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Books Set in Your Town

Well, The Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez is set in sacremento which is extremely close to where I live. Not sure if that counts but...
 
Damien Evans said:
um... So you live in Hobbiton?:boggled:

Oh, and unless your village is in two places at once, it can't be he setting for both the start and the end of LOTR, as the start is in hobbiton and the end is at the grey havens.

Ps. LOTR is one book, not a trilogy.
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Er ... "'Well, I'm back,' he said" is most assuredly set in Hobbiton.



I live in Mesa, Arizona. To my knowledge, no book has ever been set here.

I love Flagstaff. Madeleine L'Engle did it a disservice with the one small scene of The Moon by Night that she placed there.

Zenna Henderson set most of her short stories in the small towns of northern Arizona. Some of them have not changed since she was writing, in the 1950s. (Driving through Clarkdale after reading "Wilderness" or "Captivity" produces a decided sensation of déjà vu.)
 
My former home town (Falls Village, CT) got a couple of books out of one rather gruesome crime:

A Death In Canaan, by Joan Barthel, and Guilty Until Proven Innocent, by Donald Connery.

Both deal with the still unsolved murder of Barbara Gibbons and the nearly successful attempt by a local prosecutor, with the help of the State Police, to frame her teenage son for it.

I grew up in Cornwall, CT, which was James Thurber's home town, and appears from time to time in his stories and essays. Cornwall also incorporates the ghost town known as Dudleytown, which turns up in various books by woo woos and ghost hunters and the like, who can't accept the simple idea that dense, creepy woods and eerie ruins are dense and creepy and eerie without spooks.
 
"The Rebel Angels", by Robertson Davies. It's actually part of a trilogy, all of which are set here. I dearly love that novel, as well as the second part, which is titled "What's Bred in the Bone". The third part, "The Lyre of Orpheus", not so much.

Other than these three novels, I have read nothing that is set in Toronto.
 
My hometown, Santa Barbara, seems to be a magnet for mystery writers. Sue Grafton bases all of her mysteries here. Ross Macdonald also based some of his stories here. Finally, even Robert B. Parker - who based his Spenser series around Boston - had one book in which a large chunk of the action took place here.
 
lionking said:
... I mentioned "On the Beach" in an earlier post. It's about the end of the world (!). But for a good contemporary read about Melbourne, check out the Shane Maloney books
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No reference to On the Beach would be complete without mention of Ava Gardner's alleged comment that Melbourne was a good place to make a film about the end of the world!

I've got Shane Maloney on my "To Read" list. I enjoyed the Murray Whelan TV series - with John Clarke and David Wenham, what's not to like?!

Set in my home town of Brisbane, as already mentioned, are various (and usually funny) Nick Earls' novels. Rebecca Sparrow's The Girl Most Likely is the female version of Earls. Also worth a mention is David Malouf's Johnno - set in a Brisbane before my time.

John Birmingham's non-fictional He Died with a Felafel in His Hand is a darker version of Nick Earls with harder drugs and more dysfunctional characters, and interesting for the cultural differences between Brisbane and the southern cities.
 
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Doc Daneeka said:
"The Rebel Angels", by Robertson Davies. It's actually part of a trilogy, all of which are set here. I dearly love that novel, as well as the second part, which is titled "What's Bred in the Bone". The third part, "The Lyre of Orpheus", not so much.

Other than these three novels, I have read nothing that is set in Toronto.
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Timothy Findley had a couple of novels set in Tranna.
 
I can't think any novels set in Dallas, but The Last Picture Show and Texasville were set in Archer County which is just southwest of Wichita Falls which I lived just outside of in Iowa Park.
 
Fitter said:
To the best of my knowledge there are no works of fiction set in Gander, Newfoundland. I'm hardly surprised.
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Ernest K. Gann mentions it a lot in "Fate is the Hunter" but that is off course self-biografical. He flew from/through there during ww2 on transports to Britain via Greenland.
 
"Berlin Alexanderplatz" comes to mind. And countless other books and movies andwhatnot. Haha, take that you peasants!

:p
 
"Berlin Alexanderplatz" comes to mind. And countless other books and movies andwhatnot. Haha, take that you peasants!
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I still win with Steinback!

Susan
 
Isn't he spelled "Steinbeck"? Tee-hee. But you're right, if we factor in the size of your town you probably win.
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Yeah...well...okay

Where's my award?

Susan
 
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