14 must-read literature books like Gentlemen of the West by Agnes Owens

If you liked the literature plot in Gentlemen of the West by Agnes Owens , here is a list of 14 books like this:

Similar categories in Georges Perec's Les Choses book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

"Qui ne travaille pas ne mange pas, certes, mais qui travaille ne vit plus."

-Georges Perec, Les Choses

"Leur vie était comme une trop longue habitude, comme un ennui presque serein : une vie sans rien."

-Georges Perec, Les Choses

"Pero nestes tempos e nestas latitudes, cada vez hai máis xente que non é rica nin pobre: soñan coa riqueza e poderían facerse ricos: é aí onde empezan as súas desgracias."

-Georges Perec, Les Choses

"A trente ans, l'on se doit d'être arrivé, ou bien l'on n'est rien. Et nul n'est arrivé s'il n'a trouvé sa place, s'il n'a creusé son trou, s'il n'a ses clés, son bureau, sa petite plaque."

-Georges Perec, Les Choses

Similar categories in David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• short stories

"What I know about auto racing could be inscribed with a dry Magic Marker on the lip of a Coke bottle."

-David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

"If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it."

-David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

"Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear."

-David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

"American human beings are a slippery and protean bunch in real life, hard as hell to get any kind of universal handle on."

-David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

Similar categories in William H. Gass's The Recognitions book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

"Women get desperate, but they don't understand despair."

-William H. Gass, The Recognitions

"That fever had passed; but for the rest of his life it never left his eyes."

-William H. Gass, The Recognitions

"Reading Proust isn't just reading a book, it's an experience and you can't reject an experience."

-William H. Gass, The Recognitions

"Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest." William Gaddis, The Recognitions."

-William H. Gass, The Recognitions

Similar categories in Anna Kavan's Ice book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

"Her albino hair illuminated my dreams, shining brighter than moonlight."

-Anna Kavan, Ice

"I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons."

-Anna Kavan, Ice

"What I saw had no solidity, it was all made of mist and nylon, with nothing behind."

-Anna Kavan, Ice

"I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing."

-Anna Kavan, Ice

Similar categories in Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1 book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

Similar categories in Deborah Levy's Things I Don't Want to Know book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

"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

Similar categories in André Breton's Nadja book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

"I am the soul in limbo."

-André Breton, Nadja

"Le coeur humain, beau comme un sismographe."

-André Breton, Nadja

"Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all."

-André Breton, Nadja

"...with the end of my breath, which is the beginning of yours."

-André Breton, Nadja

Similar categories in Vladimir Nabokov's Transparent Things book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

Similar categories in Gerald Murnane's The Plains book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

Similar categories in John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

Similar categories in Alasdair Gray's Poor Things book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• scotland
• fiction

"Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having."

-Alasdair Gray, Poor Things

"She also said the wicked people needed love as much as good people and were much better at it."

-Alasdair Gray, Poor Things

"Baxter knows a lot more than I do, I told her. Yes, said Baxter, but I will never tell people all of it."

-Alasdair Gray, Poor Things

"You, dear reader, have now two accounts to choose between and there can be no doubt which is most probable."

-Alasdair Gray, Poor Things

Similar categories in Percival Everett's Erasure book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

Similar categories in Magda Szabó's The Door book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

Similar categories in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

"Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul."

-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

"A harmful truth is better than a useful lie."

-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil."

-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

"It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death."

