I’m writing this while they’re still counting votes after the election, when tensions are running high on both sides and the entire country could use a little something (non-liquid) to calm them down.
The best choice for readers is what might be called “gentle books,” straightforward tales of ordinary people in mostly every-day, low-key situations. No psychotics, no wrenching twists, no gore, no vampires or werewolves or demons.
Often comic, sometimes inspiring, these sorts of books were popular from the thirties right through WWII and into the sixties. Gentle books – the work of Angela Thirkell, D. E. Stevenson, Elizabeth Cadell, and many others – offered readers well-written, character-driven stories that reminded them of their own lives. Gentle books continued to thrive through the sixties and seventies with Miss Read, James Herriot, and others. Garrison Keillor and Alexander McCall Smith are among those who carry the tradition on today.
But don’t be fooled by the familiar settings and characters of these books. They are notoriously difficult to write well. It’s just too easy to sink into either banality or saccharine gooeyness – what might be called Hallmark Holiday Special fiction.
One problem is that the sources of tension available to you are, by definition, gentle. It’s easy to keep readers on the edge of their seats when your characters are trying to escape horrible deaths or fending off the destruction of the world. It’s a lot harder to keep readers interested over whether Bertie will be able to escape saxophone lessons or James Herriot will be the one who receives a cocoa tin full of goat droppings to analyze for parasites (considered an honor in Siegfried’s practice). Yet readers need to care enough about such minor, everyday problems that they will want to keep reading and will feel satisfied with the conclusion.
The only way to get that kind of tension out of minor matters is to pay sharp, detailed attention to who your characters are. The threat of a horrible death will motivate anyone, so you can get away with characters who are a little vague – there never was a lot of emotional depth to James Bond. But to get readers interested in small things, you need to understand why these small things mean so much to your characters. And the reasons are almost always because these small things are resonant in some way, they speak to something deep in the character. They mean more than they are.
In one of Keillor’s dips into Lake Wobegon, Florian Krebsbach hits a pothole hard while driving his lovingly preserved ’66 Impala, which he uses sparingly because it only has 47,000 original miles on it. When he looks down, he finds that the odometer has snapped back from 47,000 to 27,000. He’s so overjoyed that he decides to take the long way to work. It’s certainly a small thing, but for Florian, watching the meter slowly climb was a constant reminder of his own mortality, of the slow decay that comes to us all. Hitting that pothole gave him a whole new lease on life.
With gentle novels, you don’t simply have to create deeply imagined characters, you have to create a wide variety of them. Here’s a little secret about small town life (I live in a town with 1800 people on about 40 square miles). In a city, you can choose your friends from among the few hundred people who agree with you about everything. You can live in a bubble where everyone thinks alike. In a small town, you get the neighbors you’ve got, and you’re stuck with them. You have to learn to get along. This is why the “eccentric villagers novel” is almost a genre unto itself. Even Alexander McCall Smith’s Scotland Street books, technically set in Edinburgh, are limited to a neighborhood that acts in most ways like a small town.
In fact, most gentle novels draw their tension from this forced association. The connections with people who think very differently from yourself can help amplify the importance of small things. Here in Ashfield, one local resident has not yet forgiven another (both are in their seventies) for hitting her with a rock on the beach when they were ten.
In News from Thrush Green, the news is that someone new has moved into town – a young woman, Phil, and her son, Jeremy, have bought Tullivers, a somewhat worse-for-wear place in the middle of the village. She is a mystery at first – a young woman with no husband – until residents discover she is in the middle of a divorce. Her arrival hits a couple of residents in different and unique ways. Harold Shoosmith, who retired from India long ago looking for a simple, peaceful life, finds himself attracted to her, even though she’s much younger and any attraction would upset the settled life he’s come to love. And Dr. Bailey’s nephew, Richard, a young man with an obsession about diet and limited people skills who is visiting the village for the summer, views her as naturally belonging to him – he’s the most likely possible suitor in the village. While these complications are playing out, the rest of the village watches, reacting in their own way, from eccentric Dotty Harmer rooting for Harold to curmudgeonly Alfred Piggot blaming Phil for “setting her cap” at Richard.
