JENNIFER PLATT | Just say where I am and when, or it’s reader’s block for me

I need to know when and where I am when I start a book. My choice is for the first chapter to have as a heading the name of the place and the time in which the story is set. So Johannesburg 2022 would work for me. Then move on because I am firmly rooted.

Last week I finished a thriller and had no idea where it was set. It could have been anywhere. There was no hint of space or place. The characters were amorphous, the houses commonplace, the dialogue and tone, I think, intentionally oblique. So I figured it was Canada. Whenever I don’t know where a book or TV show is based my first guess is always Canada. Most of the time I’m right.

As for the name of the book, I have no idea — that is how much I took away from it. I had a look on my shelves, waiting for the light-bulb moment, but I think I must have given it away already. (My sincere apologies to whomever I gave it to).

When a place is intrinsically part of the plot I am more invested. Australian best-selling thriller writer Chris Hammer, with whom we have an interview in this Sunday’s Lifestyle section, says he is a stickler for authenticity, especially of setting. His new book, Opal Country, is set in the fictional mining town of Finnigans Gap, not far from the real mining town of Lightning Ridge. It echoes the real town, so you know exactly what type of place it is. Hammer says: “Setting is the entire world of the book. It will influence the way I write, it will influence the way the characters think, what their motivations are. It will influence what the reader is feeling.”

On his blog, Deon Meyer takes photographs of places that are featured in or part of the inspiration for the setting of his Benny Griessel books. It takes the reader to another level — the storyline and characters become immediately familiar. His latest, The Dark Flood, is mostly centred in Stellenbosch and he has photographs of the police station, Church Street and loads of other places that feature. It actually inspires me to visit that rich dorpie again.

Scotland seems to be Douglas Stuart’s preferred setting. He won the Booker Prize in 2020 for Shuggie Bain, about a boy growing up gay in 1980s Glasgow. Now, in his latest, Young Mungo, just released, we are still in working-class Scotland, this time in the early 1990s. I’m not sure if Stuart’s books can be seen as advocates for tourism, but Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope series sure makes me want to visit the green hills and valleys just south of that country’s border with England. 

A post on my rabbit hole of choice, Reddit, asked readers which book’s setting they would choose if they were rich and could read it there. Some said Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile (presumably without the murders), but most surprisingly many picked Anne of Green Gables, which is based in the fictional town Avonlea on Prince Edward Island. A real island which is, you guessed it, in Canada. This would be my first choice too.