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At the Bottom of Everything

Ben Dolnick · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt · 817 pages

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthra

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionContemporary Fiction
❤️

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini · 368 pages

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacri

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionContemporary Fiction
❤️

The 3 Mistakes of My Life

Chetan Bhagat · 268 pages

In late-2000, a young boy in Ahmedabad called Govind dreamt of having a business. To accomodate his friends Ish and Omi's passion, they open a cricket shop. Govind's wants to make money and thinks big. Ish is all about nurturing Ali, the batsman with a rare gift. Omi knows his limited capabiltiies and just wants to be with his friends. However, nothing comes easy in a turbulent city. To realize th

Friendship and BetrayalIndiaLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
❤️

The Round House

Louise Erdrich · 352 pages

A young man is upended after a violent attack on his mother, which leaves his family in turmoil. Well-written page turner that is hard to put down!

Friendship and BetrayalSurvivor's GuiltLiterary FictionContemporary Fiction
❤️

Thirteen Reasons Why

Jay Asher · 288 pages

Clay Jenkins returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers 13 cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker—his classmate and crush—who committed suicide two weeks earlier.On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list.Through

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
❤️

Sophie's Choice

William Styron · 625 pages

The gripping, unforgettable story of Stingo, a 22-year-old writer; Sophie, a Polish-Catholic beauty who survived the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz; and Nathan, her mercurial lover. The three friends share magical, heart-warming times until doom overtakes them as Sophie's and Nathan's darkest secrets are revealed.

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
❤️

Looking for Alaska

John Green · 262 pages

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Ala

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
❤️

The Speed of Light

Javier Cercas · 283 pages

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
❤️

A Separate Peace

John Knowles · 196 pages

Gene Forrester looks back fifteen years to a World War II year in which he and his best friend were roommates in a New hampshire boarding school.

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
❤️

Red Kayak

Priscilla Cummings · 209 pages

Brady loves life on the Chesapeake Bay with his friends J.T. and Digger. But developers and rich families are moving into the area, and while Brady befriends some of them, like the DiAngelos, his parents and friends are bitter about the changes. Tragedy strikes when the DiAngelos' kayak overturns in the bay, and Brady wonders if it was more than an accident. Soon, Brady discovers the terrible trut

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalContemporary FictionMale Lead
🙂

The Princesses of Iowa

M. Molly Backes

After being involved in a drunk driving accident in the spring, Paige Sheridan spends the summer in Paris as an au-pair and then returns to her suburban Iowa existence for her senior year of high school, where she begins to wonder if she wants more out life than being popular, having a handsome boyfriend and all the latest clothes, and being a member of the social elite.

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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A Map of the World

Jane Hamilton · 402 pages

In the tradition of The Good Mother by Sue Miller and Before and After by Rosellen Brown, A Map of the World is the riveting story of how a single mistake can forever change the lives of everyone involved - in ways that are beyond imagination. One unremarkable June morning, Alice Goodwin is, as usual, trying to keep in check both her temper and her tendency to blame herself for her family's sho

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionContemporary Fiction
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Long Drive Home

Will Allison · 227 pages

Impulsively veering his car into the path of a reckless driver, Glen Bauer inadvertently kills a young man and constructs an elaborate cover story, a situation that is complicated by police suspicions, agonizing guilt, and his seven-year-old daughter's witness to the crash.

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Mudbound

Hillary Jordan · 335 pages

"It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm; a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not; charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eld

Friendship and BetrayalSurvivor's GuiltLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque · 236 pages

This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I. These young men become enthusiastic soldiers, but their world of duty, culture, and progress breaks into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the hatred that meaninglessly pits young men of the s

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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The Yellow Birds

Kevin Powers · 240 pages

In this haunting fictional account, an Iraq war veteran contemplates the lives, including his own, devasated by the random violence of war.

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Everything Is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer · 288 pages

A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis, Jr, J

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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What Is the What

Dave Eggers · 475 pages

*What Is the What* is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children--the so-called Lost Boys--was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the Un

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Love Letters to the Dead

Ava Dellaira · 327 pages

When Laurel starts writing letters to dead people for a school assignment, she begins to spill about her sister's mysterious death, her mother's departure from the family, her new friends, and her first love.

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Insurgent

Veronica Roth · 544 pages

One choice can transform you--or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves--and herself--while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love. Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with h

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalFirst Person Narrator
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A Friend of the Family

Lauren Grodstein · 320 pages

After his best friend's daughter, Laura, sets her sights on his son, Alec, Pete Dizinoff sees his plans for a perfect son not just unraveling but being destroyed completely and sets out to derail the romance.

Friendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Anthony Marra · 416 pages

In a rural village in December 2004 Chechnya, a failed doctor Akhmed harbors the traumatized 8-year-old daughter of a father abducted by Russian forces and treats a series of wounded rebels and refugees while exploring the shared past that binds him to the child. "In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle

Survivor's GuiltFriendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionMale Lead
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Saint Maybe

Anne Tyler · 337 pages

Saint Maybe is the rich and absorbing story of a young man's guilt over his brother's death and his struggle to atone for the wrong he feels he has done. On a quiet street in Baltimore in 1965, seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe lives with his family in an "ideal, apple-pie household," enjoying the comfort of family traditions and indulging in all the usual dreams of the future. Until one night, when I

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionContemporary FictionMale Lead
🙂

Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

Friendship and BetrayalLiterary FictionContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator

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