Phil’s story also shows something else about gentle books – they can include serious drama and even grief. They just handle it differently than more tension-filled books. Halfway through News, Phil’s estranged husband is killed in a car accident. It’s tragic for both her and Jeremy, but the tragedy happens largely offstage. Readers aren’t asked to suffer it with her. What they do experience is the way the village rallies around her to help her through her grief.
And that may be the best feature of gentle books – they’re driven by love. Even though there is conflict, even though occasionally bad things happen, the characters almost without exception love one another and try to do the best they can for one another. No abject cruelty or depraved indifference. No wrenching grief or all-consuming rage. Just ordinary people being good to one another, who are sometimes the hardest characters to bring to life.
And in case you feel that the situations in gentle books are simply a feel-good fantasy . . .
Thirty years or so ago, my wife, Ruth, went through a difficult divorce in which she received 25 acres of land and almost no money. She struggled to move onto the land and build a house, living for a year in a 1951 house trailer, often with no running water, while she got the foundation, well, and septic put in. Throughout it all, the town was behind her, from the retiring plumber who gave her a clawfoot bathtub, to the road crew who happened to pick her driveway to turn the plows around in (with the blade down), to a local carpenter who volunteered to build the house for her. I’d come into her life by then. Our second date was the frame raising for the downstairs, and we spent our first married year together in that trailer.
Twenty years or so ago, she went through a serious health crisis, one that left her so drained that she had trouble concentrating. She asked our local librarian to find her something appropriate to read. The librarian came up with a stack of gentle books – titles by Margery Sharp, Miss Read, and Angela Thirkell. In reading them, Ruth found a genre that made her feel right at home.
That’s a pleasure we could all use and a gift you can give to your readers.
Quick author’s note. Most of the titles mentioned here have been reissued electronically, to introduce them to a new generation.
So which gentle writers have I missed? Who are your favorites?
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About Dave King
Dave King is the co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a best-seller among writing books. An independent editor since 1987, he is also a former contributing editor at Writer's Digest. Many of his magazine pieces on the art of writing have been anthologized in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing and in The Writer's Digest Writing Clinic. You can check out several of his articles and get other writing tips on his website.
You named two of my favorites, Dave! McCall Smith and Herriot. I love the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency for so may reasons. Once you fall in love with a character, you root for them and mourn with them and are willing to go anywhere with them. I first met Herriot on PBS and became addicted to the Yorkshire dialect, then totally absorbed in a world so different from my own (suburban NJ at the time). Those stories planted the seeds of my Anglophilia (is that word??) I also loved Mary Stuart’s early books. The Rose Cottage comes to mind. Deceptively sweet, but packing an emotional punch because of Stewarts skill at making me care about her people. I became such a fangirl of hers that I wrote to her. This was after the Crystal Cave series. She wrote back on creamy stationary with a beautiful family crest and told me to stay the course. I still have the letter and I’m still staying. Thanks for a wonderful post.I hope you and yours are well.
Oh, one of my favorite fictional characters is J. L. B. Matekoni. I’m also something of a car geek (it’s not surprising that one of my examples involves a vintage Impala). Smith captures the mindset perfectly — a good example of paying loving attention to a character.
In one scene, after J. L. B. Matekoni has Motholeli help him with a valve job. Afterwards, he starts the motor and says, “That sounds better, doesn’t it?”
She replies, “Yes. It sounds much happier.”
And then Smith writes one of the truest sentences I’ve ever read. “Anyone who could see a smooth-running engine in terms of happiness was born mechanic.”
Oh, no! I meant to write Mary Stewart. My bad.
I love Mary Stewart! How amazing that you got a letter from her, Susan.
I loved this post, Dave. It speaks to me as both reader and writer because, as you note, such books are not at all easy to write well. I think that’s because we have to observe carefully, have a genuine interest in (and respect for) the real people we meet, and search within ourselves—a different process than “inventing characters.” In my own writing, I’ve found that—consistently—I have to remember to make every character worthy of love, despite my tendency to make them tense, angry, brittle, or defensive. You put it so well: “Even though there is conflict, even though occasionally bad things happen, the characters almost without exception love one another and try to do the best they can for one another.” Thank you!
