10 Literary Novels That Go Completely Off the Rails

Literary fiction has a bit of an image problem. The phrase brings to mind an old man pecking at a dusty typewriter, stories of war bleeding from his fingers. Or perhaps the all-too-occasional woman of letters, bonnet in place, penning deeply romantic stories of ultimately tragic families. There’s not supposed to be scenes of expensive skincare rearranging the body parts of a beauty-store worker, and rich girls definitely should not be turning rabbits into men. There’s most certainly an absence of sex with mermen.