Books like “Sing, Unburied, Sing”

What to read after “Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold · 2002
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is murdered near her home and watches from her own heaven as her family and her killer's neighbours try to carry on. From that distance she follows her parents' grief, her sister growing up and a small town's slow reckoning with what happened.
2
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Leslye Walton · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
Born with wings she cannot fly, Ava grows up in a Seattle house where the women carry a long history of love that ends badly. As she longs to be an ordinary girl, her family's sorrows keep shaping everyone around her.
3
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
The Buendía family founds the town of Macondo and repeats its own history across seven generations, through civil wars, doomed loves and strange miracles. A manuscript of prophecies waits all the while to reveal how their story ends.
4
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan · 2018
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
After her mother's death, Leigh travels to Taiwan to meet grandparents she has never known, convinced her mother has returned as a red bird. Grief, a family silence and a friendship she left behind come together as she learns what she can and cannot hold on to.
5
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse · 1927
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
A middle-aged loner who feels half man and half wolf drifts through a city he despises, until a chance encounter leads him to a strange magic theatre. There he confronts the many selves inside him. A novel about alienation, desire and finding one's way back to life.
6
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
- Southern Gothic
- Coming of Age
A girl grows up in a sleepy Alabama town where her father, a lawyer, defends a Black man falsely accused of a crime. Through her eyes we watch the town's prejudice, the trial, and a reclusive neighbour's secret. A classic about childhood, race and courage.
7
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
- Ghost Story
In 1873 Ohio, Sethe lives in a house still haunted by the daughter she lost. When a young woman who calls herself Beloved appears at the door, the family's buried past, and the cruelty of slavery, returns to claim what it is owed.
8
The Reformatory
Tananarive Due · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robert is sent to a brutal reform school after a scuffle with a white teenager. He can see ghosts, including the boys who died there, and the warden wants to use that ability. Outside, his sister works with a lawyer to bring him home.
9
The Little Friend
Donna Tartt · 2002
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic” and “Melancholic”
Years after a boy was found hanged in the family garden, his younger sister sets out to learn who killed him. Her amateur sleuthing among the town's odd characters pulls her from her grieving family into a dangerous, half-understood world.
10
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “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 Monster Calls
Patrick Ness · 2011
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
Thirteen-year-old Conor is visited at night by a monster shaped like a yew tree, who promises to tell him three stories in exchange for a fourth, one Conor must tell himself. Meanwhile his mother is ill, and Conor struggles with grief, anger and guilt.
12
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 1963
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
Esther Greenwood wins a magazine internship in New York, but the city and the pressure of her bright future leave her feeling hollow. Back home, her mind begins to slip and she is drawn toward a darkness she cannot name, even as she tries to recover.