"What They Did Yesterday Afternoon"
By British Poet Warsan Shire
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In each of the following stories, location is practically a character, with time and place dominating each narrative. The small - town despair of Olive Kitteridge reminded me of Kent Haruf's fictional Holt Colorado - the setting of all of his novels - but with perhaps less hope. Ordinary Grace falls into the same category - but with somewhat more hope.
Check out the place names and locales, each so unique, plus a favorite passage from each:
"In any quiet town you can find
a street, a field, a stand of trees,
which breaks into the dreams of its citizens
years after the dreamers have left home for good." (93)
from
Things Invisible To See (1985)
by Nancy Willard
setting: Ann Arbor, Michigan (1940s)
2.
"Safe house. Saying the words to myself in secret.
For safe house made me smile.
Safe house made me feel warm.
Safe house was something small you could hide in, I thought.
Like a dollhouse where if you were small enough to fit inside
you would be so small nobody would come looking for you." (61)
from
Black Girl / White Girl (2006)
Joyce Carol Oates
setting: Schuylersville, Pennsylvania
Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (1974 - 1975)
3. "It was early September and the maples were red at their tops; a few bright red leaves had fallen onto the dirt road, perfect things, star-shaped. Years earlier when his sons were small, Harmon might have pointed to them, and they'd have picked them up with eagerness...
"The leaves were half-gone now. The Norway maples still hung on to their yellow, but most of the orangey-red of the sugar maples had found their way to the ground, leaving behind the stark branches that seemed to hang like stuck-out arms and tiny fingers, skeletal and bleak.
"By November, the leaves were gone, the trees along Main Street were bare, and the sky was often overcast. The shortening days made Harmon recall a soberness of heart that he had felt off and on for a long time..." (77-78, 89, 91)
from
Olive Kitteridge (2008)
by Elizabeth Strout
setting: Crosby, Maine (1970s - present day)
4. "There's a math problem everyone is familiar with. It involves two trains. One leaves from one location, New York, for example, and theother from another location, say San Francisco. The trains are traveling toward each other at different speeds. The idea is to calculate how far each train will have traveled by the time they meet. I was never any good at math and didn't waste time trying to solve this problem but I did spend a lot of time thinking about it. Not about how many miles the trains would have covered but about the travelers on them. Who were these people and why were they leaving New York and San Francisco and what were they seeking at the other end of the line? Most especially I wondered if they had any idea what awaited them when the two trains met. Because I thought of them as traveling on the same set of tracks, I imagined their meeting as a catastrophic collision. So it always struck me not as a math problem but rather a philosophic consideration of life, death, and unhappy circumstance.
"In my own life, the two trains of this problem are the summer of 1961 and the present. And they collide every year on Memorial Day in the cemetery in New Bremen." (301)
from
Ordinary Grace (2013)
William Kent Krueger
setting: New Bremen, Minnesota (1961)
5. "It was quiet out in the suburbs; the views were open, with no tenements or high-rise blocks to obscure the distant hills. The light was soft and gentle—summer was drifting ever onward and the evening seemed delicate, fragile. We walked in silence, the kind that you didn't feel the need to fill.
"I was almost sad when we arrived at the squat, white clubhouse. It was halfway to dark by then, with both a moon and a sun sitting high in a sky that was sugar almond pink and shot with gold. The birds were singing valiantly against the coming night, swooping over the greens in long, drunken loops. The air was grassy, with a hint of flowers and earth, and the warm, sweet outbreath of the day sighed gently into our hair and over our skin. I felt like asking Raymond whether we should keep walking, walk over the rolling greens, keep walking till the birds fell silent in their bowers and we could see only by starlight. It almost felt like he might suggest it himself." (162)
from
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (2017)
by Gail Honeyman
setting: Glasgow, Scotland (present day)
" . . . he could spin the web
between what he had read
and what had happened in the supermarket,
or what he had heard on the radio."
from
The Guest Book (2019)
by Sarah Blake
setting: New York City
Crockett's Island, Maine (1930s - present day)
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Not forgetting the option of a more exotic locale . . .
Where'd You Go Bernadette, 2012)
by Maria Semple
setting: Seattle & Antarctica (present day)
~ or ~
A Gentleman in Moscow (2016)
by Amor Towles
setting: The Metropole Hotel, Moscow (1922 - 1952)
“For all the varied concerns attendant to the raising of a child — over schoolwork, dress, and manners — in the end, a parent's responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment.” (p 309)
“For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too. How humbly it bows its head as the emperor is dragged down the steps and tossed in the street. But then, having quietly bided its time, while helping the newly appointed leader on with his jacket, it compliments his appearance and suggests the wearing of a medal or two. Or, having served him at a formal dinner, it wonders aloud if a taller chair might not have been more fitting for a man with such responsibilities. The soldiers of the common man may toss the banners of the old regime on the victory pyre, but soon enough trumpets will blare and pomp will take its place at the side of the throne, having once again secured its dominion over history and kings.”
Gentleman in Moscow & Ordinary Grace
