Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like The Hours
The best books like The Hours are An Unquiet Mind, A Grief Observed, and The Bell Jar. The Hours by Michael Cunningham is about mental illness and suicide, women's interiority, the passage of time. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- An Unquiet Mind
01
Kay Redfield Jamison · Psychology
Kay Redfield Jamison is a psychiatrist and professor who has manic-depressive illness.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Grief Observed
- The Bell Jar
03
Sylvia Plath · Memoir
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, one month before Plath's death.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Beautiful World, Where Are You
04
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney · Literary fiction
Beautiful World, Where Are You follows two women in their late twenties — Alice, a novelist recovering from a breakdown in a rented house in rural Ireland, and Eileen, her best friend working at a literary magazine in Dublin.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Just Kids
05
Patti Smith · Memoir
Just Kids is Patti Smith's National Book Award-winning memoir of her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, from their first meeting in New York in 1967 through their years of shared poverty, artistic development, and eventual celebrity, to Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS in 1989.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Dubliners
06
James Joyce · Short stories
Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories set in Dublin in the early twentieth century, published in 1914 after nearly a decade of rejections and publisher disputes over its frank treatment of Irish life.
Both dig into escape and entrapment.
Read the summary → - A Farewell to Arms
07
Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction
A Farewell to Arms is set during the First World War in northern Italy and follows Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, who falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Fine Balance
08
Rohinton Mistry · Literary fiction
A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, a period of suspended democracy, forced sterilization, and slum clearances that is barely taught in the West and barely taught in India.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Little Life
09
Hanya Yanagihara · Literary fiction
A Little Life follows four men from college into middle age and beyond — Willem, an actor; JB, a painter; Malcolm, an architect; and Jude, a lawyer with a past that is revealed in increasingly devastating detail as the novel progresses.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
10
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · Literary fiction
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traces the intellectual and spiritual development of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to the edge of adulthood, when he leaves Ireland to pursue life as an artist.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Thousand Acres
11
Jane Smiley · Literary fiction
A Thousand Acres retells King Lear on a thousand-acre Iowa farm in the 1970s.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Visit from the Goon Squad
12
Jennifer Egan · Literary fiction
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a novel told in thirteen chapters, each from a different point of view and sometimes in a radically different form — including one chapter composed entirely as a PowerPoint presentation.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like The Hours: quick answers
What are the best books like The Hours?
The best books like The Hours by Michael Cunningham are An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, Just Kids by Patti Smith, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Hours, such as mental illness and suicide, women's interiority, the passage of time.
What should I read after The Hours?
A natural next read after The Hours is An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney.
What books are similar to The Hours by Michael Cunningham?
The Hours centers on mental illness and suicide, women's interiority, the passage of time. Books with a similar feel include An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, Just Kids by Patti Smith, Dubliners by James Joyce — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
