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Following a Guardian "Notes and Queries" exchange, we’re looking for “any novels worth reading in which people are generally nice to each other and nobody dies". We've started compiling a list, and have already discovered that novels people remember as pleasant and soothing often include the odd violent or upsetting bit, so suggestions are continually being struck off. I think we have to allow deaths prior to the opening of the novel and possibly distant unknown people who die in order to provide inheritances. We also realise that gentle novels are not necessarily feel-good. One customer expressed a wish for novels without "nasty happenings and unexpected deaths". See Amanda Craig below.
Update, 5 April: Feel-good novels (see EO below): "To me, the key to a feel-good novel is that the characters overcome obstacles and have the will to live and to celebrate life. Good triumphs over evil and order triumphs over chaos." This is an interesting direction. Murder mysteries (Christie, Sayers) of course have deaths but we aren't usually meant to feel upset about them. (Lord Peter Wimsey sometimes feels upset that the murderer is going to be hanged.) Reactions?
In a recent Independent ( http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article354670.ece ) Amanda Craig says that McCall Smith "is wise to have made an art out of the small good things of life" - "among the greatest comfort reads of all time" but seems to think this is at the expense of truth in his most recent novel (see Blue Shoes and Happiness below). See her comment at the bottom. A wide spectrum of comfort-reading is possible - at what point does it tip over into inauthenticity? Readers come to books from widely different places.
I can think of several authors who deliberately, it seems, give their characters a bad time so they can look realistic and "well 'ard". Some good, or even great authors, I tend to approach with a sinking feeling (Hardy, Golding; Peter Ackroyd). Rose Tremain, by way of contrast, can give her characters a rough ride, but you can usually hope that she'll see them safe out the other end. I have a hypothesis that young readers like to read about doom and misery to fill them in on life while older readers have had enough already, thank you, and aren't looking for unnecessary downers. We could start a "nasty novels" section (Will Self, Niall Griffiths, Irvine Welsh - I speak from hearsay, I haven't read them though I stock them).
We welcome your suggestions, comments, corrections and objections - please e-mail to bookcase@btinternet.com, with "Nice novels" in the subject box. You can of course get all the books at The Book Case, 01422 845353.
LIST IN PROGRESS
| Title & Author | Comments & objections | Name (optional) |
| The Darling Buds of May by H E Bates | (Guardian reader) | |
| The Inimitable Jeeves by P G Wodehouse | (Guardian reader) | |
| The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith | (Guardian reader) | |
| Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy | (Guardian reader) | |
| I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith | (Guardian reader) | |
| Three Men in a Boat/on the Bummel by J K Jerome | FP | |
| Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor | NP | |
| Anything by Georgette Heyer | "People are nasty in a nice way" | KC |
| Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell | PS | |
| Persuasion by Jane Austen | "If deaths offstage of people you haven't met are allowed." | FP |
| Sally Vickers .. | Full of death, actually | |
| . Anita Shreve ... | Likewise | |
| About a Boy by Nick Hornby | NP | |
| How to be Good by Nick Hornby | Withdrawn, the main character is a pig at the beginning and unbearable when nice later. | FP |
| Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith | AT | |
| Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour by R S Surtees | New edition due soon | AT |
| Diary of a Provincial Lady - E M Delafield | AT | |
| The Warden by Anthony Trollope | Bit sad though | AT |
| Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier | Ages since I read it - don't remember much happening in it. Include?? | FP |
| Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner | Disqualified because of her father's death near the beginning. | FP |
| Typhoon by Joseph Conrad | Far from soothing but the characters don't have much time to be nasty to each other. I don't think anyone dies though a lot of china gets broken. | FP |
| Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith | Amanda Craig thinks it's a bit unrealistically happy. No pleasing some people. | FP |
| All of Alexander McCall
Smith's and especially The Sunday Philosopher's Club. All of Jane Austen's All of Elizabeth Goudge's ditto Agatha Christie ditto Dorothy Sayers ditto Barbara Pym ditto Miss Read |
"To me, the key to a feel-good novel is that the characters overcome obstacles and have the will to live and to celebrate life. Good triumphs over evil and order triumphs over chaos." | EO |
| Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant | AW | |
| Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon | Some dispute about this; he doesn't realise how he's upsetting everyone else | AW |
| Home from the Vinyl Cafe - Stuart MacLean | Not read it yet but looks a bit like Wobegon Days | FP |
| Barbara Pym | Yes - quite a few nominations | |
| Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver | It's selling well | |
| Join Me - Danny Wallace | Not a novel but uplifting. Funny and heartwarming. | |
| Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts | Feel-good autobiographical novel about a prison escapee living a colourful life in Bombay. Violence and dead people though. | |
| How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers won the F.A. Cup - J L Carr | Mentions Todmorden ... | |
| Last Ride, Missing, St Agnes' Stand - Thomas Eidson | I'm sure this will be rejected as unfortunately there are quite a few harrowing deaths; however anything by Thomas Eidson is well worth a go - amazingly uplifting, powerful tales big on happy endings - lots of spirit. What's a little blood and guts on the way! (1880s set in America so only to be expected after all.) | |
| Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee | Of course! Autobiographical novel. | |
| Chore Whore - Heather Howard | Recommended as funny. A professional Hollywood assistant has a bad time at the hands of a number of celebrities and her own son. | |
| Year of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks | This is about the plague in 17th-C Derbyshire so there are lots of deaths. | |
| Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis | ||
| Crow Road - Iain Banks | "Entertaining" - don't think I'd call it nice | |
| Are You My Mother? - Louise Voss | Young woman seeks her birth mother | |
| Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg | ||
| Price of Water in Finisterre - Bodil Malmsten | Not a novel - but pleasing autobiographical account with lots about her garden. "A window onto a solitary life." | |
| CHILDREN'S BOOKS (worth reading by adults) | ||
| Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce | "Guardian reader" | |
| Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce | "Guardian reader" | |
| Heidi by Johanna Spyri | CT | |
| Swiss Family Robinson by J D Wyss | CT | |
| A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce | FP | |
| Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce | FP | |
| Arthur Ransome - nearly all of them | The Hullabaloos in "Coot Club" aren't nice | FP |
| Milly-Molly-Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley | The epitome of a nice soothing read! | |
| Bloodtide - Melvin Burgess | Not nice exactly - killing machines, revenge, hideous disfigurement. Gripping certainly. Based on the Volsungasaga. | |
"You want to read something that is not chick-lit but sun-lit: something that is both literary and pleasurable, something that lifts the spirits while engaging the mind. Dr Johnson observed that 'the true end of literature is to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it.' While practically every Booker shortlist ... is strong on endurance, it remains extraordinarily hard to find novels that celebrate life."
- Amanda Craig, "Against Grim-Lit", Mslexia Spring 2003 reprinted in newBOOKSmag 16.