Best sense of place?

[Jonathan Bogart]

What books give you an overwhelming sense of the place (and, perhaps, the time) that they're set in? Whether urban, rural, "exotic," fantastic, widescope, claustrophobic, or entirely imaginary, it's the places, the buildings, the landscapes, the "sets" (to use a theatrical term) that stay with me most in a lot of my favorite fiction. And in fact, a lot of fiction that I hate, I hate because it doesn't give any satisfying sense of the space in which the characters run through their stories.

For example? Well, The Lord of the Rings is probably the obvious one. Many people forgave Peter Jackson much tampering with plot and character because he got the settings so exactly right. Those lingering establishing shots are the equivalent of Tolkien's lengthy descriptions, and it's those, more than anything, that makes Middle-Earth seem inhabitable.

But I've also felt as though I could step into (at random) Dickens' London, L. M. Montgomery's Avonlea, Patrick O'Brian's ship's decks, and Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. And without having any firsthand knowledge of London, provincial Canada, the sea, or L.A. That's the difference between description that just sits there on the page, requiring you to know what the author knows before it comes alive, and description which makes a place you've never seen or imagined come alive.

So where do you like to visit?

[JeffreyWKramer]

In DUNE, Frank Herbert did a fantastic job of giving the reader a sense of actually experiencing an exotic, otherworldly setting.

Between maps and narrative, Shelby Foote did a fantastic job of helping the reader make sense of battles, in terms of what happened, why and - often of major importance to the outcome - where.

[Matthew E]

I'm not sure it's the best example, but the book that comes to mind is Richard Adams' Maia, which is... I guess you'd call it a fantasy novel, except there's no, or almost no, magic in it. It's set in the same world as his other novel Shardik, which I didn't like as well.

[berk]

One famous example would be Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. Not many fictional settings have been imagined so effectively as Peake's creation.

[berk]

And of course James Joyce's Dublin in Ulysses.

[Karl J Barnes]

I'll second Mervyn Peake and also add Tad Williams' Otherland series and
his Memory,Sorrow and Thorn series. I felt that I was there.

[Blueferret]

Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

[Karl J Barnes]

Steinbeck's California and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl from The Grapes of Wrath and also, his traveloge novel Travels With Charlie were informative and lively with just a hint of whimsy.