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Really good short novels

Started by Twit 2, November 04, 2017, 04:28:44 PM

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Twit 2

Always been a fan of really good short novels. Bit longer than a novella, about 200 or 300 pages max.

Some good forrin ones:

Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Le Grande Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
The Notebook by Agota Kristoff


English language:

Ask the Dust by John Fante
Post Office by Bukowski
The Drowned World by JG Ballard

Recommend away.

Dr Syntax Head

Sombrero Fallout-Brautigan. A classic by all accounts not that I knew that when it was given to me a while back. I liked it, read it in one day.

Porter Dimi

From this year, The End of Eddy is a bleak account of a queer childhood in rural France.

Serge

Yeah, I mentioned a few of these in another thread recently. All of Brautigan's books can be read in about two hours, something he makes reference to in one of his dedications (it says something like, 'new book's on the table, I'll be back in two hours'). The shortest book I think I've ever read is Patrick Suskind's The Pigeon, which clocks in at 57 pages, but is utterly magnificent.

A lot of Ian McEwan's earlier books are pretty short - Black Dogs is another one that I don't think even manages to make it into a triple figure page count. Robert Seethaler's The Tobacconist is another. Cynan Jones seems to write short novels for the most part - I've never read him personally, but know that holyzombiejesus is a fan.

And, although I couldn't get on with them myself, Georges Simenon's Maigret books are all less than 200 pages long.

Shay Chaise

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

He only wrote one book, a bleaker take on Magical Realism, to give a shorthand description. Tremendous.

zomgmouse

Slaughterhouse-Five and The Crying of Lot 49 are both pretty short and very great. I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road in about a day as well, good stuff.

Mr Banlon

The Gambler by Kenny Rogers Dostoyevsky

Howj Begg

You've surely read Flaubert's Three Tales, Twit? Pick of the bunch for me may be The Legend of St Julian the Hospitalier ; wonderfully strange and perverse.

Jerzy Bondov

M. John Harrison's Viriconium books are all short and worth reading. Sort of high fantasy/sci-fi that goes increasingly existential.

Serge

Billy Liar and Billy Liar On The Moon are both quite short. As is There Is A Happy Land.

Sebastian Cobb

Charles Jackson - Lost Weekend
HG Welles's The Time Machine
Vonnegut - God Bless You Mr Rosewater, Breakfast of Champions, Cats Cradle.
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory (preferred the Crow Road but too long for this thread).

Bartleby The Scriverner is probably a bit too short for this innit?