact that every child in the world has wanted this brilliantly funny book for twenty years.
Perfect for fans of Roald Dahl and Mr Gum, young readers of 9 to 11 will adore the mischievously dark humour. Lemony Snicket's 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' has been made into a blockbuster Hollywood film starring Jim Carrey and is also a hit Netflix TV series. Now with new anniversary blurb by…
City planner by day, tired climate activist by day off, aspiring writer Zilla Novikov is more successful at breaking the fourth wall than breaking into traditional publishing. Her novel query letters blend together with her real life, quickly devolving into a darkly funny exploration of her own psyche.
As the rejections pile up, her blurbs and biographies grow increasingly unhinged, while Zilla discovers that the road to bestseller-dom is paved with neoliberal hellscapes.
What happens when you’re face-to-face with a truth that shakes you? Do you accept it, or pretend it was never there?
Award-winning author Mark A. Rayner smudges the lines between realist and fabulist, literary and speculative in this collection of stories that examines this question—what Homer called passing through The…
In this collection of nine stories, J.C. Gemmell takes readers on a quest into the future.
Tion is a dystopian civilisation built on the wreckage of a drowned Earth. Here, technology saves and oppresses, and mankind clings to survival in a place where the privileged live above the clouds, and…
