Books like “The Mad Women's Ball”

What to read after “The Mad Women's Ball” by Victoria Mas: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Rebellion
Okonkwo, a respected wrestler and farmer in a Nigerian village, builds his standing on a fear of appearing weak. When he is exiled and, years later, British missionaries and officials arrive, the customs that shaped him begin to collapse around him and his people.
2
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey · 1962
Similar setting: “Asylum”
A loud, scheming new patient named McMurphy arrives on a mental hospital ward run by the cold Nurse Ratched. Narrated by Chief Bromden, who pretends to be deaf and dumb, the ward becomes a battleground over who controls the men's days. A struggle between an unruly spirit and a system built on obedience.
3
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
Mariam and Laila, born a generation apart in Afghanistan, are forced together by marriage to the same violent man. Through decades of war and loss, the two women become each other's only home and take great risks for the chance of a different life.
4
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo · 1831
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Outcast Hero
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.
5
The Silent Companions
Laura Purcell · 2017
Same genre: “Historical fiction” and “Gothic novel”
- Asylum
A young widow is sent to her late husband's crumbling estate and finds an eerie painted wooden figure that seems to move on its own. As the figures multiply, she begins to doubt her own mind. A gothic horror set in the English countryside, told through an asylum diary.
6
Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson · 1999
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Outcast Hero
Melinda begins high school as an outcast after calling the police at a summer party, and barely speaks. Through art class and small moments she slowly confronts what happened to her that night and finds the words to name it.
7
Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Outcast Hero
Clay Jensen receives a box of tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, a classmate who has taken her own life. As he follows her voice around town, she explains the thirteen reasons behind her decision, and Clay learns his own place in her story.
8
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Outcast Hero
A young woman in colonial Korea, Sunja, leaves home for Japan with a husband she barely knows and raises a family that lives as outsiders for generations. Through war and poverty, the household holds on to its dignity and its secrets.
9
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.
10
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak · 2005
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
Narrated by Death, the story follows Liesel Meminger, a girl sent to live with a foster family in Nazi Germany. She steals books, shares them with a Jewish man hiding in the basement, and grows up amid bombs, loss and small acts of kindness.
11
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Leslye Walton · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Outcast Hero
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.
12
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Outcast Hero
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.