This is abstract and may be reaching a bit, but… I’m looking for a novel that’s set in a city, real or imagined, in which the setting not only looms large but conveys a sense of mystery and/or nostalgia.
The term atmospheric must apply. Things should happen at night. I generally like books with at least some ‘literary’ qualities, but I’m not a snob about it. Fantastical or supernatural elements are OK but not required. Bookshops and outdated technologies are a plus. If the setting is a real city, then the novel should probably take place in the past.
I don’t know the term for this obscure sub-genre, but I hereby nominate: dark cozy. As specific as this surely sounds, I’ve come across a few books that approximate what I’m describing:
- Perdido Street Station (Mieville; but all the descriptions of extreme suffering kind of nullify any coziness)
- The Doll Factory (Macneal)
- The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Pulley)
- Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Sloan) (parts of it? sorta? even so, this was a DNF for me…)
by WolfKey8149
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Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole fits some of the bill.
The most atmospheric book I read this year was The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. Underground hidden fantasy world that is entirely made of places to read or create other art and the mystery around it. It’s got books within books and may seem chaotic but it does tie together in interesting ways, though if you need concrete endings to all the plot threads, this may not be for you. It’s a lot about experience and interpretation and how telling stories can change based on who you are when you tell them or experience them. Fantastically cozy and the prose was exceptionally beautiful (I’ve been eating spoons full of honey since, merely bc the descriptions of that motif got to be so strongly).
Have you read the Rivers of London series? Ben Aaronovitch. V atmospheric, dark and has fantasy elements, but not too serious.
Also check out Jasper Fforde books.
They’re no terribly literary mind you. Well written though.
The Gormenghast Trilogy – Mervyn Peake. Set in a gigantic, sprawling castle the size of a city. Beautifully written as well, seriously, here’s the first paragraph…
*Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one halfway over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.*
The West Passage by Jared Pechaček is spot on, dark, moody, atmospheric fantasy set in a giant city.
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk