The city plays itself: UK regional novels? Cheerful ones?
September 4, 2020 8:06 AM Subscribe
Or at least not David Peace novels, no matter how regional they are. So I was recently reading a novel set in Rochester, lots about the cathedral, former roman wall, etc and it was very helpful. I am looking for more regional UK novels, details inside.
These should be novels which will allow me to pretend that I will get through the pandemic and emerge employed and somewhat healthy into a world where I can someday make my long-wished-for trip to the UK.
The ideal novel would be written between about 1800 and 1975, be set in a non-London city or large provincial town, describe the city or aspects of the city well and be relatively cheerful or at least not intensely downbeat. It should not have people getting spikes driven through their heads a la Peace nor should the ending be the main character staring out a dirty window and contemplating how the class system as represented by, eg, school has destroyed any hope of escaping crushing poverty or social misery. No matter how good the novel is, I don't care, I'll read it later in the timeline where we get a national response to the pandemic, the economy doesn't totally crash and there's an effective vaccine.
Books set in the country are acceptable if they aren't too much about immiseration. Mysteries are fine but they should have a degree of charming unreality rather than lots of gore.
These should be novels which will allow me to pretend that I will get through the pandemic and emerge employed and somewhat healthy into a world where I can someday make my long-wished-for trip to the UK.
The ideal novel would be written between about 1800 and 1975, be set in a non-London city or large provincial town, describe the city or aspects of the city well and be relatively cheerful or at least not intensely downbeat. It should not have people getting spikes driven through their heads a la Peace nor should the ending be the main character staring out a dirty window and contemplating how the class system as represented by, eg, school has destroyed any hope of escaping crushing poverty or social misery. No matter how good the novel is, I don't care, I'll read it later in the timeline where we get a national response to the pandemic, the economy doesn't totally crash and there's an effective vaccine.
Books set in the country are acceptable if they aren't too much about immiseration. Mysteries are fine but they should have a degree of charming unreality rather than lots of gore.
The James Herriot books are about a vet, set in the Yorkshire dales in roughly 1930 to 1950s. I find them generally charming.
posted by stillnocturnal at 9:54 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by stillnocturnal at 9:54 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night is set almost entirely at Oxford. It's got some darker elements but is also, like much of her work, something of a romp. Brighton Rock is a little dark, but might work.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:59 AM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by aspersioncast at 9:59 AM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
Apparently Middlemarch is based on Coventry.
I read Anita and me a while ago and recall enjoying it. The author Meera Syal was born in Wolverhampton and brought up in a small town in Staffordshire.
Jim Crace is based in Birmingham and I read his book Arcadia as reflecting what was going on in Birmingham at the time, although the book doesn't name a place or time specifically - the Rag Market and the Bullring Market being redeveloped in the 1990s - and the link makes this explicit.
There's always The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - we take the dog on a walk along a river that feeds the mill at Hobbiton.
Unfortunately I have mostly failed to meet your main criterion, which was that books should be written between 1800 and 1975; some are set in that period, though. The Jim Crace reference is included because to me it gives a vivid impression of how Birmingham was and how literally and metaphorically central the markets were to the city's character.
The Rotters' Club by Johnathan Coe is also set in Birmingham in the 1970s and I thought it was a great read, but it does reference the Birmingham pub bombings, which might be a bit dark given your requirements. The book itself is funny and moving but is probably one for post pandemic days.
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 10:05 AM on September 4, 2020
I read Anita and me a while ago and recall enjoying it. The author Meera Syal was born in Wolverhampton and brought up in a small town in Staffordshire.
Jim Crace is based in Birmingham and I read his book Arcadia as reflecting what was going on in Birmingham at the time, although the book doesn't name a place or time specifically - the Rag Market and the Bullring Market being redeveloped in the 1990s - and the link makes this explicit.
There's always The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - we take the dog on a walk along a river that feeds the mill at Hobbiton.
Unfortunately I have mostly failed to meet your main criterion, which was that books should be written between 1800 and 1975; some are set in that period, though. The Jim Crace reference is included because to me it gives a vivid impression of how Birmingham was and how literally and metaphorically central the markets were to the city's character.
The Rotters' Club by Johnathan Coe is also set in Birmingham in the 1970s and I thought it was a great read, but it does reference the Birmingham pub bombings, which might be a bit dark given your requirements. The book itself is funny and moving but is probably one for post pandemic days.
