19 must-read fiction books like Avalon by Nell Zink

If you liked the fiction plot in Avalon by Nell Zink , here is a list of 19 books like this:

Similar categories in Mona Simpson's Commitment book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

"He respected architecture less than he once had. Some buildings were true art. A few more worked like machines for living. But when he looked at most new buildings, what he saw was ego. So many peopl…"

-Mona Simpson, Commitment

Similar categories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary

"What does Whiteness feel like?... I imagine it's like walking barefoot…"

-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

"Why don't stars make any sounds in the winter? What sounds? Ethan said."

-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

"Every boy deserves to believe him father is good, but if each father were good, we’d be living in a different kind of world."

-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

"I imagined I could have begged an old girlfriend from college to send money; enough of them had expressed ambivalence about their trust funds that this seemed a plausible path down which I might drag…"

-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

Similar categories in Miranda July's All Fours book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

"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 Lorrie Moore's I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• literature
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels

"I've become. An object of dismay. I guess."

-Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

"Do I jar you?" he asks with his sly charm. "No," I say. “I am braced at every turn for disenchantment."

-Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

Similar categories in Deborah Levy's August Blue book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• womens
• novels

"We agreed that whatever happened next in the world, we would still rub conditioner into our hair after we washed it and comb it through to the ends, we would soften our lips with rose-, strawberry-, …"

-Deborah Levy, August Blue

Similar categories in Kathryn Scanlan's Kick the Latch book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

Similar categories in James Hannaham's Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

Similar categories in Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

"...wondering, not for the first time, when exactly she had become so technologically dependent that her first instinct in every unpredicted circumstance was to outsource her imagination to her phone."

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"Not at all,’ he said. ‘I was just going to remark that being a cliche can be very useful. You ought to consider it some time.’ ’Oh yeah?’ ’Yeah,’ he said. ‘It means people underestimate you. They thi…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"As his rhetoric and reading life matured, he grew intensely scornful of what passed at his high school for 'education' - the mania for testing; the intolerance of real dissent; and the conformist cel…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"... his future, had either been sold or laid to waste by his parents' generation, trapping him in a perpetual adolescence that was further heightened by the infantilising unreality of the Internet as…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• literature
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels

"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Similar categories in George Saunders's Liberation Day book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literature
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary

"...or said some racist thing out loud at church..."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

"It is always regrettable to have attracted the attention of adult son Mike."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

" You are trapped in you, the beam said. Yeah, well, who isn’t? she thought."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

"It was always falling down around you, everything has always been falling down around us. Only we were too alive to notice."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

Similar categories in Zadie Smith's The Fraud book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

"Eliza had long understood her cousin to be beyond the reach of editorial intervention."

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"What possesses people? Unhappiness, always. Happiness is otherwise occupied. It has an object on which to focus. It has daisies, it has snowdrifts. Unhappiness opens up the void, which then requires …"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"I know this country well. Well enough to understand that justice takes time, and that the freedoms of a minority are rarely self-evident to the majority. What is perfectly selfevident to God is – unf…"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"God preserve me from novel-writing, thought Mrs Touchet. God preserve me from that tragic indulgence, that useless vanity, that blindness! In a cold dormitory, two hundred miles away, three heartbrok…"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

Similar categories in Tess Gunty's The Rabbit Hutch book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

"On the opposite end of the sidewalk, a large woman in her sixties collapsed. Immediately, two people rushed to the woman's side, gingerly tending to her, touching her shoulders and face, speaking to …"

-Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

"· Las calles por las que caminas, el alimento que comes, el trabajo que haces, el medio de transporte que eliges, los productos de belleza que compras, los programas que ves, los enlaces en los que p…"

-Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

"Acaba de ponerse a llover. Estamos encantados de que se quede un rato más, si quiere. Milagroso. Joan recuerda que existen los perros, las tiendas de manualidades, los analgésicos, las bibliotecas pú…"

-Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

"—Estoy harta —dice Blandine— de la violencia contra las mujeres disfrazada de validación. —Lo siento —murmura James de manera automática, pero tiene el gesto de la mascota reprendida que no sabe qué …"

-Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

Similar categories in Catherine Lacey's Biography of X book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

"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 Ali Smith's Companion Piece book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• literature
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels

Similar categories in Brandon Taylor's The Late Americans book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

Similar categories in Elif Batuman's Either/Or book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• literature
• coming of age
• fiction
• contemporary
• womens
• novels

"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 Nell Zink's Avalon book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• class
• literature
• coming of age
• fiction
• contemporary
• womens
• novels

Similar categories in Namwali Serpell's The Furrows book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• literature
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels

Similar categories in Claire-Louise Bennett's Checkout 19 book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• literary fiction
• literature
• coming of age
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels

"Mimicry can be unkind, but at least it acknowledges that you’re there."

-Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19

"Yet in my heart I was bereft, grieving – homesick for a place I had never seen. For a place that doesn't exist, yet I belonged there nonetheless. Ridiculous really. Ridiculous, yet so acute and abidi…"

-Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19

"…the impulse for transgression and a taste for abasement is not so difficult to locate and arouse. Because of course it is thrilling to be astutely defiled. To have every revered trait and inimitable…"

-Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19

"an unbearably tense and disorienting paradox that underscores everyday life in a working-class environment—on the one hand it’s an abrasive and in-your-face world, yet, at the same time, much of it s…"

-Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19

Similar categories in Amy Key's Arrangements in Blue book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• contemporary

Similar categories in Octavia Bright's This Ragged Grace: A Memoir of Recovery and Renewal book and Nell Zink's Avalon

• contemporary