10 must-read magical realism books like Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

If you liked the magical realism plot in Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh , here is a list of 10 books like this:

Similar categories in Ros Schwartz's I Who Have Never Known Men book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• adult
• fantasy
• fiction

"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 Agustina Bazterrica's Tender Is the Flesh book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• horror
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Carcass."

-Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

"She had the human look of a domesticated animal."

-Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

"un matadero debería ignorarse, fundirse con el paisaje y nunca llamarse por lo que realmente es."

-Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

"No entiendo por qué nos parece atractiva la sonrisa de una persona. Con la sonrisa uno está mostrando el esqueleto"."

-Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• horror
• 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 Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• horror
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"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 Gerardo Sámano Córdova's Monstrilio book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

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

"The world was scary. Worse, I was scary in it."

-Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Monstrilio

"I wanted him to snap, to finally and absolutely lose it. To break. He was withering. To wither is not the same as to break; to break is to have pieces to put back together, and to wither is to dry up…"

-Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Monstrilio

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Bunny book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

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

"The pink pony inside me weeps softly."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"Oh, Bunny, I love you. I love you, Bunny."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"We think of it as art meets life, Bunny. We’re putting art into the world."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"Because life is shorter than we are, she says, so why beat around the bush?"

-Mona Awad, Bunny

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• historical
• fiction
• contemporary
• historical fiction
• horror
• 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 Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• horror
• 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 Eliza Clark's Penance book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• horror
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details…"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

Similar categories in Ainslie Hogarth's Motherthing book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• fiction
• horror
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Too much human touching will change a thing."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"A Good Woman butchers her meat properly, without cruelty."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"I bubble again with blinding-hot, spine-severing cumshitkill."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"I can save you. With Secrets of a Famous Chef I can save you."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

Similar categories in Sayaka Murata's Earthlings book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

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

"Sobreviver, haja o que houver."

-Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

"O senso comum é uma doença contagiosa e é difícil manter a infecção sozinho."

-Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

"I thought that when I grew up society would brainwash me, but it didn't work."

-Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

"Até quando eu teria de sobreviver? Será que algum dia poderia apenas viver e não sobreviver?"

-Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

Similar categories in Chelsea G. Summers's A Certain Hunger book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• horror
• contemporary
• adult

"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"I enjoy a man who’s kissed with a yeasty beastliness."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"Junk food was rebellion, rebellion was femininity, femininity was junk."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"I knew from a young age that motherhood was a cage I never wanted to inhabit."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Death Valley book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• 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 Dizz Tate's Brutes book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• horror
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"to be loved, was just to be watched"

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"We feel chased. It doesn't matter if it's only by our own shadows."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"and now I think that to humiliate a woman is the only way some men know how to love one."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"To be loved was just to be watched, or in my case, to imagine you are loved is to imagine you are watched all the time."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• 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 Coco Mellors's Cleopatra and Frankenstein book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"And you’re in love?"

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"People are like this too, you know,"

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light."

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"Cleo and Frank could not make each other happy, no matter how hard they’d tried."

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Boy Parts book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• horror
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Was it my idea to have him hurt me, or did he just let me think it was?"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"My mam always used to tell me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And Eddie from Tesco is a fly, but he's got a taste for vinegar. It's like vinegar is all he's ever had from peop…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"You want to think you're not like other women, but you are, you know. You're still... that's still how the rest of the world, how men are going to see you. Like, I know you hate labels, but you like.…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"Do you like it rough? I think so. I think I must. Men are rough, aren't they? Have I always had a taste for rough stuff, or did I acquire that? In the back of Lesley's car, on the floor of a friend's…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Milk Fed book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"This interplay between hope and reality was also a part of the mourning."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"There are emanations of god we can’t even see. What’s important is that you feel it."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"Life was a lot less bleak when you were staring straight down the barrel of a burrito."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"I wanted a love contingent on nothing finite. I wanted a love without end. Everyone was always saying you had to give it to yourself. Self-love, self-love."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

Similar categories in Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

• 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

Similar categories in Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

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

"In such moments, she could almost touch her loneliness, as if it were her second child."

-Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

"Her secrets were the only things these days that were purely hers, things apart from mother and wife and middle-aged woman."

-Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

"Yes, certainly, her emerging rage was in part a by-product of physiological processes, but how could you not be pissed after having a baby?"

-Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

"It had been so long since she had remembered all this, so long since she'd even thought of it, for there had been a great forgetting when she left home--a purposeful forgetting, because to forget her…"

-Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

Similar categories in Mona Awad's All's Well book and Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona

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

"I'm supposed to feel bad that I'm better now? I'm supposed to cry over a little cut. To what? To make you feel like I'm not a monster. I need to perform my little bit of pain for you so you'll know I…"

-Mona Awad, All's Well

"I gesture to the window and smile. Budding branches. Pale green leaves. Spring. Spring, does she see that? A time when everything is in bloom. Everything is having sex. Everything is so damp and frag…"

-Mona Awad, All's Well

"But not too much pain, am I right? Not too much, never too much. If it was too much, you wouldn't know what to do with me, would you? Too much would make you uncomfortable. Bored. My crying would lea…"

-Mona Awad, All's Well

"What, am I supposed to feel guilty?" I say. He looks confused. "Guilty?" "That I feel fine for once? That I'm not limping and moaning around? Dragging my leg like Briana? Lying on the floor, crying i…"

-Mona Awad, All's Well