13 Top literary fiction books like Crudo by Olivia Laing

Cover of Crudo by Olivia Laing

Crudo

By: Olivia Laing

3.19

Format: 160 pages, Paperback

A brilliant, funny, and emphatically raw novel of love on the brink of the apocalypse, from the acc…

"What a waste, what a crime, to wreck a world so abundantly full of different kinds of flowers."

-Olivia Laing, Crudo

"She missed the sense of time as something serious and diminishing, she didn't like living in the permanent present of the id."

-Olivia Laing, Crudo

"He read last, and when he got to a line about an entire bowl she gasped. Every word came out clean. We're a monstrous pair of crows, devoted to a single being."

-Olivia Laing, Crudo

"40, not a bad run in the history of human existence but she’d really rather it all kept going, water in the taps, whales in the oceans, fruit and duvets, the whole sumptuous parade, she was into it thanks, she’d like that show to run and run."

-Olivia Laing, Crudo

If you liked the literary fiction plot in Crudo by Olivia Laing , here is a list of 13 books like this:

Cover of Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy

1. Things I Don't Want to Know

By: Deborah Levy

4.09

Format: 109 pages, Hardcover

'Perhaps when Orwell described sheer egoism as a necessary quality for a writer, he was not thinkin… read more

Similar categories in Deborah Levy's Things I Don't Want to Know book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • womens
"Now that we were mothers we were all shadows of our former selves, chased by the women we used to be before we had children."

-Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know

"When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense."

-Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know

"The fact that lipstick and mascara and eye shadow were called 'Make Up' thrilled me. Everywhere in the world there were made up people and most of them were women."

-Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know

"To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL."

-Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know

2. Hot Milk

By: Deborah Levy

3.94

Format: 489 pages, Hardcover

Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother… read more

Similar categories in Deborah Levy's Hot Milk book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • contemporary

3. Transit

By: Rachel Cusk

4.14

Format: 222 pages, Hardcover

The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Revi… read more

Similar categories in Rachel Cusk's Transit book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

4. Artful

By: Ali Smith

4.16

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

The incomparable Ali Smith melds the tale and the essay into a magical hybrid form, a song of prais… read more

Similar categories in Ali Smith's Artful book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

5. Swimming Home

By: Deborah Levy , Tom McCarthy

4.04

Format: 156 pages, Paperback

Swimming Homeis a subversive page-turner, a merciless gaze at the insidious harm that depression ca… read more

Similar categories in Deborah Levy's Swimming Home book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

6. Haunted Houses

By: Lynne Tillman

2.57

Format: None pages,

This novel chronicles the loneliness of childhood and incipient womanhood, the salvation of friends… read more

Similar categories in Lynne Tillman's Haunted Houses book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

Cover of August Blue by Deborah Levy

7. August Blue

By: Deborah Levy

3.68

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

A new novel from the Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy, the celebrated author of The Man Who Saw E… read more

Similar categories in Deborah Levy's August Blue book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • womens
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"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

Cover of Real Estate (Living Autobiography #3) by Deborah Levy

8. Real Estate (Living Autobiography #3)

By: Deborah Levy

4.29

Format: 297 pages, Hardcover

'Three bicycles. Seven ghosts. A crumbling apartment block on the hill. Fame. Tenderness. The statu… read more

Similar categories in Deborah Levy's Real Estate (Living Autobiography #3) book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • womens
  • contemporary
"É difícil reivindicar fragilidade e força em igual proporção, mas é essa mistura que nos constitui a todos"

-Deborah Levy, Real Estate (Living Autobiography #3)

"A história neste livro era sobre uma mulher que oferece a sua vida a um homem. Não se deve tentar isso em casa, mas é normalmente aí que acontece."

-Deborah Levy, Real Estate (Living Autobiography #3)

"The story in this book was about a woman who has gifted her life to a man. This is not something to be tried at home but it is usually where it happens."

-Deborah Levy, Real Estate (Living Autobiography #3)

"One of these men told me at a book festival that if he did not transgress too many boundaries in his marriage, there would always be a comforting pair of slippers warming for him by the fire...Will t…"

-Deborah Levy, Real Estate (Living Autobiography #3)

Cover of I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel

9. I'm a Fan

By: Sheena Patel

3.32

Format: 207 pages, None

In I'm A Fan, a single speaker uses the story of their experience in a seemingly unequal, unfaithfu… read more

Similar categories in Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"It is toxic. I am familiar"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"Happiness or safety. Or isn't that the same thing?"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"I never came with him. I never felt safe enough to."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"The world is made for couples. Even the unhappy ones."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

Cover of Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

10. Ordinary Human Failings

By: Megan Nolan

3.78

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

When a 10-year-old child is suspected of a violent crime, her family must face the truth about thei… read more

Similar categories in Megan Nolan's Ordinary Human Failings book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"She loved the feeling of doing something on her own, and doing it in a routine. It felt thrillingly adult and affirmed her most cherished hope, the hope that she might have an actual inner life of su…"

-Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings

"He had the sort of bland, agreeable, rosy face which could disappear into whatever context he wished it to. He was blond but not provocatively so. The naturally dull Kent accent could be clipped and …"

-Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings

Cover of The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography by Deborah Levy

11. The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

By: Deborah Levy

4.18

Format: 144 pages, Hardcover

A searching examination of all the dimensions of love, marriage, mourning, and kinship from two-tim… read more

Similar categories in Deborah Levy's The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • womens
  • contemporary
"Sometimes we want to unbelong as much as we want to belong."

-Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

"It was a big release from the terror of death to finally acknowledge that it is also always absurd."

-Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

"I might one day risk falling in love again, but I was not going to lose my heart to the cardiologist."

-Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

"To unfold any number of ideas through all the dimensions of time is the great adventure of the writing life."

-Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

Cover of Parade by Rachel Cusk

12. Parade

By: Rachel Cusk

3.70

Format: 198 pages, Hardcover

From the exhilarating mind of Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy, Parade disturbs and defin… read more

Similar categories in Rachel Cusk's Parade book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • womens
  • 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

Cover of Kudos by Rachel Cusk

13. Kudos

By: Rachel Cusk

3.89

Format: 236 pages, ebook

En un avión, una mujer escucha a su vecino de vuelo contarle la historia de su vida: su trabajo, su… read more

Similar categories in Rachel Cusk's Kudos book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • womens
  • novels
"Perhaps it follows, he said, that people who live in the sun don't take responsibility for their own happiness."

-Rachel Cusk, Kudos

"We invent these systems with the aim of ensuring fairness, she said, and yet the human situation is so complex that it always evades our attempts to encompass it."

-Rachel Cusk, Kudos

"You asked me earlier,' she said to me, 'whether I believed that justice was merely a personal illusion. I don't have the answer to that,' she said, 'but I know that it is to be feared, feared in ever…"

-Rachel Cusk, Kudos

"We live with an almost superstitious belief in our own differences, she said, and Luis has shown that those differences are not the result of some divine mystery but are merely the consequence of our…"

-Rachel Cusk, Kudos

Cover of Orbital by Samantha Harvey

14. Orbital

By: Samantha Harvey

3.73

Format: 207 pages, Hardcover

A slender novel of epic power, Orbital  deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men … read more

Similar categories in Samantha Harvey's Orbital book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Maybe we're the new dinosaurs and need to watch out."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"The past comes, the future, the past, the future. It's always now, it's never now."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"Raw space is a panther, feral and primal; they dream it stalking through their quarters."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"That's all this great human endeavor of space exploration really is, he thinks, an animal migration, a bid for survival. A looping song sent into the open, a territorial animal song."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

Cover of Crudo by Olivia Laing

15. Crudo

By: Olivia Laing

3.19

Format: 160 pages, Paperback

A brilliant, funny, and emphatically raw novel of love on the brink of the apocalypse, from the acc… read more

Similar categories in Olivia Laing's Crudo book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • female authors
  • literature
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • womens
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"What a waste, what a crime, to wreck a world so abundantly full of different kinds of flowers."

-Olivia Laing, Crudo

"She missed the sense of time as something serious and diminishing, she didn't like living in the permanent present of the id."

-Olivia Laing, Crudo

"He read last, and when he got to a line about an entire bowl she gasped. Every word came out clean. We're a monstrous pair of crows, devoted to a single being."

-Olivia Laing, Crudo

"40, not a bad run in the history of human existence but she’d really rather it all kept going, water in the taps, whales in the oceans, fruit and duvets, the whole sumptuous parade, she was into it t…"

-Olivia Laing, Crudo

Cover of Three Rooms by Jo Hamya

16. Three Rooms

By: Jo Hamya

3.08

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

A piercing howl of a novel about one young woman’s endless quest for an apartment of her own and th… read more

Similar categories in Jo Hamya's Three Rooms book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
"Now, even to me, it seemed ridiculous to concede that I had accumulated substantial debt and a few degrees so that I might contractually labor for the sake of having two free days a week in which to …"

-Jo Hamya, Three Rooms

Cover of Like Love: Essays and Conversations by Maggie Nelson

17. Like Love: Essays and Conversations

By: Maggie Nelson

3.76

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

A career-spanning collection of inspiring, revelrous essays about art and artists Like Love is a… read more

Similar categories in Maggie Nelson's Like Love: Essays and Conversations book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • womens
  • audiobook
Cover of The Last Sane Woman by Hannah Regel

18. The Last Sane Woman

By: Hannah Regel

3.67

Format: None pages, Kindle Edition

A beguiling debut novel about friendship and failure, written with unusual craft and spryness by an… read more

Similar categories in Hannah Regel's The Last Sane Woman book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • contemporary
Cover of Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin

19. Scaffolding

By: Lauren Elkin

3.86

Format: 388 pages, Kindle Edition

The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apar… read more

Similar categories in Lauren Elkin's Scaffolding book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • female authors
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
Cover of The Echoes by Evie Wyld

20. The Echoes

By: Evie Wyld

3.93

Format: 304 pages, Kindle Edition

A story about the weight of the past and the promise of the future set between rural Australia and … read more

Similar categories in Evie Wyld's The Echoes book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
Cover of Private Rites by Julia Armfield

21. Private Rites

By: Julia Armfield

3.92

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, c… read more

Similar categories in Julia Armfield's Private Rites book and Olivia Laing's Crudo

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"To be misunderstood is one thing, but the curious hostility of a sibling's approach lies less in what they miss than in the strange backdated nature of the things they choose to know. A person can be…"

-Julia Armfield, Private Rites

13 must-read fiction books like Crudo by Olivia Laing

Hot Milk

Deborah Levy

3.94

Transform Your Habits

August Blue

Deborah Levy

3.68

Transform Your Habits

I'm a Fan

Sheena Patel

3.32

Transform Your Habits

Ordinary Human Failings

Megan Nolan

3.78

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20 best-selling fiction books like The Echoes by Evie Wyld

Transform Your Habits

Stone Yard Devotional

Charlotte Wood

3.68

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Safe Haven

Shankari Chandran

4.18

Transform Your Habits

Orbital

Samantha Harvey

3.73

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The Safekeep

Yael van der Wouden

4.08

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