Which authors really stand out to you as being really good at filling their stories with the most compelling atmospheres possible for their story’s genre? They’re the best at making a horror story’s whole setting feel eerie, a dystopian story’s society feel oppressive, a story with a depressed character’s surroundings feel hopeless, or a spy story feel tense or thrilling. Who are your nominees?
Steinbeck
Mervyn Peake’s *Gormenghast *novels, which if they needed to be pegged into a genre could be described as fantasy except there are no supernatural characters or occurrences, positively drip with atmosphere.
It’s one thing to describe the pervasive and dusty rot of Gormenghast castle’s trappings as well as Peake does, but he masterfully describes his diverse characters to the point that they become part of the atmosphere too. The adherence to the Groan family’s time-worn processes and procedures, especially in Titus Groan, is all atmosphere as well.
Lovecraft and Poe.
Two super popular novelists who I think are good at this:
John Grisham: While I totally agree that he just phones it in sometimes, in his best works (Time to Kill, The Client, some of his stories from Ford County) he does a great job of creating a small southern town environment. (Client was set in Memphis, but his depictions of the trailer park and seedy side of town were great.) In The Firm he did a great job of creating an atmosphere of paranoia as Mitch realizes what he’s gotten himself into.
She only wrote one book, but in Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell did an outstanding job of creating the desolation of late-war/post-war Georgia. The movie was good with its awesome sets of ruined houses and desolate fields, but you can read those sections of the book when you’re hitting the Tums for overindulging at a Chinese buffet and it will still make you hungry.
Le Carre. Novel structure is generally:
-Someone discovers some sort of spy-thing going on.
-They have lots of adventures.
-Intrigue!
-Double-crossing!
-Fight scenes!
-They approach the final conflict ready to triumph.
-EVERYTHING TURNS TO SHIT. The bad guys have been playing them all along, the good guy gets killed, the good guy’s name is smeared, to bad guys continue with their terrible corruption.
-I crawl under the bed.
Every time I read one his novels, I feel like I’m kicking Lucy’s football. I know what he’s going to do in the last chapter, but I still read it and hope this time it’ll turn out well for the good guys. He’s a master of these two different atmospheres: thrilling adventure for most of the book, sickening despair for the last chapter.
Oops, I never gave an example of my own. I’m not a super huge fan of zombies, but Carrie Ryan’s depictions of a post-zombie disaster society are really compelling. She paints the barely held off dread very well, and really makes you feel for people who have to live the way they do under constant threat that they’ll be infected next.
I’m always impressed by the way Ken Follet sets his scenes. After reading Night over Water, I felt as if I had actually flown the Atlantic in the Pan Am Clipper.
The same goes for Arthur Hailey. The amount of research he put into each of his novels must have been staggering!
Kafka.
James Ellroy
William Gibson
James Lee Bourke
Rudyard Kipling
Clive Barker. His horror books are the only ones that ever made me afraid to go to sleep.
Evan Hunter/Ed McBain. Particularly the weather.
At his best, Stephen King. Strip away the atmosphere and his well crafted characters and there was usually a very standard story. He has not been at his best for a long time.