Are There Books Similar To Sour Heart?

The fanfiction world is full of amazing novel-length stories, including many that are coffee shop AUs or artist AUs of existing characters. I talked about building a small business and slow-burn romance in those. You can find a lot of these stories on sites like Archive of Our Own. They have lots of filters, so you can search for your favorite fandom and then add tags like ‘fluff’ or ‘slice of life’ or ‘bakery AU’ or ‘bookshop AU’. I find some of the best character-driven, low-conflict storytelling on Archive of Our Own, and it’s all free.

The Queen of Hearts has changed much in her journey from printed page to screen. The character in Lewis Carroll’s novel is absurd in her abuse of power, but her threats of death are hollow since Wonderland is a place where consequences do not occur. Her satire is translated well in some of the adaptations, especially the 1951 Disney version where her death threats are portrayed in a comical manner, especially in her kangaroo court. However, in order for a story to progress in movie form, her character must be more defined than in the novel. Therefore, her character is made more intense and even merciless. Her scenes are often magnified to make her a larger than life figure. The Disney Queen is loud and overbearing. Her tiny eyes and large voice make her a memorable figure. Later versions, like the 2005 SyFy channel miniseries, portray her in an even darker and more horror-filled manner. While her core character remains the same, her translation to different mediums imparts a different perception of her character. While fans of the novel may grumble that the screen version does not capture the subtlety of the printed page, the Queen of Hearts is undeniably a more powerful character in her cinematic form.

I’ve read recently – with much pleasure – The Pisces by Melissa Broder. As I said earlier, Notes on Heartbreak is a deeply emotional read and whilst The Pisces is a vastly different book, it also deals with the depths of heartbreak and the journey of the person left to pick up the pieces after. The book is wild and crazy and at times surreal, but it’s also very real and is a very humorous take on the typical heartbreak stories that we read about. Annie Lord is another author who tackles tough subject matters with honesty and Unflinching courage in her writing. For an even more twisted take on relationships, you have to read Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan. The book is a smart and quirky dissection of the stresses of dating in your 30s and follows a protagonist as conflicted and as stuck in limbo as the narrator of Notes on Heartbreak. It’s fun and often laugh-out-loud and the dry humor has got me reading passages aloud to my flatmates to get their take. Even more, though, it’s good to have this sort of relatable take on a series of relationships, whole from the really bad to the just plain stumped. If you are looking for something a little more lyrical but equally painful, I highly recommend Graham Greene’s classic The End of the Affair. The story is of a man whose obsessive love of a woman that ended in an affair culminates in her unexpected death, and in the years that follow, he struggles with his jealousy, anger and conflicts with his Christian faith. As with Notes on Heartbreak, the novel is intense and leaves its reader shaken. It is a stunning exploration of love, and is written with incredible precision and beauty. Finally, I picked How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs because it’s different but also explores themes of love. This is a collection of short stories that follow a variety of characters, all dealing with love and relationships in different ways, from identities of families and cultures to how people are dealing with being diasporic. I find that this book is similar to Notes on Heartbreak in that the emotional range of the stories goes from extreme love to extreme hate, and in between there is a lot of love and it is so beautiful and relatable that it will make you feel all the emotions and hopefully see a little bit of yourself in the characters. Like with Notes on Heartbreak, reading How to Love a Jamaican will leave you feeling wrecked but better in the end.

A truly light-hearted book is often associated with a single, strong and distinct narrative voice that reads like a friend’s story. While Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ is a very dark book, the voice of the narration is so arch, witty and light in terms of language that the overall feeling is one of lightness, even when reading about very dark events. The author’s voice is the main carrier of the ‘lightness’ and can even make a dark story feel joyful.

Give Yes, Your Serpentine Excellency by Kate Stradling a try.

The next book I wanted to read after Falling Upward was another book on transformation. Even though The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is mostly fiction and an allegory, it is another very good book on transformation. Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor is another book that portrays darkness as a place of transformation, and ways that we can grow there. Like Rohr, she shows how we can transform our messy lives into something beautiful.

I am also looking for something similar to All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven in terms of emotional impact. This novel deals with mental health and love in a beautiful, heart-wrenching way, similar to You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone. Her characters are so real and relatable, which makes it easy to see their struggles and celebrations. Deb Caletti also wrote The Secret Life of Prince Charming, a novel centered around family, secrets, and relationships. While not nearly as focused on the medical side of things, it deals with issues in a truly honest manner, bringing a lot of heartache and laughter to the read.

Other books that capture a similar sense of positive energy in the midst of life’s ups and downs are Lauren Wolk’s Echo Mountain, which is quieter and also extremely powerful, and The Truth About Twinkie Pie by Kat Yeh. That book is chock full of recipes and finds a positive way to depict sisterhood and includes a big-hearted story at its core. All of these books take a look at life’s lemons and find a way to make them into something sweet.

Otaku no Video is an older OVA that is sort of a documentary on the rise of the “otaku king.” Of course it would be all celebratory towards the end, but the “interviews” with live-action, 80s-shaded “real” otaku in the thing have that same cringeworthy, uncompromising authenticity that was the hallmark of Dorkin’s comic. The stories that make up the main body of the thing are sort of triumphant in hindsight, but the general take is that the main character’s an obsessive outcast, and the thing looks like a sort of time capsule of Eltingville-style intense fandom viewed by outsiders with revulsion and disgust.

Sometimes you can find similar things in totally different media. The podcast “Scene on Radio” had a series of episodes called “Seeing White”, a really in depth and philosophical exploration of the construction of whiteness. For me, those episodes of “Scene on Radio” had the same feeling of having a hidden mechanism of society explained as the Soyinka poem. Or the song “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday, a really powerful and lyrical song about lynching that uses the poetic imagery to force the listener to look at the atrocity described in the song. The strategies of art to expose uncomfortable truths are different in these cases, but the end is the same. So don’t limit yourself to books on the topic. Follow the feeling to music, to podcasts, to documentaries on the subject.