Best Books Set in Small Towns
In short: For classics, read To Kill a Mockingbird or Peyton Place. For quiet, character-driven fiction, Olive Kitteridge or Gilead. For warmth, A Man Called Ove or Peace Like a River. For darkness, Sharp Objects or Winter's Bone. In each, the town is as much a character as the people.
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To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960). Scout Finch watches her father defend a Black man falsely accused of rape in Depression-era Alabama. The town's neighbourliness and prejudice are inseparable. Pulitzer Prize winner.
Peyton Place, Grace Metalious (1956). Sex, abuse and hypocrisy behind the respectable front of a New Hampshire town. Shocking for its time, a huge bestseller, and the ancestor of every small-town soap.
Quiet and literary
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout (2008). Thirteen linked stories set in Crosby, Maine, with the prickly retired teacher Olive appearing in each. Won the 2009 Pulitzer; adapted by HBO in 2014.
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004). Reverend John Ames, dying in 1950s Iowa, writes a long letter to his young son. Slow, luminous and deeply moving. Won the 2005 Pulitzer.
Warm
A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman (2012). Ove's plans to end his life keep being interrupted by his new neighbours. Funny, sad and very popular; adapted twice, most recently as A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks.
Peace Like a River, Leif Enger (2001). Eleven-year-old Reuben, his sister and their father search the Dakota Badlands for his outlaw brother. Full of faith and small miracles.
Dark
Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn (2006). Camille Preaker returns to Wind Gap, Missouri, to report on two girls' murders, and to her terrifying mother. Adapted by HBO in 2018.
Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell (2006). Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly must find her father before the family loses its home, in an Ozark community bound by silence. The basis for the film with Jennifer Lawrence.
Frequently asked questions
What's a cosy small-town book? A Man Called Ove, which is funny and warm, though it deals with grief. Peace Like a River is another gentle, hopeful choice.
What's a dark small-town book? Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn or Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell. Both show close-knit communities hiding violence.
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