Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1Ella Minnow Pea (2001)Ella Minnow Pea (2001) 7.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2001As an island's rulers ban letters of the alphabet, those letters disappear from the correspondence telling the story. The constraint becomes a problem for both the characters and the reader: how do you keep saying what matters with fewer tools? Dunn makes the wordplay serve a sharp satire of…0
  2. 2If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1982)If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1982) 9.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1982The desire to finish a book becomes the engine of an increasingly ridiculous adventure. Two readers pursue missing continuations through translators, publishers and conspiracies, while Calvino keeps offering tantalising new beginnings. The joke works because each interruption makes you want to read…0
  3. 3S. - El barco de Teseo (2013)S. - El barco de Teseo (2013) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2013S. contains a mysterious novel called Ship of Theseus, already covered in the notes of two readers trying to understand its author and one another. You move between their conversation and the book beneath it, with physical documents adding another layer to investigate. Reading becomes an…0
  4. 4The Raw Shark Texts (2007)The Raw Shark Texts (2007) 8.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2007Eric Sanderson has lost his memory, and messages from a former version of himself suggest that the danger has not passed. Hall turns that premise into a thriller in which language can acquire a predatory physical presence. Typographic images and a flip-book sequence make turning pages part of the…0
  5. 5Several People Are Typing (2021)Several People Are Typing (2021)Published 1 Jan 2021An employee's consciousness becomes trapped inside his firm's Slack channels, where his colleagues have plenty of work to do and limited patience for the problem. The entire novel uses workplace messages, making pauses, reactions and channel changes do narrative work. Familiar office habits become…0
  6. 6Interior Chinatown (2020)Interior Chinatown (2020) 9.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2020Willis Wu hopes to rise from a generic background role to the limited stardom available to him in a television cop show. The novel's screenplay form makes racial typecasting a set of rules that seems to govern life outside the camera too. Yu uses scene directions and assigned roles for dark comedy,…0
  7. 7Mr. Fox (2011)Mr. Fox (2011) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2011A writer's muse objects to his habit of killing female characters and draws him into stories they devise together. Their changing roles turn fairy-tale romance into a game about who controls the ending, while his wife complicates the arrangement. Oyeyemi makes variation the pleasure: each new story…0
  8. 8How to Be Both (2014)How to Be Both (2014) 10.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2014A Renaissance artist and a modern teenager occupy two narrative halves that were originally printed in opposite orders across different copies. What you encounter first changes the echoes you notice in the other story. Smith gives that structural play emotional stakes through art, identity and…0
  9. 9Cloud Atlas (2004)Cloud Atlas (2004) 7.9/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2004Six narratives carry you from a nineteenth-century voyage into imagined futures, changing genre and voice along the way. The book then returns through those stories in reverse, making interruptions and reappearances part of its momentum. Its pleasure is closer to exploring a linked set of worlds…0
  10. 10The Candy House (2022)The Candy House (2022) 9.6/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2022A technology for sharing human memories gives Egan a way to move between people who think they understand one another. Collective narration, messages and an epistolary chapter keep changing the access you have to each life. The shifting forms are fun to recognise, then less comfortable when they…0