Books like 'Spooner'
Readers who enjoyed Spooner by Pete Dexter also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary comedy psychological humor literary-fiction realistic coming-of-age christian family spirituality
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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 54 ratingsLibrarian's note: An alternative cover edition can be found hereNo one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fineMeet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking... -
![Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst]()
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe perennially popular tale of Alexander's worst day is a storybook that belongs on every child's bookshelf.Alexander knew it was going to be a terrible day when he woke up with gum in this hair.And it got worse...His best friend deserted him. There was no dessert in his lunch bag... -
![Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick]()
Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThirteen-year-old Steven has a totally normal life (well, almost): He plays drums in the All-Star Jazz Band, has a crush on the hottest girl in school (who doesn’t know he’s alive), frequently finds himself sitting across from his school counselor (who bribes him with candy), and is constantly annoyed by his five-year-old brother, Jeffrey (who is cuter than cute)... -
![Sabtu Bersama Bapak by Adhitya Mulya]()
Sabtu Bersama Bapak by Adhitya Mulya
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratings“Hai, Satya! Hai, Cakra!” Sang Bapak melambaikan tangan. “Ini Bapak. Iya, benar kok, ini Bapak. Bapak cuma pindah ke tempat lain. Gak sakit. Alhamdulillah, berkat doa Satya dan Cakra. … Mungkin Bapak tidak dapat duduk dan bermain di samping kalian. Tapi, Bapak tetap ingin kalian tumbuh dengan Bapak di samping kalian. Ingin tetap dapat bercerita kepada kalian... -
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![Erasure by Percival Everett]()
Erasure by Percival Everett
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Thelonious (Monk) Ellison has never allowed race to define his identity. But as both a writer and an African American, he is offended and angered by the success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days... -
![No, David! by David Shannon]()
No, David! by David Shannon
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsWhen author and artist David Shannon was five years old, he wrote a semi-autobiographical story of a little kid who broke all his mother's rules. He chewed with his mouth open, jumped on the furniture, and he broke his mother's vase... -
![A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz]()
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn irreverent comic adventure, spanning three continents, about a father and son against each other and against the world.For most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn’t decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son...Categorized as:
coming-of-age family humor literary-fiction realistic 21st-century action-adventure adult -
![Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh]()
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBrace yourself, America, for Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting—the novel and the film that became the cult sensations of Britain. Trainspotting is the novel that first launched Irvine Welsh's spectacular career—an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating episodic group portrait of blasted lives. It accomplished for its own time and place what Hubert Selby, Jr...Categorized as:
coming-of-age humor literary-fiction realistic spirituality 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
![What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg]()
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhat Makes Sammy Run?Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symp-toms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick... -
![Saint Richard Parker by Merlin Franco]()
Saint Richard Parker by Merlin Franco
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHis search for love and enlightenment across India, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia...Ace businessman, writer, and investigative journalist Richard Parker loses his job when he exposes the vegetarian CEO of his newspaper as a beef exporter. Accused of misconduct and forced to dissolve his company, he retreats to his wretched little village... -
![Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee]()
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 35 ratings"Twelve times a week," answered Uta Hagen when asked how often she'd like to play Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the same way, audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albee's masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games... -
![What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges]()
What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsJust about everything in Endora, Iowa (pop. 1,091 and dwindling) is eating Gilbert Grape, a twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving. His enormous mother, once the town sweetheart, has been eating nonstop ever since her husband's suicide, and the floor beneath her TV chair is threatening to cave in...Categorized as:
coming-of-age family humor literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure book -
![The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion, Dan O’Grady]()
The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion, Dan O’Grady
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsI was standing on one leg shucking oysters when the problems began…Don and Rosie are back in Melbourne after a decade in New York, and they’re about to face their most important project.Their son, Hudson, is having trouble at school: his teachers say he isn’t fitting in with the other kids. Meanwhile, Rosie is battling Judas at work, and Don is in hot water after the Genetics Lecture Outrage... -
![Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad]()
Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA pop-saturated epic novel about the second man on the moon, and the quiet thirty-year-old gardener who idolizes him. A story of unconventional psychiatry, the Faroe Islands, amateur boat building, and the journey across the space that divides us from other people: a journey as remote and dangerous as the trip to the moon itself... -
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![The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph]()
The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOusep Chacko, journalist and failed novelist, prides himself on being “the last of the real men.” This includes waking neighbors upon returning late from the pub. His wife Mariamma stretches their money, raises their two boys, and, in her spare time, gleefully fantasizes about Ousep dying... -
![Boy Parts by Eliza Clark]()
Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIrina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle.Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema... -
![Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg]()
