7 must-read magical realism books like Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

If you liked the magical realism plot in Pure Colour by Sheila Heti , here is a list of 7 books like this:

Similar categories in Elif Batuman's The Idiot book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"For a while now, I have been conscious of a tension in my relationship with you,"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"Lighting a match felt exciting and a little bit dangerous, and when the flame came into contact with the paper, it made a sound like the needle coming down on a record player—like the music was about…"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"For the first time in my life, I couldn't think of anything I particularly wanted to study or to do. I still had the old idea of being a writer, but that was being, not doing. It didn't say what you …"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the point of writing wasn't just to record something past but also to prolong the present, like in One Thousand and One Nights, to stretch out the time until the…"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

Similar categories in Maggie Nelson's Bluets book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• philosophy
• contemporary

Similar categories in Rachel Cusk's Outline book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

Similar categories in Ros Schwartz's I Who Have Never Known Men book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels
• adult
• fantasy

"Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Only now, I tell myself that what I'd felt for her, the trust that slowly built up, the constant preference for her company and the joy each time I was reunited with her after an expedition were prob…"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• fantasy
• audiobook

"If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up."

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"I mean, we all have our dark days. Very dark days, sometimes. When our demons come out to play. No one lives entirely in the light, right?"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"That I can’t protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can’t help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I’m trying to…"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

Similar categories in Ling Ma's Bliss Montage book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• fantasy
• audiobook

"To live is to exist within time. To remember is to negate time."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"It doesn't take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone's gaze."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"Maybe you don't know that you're wounded until you receive the salve. The salve that makes everything come back."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"It was a time when the future could have been anything, been anywhere. It was so open that it could actually crush her."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• fantasy
• audiobook

"But such was death - it had nothing to say."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

"Blood was the wine of the spirit, was it not?"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

"What scared her were other people and their immovable selfishness"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

"But Jude's piety was a kind of violent urge and not the love and peace it ought to be"

-Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

Similar categories in Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• fantasy
• audiobook

"I took a bite of a Bloody Ploughman. Even the flesh was red. 'Bloody,' Carral said. 'Nice colour,' I answered. 'It looks sinful. I bet that was the apple Eve ate, you know, in the Bible, the forbidde…"

-Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot

"I'll tell you the fairy tale of the apple. Eve ate the apple, and then Adam came and did so too. Afterwards the apple was forgotten, and it was assumed that it rolled away in the grass while Adam and…"

-Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot

Similar categories in Miranda July's All Fours book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"But maybe the road split between: a life spent longing vs. a life that was continually surprising"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"Maybe we shouldn't do that," Jordi said. "Flatten ourselves like that. Erratic doesn't have to mean crazy or irresponsible. Shouldn't we be normalizing change?"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"I guess any calling, no mater what it is, is a kind of unresolved ache," I said, giving in to knowing more than him. "It's a problem that you can't fix, but there is some relief in knowing you will c…"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"For me lying created just the right amount of problems and what you saw was just one of my four or five faces- each real, each with different needs. The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to co…"

-Miranda July, All Fours

Similar categories in Emma Cline's The Guest book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"Younger men had to make everything mean something, had to turn every choice and preference into a referendum on their personality."

-Emma Cline, The Guest

"He assumed her attention when he spoke. He had his insecurities, his anxieties. But underlying it all was the certainty that the world would be generous in its orientation toward him."

-Emma Cline, The Guest

"All the women in the show hated each other, hated each other so much, just so they could avoid hating their husbands. Only their little dogs, blinking from their laps, seemed real: they were the wome…"

-Emma Cline, The Guest

Similar categories in Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

Similar categories in Noor Naga's If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• canada
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Death Valley book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• fantasy
• audiobook

"My body is the real problem here. If I could be bodiless - or at least, senseless - I’d be better off."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"I am going to die out here. I might. I could. Die. All this time I should have been practising for dying. What was I doing instead? Reading reviews for sweatpants."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"Stop placing so much value on the known, I tell myself. Fake like this is the hero’s journey. It’s good to get lost. Good for the soul. But how lost is the good amount of lost? If I die here, is that…"

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

Similar categories in Catherine Lacey's Biography of X book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"One of the armed guards smiled and said, “God bless,"

-Catherine Lacey, Biography of X

"Who can say who I are, how many I are, which I is the most I of my I’s?"

-Catherine Lacey, Biography of X

"She could not hurt me. I had no more space, at the time, to hold any new hurts."

-Catherine Lacey, Biography of X

"She kept losing track of the people she loved, and losing track of herself along with them."

-Catherine Lacey, Biography of X

Similar categories in Rachel Cusk's Second Place book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"Some people write simply because they don’t know how to live in the moment and have to reconstruct it and live in it afterwards."

-Rachel Cusk, Second Place

"Muutoksen ja toiston kaava on niin tiukasti yhteydessä tietynlaiseen harmoniaan elämässä, ja vapauden harjoittaminen on alisteista sille aivan kuin opinkappaleelle. Muutoksia täytyy annostella kohtuu…"

-Rachel Cusk, Second Place

"Joskus minun vain täytyy saada puhua jotta tuntisin itseni todelliseksi, ja toivoisin että sinäkin puhuisit minulle." Hän makasi vaiti pimeässä ja tuijotti kattoon. Sitten hän sanoi: "Minusta tuntuu …"

-Rachel Cusk, Second Place

"It struck me how the human capacity for receptivity is a kind of birthright, an asset given to us in the moment of our creation by which we are intended to regulate the currency of our souls. Unless …"

-Rachel Cusk, Second Place

Similar categories in Rachel Cusk's Parade book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"He knew that [his work] embodied change, and he wasn’t interested in change. He was interested in the fragments that change leaves behind in its storming passage toward the future."

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"Not to be understood is effectively to be silenced, but not understanding can in its turn legitimise that silence, can illuminate one’s own unknowability. Art is the pact of individuals denying socie…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"Sanity and insanity were not opposites but rather were the two faces of inanimate matter, the point at which the existence of consciousness can get no further in breaking down the existence of substa…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"The impulse to have a child is very often a response to the woman’s own childhood, as though her childhood has left her incomplete, or has taken a part of her that she is driven to find again. The st…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

Similar categories in Marlowe Granados's Happy Hour book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"Being unattached is exhausting."

-Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

"being a muse is not for the weak"

-Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

"Money was limited, but my taste was not."

-Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

"isn't a vacation when you forget what day it is?"

-Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"¿Habla más de un idioma?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"You bullied other bullies,"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Similar categories in Sheila Heti's Pure Colour book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• canada
• philosophy
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• fantasy
• audiobook

"And what opens one heart opens many."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"The body becomes a woman and it cannot turn back."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"And a glimpse into one heart is a glimpse into many."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"Why did it seem like the only way to live-was to disobey?"

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

Similar categories in Elif Batuman's Either/Or book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"I'm going to become whatever I was going to become."

-Elif Batuman, Either/Or

"Fiona Apple's album made me more immediately depressed than any other music I remembered hearing."

-Elif Batuman, Either/Or

"That had probably been written by a professor. I recognized the professor's characteristic delight at not imparting information."

-Elif Batuman, Either/Or

"I was going to remember, or discover, where everything came from. I was going to do the subtle, monstrous thing where you figured out what you were doing, and why."

-Elif Batuman, Either/Or

Similar categories in Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe book and Sheila Heti's Pure Colour

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• fantasy
• audiobook

"The open office floor plan is a form of strangulation."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"Maybe there must always be two of us—our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"If the brain is elastic and memory is faulty, maybe all of these stories are wrong. Maybe it happened a different way altogether. Maybe I was happy and I just forget that now."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe