I just finished THE ICE PRINCESS by Camilla Lackberg and although it was a fine "mystery," it had virtually no sense of place. It could have taken place in any town. Is it the translations that are smoothing out phrases, dialect and words that might have placed it? Or are writers deliberately trying to universalize their settings? Or is every place pretty much the same now.
Other than for a few mentions of a different monetary system, I might have been in Kansas.
I dislike this. I want to be put in a different place. I have read books set in the South, which seem more foreign that this book (see Woodrell, Sallis or Pelecanos for especially strong senses of place).
Even the food mentioned was the same fare we eat here.
Who is especially good at evoking another place?
39 comments:
James Lee Burke does it well. Joe Lansdale too. Shane Stevens always did a remarkable job of New York and New Jersey.
Manly Wade Wellman. Avram Davidson. Liza Cody. Marcia Muller loves her San Francisco.
Sara Paretsky loves her Chicago almost as much.
Well, I agree with you 100% first off. Now the "who" is harder than the general agreement.
Detroit 187 the show did well, as does HBO's Hung, for Detroit. Books, the Russian "classics" come to mind. Things set in Louisiana usually do that, regardless of writer or genre. Beyond that, must ponder and muse.
Detroit 187 nailed Detroit. But their approach to story telling was too conventional. HUNG has it in reverse.
Bookwise, MIDDLESEX and VIRGIN SUICIDES were pretty strong. Some of Leonard, some of Estleman. If someone would publish my novel....well, I won;t go there.
I guess what I mostly mean here is I want to read books set in other countries that evoke that culture and I am not seeing that much.
Robert Parker's Boston is one of my favorites. I also like Sitka, Alaska, in Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union, yet it's not a real place. (Or at least Chabon's version of it is not real.)
I'm actually OK with the placeless story so long as it's done well and intentionally. Pablo D'Stair's novella this letter to Norman Court feels quite placeless and I think it works for him.
I don't mind placeless if that's the point. It can be an interesting approach but if it says small city in Sweden I want to feel the difference.
Sense of place is important to me. In addition to some of those already named, William Kent Krueger is very good at sense of place.He really nails it.
Funny, the first name that came to mind was James Lee Burke...Could be an editorial belief that readers want familiarity - just like we supposedly hate subtitles in movies and are willing to wait for crappy Hollywood remakes...Could be just mediocre writing. Reading early-early westerns, I notice a wide range of interest taken by writers in the setting. Sometimes it's bland and generic; sometimes gritty; sometimes wildly romantic.
Louise Penny. Raymond Chandler evoke such a sense of time. John Fante's Brotherhood of the Grape, and M.C. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth highland novels.
Michel
Another good question. In reading New York-set books I'm a pretty tough critic. I've always found Westlake (DANCING AZTECS stands out) and Block to be good.
Estleman does Detroit well. Pronzini and Muller get San Francisco right.
I'd also say Bill Crider for semi-rural Texas. Ian Rankin for Edinburgh. Stuart MacBride for Aberdeen - excellent for making you NOT want to go there! Simenon for Paris. Tony Hillerman for the Four Corners area. Margaret Maron for North Carolina.
Oh yeah, almost forgot Ken Bruen for Galway.
Jeff M.
Laura Lippman and David Simon, Baltimore. Ian Rankin, Edinburgh, Peter Robinson, Yorkshire, Nicholas Freeling, Amsterdam; Sjowal and Wahloo, Stockholm, Cara Black, Paris, Donna Leon, Italy.
Yes, Louise Penny for sure, and Hillerman, as Jeff points out.
Hillerman really took us to a new place, didn't he?
Yes, I believe that Chandler truly captured that time and place. Cain was no slouch either. Mildred Pierce really nailed it.
Caleb Carr. You are in old New York when reading The Alienist or The Angel of Death.
Great use of time and place.
Chad took my first answer, James Lee Burke. But Craig Johnson, in his series set in Absaroka County, WY, also gives a great sense of place.
I keep hoping to get to him and several of the others mentioned here. I need to quit my book group so I have more time to read this.
Avram Davidson, for Guyana (LIMEKILLER) and Italy ("Naples"), among others.
Graham Greene, Hugh Cave, and Manly Wade Wellman similarly trotted the globe (leaving aside such other obvious candidates as "Isak Dinesen" and Kipling)...but Wellman did prefer the Appalachian setting for most of his best work.
I agree with the Caleb Carr, Woodrell, and Bill Crider (whoever that is).
Also:
- Gillian Flynn's Kansas.
- Bernard Cornwell's SHARPE series.
- Reed Farrell Coleman's Long Island.
- Lawrence Block's Manhattan.
- Barry Eisler (who sounds obsessive about it).
- Brent Ghelfi (who has a new one out).
