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Weird Girl Lit: Unusual & Quirky Books 🐈⬛
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items From surrealist short stories to melancholic novels about grief, from books about social outcasts to those about characters learning how to cope with grief, you'll find something fun here. Peculiar characters, absurd storylines, obsessive relationshi...
one of my favourite releases in the last 3 years, i adore this book with my whole heart and the fact that it's the author's debut is so impressive. we follow the life of noelle, an ex-catholic woman with lots of emotional issues who travels to an isl...
Fragile Animals
another book i adore and one of the most intriguing, thought-provoking novels i've ever read. this gothic story follows the life of a man whose home is invaded by two women who then start to question his identity, and throughout various mysterious ci...
The Iliac Crest
one of my favourite atmospheric reads ever, and my favourite work from julia armfield, whose books i adore in general. we follow leah and miri - leah returns from a deep sea expedition gone wrong and seems like a completely different person, and her ...
Our Wives Under the Sea
a classic when it comes to weird girl lit, and for good reason - this one is truly amazing. it follows keiko, a woman working at a convenience store. she feels out of place everywhere in life, except for the store, she feels like that's the only plac...
Convenience Store Woman
if i'm being honest, this is a book i gatekeep 99% of the time because i love it so so much i feel like i need to keep it to myself, like my own precious treasure chest or something. but on the other hand, it's so good i feel like i should share it. ...
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace
a strange little book i haven't seen literally anyone talk about ever, but i thought the title was fun so i checked it out. the story is set in a peculiar town called rosary. the town is run by evangelicals, and the residents are basically almost ent...
gods with a little g
this one was such a page turner for me, it kept me engaged and intrigued throughout, and i think it's a great horror read since it's psychological horror (my fav). i think it's best to go into reading this book knowing as little as possible about it,...
The Last House on Needless Street
i will never miss an opportunity to recommend this wonderfully entertaining and perfectly strange collection from the author of convenience store woman. sayaka murata is a master of writing weird girl lit, and that shows here as well. this is a colle...
Life Ceremony
a super entertaining and peculiar coming-of-age story of ren yu, a girl who is a swimmer who wishes to become a mermaid. everyone around her encourages her, while not realising they're enabling her obsession with turning into a mermaid. i very much e...
Chlorine
an underrated emotional story set in world war II, following two women and their experiences with motherhood and other struggles. the intriguing part is that both women are named violet, and their story is told in alternating chapters. both women dea...
Violets
one of the most unique stories i ever read, and i picked it up immediately upon reading the blurb because i was just to incredibly intrigued. the story mostly focuses on the narrator's family life, as she lives with two deaf parents who both have dif...
Strangers I Know
a great dystopian read and in my top 5 dystopian novels ever, the story is set on the six thousand ship which is on an interstellar expedition. some of the employees are humans, others are humanoids, and the novel consists of their accounts and tales...
The Employees
another one from sayaka murata since she's genuinely perfect at writing this niche of literature. the story follows natsuki, who decided she must be an alien when she was a child, because she felt so much like an outcast. now that she's a grown up, s...
Earthlings
my favourite dystopian / speculative fiction novel ever, and one that was truly ahead of its time, since it's unbelievable to me that this was released in 1995. set in the late 21st century, humans are living in domes on the sea floor due to the unbe...
The Membranes
adore this and i recommend it on the regular, this peculiar little book is set in a small religious town in the american south. one day, the residents come to church to find an extremely strange person sleeping on a pew. the person is racially ambigu...
Pew
such an unique book that consists of three stories, all connected to each other, about artists who use their bodies to make their art, perhaps not in the way you'd expect. you should take that description quite literally - grace, for example, uses he...
Suture
an unusual story and such a page turner, i was so entertained by this one. the story is set in a small town where everyone has gone mad, and historians cannot agree on the reason why, some speculate that their bread was cursed, others think it's the ...
Cursed Bread
an amazing queer novel that follows the unnamed narrator who teaches at a prestigious girls' school, and falls in love with the headmaster's wife (mrs. s). the narrator is a butch lesbian, and mrs. s is pretty much the opposite. the narrator has some...
Mrs. S
a criminally underrated book but one that i love with my whole heart, as i generally do with hwang jungeun's work. the story is focused on a non-binary character grieving the death of their partner, as south korea mourns as a result of the sewol ferr...
dd's Umbrella
great for those who enjoy the handmaid's tale, and a very historically intriguing book. the story is based on sin eaters, people who consume ritual foods to take on people's sins, and they were an actual thing in history. since the story is set in th...
Sin Eater
another super underrated pick and a true hidden gem, the story follows anya and luke, a couple with various issues. despite these issues, luke proposes, and they go back to london as an engaged couple, where anya's state of mind only gets worse and w...
Asylum Road
a super intriguing and beautifully written novel set in a girls' boarding school in postwar switzerland, it follows the narrator and her relationships with two different girls. one of them, frédérique, is more stoic and cold, and the narrator is fasc...
Sweet Days of Discipline
just the title of this novel will make you think wow … what a strange book. and that's exactly why i picked it up immediately upon reading its name, i simply had to know what goes on in there. it follows a translator who travels a lot, often bringing...
You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked.
i never miss a chance to recommend this collection of 11 surrealist stories in which the author blends fantasy and science fiction. each story follows an absurd character, sometimes making you feel like you're reading a fever dream or a hallucination...
Hit Parade of Tears