It seems it’s just as ambitious to tell a story succinctly, to have a short amount of pages make up one’s entire enterprise.
Novels under 200 pages:
Albert Camus – L’Etranger
Paula Fox – Desperate Characters
James Salter – A Sport and a Pastime
Short/long stories that “feel” like novelesque creatures:
William Gass – “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country,” 40 pages
Alice Munro – “The Albanian Virgin,” 50 pages
Gary Lutz – “Recessional,” 10 pages
and
how about a cheer for ambitious flash fictions like Amber Sparks’ May We Shed These Human Bodies
and Joseph Young’s pieces in Easter Rabbit.