Books like 'Jack the Modernist'
Readers who enjoyed Jack the Modernist by Robert Glück also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsJOYCE'S MOTTO has had much fame but few apostles. Among them, there has been Jack Gilbert and his orthodoxy, a strictness that has required of this poet, now in the seventh decade of his severe life, the penalty of his having had almost no fame at all... -
Perestroika by Tony Kushner
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe second half of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Angels in America, Perestroika steers the characters introduced in Millennium Approaches from the opportunistic eighties to a new sense of community in the nineties... -
More Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe divinely human comedy that began with Tales of the City rolls recklessly along as Michael Tolliver pursues his favourite gynaecologist, Mona Ramsey uncovers her roots in a desert whorehouse, and Mary Ann Singleton finds love at sea with the amnesiac of her dreams... -
What Work Is by Philip Levine
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWinner of the National Book Award in 1991 “This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating...Categorized as:
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The Sweet Cheat Gone by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLarge format paper back for easy reading... -
The Prisoner by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe long-awaited fifth volume — representing "the very summit of Proust's art" (Slate) — in the acclaimed Penguin translation of "the greatest literary work of the twentieth century" (The New York Times)Carol Clark's acclaimed translation of The Prisoner introduces a new generation of American readers to the literary riches of Marcel Proust...Categorized as:
lgbtq literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook bildungsroman classics -
Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath, Frieda Hughes
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it.When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide acclaim, though it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see... -
Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 20 ratings"I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail." These provocative poems move with the power of Rich's distinctive voice... -
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSet in North Carolina, these are stories about blacks and whites, young and old, rural and sophisticated, the real and fantastical. Named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, nominated for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award, and given the Lambda Award... -
Further Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe residents of 28 Barbary Lane are back again in this racy, suspenseful and wildly romantic sequel to Tales of the City and More Tales of the City.DeDe Halcyon Day and Mary Ann Singleton track down a charismatic psychopath, Michael Tolliver looks for love, landlady Anna Madrigal imprisons an anchorwoman in her basement storeroom, and Armistead Maupin is in firm control... -
The Healers by Ayi Kwei Armah
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFiction. African Studies. THE HEALERS tells a story of the conflict and regeneration focused on replacing toxic ignorance with the healing knowledge of African unity...Categorized as:
romantic-love literary-fiction fiction historical-fiction contemporary 20th-century poc-mc medical -
Crystal Boys by Pai Hsien-yung
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsCrystal Boys is the first Chinese novel on gay themes. A-qing, the adolescent hero, comes from an impoverished family. His father casts him out after learning that his son is gay. A-qing drifts into New Park, a gay hangout in Taipei, and begins his life as a hustler... -
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis novel in verse about a group of California yuppies was one of the most highly praised books of 1986 and a bestseller on both coasts... -
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, determined to persist in the routines of his daily life... -
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Beautiful Thing (Modern Classics) by Jonathan Harvey
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBeautiful Thing explores pre-teenage homo-erotic sensuality and the frictions and intimacies of living cheek by jowl on a Thamesmead housing estate... -
The Art Lover by Carole Maso
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWhat is the power of art in the face of death? In The Art Lover Carole Maso has created an elegant and moving narrative about a woman experiencing (and reliving) the most painful transitions of her life...Categorized as:
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Reader’s Block by David Markson
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn this spellbinding, utterly unconventional fiction, an aging author who is identified only as Reader contemplates the writing of a novel. As he does, other matters insistently crowd his mind - literary and cultural anecdotes, endless quotations attributed and not, scholarly curiosities - the residue of a lifetime's reading which is apparently all he has to show for his decades on earth...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction historical-fiction philosophy -
Break It Down by Lydia Davis
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsPublished to huge acclaim in the US, Lydia Davis's important debut collection of 34 stories seems to assure us that reality is ordered and reasonable. However, as the characters in the stories prove, misunderstanding and confusion are inherent in everyday life... -
