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Le Bal

Irene Nemirovsky · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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Flowers in the Attic

V.C. Andrews

Mother and DaughterRevenge PlotToxic Family DynamicsWealthy Families
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White Oleander

Janet Fitch · 390 pages

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes-each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsRevenge PlotLiterary Fiction
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Good Behaviour

Molly Keane · 256 pages

Toxic Family DynamicsMother and DaughterWealthy FamiliesDark Comedy
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A Sorceress Comes to Call

T. Kingfisher · 321 pages

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsWealthy FamiliesDark Comedy
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Eugénie Grandet

Honore de Balzac · 236 pages

Published in 1833 Part of Balzac's "Comédie Humaine"

Toxic Family DynamicsMother and DaughterWealthy FamiliesLiterary Fiction
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The Book of Proper Names

Amelie Nothomb · 126 pages

"To have an extraordinary life, Lucette believes, one must have and extraordinary name. Horrified by the pedestrian names her husband chooses for their unborn child (Tanguy if it's a boy, Joelle if it's a girl), Lucette does the only honorable thing to save her baby from such an unexceptional destiny - she kills her spouse. While in prison, Lucette gives birth to a daughter to whom she bequeaths t

ParisNovellaMother and DaughterDark Comedy
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The Vacationers

Emma Straub · 372 pages

Celebrating their thirty-fifth anniversary and their daughter's high-school graduation during a two-week vacation in Mallorca, Franny and Jim Post confront old secrets, hurts, and rivalries that reveal sides of themselves they try to conceal.

Toxic Family DynamicsWealthy FamiliesLiterary FictionMother and Daughter
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Aquarium

David Vann · 272 pages

"Twelve year old Caitlin lives alone with her mother-- a docker at the local container port-in subsidized housing next to an airport in Seattle. Each day, while she waits to be picked up after school, Caitlin visits the local aquarium to study the fish. Gazing at the creatures within the watery depths, Caitlin accesses a shimmering universe beyond her own. When she befriends an old man at the tank

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsTeen ProtagonistLiterary Fiction
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Nothing Holds Back the Night

Delphine de Vigan · 346 pages

Only a teenager when Delphine was born, Lucile raised two daughters largely alone. She was a former child model from a Bohemian family, younger and more glamorous than the other mothers: always in lipstick, wayward and wonderful. But as Delphine grew up, Lucile's occasional sadness gave way to overwhelming despair and delusion. She became convinced she was telepathic and in control of the Paris me

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsParisLiterary Fiction
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My Life Next Door

Huntley Fitzpatrick · 432 pages

When Samantha, the seventeen-year-old daugher of a wealthy, perfectionistic, Republican state senator, falls in love with the boy next door, whose family is large, boisterous, and just making ends meet, she discovers a different way to live, but when her mother is involved in a hit-and-run accident Sam must make some difficult choices.

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsWealthy FamiliesTeen Protagonist
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The Middlesteins

Jami Attenberg · 282 pages

Two siblings with very different personalities attempt to take control of their mother's food obsession and massive weight gain to save her life after their father walks out and leaves her reeling in the Chicago suburbs.

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood · 638 pages

More than fifty years on, Iris Chase is remembering Laura's mysterious death. And so begins an extraordinary and compelling story of two sisters and their secrets. Set against a panoramic backdrop of twentieth-century history, The Blind Assassin is an epic tale of memory, intrigue and betrayal...

Wealthy FamiliesToxic Family DynamicsLiterary FictionDark Comedy
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Bonjour Tristesse & A Certain Smile

Francoise Sagan · 251 pages

ParisNovellaLiterary FictionTeen Protagonist
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The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Paul Zindel · 102 pages

An embittered widow lives with her teenage daughters in a ramshackle house where she makes a living by nursing an elderly invalid. Alternately charming and abrasive, Beatrice is selfish like her elder daughter, Ruth, who suffers from convulsions. The younger daughter, Matilda, is an eccentric outcast who earns respect by winning top honors at school for her science fair project.

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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Never Mind

Edward St. Aubyn · 154 pages

Now a 5-Part Limited Event Series on Showtime, Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Blythe Danner Never Mind, the first installment in Edward St. Aubyn's wonderful, wry, and profound Patrick Melrose Cycle, follows five-year-old Patrick through a single day, as the Melrose family awaits the arrival of guests. Bright and imaginative, young Patrick struggles daily to contend with the searing cruel

Toxic Family DynamicsWealthy FamiliesDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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The Lamb

Lucy Rose

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsTeen ProtagonistLiterary Fiction
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The Book of Ruth

Jane Hamilton · 328 pages

"I learned slowly, that if you don't look at the world with perfect vision, you're bound to get yourself cooked." Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it - to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess." Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place. Ruth grows up in the shadow of her

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsLiterary FictionTeen Protagonist
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Bee Sting

Paul Murray · 645 pages

Toxic Family DynamicsMother and DaughterDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler · 336 pages

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I was raised with a chimpanzee," she explains. "I tell you Fern is a chimp and, already, you aren't thinking of her as my sister. . . . Until Fern's expulsion . . . she was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. . . . I loved her as a sister."

Toxic Family DynamicsMother and DaughterDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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Little Jewel

Patrick Modiano · 176 pages

Mother and DaughterParisNovellaLiterary Fiction
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The Dressmaker

Rosalie Ham · 296 pages

Exotic Tilly, a talented and beautiful misfit, returns from Europe to the small Victorian town of Dungatar to nurse her mad old mother. Her reappearance after twnety years is met with suspicion and malice from the eccentric locals until they discover her startling dressmaking skills.

Revenge PlotMother and DaughterDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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Maine

J. Courtney Sullivan · 394 pages

Three generations of women converge on the family beach house in this wickedly funny, emotionally resonant story of love and dysfunction.

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsDark ComedyFemale Lead
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The Liars' Club

Mary Karr · 320 pages

The Texas refinery town of Leechfield, perched on the swampy rim of the Gulf, is famous for mosquitoes and the manufacture of Agent Orange - a place where the only bookstores are religious ones and the restaurants serve only fried food. A handful of the Leechfield oil workers gather regularly at the American Legion Bar to drink salted beer and spin long, improbable tales. They're the Liars' Club.

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsDark ComedyFemale Lead
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Ghachar Ghochar

Vivek Shanbhag

Toxic Family DynamicsNovellaWealthy FamiliesLiterary Fiction
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