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The Dumb House

John Burnside · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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Dark Places

Kate Grenville · 376 pages

Child AbuseUnreliable NarratorLyrical ProseDark
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Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

Contains: - Смех в темноте - [Lolita](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL627084W)

Unreliable NarratorChild AbuseDarkLiterary Fiction
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Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Marlon James · 640 pages

Unreliable NarratorChild AbuseLyrical ProseDark
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Surrender

Sonya Hartnett

Unreliable NarratorChild AbuseDarkLiterary Fiction
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Grendel

John Gardner · 174 pages

The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic. This is the book William Gass called "one of the finest of our contem

Unreliable NarratorLyrical ProseDarkLiterary Fiction
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Lamb

Bonnie Nadzam · 275 pages

She was coming toward him in a crooked purple tube top and baggy shorts and brassy sandals studded with rhinestones. She carried a huge pink patent leather purse and was possibly the worst thing he'd seen all day. This ugly kid before Lamb was obviously the brunt of a joke. Stupid. And reckless. Had they any idea who he was?

Child AbuseUnreliable NarratorLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The End of Alice

A.M. Homes · 271 pages

Unreliable NarratorChild AbuseLiterary FictionDark
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A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley · 377 pages

This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare’s *King Lear* centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, *A Thousand Acres* takes on t

Child AbuseUnreliable NarratorLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield · 424 pages

Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long.

Unreliable NarratorLyrical ProseFirst Person NarratorLiterary Fiction
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In the Woods

Tana French · 560 pages

A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspenseAs dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood

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The Secret History

Donna Tartt · 557 pages

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.

Unreliable NarratorLyrical ProseDarkLiterary Fiction
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Iodine

Haven Kimmel · 288 pages

From her earliest years, Trace turned away from her abusive mother toward her loving father. Within the twisty logic of abuse, her desperate love for him took on a romantic cast that persists to this day, though she's had no contact with her family since she ran away from home years ago. Alone but for her beloved dog, she's eked out an impoverished but functional existence, living in an abandoned

Child AbuseUnreliable NarratorLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Lamb

Lucy Rose

Child AbuseLyrical ProseDarkFirst Person Narrator
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Mother Night

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. · 202 pages

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

Unreliable NarratorDarkLiterary FictionVillain Protagonist
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Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys · 189 pages

Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of citsion's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". A sensual and protected young woman, the narrator grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the cold-hearted and prideful R

Unreliable NarratorDarkLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The People in the Trees

Hanya Yanagihara · 384 pages

In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub "The Dreamers," who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of thei

Child AbuseUnreliable NarratorDarkLiterary Fiction
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The Book of Evidence

John Banville · 219 pages

Freddie Montgomery is a gentleman first and a murderer second. He committed two crimes - he stole a painting from a wealthy family friend and he killed a chambermaid who caught him in the act. Here he tells his story.

Unreliable NarratorLyrical ProseLiterary FictionDark
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Unreliable NarratorChild AbuseDarkLiterary Fiction
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God's Own Country

Ross Raisin · 253 pages

Sam Marsdyke falls for a young, sophisticated girl from London, while she begins to see him as a means to escape. She wants to rebel against her parents and he wants to fulfil the fantasy he harbours about her and so they run away together. But this journey across the moors takes a terrifying menacing turn.

Unreliable NarratorDarkLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Our Endless Numbered Days

Claire Fuller · 382 pages

"Peggy Hillcoat is eight years old when her survivalist father, James, takes her from their home in London to a remote hut in the woods and tells her that the rest of the world has been destroyed. Deep in the wilderness, Peggy and James make a life for themselves. They repair the hut, bathe in water from the river, hunt and gather food in the summers and almost starve in the harsh winters. They ma

Unreliable NarratorChild AbuseLiterary FictionDark
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Don't Let the Forest In

C.G. Drews · 352 pages

Unreliable NarratorLyrical ProseDarkFirst Person Narrator
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The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · 258 pages

The Bell Jar is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful - but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior

Unreliable NarratorLyrical ProseLiterary FictionDark
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The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald · 182 pages

Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate – a marvelous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period – which reveals a hero like no other – one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts. "There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to

Unreliable NarratorLiterary FictionLyrical ProseFirst Person Narrator

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