- Will Beall's one novel.
- Abbott Junior's 1931 Arizona.
You know whenever I start this sort of list, I always feel like the worst read person in the room. I have read one Flynn, one Coleman, several Blocks, no Eisler, Ghelfi or Beall. Abbott, Jr. yes.
I have read almost all of Greene though, but none of the others, Todd.
I first learned about Ghelfi when that Crider guy reviewed his first novel. Ghelfi's novels are violent tales of modern Russia and he always weaves in current Russian events.
I got to speak to Ghelfi on camera a couple years ago but, due to my technological inabilities, have been able unable to post the interview online.
August Derleth and Wisconsin.
Lovecraft and his New England (Providence, Salem, etc.)
William Hope Hodgson and the sea.
Ray Bradbury and small-town Illinois.
Have to agree with Wellman, Cave, Davidson, Crider, Pronzini/Muller, Lansdale, Burke, Hillerman, Estleman, Beaton, Bruen, and many others mentioned.
Lehane for Boston, and Andrew Coburn for Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and John D. mcDonald and Carl Hiaasen for Florida.
There's a heck of a lot to choose from, isn't there?
Think of how little else you would have to have done to have read all the folks' work that is recommended, though, Patti. Or, at best, how much unfortunate speedreading.
If you want to get literary Larry Watson does a good job with small town Montana and Colorado.
I really love a good sense of place, but in fantasy I've learned to live with places that are not real. I still like them to have that feel, as if I could walk through the bazaars and pray in the temples.
Chandler, Bill Crider, and me. The Big Three.
Something I hadn't thought about. Giving a sense of place to an imaginary place--something in another galaxy or such.
I have read one Larry Watson and it was terrific.
The Big Three rules.
If we're talking imaginary places, I would definitely go for two who evoke the underside (literally) of London: Neil Gaiman for NEVERWHERE and Simon R. Green for his Nightside series.
Jeff M.
I read plenty of foreign translations in which the place is intrinsic to the story. Arnaldur Indridason's books can take place no place other than Iceland. Lackberg must have a translator who is working at the mercy of an editor's demands.
I think much of the world is being homogenized, though. It's culture more than anything that adds to a place these days, not so much the geography, the architecture, the climate.
As an example, when I was the countryside of Tanzania and Kenya with people more tied to the land and their culture and with less access to the modernization of city life it was completely different than when I was in Nairobi. In the city it didn't feel like Africa anymore. I think that's part of the urban landscape becoming more and more like every other urban area.
Most fiction writers are reflecting this, although there are some who prefer to fully create their own microcosms. Louise Penny and Phil Rickman are tow that I think have spent a lot of time using their powerful imaginations to fully realize the worlds in which their books take place. P.M. Hubbard said that place is first in his books. He was extremely evocative and skillful with his settings.
Speaking of homogenization. Think about the novels where setting is irrelevant or avoided.
Parker was always pulling heists in anonymous, mid-sized, midwestern cities that were all interchangeable.
Sense of place--and at the same time making it a void, a claustophobia even if it had expanses--you cannot get away from or better than Patricia Highsmith. That woman was amazing for many reasons, but her physical, visceral use of landscape, location, and the alterting rythms it carries with it into the concious and unconscious psychology is something whole studies could be done on. Especially in some of her sadly lesser talked about stuff like Those Who Walk Away, The Two Faces of January, Found in the Street, The Tremor of Forgery.
I read The Ice Princess a couple of years ago, and I remember ´seeing´ the Swedish archipelago and Fjällbacka quite vividly so perhaps it is a question of translation with this one?
I just finished a Scottish mystery by Aline Templeton last night. Excellent story, including the sense of place.
Highsmith was one of the very best at almost any aspect of crime fiction writing. Few people can match her plots, characters, settings and lucid sparking prose.
Lost in Translation perhaps. I will look for Templeton.
William Kent Krueger and James Lee Burke for sure, Donald Harstad for rural Iowa, Randy Wayne White for Florida in particular around Sanibel Island, C.J. Box for rural Wyoming, W.P. Kinsella for his stories set in an Alberta Indian Reserve, Tom Corcoran for Key West, Bryan Gruley for small-town Michigan. And don't forget Jim Harrison.
Sjöwall & Wahlöö were always meticulous about the localities, so their books really are detailed and accurate descriptions of Stockholm. That is, Stockholm of 40 years ago. Quite a lot has happened since then.
I agree with Kent Morgan that William Kent Krueger and C.J. Box describe locations well. (Thanks, Kent, for listing the others. I'll check into them.)
Also, Steve Hamilton with his Alex McKnight series set in Paradise, MI, and Ann Cleeves' Shetland Island series and her Vera books in Northumberland.
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