Oates’s Black Water tracks a Fourth of July picnic as it leads to the seduction of Elizabeth Anne Kelleher, a woman half age, by an unnamed Senator. “A photograph of the Senator and Kelly presents a formally posed group, but what cannot be seen is The Senator’s...
Vertiel’s picnic is a lovers’ tryst in a finca above Marbella, a town on the Costa Brava. Robert Masters and Carmen Fernandez, a flamenco dancer, are having a farewell picnic because she is leaving for Madrid to dance with an important company. She packs a...
Adam Dalgliesh takes a break during the murder investigation for a picnic. He needs the time to think, and so he picnics. Dalgliesh is utterly content, a moment of unusual peace in an otherwise hectic life. An hour south of Salisbury near Lulworth Cove, he stops....
Among ruined picnics, Kingsolver’s Congo picnic ranks high. It’s a highlight of misadventure in The Poisonwood Wood Bible, a novel the name of which is derived from a misunderstanding of the local language. Reverend Nathan Price says, “Tata Jesus is...
Vargas Llosa imagines Lima as a city of extremes. It’s beautiful if you “concentrate on the landscape and the birds, but it’s “ugly if you notice the piles of garbage festering as it “piles up on the outer edge of the Malecón and spills...
McEwan’s menu for Joe Rose and Clarissa Mellon’s picnic is black olives, mixed salad, mozzarella, focaccia, and white wine, specifically Daumas Gassac, perhaps the author’s favorite. Roger Michel’s adaption Enduring Love (2004) substitutes...
Crace’s combination of an awful picnic and murder is not your average picnic. But Being Dead’s readers often find it so appealing that they search for Baritone Bay, where the central characters are murdered. There is no telling where they search because it...
Pilcher’s Winter Solstice is about a Christmas picnic at which a pair of 60-somethings unexpectedly find love when it’s not expected. It’s heartwarming and sudsy! After much tribulation, Elfrida Phipps and Oscar Blundell, and friends gather at a...
An intimate picnic in The Blind Assassin is a lover’s picnic on the grass that might fleetingly Genesis but more directly alludes to Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát “XI.” Iris Chase has returned from her wedding trip with Richard and is unhappy. By...
After much tribulation, Elfirida Phipps Oscar Blundell and friends gathered at a Christmas Eve picnic for the start of a happy future. The timing purposefully combines the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and the winter solstice that is the beginning of the...
