Recommendations: books set on islands or a sense of place; unreliable narrators; food; music

[StColumbofNavron]

A bit of a list of requirements. Fiction and non-fiction welcome.

I am looking for books that evoke a real sense of place e.g. like Wuthering Heights makes you feel as though you are on the Moors, or A Theatre for Dreamers makes you feel like you are on a Greek island and the sun is burning your skin. Anything involving an island is even better but not essential.

Then, anything with an unreliable narrator(s).

Anything involving food where it is visceral and where music is used cleverly.

@Time40 Angus Wilson is so great.

@StColumbofNavron for books about music, I’d recommend Clara by Janice Galloway. It’s a beautiful and very immersive novel about Clara Schumann.

@Terpsichore Yay! My heart is a little warmer to know that someone else remembers his work.

Lots of the above and also The Tempest.

Surfacing - Margaret Atwood

Am sure this will have been suggested already but Pincher Martin by William Golding ticks multiple boxes and is utterly brilliant.

Sorry haven't read whole thread - I thought of "The Light Between Oceans" when I read your OP.

Two quite different recommendations.

Sense of place and time for me would be The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Emma's Island by Honor Arundel which is childrens/young adult. Don't know if that's a problem? Haven't read it in ages, but a really strong sense of the Scottish island. Think it could be out of print but I saw it on Amazon second hand. Second part of a trilogy; first of which The High House is equally evocative of Edinburgh.

Holy Fools by Joanne Harris Is set in Noirmoutier in medieval France , has a great sense of place and is set on an island. I want to go there!

The House at Ladywell by Nicola Slade
One house through the centuries and the very practical women who have lived in it.

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex is set on

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex is set in a lighthouse that is out at sea, and has more than one unreliable narrator.

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See is a mostly historical novel about two women from childhood through their lives on a South Korean island. They work diving for sea food. Their lives are affected by Japanese occupation, the Korean war and the aftermath of continued repression by their own government and also by American military intervention. I didn't and don't know that much about this aspect of Korean history but there's a really strong sense of place, a very particular culture and character of the main narrator of the story and her childhood best friend.

Set on an island - The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.
Inspired by real events and set in early 1600s, I found it very evocative in the descriptions of life in a remote fishing island in the far north-east of Norway.

Circe by Madeline Miller

Ah @elkiedee I love Lisa See.

Ann Cleeves' Shetland books have a great sense of place and are set on an island, sometimes other smaller islands. The books are much better than the TV series. She's very good on things like weather, wildlife, and how personalities are shaped by the places they live. Also very entertaining and easy to read.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver, not an island but the Arctic. I've not been there, but the descriptions and atmosphere of the place felt very real.

Watership Down is excellent for sense of place. It leaves me homesick

Yes, Circe was completely engrossing in terms of the sense of place.
Island book: Wide Sargasso Sea Also Everything You Need A L Kennedy

Sharon Bolton - Little Black Lies
www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Black-Lies-Sharon-Bolton-ebook/dp/B00QDGVFJU/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1PXSQ0N9EW4RM&keywords=little+black+lies&qid=1656367753&s=digital-text&sprefix=little+black+lies+%2Cdigital-text%2C65&sr=1-1

I loved the location aspects of this. It's a psychological thriller - what I liked was the setting, the geography, the sense of place. It's set in the Falkland Islands, which I knew nothing about before reading this. The main character is a marine conservationist and there's a lot in it about the marine life. It made me want to find more books with such a strong sense of place.

Just remembered Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It's autbiographical, about a year in which BK and her (occasionally annoying) family lived on a her husband's family farm in the Appalachian mountains and tried to eat local produce only. It's about food and has a strong sense of place.

@StellaAndCrow how graphic and scary is Little Black Lies? I'd love to read something set on the Falklands but can only stomach quite cosy thrillers, so any graphic violence is out.

I just re-read the Flame trees of Thika because I loved the TV series (absolutely yonks ago).