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsFrom the creator and executive producer of the beloved and universally acclaimed television series BoJack Horseman, a fabulously off-beat collection of short stories about love--the best and worst thing in the universeWritten with all the scathing dark humor that is a hallmark of BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg's stories will make readers laugh, weep, and shiver in uncomfortably delicious... -
![There's A Boy In The Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar]()
There's A Boy In The Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWith the new school counselor's help, Bradley begins to see himself as less of a monster and more of an individual capable of believing in himself... -
![The Reason You're Alive by Matthew Quick]()
The Reason You're Alive by Matthew Quick
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAfter sixty-eight-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard - that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline... -
![The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick]()
The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsMeet Pat. Pat has a theory: his life is a movie produced by God. And his God-given mission is to become physically fit and emotionally literate, whereupon God will ensure a happy ending for him—the return of his estranged wife, Nikki. (It might not come as a surprise to learn that Pat has spent time in a mental health facility.) The problem is, Pat's now home, and everything feels off... -
![The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, 嘉布莉·麗文]()
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, 嘉布莉·麗文
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsOn the faded Island Books sign hanging over the porch of the Victorian cottage is the motto “No Man Is an Island; Every Book Is a World.” A. J. Fikry, the irascible owner, is about to discover just what that truly means.A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be... -
![The Clown by Heinrich Böll]()
The Clown by Heinrich Böll
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAcclaimed entertainer Hans Schnier collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he won’t marry her within the Catholic Church. The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his life—the loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisies of his mother, who first fought to “save” Germany from the Jews, then worked for “reconciliation” afterwards... -
![How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper]()
How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"Beautifully crafted", "Fantastically funny." "Compulsively readable." Jonathan Tropper has earned wild acclaim—-and comparisons to Nick Hornby and Tom Perrotta—for his biting humor and insightful portrayals of families in crisis and men behaving badly... -
![The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy]()
The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made. In that small apartment, Black and White, as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two fundamentally opposing world views... -
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![Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett]()
Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThis is a darkly comic novel about a young girl named Elvis trying to figure out her place in a world without her mother. Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent...Categorized as:
coming-of-age family humor literary-fiction realistic animals audiobook bildungsroman -
![Post Office by Charles Bukowski]()
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 40 ratings"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service... -
![The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, Martha C. Nussbaum]()
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, Martha C. Nussbaum
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement... -
![The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant]()
The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNorman Moonbloom is a loser, a drop-out who can't even make it as a deadbeat. His brother, a slumlord, hires him to collect rent in the buildings he owns in Manhattan... -
![Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley]()
Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNick Naylor likes his job. In the neo-puritanical nineties, it's a challenge to defend the rights of smokers and a privilege to promote their liberty. Sure, it hurts a little when you're compared to Nazi war criminals, but Nick says he's just doing what it takes to pay the mortgage and put his son through Washington's elite private school St. Euthanasius... -
![Everything Changes by Jonathan Tropper]()
Everything Changes by Jonathan Tropper
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsJonathan Tropper’s novel The Book of Joe dazzled critics and readers alike with its heartfelt blend of humor and pathos. Now Tropper brings all that—and more—to an irresistible new novel. In Everything Changes , Tropper delivers a touching, wickedly funny new tale about love, loss, and the perils of a well-planned life. To all appearances, Zachary King is a man with luck on his side... -
![The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving]()
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 34 ratings"The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels... -
![Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple]()
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 51 ratingsBernadette Fox has vanished.When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown...Categorized as:
coming-of-age family humor literary-fiction realistic 21st-century action-adventure audiobook -
![The Scarecrow by Ronald Hugh Morrieson]()
The Scarecrow by Ronald Hugh Morrieson
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratings'The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throat cut.' The greatest opening line in New Zealand literature opens this hilarious Gothic melodrama. Klynham is a sleepy little New Zealand town in which not a lot happens. But then one moonlit night the Scarecrow arrives, swilling brandies and looking for victims. Something sordid and even macrabre lies ahead...Categorized as:
coming-of-age humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure book classics comedy -
![Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank]()
Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFolly Beach Home is the place that knows us best. . . . A woman returns to the past to find her future in this enchanting new tale of loss, acceptance, family, and love. With its sandy beaches and bohemian charms, surfers and suits alike consider Folly Beach to be one of South Carolina's most historic and romantic spots... -
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![The Bell by Iris Murdoch]()
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband... -
![Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton]()
Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsShe has as much business keeping a stray dog as she would walking across Egypt–which not so incidentally is the title of her favorite hymn. She’s Mattie Rigsbee, an independent, strong-minded senior citizen who, at seventy-eight, might be slowing down just a bit. When teenage delinquent Wesley Benfield drops in on her life, he is even less likely a companion than the stray dog... -
![Nice Try, Jane Sinner by Lianne Oelke]()
Nice Try, Jane Sinner by Lianne Oelke
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe only thing 17-year-old Jane Sinner hates more than failure is pity. After a personal crisis and her subsequent expulsion from high school, she’s going nowhere fast. Jane’s well-meaning parents push her to attend a high school completion program at the nearby Elbow River Community College, and she agrees, on one condition: she gets to move out... -
![The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler]()
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsMacon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and anything out of the ordinary. He is grounded by loneliness and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts when he meets Muriel, a deliciously peculiar dog-obedience trainer who up-ends Macon’s insular world and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life... -
![Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison]()
Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAfter a ten-year silence, Mary Robison has emerged with a novel so beguiling and funny that it has brought critics and her live-reading audiences to their feet. Why Did I Ever takes us along on the darkest of private journeys. The story, told by a woman named Money Breton, is submitted like a furious and persuasive diary-a tale as fierce and taut as its fictional teller... -
![Rock-a-bye Baby by Willow Rose]()
Rock-a-bye Baby by Willow Rose
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsLisa Rasmussen just had a baby and everything in her life seems perfect at this point. Only she wishes that everyone else around her would be as flawless as she is and stop getting in her way. And if they won't listen, then she'll make them.ROCK-A-BYE BABY, is a thriller novella from Willow Rose, author of the International Bestselling horror-series starring the Danish reporter Rebekka Franck...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction action-adventure adult anthologies comedy contemporary fiction -
![Things that Fall from the Sky by Kevin Brockmeier]()
Things that Fall from the Sky by Kevin Brockmeier
Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWeaving together loss and anxiety with fantastic elements and literary sleight-of-hand, Kevin Brockmeier’s richly imagined Things That Fall from the Sky views the nagging realities of the world through a hopeful lens. In the deftly told “These Hands,” a man named Lewis recounts his time babysitting a young girl and his inconsolable sense of loss after she is wrenched away... -
![The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch by Marsha Moyer]()
The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch by Marsha Moyer
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsI was thirty-three years old when my husband walked out into a field one morning and never came back, and I went in one quick leap from wife to widow. Lucy Hatch never expected more of life than to spend it on an East Texas farm with her silent and stoic husband, Mitchell... -
![Single in Suburbia by Wendy Wax]()
Single in Suburbia by Wendy Wax
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAmanda’s husband has just traded her in for an affair with a teenybopper. Brooke is a trophy wife collecting dust. And Candace (Don’t call me Candy) has had too many husbands and too little love. What do these three unlikely accomplices have in common besides a Little League team called the Mudhens? A plot to reclaim a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t. And they’re going to do it with a mop and a bucket... -
![The Gamal by Ciarán Collins]()
The Gamal by Ciarán Collins
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsMeet Charlie. People think he's crazy. But he's not. People think he's stupid. But he's not. People think he's innocent...He's the Gamal.Charlie has a story to tell, about his best friends Sinead and James and the bad things that happened. But he can't tell it yet, at least not 'til he's worked out where the beginning is... -
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![The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker]()
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlthough most of the action of The Mezzanine occurs on the escalator of an office building, where its narrator is returning to work after buying shoelaces, this startlingly inventive and witty novel takes us farther than most fiction written today. It lends to milk cartons the associative richness of Marcel Proust's madeleines... -
![The Other Shulman by Alan Zweibel]()
The Other Shulman by Alan Zweibel
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsShulman, a chubby, middle-aged stationery-store owner from New Jersey, has always claimed that he's been gaining and losing the same thirty-five pounds since junior high-and that if you added all of that discarded weight together, he had lost an entire person. Another Shulman. A Shulman he never really cared for. A Shulman he'd always tried to lose by dieting and exercising... -
![The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping, and the Novel by Alain de Botton]()
The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping, and the Novel by Alain de Botton
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn The Romantic Movement , Alain de Botton explores the progress of a love affair from first meeting to breaking up, intercut with musings on the nature of art of love... -
![A Crowded Marriage by Catherine Alliott]()
A Crowded Marriage by Catherine Alliott
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThere are three people in Imogen Cameron’s marriage – herself, her husband, Alex, and their son, Rufus – and that’s just the way she likes it. But that’s about to change... When the Camerons hit dire financial straits they’re forced to leave London and accept Eleanor Latimer’s offer of a rent-free cottage on her country estate... -
![15 Days Without a Head by Dave Cousins]()
15 Days Without a Head by Dave Cousins
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA compelling US debut about family, forgiveness, and hopeDespite having a depressed alcoholic mother and a little brother who's convinced he's a dog, fifteen year-old Laurence Roach is trying to live a normal life. But when his mom doesn't come home after work one night, Laurence is terrified that child services will find out she's gone and separate him from his brother... -
![How Not to Let Go by Emily Foster]()
How Not to Let Go by Emily Foster
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom the author of How Not to Fall comes an electrifying, powerful new story about love, trust, and emotional surrender. Once upon a time, med student Annie Coffey set out to have a purely physical fling with Charles Douglas, a gorgeous British doctor in her lab. It didn’t quite work out that way...
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