Everything takes place over a few hours, or entirely set during the immediate aftermath of an automobile crash, for example?
I’d like to avoid “and it was all a dream”, time travel, or similar plot devices if possible.
I’m curious what a novel of any length purposely confined to a strict time window in-story reads like.
Maybe I should be reading more plays.
Thanks.
Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine - basically takes place over the course of a lunch break - with a few footnotes and digressions.
OK, a LOT of footnotes and digressions. But, still, a lunch break.
Ulysses by James Joyce takes place in a day… 🫠
Also, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens takes place in one night
Oops, I forgot you said: I’d like to avoid “and it was all a dream”, time travel, or similar plot devices if possible
Wow, it’s really hard to think of books that only take place in a few hours. The only ones I can think of take place over the course of a day. Yeah, I guess reading plays would be your best bet
Plays tend to be very definite in timeframe.
For example God of carnage happens during a dinner iirc? And Death and the maiden during a night or so (except preface and conclusion).
That’s kind of what gave rise to this question. Plays are so succinct and plotted accurate and characterization I was wondering what sort of novels also had that kind of accuracy.
But I haven’t read many plays, regardless of the fact that I usually enjoy them for exactly the reason I’m asking.
So yeah, I’ll definitely read some more plays, but I’m definitely going to check out some of these novels people are suggesting as well
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World — Elif Shafak.
Try the classical Greek tragedies—one of the requirements of the genre is that the action is supposed to take place in less than a day (Aristotle’s “unity of time”).
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Can’t believe I forgot that