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 10:05 AM on September 4, 2020
My wife, heatherlogan, who has in no way read the book, has asked me, who has also not read it, to recommend 3 Men in a Boat: (goodreads reviews, full text at gutenberg.org).
Her sole basis for this recommendation is having watched 3 Men in a Boat, the video, in which Griff Rhys Jones, Rory McGrath, Dara O Briain and a dog named Loli undertake a boating journey down the Thames, in tribute to the one described in Jerome K. Jerome's similarly-titled book.
It's good cheerful fare.
Also try BBC Coast S01E01 - Dover to Exmouth
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:51 AM on September 4, 2020 [3 favorites]
Her sole basis for this recommendation is having watched 3 Men in a Boat, the video, in which Griff Rhys Jones, Rory McGrath, Dara O Briain and a dog named Loli undertake a boating journey down the Thames, in tribute to the one described in Jerome K. Jerome's similarly-titled book.
It's good cheerful fare.
Also try BBC Coast S01E01 - Dover to Exmouth
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:51 AM on September 4, 2020 [3 favorites]
Mysteries are fine but they should have a degree of charming unreality rather than lots of gore.
Rivers of London is calling your name. The London history is rich and vivid even in the contemporary London setting. The entire series is excellent.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:10 AM on September 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
Rivers of London is calling your name. The London history is rich and vivid even in the contemporary London setting. The entire series is excellent.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:10 AM on September 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
Well, this question has really brought home to me how little I read that's older than I am.
Domestic comedy is perhaps what you're looking for: gentle, ultimately cheerful, likely to be set somewhere quieter than London. The first examples to come to mind are, unfortunately, probably not good answers to the question, because the novels are written too recently and the cathedral cities they inhabit are imaginary ones, but you might enjoy them anyway: Elizabeth Pewsey's Mountjoy series, and Angels and Men (and its sequels) by Catherine Fox.
I second the suggestion of Gaudy Night for Oxford, although you should read Strong Poison and Have His Carcase first, which are set elsewhere in England. (And then read everything else Sayers wrote.) If the tone of golden age detective fiction appeals, then you might also like Gladys Mitchell, although her Mrs Bradley novels are set in the countryside rather than in the larger towns and cities.
Three Men in a Boat is delightful.
What was your Rochester book, though, please? I live near there and am intrigued.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 12:01 PM on September 4, 2020
Domestic comedy is perhaps what you're looking for: gentle, ultimately cheerful, likely to be set somewhere quieter than London. The first examples to come to mind are, unfortunately, probably not good answers to the question, because the novels are written too recently and the cathedral cities they inhabit are imaginary ones, but you might enjoy them anyway: Elizabeth Pewsey's Mountjoy series, and Angels and Men (and its sequels) by Catherine Fox.
I second the suggestion of Gaudy Night for Oxford, although you should read Strong Poison and Have His Carcase first, which are set elsewhere in England. (And then read everything else Sayers wrote.) If the tone of golden age detective fiction appeals, then you might also like Gladys Mitchell, although her Mrs Bradley novels are set in the countryside rather than in the larger towns and cities.
Three Men in a Boat is delightful.
What was your Rochester book, though, please? I live near there and am intrigued.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 12:01 PM on September 4, 2020
Response by poster: My Rochester book was The Mystery of Angelina Frood by unpleasant right-winger R. Austin Freeman. I'm reading it as part of a more general interest in the history of the detective story and I'll warn you that although it does not (so far, not actually quite done) seem to have any of Freeman's pre-WWII anti-semitism*, it has a really chilling attitude toward drug addiction and mental illness. Strangely (and this is why I'm reading it) it is pretty progressive on the "women should not be trapped into abusive marriages" front and provides an extremely realistic portrait of stalking by an abusive spouse.
It's a partial reworking of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I have not read and which is (as you probably know but I did not) set in a fictionalized Rochester. Mainly I'm enjoying the sense that the book gives of being in a small city where economic relations haven't been rationalized into their modern form - on one hand, this means some pretty grim riverside life, but on the other there's a terrific portrait of this two-person real estate/legal agency and a general sense of properly old houses where things don't change much.
If you are interested in 19th and early 20th century detective stories (and this has, to me, the air of being older than it in fact is - it was published in 1924) and are used to putting up with some of the things you find in them, this is pretty engaging.
