During the great ice storm I re-read Ben Elton’s Blast fromt he Past. One of my observations was that main story takes place between 1 - 4 a.m. in a London flat.
That got me thinking: What other tales take place within 24 hours? Note: Flashbacks are okay; Dream sequences are not.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich is an obvious choice.
Mary Higgin Clark’s first mystery novel “Where Are The Children” takes place on the protagonist’s 32rd birthday.
The third Wild Cards book, Jokers Wild, takes place on one day, specifically September 15th. In truth, the book is made up of sections written by seven different authors, about the same characters and events, taking place on a single day. It does form a single narrative, though.
Nicholson Baker’s first two novels, The Mezzanine and Room Temperature both take place during extremely short periods of time. The former takes place during an escalator ride and the latter during the bottle-feeding of an infant.
Obviously, they both concern themselves heavily with how the mind free-associates.
FWIW, The Mezzanine was very good. Room Temperature I could have done without.
ETA: His later book Vox may cover a very short period of time as well, I don’t remember it as well.
Might as well add Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, each of which takes place during a nap (although I think even the dream-action in both is still limited to a single day).
Apart from numerous flashbacks, the action of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is pretty well limited to the birthday of the protagonist. (And by “birthday” I mean the day that he was born.)
I can’t believe I didn’t think of Mary Higgins Clark’s Silent Night, which starts at twilight on Christmas Eve and ends Christmas morning.
Her daughter Carol Higgins Clark’s Zapped takes place on a night when NYC is having a blackout, except for a short epilogue taking place the following night.
Dram sequences don’t county because book’s dream sequences can take years (yes, Ira Levin, I’m pointing to you with my middle finger), and that just doesn’t happen in real life.