hello! ik your post about loving ambiguity in writing is quite old now, so i apologise if you’ve been asked this before, but i was wondering if you have any novel recommendations that follow what you mean? no pressure to answer ofc!! thank you!!
i actually don't remember if i've been asked this before. most of the responses to that post have been people who were more interested in giving me their recs tbh, so thank you for asking!
here's a quick list of ten off the top of my head to get you started:
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro is a top contender for my favorite novel. when the dev patel green knight movie came out i would not stop telling everyone who said a word to me about it to read this book asap. it's a flawless example of a novel where you feel in your gut what's going to happen even as you can't really be sure what's happening at all. huge chunks of it are told from the point of view of a character who doesn't even share a language with most of the other characters. i recommend Ishiguro in general for a lot of reasons (and many people have rightfully cited him in the notes of my post about loving ambiguity) but The Buried Giant in particular is my darling when it comes to masterful ambiguity.
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie is actually the book that prompted the original exchange from that post. a classmate of mine in grad school was having a hard time with it when we read it for a postcolonial lit course, meanwhile i was having the time of my life just hanging on tight watching it all come together.
Beloved by Toni Morrison was an honor and a privilege to both read and get to teach to a college class. I had my students do a compare-contrast activity with one particular chapter of Beloved and a poem from Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip, which i also recommend, and looking back on that is one of the biggest things that makes me miss teaching.
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin is less "ambiguous" per se than some of the others listed here, but it has exactly the vibe i look for in a book that grabs me by the throat chokehold style and drags me through a story where the pov character frequently doesn't have a clue what's going on.
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht is a book i just read last year that knocked my socks off. that novel feels absolutely no obligation to tell you which parts of the story are "true" or "real"; that's not the point.
Devil House by John Darnielle pulls a similar trick but almost in reverse. what did or didn't "really" happen is exactly the point (though also hard to pin down); but why does it matter? and what is put at risk in the pursuit of a True Story?
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez is also fairly unambiguous about the events of what might be considered the "main" story, but the nonlinear, second person frame narrative is where the book really shines and that part leaves some delicious things unsaid.
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. i'm sorry but i am the moby dick friend. i'm the mutual who's gonna tell you to read moby dick. you have to read moby dick.
What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah is a collection of short stories, but a lot of them live in a really gorgeous and unsettling ambiguous space, especially the eponymous one; the short story "What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky" is high on my list of favorite short stories ever.
Kraken by China Miéville. i spent so fucking much of this book with no damn clue what was going on. by the end you're like OF COURSE but getting there is bonkers.
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