A picnic in the woods is a novelty for Billy Bathgate, a fifteen-year-old New York City boy who has never walked on anything but pavement. So, when Drew Preston, a worldly woman of twenty-one, says,” Let’s go for a picnic….” Billy is flummoxed. He...
Oscar Hijuelos’s Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989) is about Cuban immigrants in the 1950s. Music and food sometimes blend, and at a hotel club, there are platters of roast suckling pig, rice and beans, and a chocolate-éclair cake drenched in honey. But for a...
Animal Dreams describes a celebration of All Souls’ Day in Grace, Arizona. The cemetery is on a hill above the town. Once there, the graves are cleaned and decorated, after which the family enjoys a picnic. The protagonist Codi says, “We were a harvester-ant clan...
The Midsummer’s Day picnic is ruined when flying ants fall into the strawberries, cucumber sandwiches, and silver cream jugs. Everyone runs for cover. Belying the humor, the dying ants in e cream jugs and teacups, is Byatt’s metaphor contrasting the...
Waller’s sudsy Bridges of Madison County does not include a picnic. But Clint Eastwood’s film does. Francesca (Meryl Streep) and Kincaid (Clint Eastwood) enjoy a romantic picnic by Roseman Bridge. Featured Image: The bridge is in the background. Clint Eastwood. See...
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...
