Similar Titles to The Rubble and the Shakespeare

tyunglebower ♦ November 22, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

A common, and perfectly logical way to promote a new novel such as my novel is to compare it to other works. What does it resemble? It’s an efficient if not foolproof way to suggest to readers the kind of book you’ve written.

As with any marketing strategy, I face a personal challenge when proceeding.

I tend to read fewer books in a year than is fashionable these days, due to my overall reading speed. As you can imagine, this means I have fewer reference points for comparison than those who devour books with the speed of a demi-god.

Not only that, I tend to choose my next read based not on how new a title is. I myself will pick up a book if it happens to be compared to one I’ve already enjoyed, but usually the choice is based on such things as word of mouth, happenstance, searching for novels about whatever I am fixated on a given day, or even just stalking the library shelves. When you choose titles in this way, you are just as likely to “discover” a book from 20 years ago.

My list of completed book spans decades and various genres. You may or may not have heard of many of the novels I’ve read and enjoyed.

Still, I’ll try to mention a few books I think accomplish similar things to The Rubble and the Shakespeare. In no particular order, here are four:

–Virgil Wander by Leif Enger. (2018)

This recentISH novel is, about a man who loses his memory and goes on to manage the movie house of a local failing midwestern town. Stacked with well drawn characters and free of the outlandish for most of its pages, this is a story about decent, diverse people getting to know one another under circumstances that are only slightly askew from the every day. A found-family vibe of community, with nods towards the power of imagination.

My upcoming novel is not quite as somber as this Enger work tends to be in places. Still, if you read and enjoyed this, I’m reasonably confident you’s also enjoy The Rubble and the Shakespeare.

–The Black Tower, Louis Bayard (2014).

This was the first of several Bayard books I’ve read, and thus far my favorite. This historical fiction and mystery/thriller is, I must point out, much more complex than The Rubble and the Shakespeare, because it is a different genre doing different things. However, much like Virgil Wander it is filled with what I found to be memorable characters that charm. This is particularly true of the protagonist of this first-person narrative. (My book is also first person this time around.)

I chose this one because like my novel, it maintains humor even in darker situations. Once more, the subject matter is more intense at times than I intend my story to be, but I hope the humor I’ve spread throughout is just as successful even if lighter in nature than that of Bayard.

–Legends and Lattes, Travis Baldree, (2022)

I will admit upfront that this is the outlier. This very recent and popular work is in the high-fantasy genre, complete with orcs and magic and trolls, etc.

The Rubble and the Shakespeare is quite removed from such things, for certain.

So why include it? Because the intentional selling point of this tale was its low stakes compared to its “high vibes.” A character-driven fantasy story free of quests and battles so common in the genre. That was the point. My novel has more stakes than Baldree’s. And the vibes are not fantastical. But like this 2022 bestseller, I’ve aimed to make atmosphere and characters the pillars of my story, allowing actions and conflicts to occur in their orbits as opposed to in their faces.

I’m sure there were other novels with a similar approach that were not as fanciful and would have made a better comparison, but I’m sticking to those novels I’ve actually read and enjoyed. Both this and Rubble embrace plot simplicity.

–A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler (2014)

Closer to a novella in length than a novel, I read a translation from the original German. This piece, despite being more literary than The Rubble and the Shakespeare aspires to be, was an easy read, and deeply atmospheric and personal. Introspective. It is the interior nature of this work combined with the mostly wintry, frigid environment (the mountains) that lands it on this list. Far fewer characters than my own first-person novel, and again, more somber in tone, I nevertheless recall certain similarities between Seethaler’s Andreas and my own Dimitri.

In case you missed the pattern, memorable characters saying and thinking thoughtful things are a thread that runs through the above novels, and, I hope, through my own. And while the purpose of this list was never to suggest I’ve written something superior to the work of these authors, I like to think that there is some noteworthy overlap in quality, theme, style, tone, or all of the above.

I hope you will download a copy yourself, priced at $4.99 once it is available five days from now.