You’re quite welcome. And you’re right about the importance of loving attention.
I didn’t actually make this argument in the piece, but I think the only way to convincingly create a good person in fiction is to be a good person in real life. Fiction as a spiritual exercise.
A newbie to this site, you just helped me describe my just-released novel. Trying to figure out the whole marketing thing, a tagline like this is helpful. Not to mention that I have always enjoyed these gentle genre stories and now have a term for them! Thank you!
You’re welcome. And, full disclosure, it was Ruth who suggested the “gentle genre.”
This post speaks to a basic need in all of us, that wherever we live there might be a neighbor nearby who understands us, who gets it when the lawn is overgrown or we forgot to bring in the garbage cans. In my youth, my widowed mother often had to rely on our neighbors to step in and help. You relate that very quiet giving in your post concerning your wife. Books that focus on the goodness of a neighbor or an entire village give all of us hope. Right now the house next to us is vacant. Who will move in? How will that all work out with Covid and the rather bumpy roads we now follow? The books you mention can provide an excellent roadmap.
Absolutely. I think — hope — they are far more true to real life than darker, more violent fiction.
Thank you, Dave. I have been longing for more “gentle reads.” I grew up listening to James Herriot’s books on tape. I love the accents and the quiet drama. In the last year, I’ve been doing a lot of re-reading. I can skip the angst of “not-knowing” how it ends and can just revel in the characters and nuance of the story.
I’m currently revising a YA Contemporary manuscript and every time I dip in, there’s something that makes me tear up or laugh out loud. There’s an assortment of characters (friends and family) that rally around the MC as she faces disappointments and potholes in her own life. I think I wrote a gentle read for teens! Maybe.
Thank you for the reminder of the value of these books!
I’m glad to do it. And if you are tearing up or laughing out loud at your WIP, that’s an excellent sign. It means you’re coming to love these characters, and that’s the key to making them live.
I’m rereading a lot of books too, Amelia–going for the comfort of a familiar (and often gentle) read.
You know, I never have read Alexander McCall Smith, and I really must remedy that. Earlier this year, finding myself a bit focus-challenged, I picked up Miss Buncle Married (D.E. Stevenson), and it was just the thing for the moment–I’d already (re)read Miss Buncle’s Book. I should think A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman) might also fit into this category. And while people often focus on the romance aspects of Jane Austen, I think her ability to capture the complex relationships of a community is at least half the fun of reading her.
I appreciate your reminder about the need to have a wide variety of characters in the story. My current WIP takes place in a small college town, and I find I keep expanding the cast–not because I want a cast of dozens, but because that variety needs to be there to make the place feel rounded and real.
You really must. He has, I believe, four different series going at the moment, and they are all wonderful. I’m torn between the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books and the tales of Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. The latter are drier and more openly comic than the others, but they still turn on small things and a loving attention to character.
Although it’s not usually though of in this way, Jane Austen’s work is certainly gentle, with that same loving attention to character. I’d put much of Anthony Trollope in that category, as well, particularly the Chronicles of Barsetshire.
As to Miss Buncle, you have two more books ahead of you: The Two Mrs. Abbotts and The Four Graces. Enjoy.
And good luck with your WIP. It sounds like your setting and characters are coming to life, which is always a good sign. And good fun.
I had forgotten about the pleasure that can be found in books like these. It’s easy to dismiss tales of balmy villagers as lightweight, but every time I think of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, I think of the woman kneeling at night in the mud during a driving storm, cradling her massive prize tomato to keep the wind from breaking its branch. That’s funny, but it’s also dramatic human behavior, recorded by a sharp observer.
Yes! Yes, exactly. It’s so easy to dismiss these books as lightweight fluff. But that doesn’t recognize the originality of the characters or the effort that goes into their creation. These are hard books to get right.
Michael, you reminded me of the Midsomer Murder series, one of my all-time favorites. Cozy mysteries?
I’d thought of mentioning cozy mysteries in with gentle books, and they are certainly gentle. But they seem to be a genre in itself, and often turn on the standard mystery tensions rather than the small, intensely human dramas that usually inform the gentle genre.
That having been said, Midsomer Murder is fun.