-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Similar categories in Ryū Murakami's Audition book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

Similar categories in Neige Sinno's Triste tigre book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

"C'est vrai qu'aucun [...] n'avait vu ce que nous pouvions voir nous, les enfants et ma mère, au sein du foyer, où il se comportait comme un tyran. Et c'est quand même ça qui ressort avant tout de cet…"

-Neige Sinno, Triste tigre

Similar categories in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

"people are entitled to some small moment of peace."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"the child absorbing the mother’s trauma and storing it in his body for later use,"

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"... time is at once addition and subtraction, time adds one day to the next and always takes away from what's left..."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"...knowing how it is so that all boys grow up and pull away from home to unmake the world in the guise of making it, nature decrees it so."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Similar categories in Paolo Di Paolo's Romanzo senza umani book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• fiction

Similar categories in Michael Bible's L’ultima cosa bella sulla faccia della terra book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• fiction

"Quegli anni sono così malinconici e bizzarri. Per effetto del vento sembrava che le azalee levitassero a una spanna da terra. I cani dei vicini, Sale e Pepe, abbaiavano come due innamorati durante un…"

-Michael Bible, L’ultima cosa bella sulla faccia della terra

Similar categories in Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• fiction

"El océano profundo es una casa embrujada: un lugar donde se mueven en la oscuridad cosas que no deberían existir."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"She refused almost every aspect of my help, the way women will when they've been bred to accept little more than the baset civility."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"I don't know why I expected you to read my mind,' I say, when I call back to leave her a message, 'I was just doing what I always do, assuming the world revolves around me."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"The space around us is a claw half grasped, holding tight without quite crushing, and I wish, in the idle way I always wish these days, that I felt more confident in my ability to breathe."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

Similar categories in Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• short stories
• fiction

"Her husband had pursued an “alternative lifestyle"

-Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

"One can break the curse, but it is impossible to cure their blindness from greed. They were always ready to wage another war"

-Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

"But there I remained, standing in the bathroom, waiting for someone to miraculously find me, to release me from my ties to this life."

-Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

"Once you experience a terrible trauma and understand the world from an extreme perspective, it is difficult to overcome this perspective. Because your very survival depends on it."

-Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

Similar categories in Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

"A thing that is not talked about ceases to exist."

-Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob

"Literatura to szczególny rodzaj wiedzy, to... (...) ... doskonałość form nieprecyzyjnych."

-Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob

"Gdy przepisujemy i cytujemy, budujemy gmach wiedzy i rozmnażamy ją jak moje warzywa czy jabłonki. Przepisywanie jest jak szczepienie drzewa; cytowanie – jak wysiewanie nasion."

-Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob

"If human beings had only known how to truly preserve their knowledge of the world, if they had just engraved it into rock, into crystals, into diamond and in so doing, passed it on to their descendan…"

-Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob

Similar categories in Anna Burns's Milkman book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• fiction

"how much I’d been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man"

-Anna Burns, Milkman

"It’s not about being happy,’ he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I’ve ever heard."

-Anna Burns, Milkman

"also found the situation unworkable. Not just unworkable – ridiculous. Not just ridiculous – perturbing."

-Anna Burns, Milkman

"even though it was weird to talk on the telephone. Only eight times, seven, maybe six, ever had I done so."

-Anna Burns, Milkman

Similar categories in Zadie Smith's The Fraud book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• fiction

"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 Catherine Lacey's Biography of X book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• fiction

"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 Christian Kracht's Eurotrash book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• fiction

Similar categories in László Krasznahorkai's Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

"...we must never lose sight of that gaze with which we look at things."

-László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming

"it’s precisely the infinite that casts light upon how the brain thinks, and how clever it is in showing us something that seems real when it’s merely an abstraction, namely that brain introduced or e…"

-László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming

"at this point, we must refocus our attention on this, as fear is what defines human existence, ...you will see that fear is the deepest element that can be grasped in this organic and inorganic world…"

-László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming

"empirical evidence is precisely that which is sacred in so-called scientific thought, and by these means—there’s no point in denying it—we can go far, but at the same time, by following this method, …"

-László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming

Similar categories in Isabella Santacroce's Magnificat Amour book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• fiction

Similar categories in Wolfgang Hilbig's The Females book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• fiction

Similar categories in Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West book and Agnes Owens's Gentlemen of the West

• literature
• short stories
• scotland
• fiction