Novels told in an interesting way

What a great thread. A second vote for The Collector Collector by Tibor Fischer.

And my favourite book ever is Woman's World by Graham Rawle.

The Hours follows three women of different generations that are all influenced in some way by the book Mrs Dalloway.
It sounds a bit pretentious but the way their lives are woven together is so clever. It's one of my all time favourite books.

Cuddy by Benjamin Myers

Surface Detail by Ian M Banks is told from numerous points of view, not all of them human. I loved it.

Riddley Walker is told in a dense dialect but it's fantastic. The reason for the dialect is also part of the plot so I won't mention it.

Some great recommendations here!

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. More of a novella, and written across someone's lumchbreak with incredible attention to detail. In places the footnotes are longer than the narrative.

Placemarking

The Employees by Olga Ravn is a series of witness statements with the crew of a spaceship who encounter some strange objects from a new planet. Gorgeous.

Dracula - Bram Stoker

For something a bit less literary try Murder In The Family by Cara Hunter. A group of experts is brought together to make a TV programme investigating a cold case murder. It’s told entirely through transcripts of the programme, production notes and newspaper articles.

Re-commenting but people keep mentioning Sarah Waters and… just read her work, it’s awesome. Fingersmith is my favourite closely followed by Night Watch and Affinity. Can’t wait for her next one.

I ordered this up once in a copyright library and ended up with a lot of total strangers around my desk, fascinated.

I read this too.

I read one called E (I think) which was set in an office and written in emails. It was very funny in a Drop the Dead Donkey kind of way.

https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/matt-beaumont/e/9780007100682?cq_src=google_ads&cq_cmp=18082217234&cq_con=&cq_med=pla&cq_plac=&cq_net=x&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImc_GsJO4ggMVz-h3Ch0N6ApGEAQYAiABEgKTdvD_BwE#GOR000426015

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Gabrielle Zevin. Very clever, written in different time frames and jumps backwards and forwards, with computer games as the backdrop. Discussed it at book group tonight - was a thought provoking read

@StormySea23 - I've read the Stuart Turton book - it's definitely written in a different way and very effective and enjoyable. Think An Instance at the Fingerpost by Iain Pears was a bit similar

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. The protagonist has to save Evelyn but each time he fails is 'reborn' in a different body. Never read anything quite like it.

Another rec for The Bees by Laline Paull. Such a strange story but utterly compelling!

You're very welcome 🙂

Books written from the perspective of deeply unpleasant characters - American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis is well known but a couple of John Banivlle's ones are as well - The Book of Evidence is one

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell is probably the best one I've read though - a memoir of a former Nazi mass murderer - won two very prestigious French literary awards (was written in French by an American and first published there)

The British Museum is Falling Down, by David Lodge. About a man who escapes his life in the reading room at the British Museum. But different chapters are written in the style of different authors (Kafka, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce). The last chapter in particular is fabulous - it was the first time I realised what he was doing so I had to go back to the beginning and read again to play Spot The Parody.

Birds without wings by Louis de Bernieres. In fact anything be that author. I think he's a bit Marmite in that people either love or hate his style. I thought his trilogy of WW1 and WW2 books were great too.

Trust by Hernan Diaz

The same events written by four different people and in different formats - novel, biography etc. Long but worth persevering

The Hours by Michael Cunningham. It’s about Virginia Woolf and two fictional women (all set in different times) and mirrors Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (which I haven’t read but The Hours is a great story anyway - I need to read Mrs D then re-read The Hours).

The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel. The narrative jumps forward in time with different characters and then back again and some of the characters cross over with The Glass Hotel (you don’t have to read one to appreciate the other).

Also her Station Eleven moves in time and is beautifully written.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unfortunates

this the book I mentioned upthread as the description from wiki is far better than my attempt!

The Unfortunates is an experimental "book in a box" published in 1969 by English author B. S. Johnson and reissued in 2008 by New Directions.[1] The 27 sections are unbound, with a first and last chapter specified: the 25 sections between them, ranging from a single paragraph to 12 pages in length, are designed to be read in any order,[1] giving a total of 15.5 septillion possible combinations that the story can be read in.[2] Christopher Fowler described it as "a fairly straightforward meditation on death and friendship, told through memories."[3] Jonathan Coe described it as "one of the lost masterpieces of the sixties".

Thanks for starting this thread OP - I'm now adding titles to my 'to read' list 😊