Books about a moment

April 5, 2023 9:50 PM

I’m looking for recommendations for fiction books that span only a small amount of time and focus mainly on one character. I’ve read many books lately that span decades/generations, and/or go back and forth between different characters or plot lines. I’ve enjoyed many of these books (some do it better than others) but I’m getting a little worn out on the style and need a break for something different.

(“Small amount of time” doesn’t have to be a day or week or something - I just want something less than generations.) And no flipping between characters, please. So many of the books I want to read lately have this style but I just need something different for a few books!

No other restrictions besides that, although not really into anything scary, but some thriller type stuff is ok. Thanks!

posted by sillysally to Writing & Language (27 answers total)

You might find some inspiration here: 15 Novels That Take Place in a Single Day.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:59 PM on April 5, 2023

Then entire short novel Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker follows one office worker through his lunch hour. Other books by Baker focus on one character for a short time, but this is his most extreme example.

The classic example, of course, is James Joyce's Ulysses, which follows one man through a single day in Dublin. There are two other important characters who appear in parts of the book, though.
posted by JonJacky at 10:01 PM on April 5, 2023

I can also highly recommend Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, a graphic memoir by Kate Beaton. It is excellent, though it can be bleak at points (content warning: sexual assault). It just won Canada Reads (the CBC’s annual battle of the books).
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:08 PM on April 5, 2023

Thanks for the answers so far! To clarify, and I didn’t write this clearly, I’m fine with more than one important character - I should have said I don’t want to flip back and forth between *points of view* or storylines that focus on characters separately. No worries if there are more than one, as long as they are intertwined and not distinct sections/chapters.
posted by sillysally at 10:08 PM on April 5, 2023

I just really enjoyed Becky Chambers story A Psalm for the Wild Built, a beautifully gentle, kinds sci-fi/solarpunk little book.
posted by Iteki at 10:32 PM on April 5, 2023

Tom Hanks' movie Greyhound is based (very loosely) on C.S. Forester's novel The Good Shepherd. It's about an American captain trying to get a British convoy through the approach to England during the Second World War, under attack the entire time by U-boats. It takes 48 hours, which is about how long it takes to read if you can't stop doing anything else and read it. The hero never sleeps, never gives up, and knows he's not going to get any credit or thanks. It's heartbreaking and wonderful.
Clifford Simak wrote science fiction about people living quiet lives in rural settings, which is hard to do, and he consistently did it brilliantly. I think his best work was Way Station. Enoch, the hero, runs a way station where alien travelers can stop and rest on Earth. Nobody else knows about this. Enoch has trouble with his deadbeat neighbors, and with his girlfriend, and then with the FBI, and the aliens, and then there's going to be an atomic war, and that's only the start. It takes 24 hours for him to go from sitting quietly in his house until it's over and he's at home again.
I have never given this book to anyone who didn't come back and tell me it was one of their favorite books, and that includes people who have no interest in the genre. If I had to list the best books ever written ... I don't believe that's possible, but Way Station would be near the top.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 10:40 PM on April 5, 2023

The Mezzanine takes place on an escalator
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 11:38 PM on April 5, 2023

A Month in The Country, by J L Carr is a lovely read.
posted by Enid Lareg at 11:42 PM on April 5, 2023

Emma Donoghue's Frog Music (less than a week)
Six Days of the Condor (later film: Three Days of the Condor)
Catcher in the Rye (3 days)
Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day
Herman Koch's The Dinner (an evening)
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:22 AM on April 6, 2023

Pincher Martin [1956] by William Golding, concerning the tribulations and mental health of a shipwrecked mariner, is constrained in place [rocky islet] and time [a few days] and dramatis persona [N = 1]. Surprise ending so beware spoilers.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:46 AM on April 6, 2023

Drive your plow over the bones of the dead has a single POV character if I remember correctly and is an excellent book. Takes place over one winter.

If you enjoy unreliable narrators who are kind of awful people Death in her hands by Ottessa Mosfegh might be to your taste - I had mixed feelings on it but it has a tight single POV and doesn't take place over too much time.