I love Midsomer (the most dangerous place on earth outside Cabot Cove) and St. Mary Mead, but these stories are always about the detective, even though there’s a bunch of characters, most of whom are gentle.
Dave, how nice to see some of these classics mentioned — they are too often dismissed as mindless, but while they are easy to read, they are anything but mindless, and full of heart. Barbara Pym’s English village novels fit here, and I think Jan Karon’s series does as well. I write cozy mystery, a close relative of the “gentle genre,” and particularly appreciate your reminder that what matters most in these kinds of books is the characters, their connections, and their goodwill — the sense of community. Maybe re-reading a gentle book or two (or ten) will help remind each of us of the importance of community in our own lives.
Ruth, who is a Pym reader (her favorite is Crampton Hodnet) tells me that this is true of Pym’s earlier work, but that later in life she grew more somber.
You’re right about the sense of community. I think this is why village novels are, as I say, almost a genre in themselves. A close community becomes a character on its own.
At last — someone put a name to the kind of stories I like to write. Maybe in the current climate, given the general upheaval in the world, markets will be more receptive to my fellow “gentle” genrists and me. Thanks, Dave.
Let’s hope so. As I said, the writers focused on these novels used to be a lot more plentiful. But their books are being reprinted, and new authors are beginning to take the baton.
Ah, the underappreciated gentle genre.
I am fond (to the point of perpetual re-reading) of the classic mysteries where unpleasant things may happen, but generally discreetly “offstage”, and I quite enjoy Ann B. Ross’s Miss Julia novels.
And of course, one can’t go past the oeuvre of P. G. Wodehouse – good for what ails you!
Not familiar with Ross, but thanks for the recommendations.
I love P. G. Wodehouse, but some of his satire might be a bit more biting than gentle. I’m thinking of Spode and his Brown Shorts, fighting for the glory of English Brussel sprouts.
A take-off of the British Fascist Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts, apparently.
“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?'”
Interesting to note that Wodehouse wrote that before he was interned by the Nazis, not after.
I think Spode and the Brown Shorts were gone by the time he was interred. And, of course, Spode was destined to become Lord Sidcup.
I think my favorite moment from Wodehouse (well, one of them) is a parody of the language of telegrams. Bertie had just received notice that Gussie Fink-Nottle had broken of his engagement, and wired back (quoting from memory), “What engagement, what rift, what Dickens doing?”
Some books similar to what you’re describing are published as women’s fiction (although not all of those are gentle) and sweet romance. A group of veteran authors have put together a collection of gentle romances about couples over fifty, called Better Late Romances, that might interest you. Here’s a link to their website. https://bethblack.wixsite.com/betterlateromance
Thanks. Like Cozy mysteries, romance can be gentle and humanely character driven. And one of my examples, News from Thrush Green, certainly has romance elements in it. But I think romances may be a bit more focused than gentle books — more about the involvement of the two main characters, with perhaps a rival thrown in, rather than a community.
Though the kinds of complications that often drive romances do involve two people with different takes on life finding a way to come together.
Dave, my thanks to both you and Ruth for this post. I’ve just finished beta reading a high concept, high stakes book and in comparison, my WiP feels small. But I think the genre you describe is where my natural inclinations lie, so I feel much heartened.
I love the Herriot books. I’d put all LM Montgomery’s books in this category, too.
Also, the above-mentioned Backman’s new book, Anxious People, which I’d highly recommend. The story is about a bank robber, but because of the type and quality of people they take hostage, the book falls squarely in this category. I’d go so far as to say it’s guaranteed to grow the heart of even the grinchiest of Grinches.
Given the response here so far, there is clearly a market for these books. So keep after your WIP.
And thanks for the recommendations. We’re gaining a reading list that will come in handy in the winter months.
Dave, good post, and you did an inviting job in showing the value of these works.
Though this book doesn’t fully fit into the “gentle” category, reading your post made me think of the novel “Stoner,” by John Williams. The book is a measured, layered look at an professor of English who leads what by many standards is an ordinary life, a fellow experiencing frustration in his marriage, career thwartings by colleagues, and some indifference from his students.
