Books That Evoke Time and Place
Penelope Lively says these books excel in depicting a particular time
and place


by PENELOPE LIVELY

1. The Boys' Crusade

By Paul Fussell

Modern Library, 2003

In 1944, during the run-up to D-Day, two million young American men were
given 17 weeks of basic training and shipped to Europe. Over the course
of 11 months, from the Normandy landings to Germany's surrender, 135,000
U.S. infantrymen were killed and half a million wounded. Paul Fussell
was among the soldiers who came home. He offers a brief, selective and
forceful account of that period in "The Boys' Crusade" and boys is what
they largely were. The jacket of my copy shows the face of what one can
only see as a child, swamped by his helmet. The book makes liberal use
of eye-witness quotationone soldier describes finding German corpses,
"gray teeth, gray hands, worn boots, no identities . . . dead meat,
nothing to grieve," and being "stupefied by the death we'd breathed"an
effect that plunges the reader into specific actions and the day-by-day
routines of combat. But "The Boys' Crusade" also evokes the outlook of
those teenagerstheir blithe fidelity to the idea of America as the best
and only modern country in the world, and their rapid exposure to the
grim realities of an annihilating war.

2. The Last September

By Elizabeth Bowen

The Dial Press, 1929

This early novel by Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) is set in September
1920, at one of the "great houses" of the Anglo-Irish landowning
Protestant families in southern Ireland. The central figure is Lois, a
teenager staying on the estate, called Danielstown, with her aunt and
uncle. There are tennis parties and dancesLois loves a British officer
from the nearby army station. But behind the story of this happy,
innocent girl lurks another one: Ireland is in the midst of violent
turmoilguerrilla conflict between Irish rebels and the British troops
who garrison the land. There are ambushes, reprisals, figures glimpsed
in the darkness, rumors of arms caches. None of this is made explicit;
instead, it surfaces in hints and clues that disturb the autumn program
of social events. Until, at the end, there is the stark account of what
came soon after: "A fearful scarlet ate up the hard spring darkness."

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3. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

By James Shapiro

HarperCollins, 2005

James Shapiro places Shakespeare and his plays in their historical
context, demonstrating how a yearlong burst of creative activity in
1599"Henry V," "Julius Caesar," "As You Like It," the first draft of
"Hamlet"was prompted and fueled by what was actually happening at the
time. England was threatened by Spain and its armada (possibly inspiring
the "jittery soldiers" early in "Hamlet"), for instance, and Queen
Elizabeth's favorite, the Earl of Essex, was pursuing a disastrous
campaign to put down an Irish insurrection ("Henry V" mentions a general
"from Ireland coming, / Bring rebellion broached on his sword"). The
aging Elizabeth, with no successor waiting, feared assassination;
"Julius Caesar" depicted the murder of a ruler. By finding public
concerns reflected in the plays that Shakespeare was writing, Shapiro
cunningly carries readers back to a single year and shows an
extraordinary mind at work.

4. The Common Stream

By Rowland Parker

Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975

Rowland Parker's publication of "The Common Stream" more than three
decades ago was a pioneering instance of what is now known as
micro-history. Parker was not a professional historian; he lived in the
village of Foxton in eastern England and became fascinated by the
visible presence of the past all around him. He walked, dug, ferreted in
archives and eventually produced this remarkable reconstruction of how
people had lived in one small part of the world for 2,000 years. The
presence of water determined the beginnings of settlement, hence "the
common stream" of the book's title. National events intruded on Foxton:
A Roman villa was burned down by what we would now call insurgents; the
Black Death devastated the area; the English Civil War made partisan
demands on the populace. But the village's story is of persons and of
familiesindividual homes traced, their furnishings deduced from the
content of wills. In Parker's telling, Foxton springs to life, century
by century.

5. The Shorter Pepys

By Samuel Pepys

Penguin Classics, 1993

"Up, and to the office . . ." So far, so 21st century, but Samuel
Pepys's office was of course that of the British Navy Board in the
1660s. His expansive, vivid diaries, published in several editions since
they first appeared in 1825, are one of the most immediate and valuable
accounts that we have of the habits and outlook of the mid-17th century,
let alone the habits and outlook of a remarkable man. Pepys was clever,
ambitious and wonderfully indiscreet. At one extreme, the diaries are an
insight into the operation of the British navy and the labyrinthine
politics of the times; at the other, they are a funny and candid
portrait of Pepys's own family life, his incessant pursuit of women, his
fractious relationship with his young wife. They also provide close-up
accounts of the Fire of London and the Great Plague, presenting as well
an enthralling picture of what it was like to live through it all as a
privileged Londoner.
Ms. Lively is the author of "Moon Tiger" and other novels. Her latest,
"Family Album," has just been published by Viking.