Către frumusețe by David Foenkinos, Daniel Nicolescu
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings„Dacă nu ar părea tocit de atâta folosire, aș fi ales drept motto al romanului meu acest adagiu al lui Dostoievski: «Frumusețea va salva lumea»“, mărturisea David Foenkinos într-un interviu... -
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsSan Francisco, 1976. A naïve young secretary, fresh out of Cleveland, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, and Jockey Shorts dance contests. The saga that ensues is manic, romantic, tawdry, touching, and outrageous—unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin... -
Tin Man by Sarah Winman
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsA novel celebrating love in all of its forms and the little moments that make up the life of an autoworker in a small working-class town.This is almost a love story. But it's not as simple as that... -
Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and Other stories by Annie Proulx
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsClose Range "Brokeback Mountain" The inspiration behind 'Life of Pi' director Ang Lee's 'Brokeback Mountain' is one of the short stories to be found in this haunting collection of Wyoming tales... -
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsWith this groundbreaking novel, Maureen F. McHugh established herself as one of the decade's best science fiction writers. In its pages, we enter a post-revolution America, moving from the hyper-urbanized eastern seaboard to the Arctic bleakness of Baffin Island; from the new Imperial City to an agricultural commune on Mars... -
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Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Flesh and Blood, Michael Cunningham takes us on a masterful journey through four generations of the Stassos family as he examines the dynamics of a family struggling to "come of age" in the 20th century... -
The Centre of My World by Andreas Steinhöfel
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSeventeen-year-old Phil has felt like an outsider as long as he can remember. All Phil has ever known about his father is that he was Number Three on his mother's list - third in a series of affairs that have set Phil's family even further apart from the critical townspeople across the river...Categorized as:
lgbtq mlm literary-fiction europe western-central-europe germany romance young-adult -
Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn intricate and self-reflective novel about that most delicate of relationships--meaning the one between writers and readers. The narrator, an anonymous graduate student, sets off on the trail of a French novelist named Paul Michel, who is currently confined to an asylum... -
Koolaid's Art of War by Rabih Alameddine
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDetailing the impact of the AIDS epidemic and the Lebanese civil war in Beirut on a circle of friends and family, "Koolaids" tells the stories of characters who can no longer love or think except in fragments of time, each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears... -
Two Lives by William Trevor
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWilliam Trevor's astonishing range as a writer--his humor, subtlety, and compassionate grasp of human behavior--is fully demonstrated in these two short novels. In Reading Turgenev, a lonely country girl escapes her loveless marriage in the arms of a bookish young man. In My House in Umbria, a former madam befriends the other survivors of a terrorist bombing with surprising results... -
Plays Well with Others by Allan Gurganus
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWith great narrative inventiveness and emotional amplitude, Allan Gurganus gives us artistic Manhattan in the wild 1980s, where young artists--refugees from the middle class--hurl themselves into playful work and serious fun. Our guide is Hartley Mims Jr., a Southerner whose native knack for happiness might thwart his literary ambitions... -
An Explanation of the Birds by António Lobo Antunes, Richard Zenith
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsRui S., a political historian, is unable to accept the circumstances of his life: his mother's death from cancer, his estrangement from his family, his rejection by his first wife and children, his political vacillations and his ambigious feelings for his second wife... -
The Age of Miracles by Ellen Gilchrist
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAn observation of family life at its least conventional. These stories portray human longing and love as an elderly couple find joy and recognition, a physician tries to mould his lover into the image of his dead wife and some children kidnap their mother to stop her having a facelift...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary female-author fiction humor -
The Franchiser by Stanley Elkin, William H. Gass
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBen Flesh is one of the men "who made America look like America, who made America famous." He collects franchises, traveling from state to state, acquiring the brand-name establishments that shape the American landscape. But both the nation and Ben are running out of energy... -
The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThis scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages... -
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Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne of the most important works of gay literature, this haunting, brilliant novel is a seriocomic remembrance of things past -- and still poignantly present. It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene... -