But the writing takes the full measure of his stoicism, his quiet resolve, his belief in his teaching, his resilience, his acceptance of his lot—I was very moved by the novel. It is gentle, but deep. Thanks for the post.
Not familiar with Williams, but thanks for the recommendation.
Stoner is one of the best books I’ve ever read! And impossible to describe why it is so good–though you’ve done a good job here, Tom.
Thank you for this, Dave. What a great descriptor, which helps me understand my WiP too.
For another author who seems to fit in the gentle genre, I’m thinking of Helen Simonson’s book, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.
Ruth has read Simonson and agrees with you.
And I’m glad you liked the article.
Thank you for sharing about some of my favorite writers. I like the description of ‘gentle books’ and see so many authors that I’ve read listed in your article . I linked to this article from the Elizabeth Cadell group. Her books have been lovingly reprinted by her family and it’s fun to add in ones I’ve missed reading. Interestingly enough, I picked up a Miss Read book the other day when I’d hurried into the library for my reserved books. Someone had put it on display and I wanted a ‘gentle read.’ I had just finished watching Cranford series as a comfort show and wanted another small village. Jan Karon’s Mitford series also comes to mind and is one that has inspired me to create my own small community in a new series. P.S. your self-editing book is by my desk and one I always recommend in writing classes I teach. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with writers!!
Cranford is another good example, as is most of the work of Mrs. Gaskell. And thanks for sharing with the Cadell group.
My dad was a great fan of this genre. He read almost all the ones you mention, plus Elizabeth Goudge and R. F. Delderfield.
Elizabeth Goudge–I devoured all her books when I was a preteen and teenager. I remember what shelf they were on in our local library! I loved the spirituality and magical realism in her books.
Elizabeth Goudge is one of my all-time favorite writers. Some of her books are for children and some for adults. They have their own special shelf by my desk. Since first finding it when I was 13, I’ve been rereading her adult novel The Scent of Water regularly. It is a touchstone for me.
Yes, I had forgotten about Delderfield. Thanks.
I’d add Marcia Willett to your list of gentle genre writers. A reviewer for Kirkus (not me) described one of her plots as “smothered by excessive niceness.”
Not my cup of tea.
I second the comment that the “pure” gentles are a different animal from the detective-centered ones like Ladies’ Detective Agency and, I would add, the Her Royal Spyness series by Rhys Bowen, etc. I like the detective type, especially in the current time; the others…not so much.
They are not for everyone. And I’m not sure that “smothered in niceness” is necessarily a recommendation. As I say, nice characters are notoriously hard to write authentically. The temptation to slip into cloying sweetness is hard to resist. The joy of these books is that you can feel that actual people are capable of being nice.
I so appreciated your personal story regarding your wife’s tough struggle period, and how kind people were to help her through it. That alone was balm for my soul today. Thank you, Dave.
It’s the town of Ashfield, MA, one of the “hill towns” between the Connecticut River and the Berkshires. It really is a magical place.
Just one quick Ashfield story. Years ago, my wife transcribed the journal of a young farmer, Ebenezer Graves, for 1850/51. A farmer’s journal back then was mostly about management of the farm and consisted mostly of just a couple of sentences on practical matters. (“Lowry day. Father went and got the mare shod, and Addison and I mowed some in the road. Got in one load of green hay.”) But toward the middle, Eb mentioned that his cousin Darwin had disappeared. Not long after, they went to Greenfield to pick up Darwin’s trunks at a tavern. He’d never collected them. Eb says they suspected he’d committed suicide.
A year and a half later, they got a letter from Darwin. From Honolulu. He had gone to Boston and joined the crew of a whaler. The Historical Society also has a copy of the letter, which gives a first-person description of life aboard a nineteenth-century whaler. Darwin was one of only two crewmen who could read and write, for instance.
Anyway, that’s the kind of place Ashfield has always been — a little strange and magical.
These books are my comfort reads, my there-is-goodness-in-the-world reads. In addition to Elizabeth Goudge, mentioned above, I would add Wendell Berry’s Port William stories.
I’m familiar with some of Berry’s poetry, and Ruth is a big fan. He spoke here in Ashfield, once. But I haven’t read his novels. Thanks for the recommendation.