Books like A Streetcar Named Desire
12 books with a reading profile close to A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Deep, inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
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1
The Lowland
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Subhash and Udayan are brothers born in Calcutta, separated by temperament and political conviction.
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2
Cathedral
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Raymond Carver’s collection presents twelve short stories centered on blue-collar domesticity, alcoholism, and isolation in the American Pacific Northwest.
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3
The Sun Also Rises
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Jake Barnes, an American journalist living in Paris, lives with a physical wound from the Great War that leaves him impotent.
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4
The Bluest Eye
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Set in 1941 Lorain, Ohio, the narrative focuses on Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl who internalizes the white standards of beauty dominant in her community.
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5
A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
John Wheelwright narrates the life of his best friend, Owen Meany, a boy with a high-pitched voice who accidentally kills John’s mother with a foul ball during a Little League game in 1953.
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6
Martin Eden
by Jack London
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Martin Eden, a coarse and uneducated sailor, decides to overhaul his entire identity after meeting Ruth Morse, a woman from a refined bourgeois family.
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7
Bastard Out of Carolina
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Ruth Anne "Bone" Boatwright grows up in Greenville, South Carolina, within a family cycle of poverty, violence, and heavy drinking.
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8
A Thousand Acres
by Jane Smiley
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
In 1979, aging Iowa farmer Larry Cook decides to divide his namesake farm among his three daughters: Ginny, Rose, and Tyra.
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9
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy, Margaret R. Higonnet
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Tess Durbeyfield, a young woman living in the rural English countryside, discovers her family descends from the aristocratic d’Urberville line.
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10
The Marriage Plot
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Set in the early 1980s, the story follows three Brown University graduates navigating the transition to adulthood.
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11
Tokyo Ueno Station
by Yū Miri
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Kazu is a ghost who haunts the grounds of Tokyo’s Ueno Park, mirroring the era he spent living there as a homeless laborer.
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12
Villette, a novel
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Lucy Snowe, a young woman without family or financial security, travels to the fictional Belgian city of Villette to become a teacher at a girls’ boarding school.
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