Boston in books: readers' picks
Reading American citiesBooksThe Massachusetts capital has a great literary history that includes crime, satire and children’s books. Here’s a selection of your favourite books about Boston. Add your own below the line
If you’re planning a trip to Boston and want to read up on it first, we’ve got it covered. Last week, we offered you a blog with a selection of great Boston reads, from Henry James to Margaret Atwood. And you had a great list of books to add. Interestingly, as reader Isabelle Leinster pointed out, “there are many historical books which depict Boston as it was back then but I can’t think of one which accurately portrays Boston as it is today.”
“It’s strange that so many writers have managed to conjure up the essence of New York in books but not Boston. I think it’s because really Boston is rather provincial and not cosmopolitan in the way New York is,” pointed out our reader. But the following list would contest that.
Often called the most European city of the United States, the picturesque New England city is certainly known for its place in history and for its Irish heritage, but plenty of writers have also tried to depict its very recent past and present. Is your favourite Boston book not included below? Add it in the comment thread.
1. The Given Day by Dennis Lehane (2008)
Dennis Lehane immediately springs to mind when one thinks of fictional depictions of Boston – not least because of the film adaptations of his books: Gone Baby Gone, Moonlit Mile or Mystic River. But The Given Day, the story of post-first world war Boston featuring an Irish-American police patrolman, was recommended by brokenbra and sbasar. It’s a crime story but also a great portrayal of the city in the early 20th century, which includes a 1919 police strike, the rise of unions, race conflicts and economic instability.
Boston in quotes from the book:
The flyers also saturated the worst of the Boston slums, where one was most likely to find the core of the criminal element - the plug-uglies, the bullyboys, the knuckle-dusters, and, of course, the Gusties, the city’s most powerful and fuck-out-of-their-minds street gang, who headquartered in South Boston but spread their tentacles throughout the city at large.
Boston had to be the least safe city he’d ever come across in his life. The Athens of America ... he’d change the name to the Asylum of America.
2. The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins (1970)
George V. Higgins was assistant US attorney in Boston when he wrote this, his debut novel about the Irish-American underworld. A “compelling view of the 70s in our city”, said commenter SteveHimmer, who also recommended Russell Greenan’s It Happened In Boston? (1968) for a distinct, but also great, novel from that period. It was also recommended by John McMurtrie and David Holmes on Twitter as a book that offers a “very different, criminal, side of the city” – a sentence that probably refers to its no-nonsense, realistic and non-glamorised view of crime.
DuquedeLerma added another one of Higgins’s titles, Kennedy for the Defense (1980): “Boston lowlife (both the attorney and his clients), and a great example of Higgins’s way with dialogue – one might call it unrealistically and very enjoyably realistic.” And ringsend01 corroborated: “Just about anything by Higgins, if you’re interested in Boston, and especially the way the Bostonians talk. I’m married to a Bostonian, and I can tell you Higgins was spot on. Where can I get a spuckie around here?”
In quotes from the book:
This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.
3. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
David Foster Wallace’s enormous masterpiece about a nearish future is a partly satirical, partly tragic sort-of-science fiction novel about addiction, tennis, politics, family, entertainment and many other themes of contemporary America. A big part of the novel takes place in suburban Boston, more specifically in a tennis academy and a drug and alcohol recovery centre. “It may be a book of global significance, but (...) Infinite Jest is fundamentally a Boston novel; it is to Boston what Ulysses is to Dublin,” wrote American author and journalist Christopher Lydon. Recommended by Heather Roche.
In quotes from the book:
The thing is it has to be the truth to really go over, here. It can’t be a calculated crowd-pleaser, and it has to be the truth unslanted, unfortified. And maximally unironic. An ironist in a Boston AA meeting is a witch in church. Irony-free zone. Same with sly disingenuous manipulative pseudo-sincerity.
Orin’s special conscious horror, besides heights and the early morning, is roaches. There’d been parts of metro Boston near the Bay he’d refused to go to, as a child. Roaches give him the howling fantods.
4. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn (2004)
Playwright and poet Nick Flynn’s first memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City describes his reuniom with his estrange father, an alcoholic who lived in a Boston homeless refuge in downtown Boston. The author grew up in a backstreet of Scituate, a fishing port 30 miles south of Boston. Recommended by notassorryasiam.
In quotes from the book:
Trinity Park lies directly across from the library, Trinity Church rising like a midieval thought amidst the glass and steel towers.
If not for the rats you could crawl beneath a bush. A bush. A bench. The alliterative universe. Rats too can pass through that needle’s eye to enter heaven. . . . This box held a refrigerator, the refrigerator is an apartment, a man is in the box. . . . Wake up on the grass, soaking wet. Dew is the piss of God. ‘Another bullshit night in suck city’, my father mutters.