*Although he seems to have had many really repulsive views, he did at least pull a Dorothy Sayers/Margery Allingham and start writing sort of stiffly positive portrayals of Jewish characters after Hitler rose to power.
posted by Frowner at 12:58 PM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's a partial reworking of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I have not read and which is (as you probably know but I did not) set in a fictionalized Rochester. Mainly I'm enjoying the sense that the book gives of being in a small city where economic relations haven't been rationalized into their modern form - on one hand, this means some pretty grim riverside life, but on the other there's a terrific portrait of this two-person real estate/legal agency and a general sense of properly old houses where things don't change much.
If you are interested in 19th and early 20th century detective stories (and this has, to me, the air of being older than it in fact is - it was published in 1924) and are used to putting up with some of the things you find in them, this is pretty engaging.
*Although he seems to have had many really repulsive views, he did at least pull a Dorothy Sayers/Margery Allingham and start writing sort of stiffly positive portrayals of Jewish characters after Hitler rose to power.
posted by Frowner at 12:58 PM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers (1940; later republished under the title George Passant) and William Cooper's Scenes from Provincial Life (1950) are both set in lightly fictionalised versions of 1930s Leicester. Both have a very strong sense of place. Snow has been criticised for his flat and pedestrian prose style, but there is something rather soothing about the way his novels carry you along. Scenes from Provincial Life is a sly and ironic comedy of manners, and was an influence on Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin.
For unabashed romanticism, you can't do better than Elizabeth Goudge's A City of Bells (1936) and The Dean's Watch (1960), set in the imaginary cathedral city of Torminster (partly based on Wells, where she was born). They are dreadful slush really, but excellent comfort reading, and the feel of the cathedral city is very well captured. As a reader of Golden Age detective fiction you'll probably know this one already, but Margery Allingham's Traitor's Purse (1941) is set in the imaginary small town of Bridge and absolutely fits the bill for mystery-with-charming-unreality.
posted by verstegan at 1:43 PM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
For unabashed romanticism, you can't do better than Elizabeth Goudge's A City of Bells (1936) and The Dean's Watch (1960), set in the imaginary cathedral city of Torminster (partly based on Wells, where she was born). They are dreadful slush really, but excellent comfort reading, and the feel of the cathedral city is very well captured. As a reader of Golden Age detective fiction you'll probably know this one already, but Margery Allingham's Traitor's Purse (1941) is set in the imaginary small town of Bridge and absolutely fits the bill for mystery-with-charming-unreality.
posted by verstegan at 1:43 PM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
Books set in the UK by city/area
Novels set in Yorkshire
posted by TheRaven at 11:42 PM on September 4, 2020
Novels set in Yorkshire
posted by TheRaven at 11:42 PM on September 4, 2020
J.L Carr based most of his books on his own experiences, so the settings are thinly veiled versions of the real life places (mostly towns and villages in England, though also West Africa and South Dakota). Some of them are classics, and some of those (The Harpole Report or Harpole and Foxberrow, for example) fairly cheerful, though others (A Month in the Country or A Season In Sinji) less so. Most are still available from Quince Tree Press, set up in his back bedroom to publish his later novels along with tiny compilations of extremely out of copyright authors and maps of English counties as of 1974, though the latter are dwindling in availability with only the less popular counties left.
posted by Grangousier at 3:12 AM on September 5, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Grangousier at 3:12 AM on September 5, 2020 [1 favorite]
I don't know whether Possession by AS Byatt quite fits your criteria, because it was written after 1975. But I'm trying to sneak it in because it's certainly _about_ the period between 1800 and 1975, and also because it's so so good.
I remember locations in London, a campus university in the east of England (UEA, possibly), Yorkshire, and various coastal & country settings in flashback.
It's also kind of loosely semi-based on The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is set in Lyme Regis. But I don't recommend that one, because I thought it was rubbish. YMMV.
posted by rd45 at 5:31 AM on September 5, 2020
I remember locations in London, a campus university in the east of England (UEA, possibly), Yorkshire, and various coastal & country settings in flashback.
It's also kind of loosely semi-based on The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is set in Lyme Regis. But I don't recommend that one, because I thought it was rubbish. YMMV.
posted by rd45 at 5:31 AM on September 5, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
Going out into the country feels like it could open up some more cheerful options, like I Capture The Castle which is about the cheerfulest book I've read in years, or Cold Comfort Farm? .
Hoping you make it over here OK.
posted by johngoren at 9:02 AM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]