peter-may

Remote Isn’t Just What Turns On Your TV

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The Isle of Lewis (© Manel Vinuesa).

Novels with remote settings can be highly populated with elements fascinating to readers. Challenging weather. Lonely characters. Intense interactions between a relatively small number of people. Heightened danger because of the remoteness. And more.

The Blackhouse and its first sequel The Lewis Man, two riveting Peter May novels I read this month, mostly unfold on the isolated Isle of Lewis off Scotland. This setting gives the books lots of atmosphere amid murders and interesting (at times pathological) relationships between various three-dimensional characters.

I also recently read Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier, who uses a remote setting as a backdrop to an intriguing love affair between a dissatisfied upper-class woman and a charismatic pirate.

Pirates have ships, of course, and many novels with remote settings unfold on boats, islands, or other isolated places near water. Among the examples I’ve read are Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (obviously), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (which chronicles a surreal journey to the South Pole), Herman Melville’s Typee (whose escapee sailor protagonist enjoys Polynesian island life), and Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (a key part of which is set on a prison island off Marseille).

Also: Aldous Huxley’s Island (as utopian as that author’s Brave New World is dystopian), Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (murders on an island), Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (boy and tiger overboard), Martin Cruz Smith’s Polar Star (the ship-set first sequel to Gorky Park), M.L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans (about the troubled life of a married couple on an island off Australia), and Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow (partly set on an island off Greenland).

Other remote locales in fiction can be mostly on land — including Canada’s Yukon wilderness in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, the Alaskan wilderness in Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, the New York State wilderness in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer, the Siberian wilderness in Louis L’Amour’s Last of the Breed, and the African desert in J.M.G. Le Clezio’s Desert and Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky.

There’s also the bleak end-of-the-world landscape in the concluding pages of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and of course lonely settings in many sci-fi novels — such as Andy Weir’s The Martian and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Your thoughts on this topic (which I also covered, in a partly different way, seven years ago) — including your favorite fiction with remote locales?

Misty the cat says: “My back legs and gasoline prices are both up.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which discusses a welcome downzoning decision in my town — is here.

Spring is for Jogging and Kitty Blogging

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Misty the cat here again with my every two-month guest post, which gives Dave a break to search 24/7 for The Golden Bowl. That’s a Henry James novel as well as a circular dish I want for an elite food and drink experience.

Another novelist with the same last name, E.L. James, wrote Fifty Shades of Grey. I never read it, but, as you can see in the photo atop this post, I was recently amid five shades of gray — including the color of the not-golden bowl I’m eyeing that contains liquid that’s either milk or Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White minus the woman. (Photo by my adult female human Laurel Cummins.)

What am I, Misty the cat, reading now? I just finished T is for Trespass as I continue to work my way through Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries starring private investigator Kinsey Millhone, whose last name rhymes with Milk-Bone. (Shout-out to my dog readers, including Snoopy the Easter Beagle.) As you might know, the late Grafton didn’t allow her book series to be adapted for the screen because she had formerly worked in that business and distrusted it. Heck, Hollywood even had nowhere-near-tall-enough Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher before the physically massive Alan Ritchson more appropriately got the role in the current TV iteration of Lee Child’s thrilling book series. Ritchson IS Reacher, which creates ID confusion for the actor at airports.

While I almost always read fiction, I’ve been periodically perusing Rebecca Romney’s nonfiction book Jane Austen’s Bookshelf — which Dave received as a December holiday present from his sister-in-law Sheila Cummins. (I, Misty the cat, was gifted a $700,000 Lamborghini by Dave…in my dreams.) Romney focuses on the 1700s-born female authors who inspired Austen and why some of those excellent/pioneering writers are barely known today. These authors include Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth. All of whom are also known for founding the crack law firm Burney, Radcliffe, Lennox, More, Smith, Inchbald, Piozzi, Edgeworth, and Dora the Explorer. I want that firm in my corner when I’m on trial for purchasing a Trump pardon with catnip crypto.

Besides T is for Trespass, other novels I had Dave borrow from the library last month were Pearl S. Buck’s Sons (The Good Earth sequel I just started reading), Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (which I’ll be rereading) and Jamaica Inn, and Peter May’s The Blackhouse. All will be mentioned in future posts, with credit at that time to those who recommended two of those books. I would’ve visited the library myself, but it’s hard for a cat to drag books home when they’re no longer printed on yarn.

Speaking of high-tech things like knitting, it has been suggested that I comment on Artificial Intelligence’s relation to literature — especially after the Shy Girl novel was recently pulled by a major publisher for reportedly including lots of AI-generated content. But I’m no AI expert, which contrasts with my deep knowledge of 14th-century automobiles. Curiously, Chaucer only featured one Lamborghini in The Canterbury Tales; maybe he was more into mass transit. Dave does periodically receive seemingly AI-generated emails offering marketing help for his books — for a not-small fee, of course. Dave looked in his wallet, consulted with George Washington and other notables pictured on American currency, and was advised to…get a roomier wallet. With a kitchen so those long-dead notables can eat.

In conclusion, I’ll mention that I’m now an older cat (10) who recently starting doing three things to keep myself healthier: eat a prescription diet, get a monthly arthritis shot, and read fiction by writers who had also been medical doctors — among them Khaled Hosseini, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Anton Chekhov. Anton even appeared on the TV series Scrubs.

As I fend off a lawsuit claiming Chekhov did NOT appear on Scrubs, Dave will reply to comments.

Misty the cat says: “My favorite comedy trios are The Marx Brothers and The Pine Cones.”

My and Dave’s comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about “No Kings” rallies and more — is here.