The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDavid Leavitt's extraordinary first novel, now reissued in paperback, is a seminal work about family, sexual identity, home, and loss. Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man... -
Evening in Paradise: More Stories by Lucia Berlin, Kyla Garcia
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA collection of previously uncompiled stories from the short-story master and literary sensation Lucia BerlinIn 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published A Manual for Cleaning Women, a posthumous story collection by a relatively unknown writer, to wild, widespread acclaim...Categorized as:
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The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel, personifying his quest for spiritual glory through the pursuit of evil... -
The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen the narrator of White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men... -
Respiración artificial by Ricardo Piglia
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsRespiración artificial se trata no sólo del único libro memorable publicado durante el período de la dictadura militar (la edición original es de 1980), sino también de una espléndida ficción que se convierte en espejo de la historia, de una novela que, utilizando la estructura de la novela policíaca -para Piglia éste es uno de los géneros fundamentales de la literatura contemporánea-, puede... -
Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCabrera Infante's masterpiece, Three Trapped Tigers is one of the most playful books to reach the U.S. from Cuba. Filled with puns, wordplay, lists upon lists, and Sternean typography--such as the section entitled "Some Revelations," which consists of several blank pages--this novel has been praised as a more modern, sexier, funnier, Cuban Ulysses...Categorized as:
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Querelle of Brest by Jean Genet
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsQuerelle of Brest was first published anonymously in 1947 and limited to 460 numbered copies. It is set in the midst of the port town of Brest, where sailors and the sea are associated with murder. Its protagonist, Georges Querelle, is a bisexual thief, prostitute, and serial killer who manipulates and kills his lovers for thrills and profit... -
Heart Songs and Other Stories by Annie Proulx
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsBefore she wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx was already producing some of the finest short fiction in the country. Here are her collected stories, including two new works never before anthologized. These stories reverberate with rural tradition, the rites of nature, and the rituals of small-town life... -
The Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratings“This posthumous translation of Rosales, a Cuban-American writer who committed suicide in 1993, delivers a raw, powerful story set in a Miami home for the mentally ill… It’s a frightening, nihilistic cousin of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest .”― Publishers Weekly Never before available in English, The Halfway House is a trip to the darkest corners of the human condition...Categorized as:
literary-fiction fiction 20th-century poc-mc historical-fiction contemporary book adult -
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The French Girl by Felicia Donovan
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe heartwarming story of a young French girl raised in a world of prejudice and despair, who becomes orphaned and is sent to live with her distant cousin and her cousin's partner... -
The Rainbow Stories by William T. Vollmann
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsHere are 13 daring and innovative tales dealing with "skinheads, x-ray patients, whores, lovers, fetishists, and other lost souls" who populate landscapes as diverse as ancient Babylon, India, and contemporary San Francisco. Part fiction, part reportage, these narratives are laced with a bleak and bitter humor, and portray a dazzling array of characters...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction substance-abuse -
Beijing Comrades by Beijing Tongzhi, Bei Tong
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen Handong, a ruthless and wealthy businessman, is introduced to Lan Yu, a naïve, working-class architectural student—the attraction is all consuming.Arrogant and privileged, Handong is unsettled by this desire, while Lan Yu quietly submits. Despite divergent lives, the two men spend their nights together, establishing a deep connection... -
The Flight of Icarus by Raymond Queneau
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn late 19th-century Paris, the writer Hubert is shocked to discover that Icarus, the protagonist of the new novel he's working on, has vanished. Looking for him among the manuscripts of his rivals does not solve the mystery, so a detective is hired to find the runaway character... -
The History Boys by Alan Bennett
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport, and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool... -
A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsMichael Cunningham’s celebrated novel is the story of two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely, introspective, and unsure of himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars. Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare's child...
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