Seven Books Where the Setting Exposes the Characters
Late summer so often feels like a season of returning, to all sorts of places: home after months away; school to measure up for another year; an annual vacation spot, where, if beach reads are to be believed, an awkward childhood best friend has magically transformed into a semi-available bombshell with a dark secret. But it’s not only those beachy books that send characters back to familiar places, and it’s not just summer that sparks return.
When writers bring us back to a location that they’ve already visited, they’re employing a useful narrative tool. The contrast with unchanging environments is a clear way to illustrate how a protagonist changes over the years. But it can also be a subtler measuring stick of how secrets simmer, or of how painful, powerful forces such as racial injustice or economic inequality can grind characters down over time. The books below show how a setting can reveal the depth of those tensions, and how people respond to their circumstances at different periods in
