Friday Mood Recs: Let's get meta
Metafictional stories I love and what to look for while you're reading
Last week on Instagram, a follower asked me if I could define metafiction. Little did I know that this would lead to a whole series of stories exploring this genre and how to spot it (you can watch all of those responses in my IG story highlights). While I might write more about my love of metafiction in a Reading in Public essay, I’ve got meta on the mind and decided to share some of my favorites from the genre and what metafictional characteristics and questions you might notice as you read.
If the term metafiction is new to you, I like to think about it most basically as “fiction about fiction.” A book can be metafictional in style, structure, or subject, but for a book to fully fit in the metafiction genre, it is also metafictional in theme, meaning it in some way address the nature of fiction by breaking the reader’s suspension of disbelief. I love this type of writing because it allows me to think about what the purpose of fiction is and what fictional storytelling can do that a factually true story cannot. It’s one of my favorite topics to consider and novels that wrap that into the very nature of the text will always win me over.
There’s a ton to explore with the idea of metafiction and this isn’t the post where I’m going to deep dive into how to determine if something is metafictional. Instead, I’m going to share some of the most thought-provoking metafictional novels I’ve encountered, along with brief summaries and the metafictional elements to look out for if you pick them up. I hope this can serve as a spring board for anyone else who’s fascinated by these layered stories as well as an invitation to share your own favorite works of metafiction in the comments.