Books › The Trick is to Keep Breathing › Books like it
If you loved
Books like The Trick is to Keep Breathing
An agonizing yet witty plunge into the fragmented, detached reality of clinical depression, saved by a biting sense of the ridiculous. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with The Trick is to Keep Breathing.
- detached
- melancholic
- absurdist
- 01
Reasons to stay alive
Matt Haig
A lifeline in book form that feels like sitting with a friend who truly understands the darkness but promises the morning will come.
- 02
The Shock of the Fall
Nathan Filer
A raw, immersive plunge into the turbulent and spinning reality of mental illness.
- 03
The Female Malady
Showalter, Elaine; Showalter, E. · 1985
A chilling, meticulously researched exploration of how the medical establishment weaponized madness to control women.
- 04
The Wasp Factory
Iain Banks
A chilling, darkly comic descent into the meticulously ordered mind of an isolated teenage psychopath.
- 05
Asleep
Banana Yoshimoto · 2000
A gentle, hypnotic drift through the hazy borderlands of sorrow, memory, and the subconscious.
- 06
An unquiet mind
Kay Redfield Jamison · 1995
A fiercely articulate descent into the terrifying highs and crushing lows of a brilliant, fractured mind.
- 07
It's Kind of a Funny Story
Ned Vizzini
A candid, surprisingly funny exploration of teenage depression and the unexpected moments of light found within a psychiatric hospital.
- 08
Grief is the thing with feathers
Max Porter
A surreal, poetic, and darkly funny exploration of the chaotic shape that mourning takes in a shattered home.
- 09
Reasons to live
Amy Hempel · 1985
A masterclass in saying everything by saying almost nothing, wrapping profound grief in sharp, brittle wit.
- 10
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
A prickly, deadpan exploration of profound loneliness that slowly thaws into a deeply moving story of unexpected friendship.
- 11
Look at Me
Jennifer Egan · 2001
An eerie, symphonic exploration of identity and alienation in a world where surface and reality are indistinguishable.
- 12
The Girls at 17 Swann Street
Yara Zgheib
A haunting, poetic exploration of perfectionism, illness, and the fragile but fierce bonds of women fighting for their lives.
