I was thinking last evening about novels I’ve read that have been able to produce the deepest sensory reactions in me…that either describe places or events or characters (preferably all three) which come vividly alive in one’s mind, which evoke images palpable enough to feel, inhale or taste–and images which stay with you for days, months or years afterwards.
So my question to you is, which single book of your intimate acquaintance evokes the most complete sensory reaction in you?
If your book is part of a series, that is fine and the series can be mentioned, but I am looking for just one book which was able to create a sensory mindset for you, and which stuck with you for awhile afterwards. If you re-read this book periodically because of the sensations it gives you, I’m interested in that, too. You’re not required to mention plot points or characterizations, but I HAVE warned of spoiler potential in the title and if you’d like to tell which part or parts particularly overwhelmed you, feel free.
The most evocative book I have ever read is without a doubt “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, Gabriel G Marquez. A friend of mine once described it as “the images which run through your mind during an especially excellent mushroom trip”, and I have to agree. I LIVED in every inch of Macondo with the rest of the erratic, fascinating Buendia family while I read this novel, and I do pick it up and re-read passages from time to time, several times a year. I have re-read it entirely only once, however.
I’ve read Titus Groan and Gormenghast several times, mostly just to revel again in Mervyn Peake’s masterful use of descriptive imagery. Whether the action is taking place in a dusty, moldering castle room or in a lush and vibrant forest, Peake was a wonder at making the reader feel that You Are There. There are many passages in the books in which very little happens at all, but it’s still just a pleasure to read and see in the mind’s eye what Peake himself envisioned.
His character description, too, is something to behold – many different types of personalities are made three-dimensional through Peake’s writing.
I’m reluctant to read Titus Alone, the last the Gormenghast trilogy, because I understand that Parkinson’s was starting to get the best of Peake while he was writing it.
I watched, or rather tried to watch, the BBC’s adaptation of *Gormenghast * a few months ago – I didn’t care for it, and it was mostly because what was on screen didn’t come close to matching what I’ve envisioned from my own reading of the books.
Wow, this is a toughie. I get completely wrapped up in almost every book I read. I can usually see, hear, feel etc nearly every enviroment in a good story.
That said, Anne Rice’s Witch trilogy always does that for me. From really sensing the sounds, sights and smells of the garden district of New Orleans, the foggy moors of Scotland, to the luxury of an estate right in the middle of the untamed Australian wild. I feel as though I’ve lived there. Her verbose style turns off a lot of people, but I personally love how each setting comes alive.
I think “The Secret Garden” is one that had an impact since I was a kid when I read it and had a strong imagination about it. The stress and badness of the sickrooms and the hope of bringing the garden back to life…
“The Phantom Tollbooth” too, and the Oz books.
I think it’s the kid ones that stick with me because we didn’t have TV and with little exposure to the world my imagination depended on what they told me. Now I can think of real people and places to envision as what is being described and it’s not as fanciful.
I know it’s almost a cliche for me to say, but I still have to answer The Lord of the Rings. The descriptions carry me away to Middle Earth; never mind that it doesn’t “really” exist.
In a totally different way To Kill A Mockingbird is very evocative. Though I no longer live down South, the descriptions in that book bring small town Southern America completely alive to me again.
I’ll agree with One Hundred Years of Solitutde and add the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy. Both succeed in evoking a place extremely well.
Something about Stephen King’s The Stand made me feel as if I had actually experienced it. The sequences in the desert were particularly vivid. I’ve never spent any substantial amount of time in a desert (other than driving through in a car), but King’s prose got under my skin and left little bits of sand there.
It’s not the deaths that made me feel sadness, but J.K. Rowling’s description of Harry Potter’s thoughts on how he is now alone. First his parents died. Then Sirius. Now Dumbledore. Very depressing ending and very well written.
Of Mice and Men
I’m a sucked for depressing endings. When George kills Lennie…it moves me. Actually, when they kill the old dog, it gets me too.
I’d have to go with Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, and Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Life of Pi was an easy story to visualize, but some of the images were great. There’s a bit about lightning strikes going into the ocean that I thought was remarkable. Midnight’s Children is the really amazing one, though, as it’s a very dense, complex, dramatic and mystic book, and it’s set in India, where I’ve never been. But it nonetheless had a tangible reality as I read it.
Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood evokes concrete and heat, and 50’s era men wearing fedoras.
I’m currently reading In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent (I think a Doper recommended it) and although I’ve never been to Vermont or lived on a working farm, I feel like I have.
The characters in The Stand came alive for me too. I’d wonder what they were doing when I wasn’t reading about them.
Oh, thanks AuntiePam for reminding me that all Flannery O’Connor gives me a real creepy feeling, probably because I read them as a kid and the literal stories are so sickeningly real. I need to look again to see what I missed figuratively.
Delia Falconer’s two books - “The Service of Clouds” and “Lost Thoughts of Soldiers” are phenomenal in their spirit of place, and her abiliy to tie the emotions and reactions of her characters to them. She’s phenomenal.
[hijack]One of my more surreal moments was reading A Good Man is Hard to Find while seated on the porch of a shack on a blazing hot day at Flannery’s home, Andalusia. It was the first time I read the story and I didn’t know how it turned out (though I’d read many if not most of her lesser known stories). Chillbumps and sweat. The house is also spooky (especially Flannery’s monastic and dark bedroom) and the trees look like Ents in the pastures- add in her illness and her legendary [in central Georgia] mother (everybody has a “Miz Regina” story: “Yeh, I sold her fifty bales of hay in 1990 when she was about 90 years old— stood there and made me count every damned bale of it out loud, then made me take less cause some of it was too green”) and it’s no wonder she was so dark.[/hijack’
If it counts as a book since it’s a collection of articles and stories, but Capote’s Music for Chameleons has some of my favorite evocative moments and one of my all time favorite sentences. In describing a very attractive black prostitute hawking her wares to him (see “numbers, wrong and misdialed”) in the French Quarter he says of her “She sounds the way bananas taste”. THIS, not his lifestyle or his pathological lying or other neuroses, is why Vidal hated him so much and took him to court- Gore could never in three times the normal lifespan have assembled six such simple words in a way that would bring about such a simultaneously auditory, visual, gustatory and quirky yet perfect feel.