5. Detective Spenser series by Robert B. Parker
The series of detective novels by Robert B. Parker dedicated to Spenser (no first name) are almost an encyclopaedia of the Boston metropolitan area, just as its author was as Bostonian as it gets. It ran from 1973 to 2011, and was then taken up by Ace Atkins. Perfect to get acquainted with the city, as well as to enjoy prime American crime fiction. LookingLeft recommends it: “Try any one of the 40-odd books Robert B Parker wrote featuring his Private Detective, Spenser. The Boston location was practically a character of its own.” “The white guy/black guy banter gets old fast but the local colour is pretty good”, says Kathryn Gardiner.
In quotes from the book:
I took my .38 out and looked to see that there were bullets in all the proper places. I knew there would be, but it did no harm to be careful. And I’d seen Clint Eastwood do it once in the movies.
We split a bottle of Norman cider. Not everybody sells Norman cider by the bottle.
‘Has a European feel’ Susan said.
‘That sounds terrific’ I said. ‘Can I have one?’
Susan grinned at me. ‘How did you ever get to be so big without growing up?’ she said.
‘Iron self-control’ I said.
6. Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey (1941)
Revealing a very different side of Boston, this delightful children’s picture book describes “how an urban environment can also nurture wildlife,” says JEccleshare. It tells the story of a couple of mallards who raise a family on an island in the lagoon in the Boston Public Garden, a park in the city. As ActualGraunReader points out, Bostonians have celebrated it in statue form.
In quotes from the book:
One day Mr. Mallard decided he’d like to take a trip to see what the rest of the river was like, further on. So off he set.
7. Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen (1992)
Jonathan Franzen’s second novel, published 18 years before his acclaimed Freedom, revolves around a series of small earthquakes – and a big one – north of Boston, artificially provoked by a giant chemical corporation. This provokes character Louis Holland to fight with his sister and mother over a grandmother’s inheritance, and to meet a Harvard seismologist, a weapons company and anti-abortion activists, among other urban American characters. Recommended by notassorryasiam.
In quotes from the book:
I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.
‘Yeah, well, we’re all grieving in our own way, obviously. It’s just I heard this crazy rumor about your having inherited twenty-two million dollars.’ He tried to meet her eyes, but she’d turned away, squeezing her thumbs, fists balled.
8. Run by Ann Patchett (2007)
This novel by the author of award-winning Bel Canto explores family relations, race identity and adoption. It revolves the character of Doyle, former mayor of Boston and widower of Bernadette, an Irish Catholic woman who wanted to adopt more kids after having had one natural son. The couple had taken two boys in from the same birth mother, but Bernadette died soon after, leaving Doyle to raise them on his own. A warm book, “overflowing with love and affection” said Patrick Ness in his Guardian review. Recommended by Terri Windling.
In quotes from the book:
Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.
9. The Bostonians by Henry James (1886)
Henry James’s witty novel about political, utopian and spiritualist movements in post-civil war America is a no brainer. It is, of course, a “very American tale” and gives and a chance to see an early James touching on politics, feminism, sexuality and idealism. The title doesn’t actually refer to Bostonians in general but two characters. But it is, of course, a very funny and eccentric depiction of the society of the north-eastern United States of the time – something that that bothered the people of Boston of the 1880s for its indecency. Picked by marsgrover.
In quotes from the book:
She made him sit down; she assured him that her sister quite expected him, would feel as sorry as she could ever feel for anything – for she was a kind of fatalist, anyhow – if he didn’t stay to dinner. It was an immense pity –she herself was going out; in Boston you must jump at invitations.
She is very honest, is Olive Chancellor; she is full of rectitude. Nobody tells fibs in Boston; I don’t know what to make of them all.
There were people who wanted one to spend the winter in Boston; but she couldn’t stand that--she knew, at least, what she had not come back for. Perhaps she should take a house in Washington; did he ever hear of that little place?
10. The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor (1956)
And now on to the 1950s. The Last Hurrah, the best-remembered novel of Pulitzer Prize-winner Edwin O’Connor, which tells the story of a mayoral election in an unnamed East Coast city, assumed to be Boston. It is, of course, also remembered because of the famous film adaptation played by Spencer Tracy. Here’s our reader jrsd:
When I was living in Boston I was recommended The Last Hurrah, a novel by Edwin O’Connor – a good insight into local (tribal?) politics in the 1950s and earlier. Then there must be dozens of books about the RedSox and the old fans’ defeatist attitudes, allegedly typical of the New England character. The Curse of the Bambino by Dan Shaughnessy is as good as any.
Is your favourite missing? Add it in the comment thread below. Next up: Washington DC.
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