We have always lived in the castle is another one with a tight pov and doesn't take place over too much time. I would call it creepy but not scary.

A fantasy novel I enjoyed recently that had a single POV and doesn't take place over generations was Vespertine. It does contain a lot of ghosts and such but it's more an adventure story than a horror story I'd say.
posted by colourlesssleep at 3:52 AM on April 6, 2023

To Be Taught, If Fortunate, also by Becky Chambers.
The Shadow-Line by Joseph Conrad.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 5:10 AM on April 6, 2023

Thanks for asking this question! It caused me to reflect on the defaults I hadn't noticed in fiction I often read.

Expendable by James Alan Gardner: a scifi novel about a seemingly expendable set of staffers in a spacefaring fleet.

So Lucky by Nicola Griffith: a suspense/fantasy novella about a nonprofit leader who starts to fall ill. I also recommend her (out-of-print?) detective novels, which stay tightly within Aud's point of view and take place over just a few months each, if you can find them.

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho: a fantasy novel about a young woman whose return to her home country is disrupted by family secrets. We do get flashbacks from one other person's point of view but they are sort of fantastically integrated with the main character's perspective.
posted by brainwane at 5:49 AM on April 6, 2023

The Trial by Franz Kafka
posted by Sassyfras at 7:23 AM on April 6, 2023

Real Life by Brandon Taylor takes place over a single weekend and focuses tightly (in third person limited) on a single character's perspective. Where it does include more of his history, it's in the context of him reflecting and/or talking about it in the moment and/or talking about it in the moment.
posted by earth by april at 7:59 AM on April 6, 2023

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (starting with All Systems Red) have one POV character, an anxious, cynical bot/human construct working security contracts who really just wants to watch soap operas. There is also a novel later in the series that has two more POV characters introduced in the last third or so of the book, but you’re still mostly inside Murderbot’s head. Which is, as it says in one book, where 90% of its problems are.
posted by expialidocious at 8:16 AM on April 6, 2023

Andorra by Peter Cameron – first person perspective, about a man who arrives in a (fictional version of a) tiny country in Europe and is immediately the focus of interest of the townsfolk. Beautifully written, escapist, evocative, with disconcerting undercurrents.
posted by MinPin at 8:51 AM on April 6, 2023

The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart is a punchy novel about the security head at an unusual hotel during a major conference.

Artemis by Andy Weir is a sort of heist that takes place on the moon.
posted by jeoc at 9:09 AM on April 6, 2023

There was an ask about Novels taking place over the course of a day Previously
posted by Julnyes at 9:21 AM on April 6, 2023

Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral. I read this recently and it was such a fun, poignant read. There are a few characters who all met through the deceased, and the time span is just a couple of weeks. I couldn't put it down.
posted by annieb at 9:58 AM on April 6, 2023

I just sped through Babel by RF Kuang and enjoyed it immensely. It's fantasy and set specifically in the 1830's and 1840's in an alternate history Britain. There are a couple brief interludes of maybe ten or twenty pages at a time from different characters, but otherwise is in the protagonist's voice.
posted by crossswords at 12:17 PM on April 6, 2023

Some random books with nothing much in common except that I think they meet your criteria and I enjoyed them when I read them:

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
The Book of Strange New Things - Michel Faber
Winter Wheat - Mildred Walker
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
The Dog Stars - Peter Heller
The Everlasting Story of Nory - Nicholson Baker
posted by Redstart at 12:37 PM on April 6, 2023

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan. Short and very good.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 2:23 PM on April 6, 2023

City of Thieves and The 25th Hour, both by David Benioff.
posted by BibiRose at 3:41 PM on April 6, 2023

Winter by Ali Smith, and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. They are winter books and strongly seasonal to me. As is Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh which takes place over a couple of weeks maybe?
posted by BibiRose at 3:47 PM on April 6, 2023

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 11:38 AM on April 7, 2023

Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson (disclaimer: my spouse): light humorous scifi novel about a modern-day video game enthusiast and programmer who, upon first contact from aliens, wants to play and review their games on his blog.
posted by brainwane at 10:09 AM on April 8, 2023