Epistolary novels are a recurring narrative device in French Literature. I guess it doesn’t score points for originality, but some of them are really good. Off the top of my head, I can think of Mémoires d’Hadrien de Marguerite Yourcenar , les lettres Persanes de Montesquieu, les liaisons dangereuses and Les lettres Chinoises de Ying Chen.

L’écume des jours de Boris Vian is pretty difficult to explain but should be read by everyone.

The book thief being narrated by Death

Not sure if this is the most inventive but I haven’t seen this done so well before

In Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow there are 2 devices I think were very well done. First of all one chapter is in 2nd person but it is very well done and made me sob into my book (if you know you know)

Also later on in the book there is a chapter where 2 of the main characters play a video game and the whole chapter is from the POV of their video game characters? It’s kind of hard to explain because it is so weird but very very good and a beautiful story of friendship in this chapter it was very interesting and I haven’t seen it done before so it was a cool read!

Ursula le Guin often used science reports to break up the prose and add additional context, which I think makes the story richer. Particularly in the Left Hand of Darkness - an entire chapter towards the middle is a science report on the physiology of the Gethens, and honestly it’s much needed context since their biology is so different.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin has a really interesting narrative approach I haven’t seen elsewhere. There are three POVs, two in the expected third person omniscient and one in second person.

There is a reason for this oddity, massive spoilers:

Time’s Arrow. The entire life story is told backwards.

For Want of a Nail is written as a history book from an alternate history where Burgoyne won at Saratoga. It’s meticulously sourced with hundreds of fake sources created from the world. And an afterword even accuses the author of having a national bias.

It’s YA, but Illuminae Files by Kristoff and Kaufman is one of the weirdest formats I’ve ever read.

Raw Shark Texts, used to be a Reddit fave but has completely fallen off its radar. I don’t get it - it’s so good. One of the few books to live up to the hype.

It’s been forever since I’ve read either of these, but {{the Tattooed Map}} by Barbara Hodgson was beautifully laid out. A sort of travelogue narrative with many images and inscriptions throughout. I gave it ⭐⭐⭐

But the absolutely most inventive is Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton. It’s literally an auction catalog with no traditional narration. I also gave it ⭐⭐⭐

In Leanne Shapton’s marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who aren’t real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple’s personal effects-the usual auction items (jewelry, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pajamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks)-the story of a failed love affair vividly (and cleverly) emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple’s accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate.

Honorable mention, because I haven’t read it yet, but Dark Factory by Kathe Koja is supposed to be an immersive experience. I bought it from her website and it even included a perfumed paper of a scent from the book.

One of the stories in Stephen Kings If It Bleeds is called The Life of Chuck. I can’t remember what it’s called but it’s told in three acts in reverse and it blew my mind into a million pieces. It’s so good!

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has an unreliable narrator - you cannot tell if what he claims is happening is REALLY happening.

The Athenian Murders, by Jose Carlos Somoza. It is a story that is supposedly translated. The translator adds little footnotes, and they become increasingly erratic because >!he is actually a character of the story.!<

World War Z by Max Brooks

It’s a collection of interviews with a U.N. news correspondent and various people who survived the zombie war. It’s great. He breaks it down into sections like pre-war, initial outbreak, all out war, on the offensive and post-war.

The stories range from a soccer mom down the street to a Chinese admiral on a nuclear sub.

As a side note the audiobook is fantastic and features a full cast but make sure you listen to the full version if you do the audio book because the original recording was abridged but still award winning

Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie, it’s amazing how something so seemingly simple but kind of revolutionary having a culture with a single gender, and that uses exclusively feminine pronouns is.

The use of typeface, spacing, and page format in the synesthesia sections of Alfred Bester’s Tiger, Tiger, or in the USA The Stars my Destinstion. Also, just doing The Count of Monte Cristo but science fiction and shorter was cool, as was The Burning Man.

Slaughterhouse Five and the back and forth chronology of it. The way it’s written really does the best it can at expressing what it’s like for someone who’s experiences all their time at once (or the experience of someone with terrible ptsd(or both).