Books like “Madame Bovary”

What to read after “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1878
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Melancholic”
Anna Karenina, married to a senior official, meets the young officer Vronsky at a Moscow railway station, and the attraction between them overturns her settled life. In parallel, the landowner Levin wrestles with faith, work and his courtship of Kitty. The novel follows both households and the price society demands.
2
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray · 1848
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
- Morally Grey Character
Becky Sharp, clever and poor, leaves school determined to climb London society by any means available. Beside her is her gentle friend Amelia, whose love for a vain soldier leads her toward ruin. The novel follows the two women through marriages, debts and reversals, always with an ironic eye on ambition.
3
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol · 1842
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
- Morally Grey Character
Chichikov arrives in a provincial Russian town and charms its officials and landowners. He has come to buy serfs who have died but are still listed on the tax rolls, and his odd scheme draws him into the vanity and corruption of the society around him.
4
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
Keiko has worked at the same Tokyo convenience store for eighteen years and is content there, until the people around her begin pressuring her to want a normal life. Deadpan and sharp, the novel follows her attempt to perform the life others expect, by staging a relationship she does not want.
5
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1961
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
- Morally Grey Character
Bombardier Yossarian wants to survive the war and go home, but every attempt to be grounded runs into a rule that answers itself: to be excused he must ask, and asking proves he is sane. Around him, officers profit and comrades die.
6
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · 1884
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
A boy fleeing his abusive father and a man escaping slavery travel together down the Mississippi on a raft. Their friendship grows as they meet swindlers and feuds along the way, and Huck must decide what he believes. A comic, humane adventure about freedom and conscience.
7
The Poisoned Chocolates Case
Anthony Berkeley · 1929
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
A box of poisoned chocolates kills a man at his club, and the police can find no culprit. Six members of the Crimes Circle, an armchair detective society, each offer a different solution to the same murder, until amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham tests their theories against the facts.
8
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo · 1831
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Forbidden Love
Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, is kept hidden by the archdeacon Frollo. When the gypsy dancer Esmeralda is accused of witchcraft, several men desire or condemn her, and the cathedral becomes both her refuge and her trap. Set in 1482 Paris among beggars, judges and stone gargoyles.
9
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy · 1891
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Forbidden Love
Tess Durbeyfield, a poor country girl, is sent to wealthy relatives who share her family name. There she is wronged by a young man and later falls in love with Angel Clare, who knows nothing of her past. Society's judgement of her becomes the story's central cruelty.
10
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
Expelled from prep school and drifting through New York before going home, teenager Holden Caulfield narrates a few days of restless encounters. He rails against adults he calls phonies while quietly grieving a brother and his own place in the world.
11
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov · 1840
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Morally Grey Character
Pechorin is a clever, restless officer serving in the Caucasus, bored by everything and unable to value what he wins. In five linked tales he manipulates the people drawn to him, a princess, a smuggler, an old comrade, and coolly explains his own cruelty. A portrait of a gifted man who has nothing left to want.
12
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1945
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
The animals of Manor Farm drive out their human master and run the farm themselves, promising equality for all. The pigs slowly take control, and their revolution turns into a new kind of tyranny, showing how power can corrupt those who hold it.