Irresistible Geographical Settings

I am drawn to certain novels because of their geographical settings. I especially cannot resist novels set in India, San Francisco, Manhattan, or England. In the cases of the first two, the reasons are obvious: I grew up in India, and that experience will always be an essential part of who I am, and I have lived in San Francisco most of my adult life. Manhattan settings are appealing for at least two reasons. First, New York is the center of American literature; it is the one place in the United States that almost all serious readers know and can picture. Second, it has a glamor and excitement that most of us are drawn to. I have never lived there, but have visited fairly often, and always feel it is a sort of magic, larger-than-life city. As for England: As I mentioned in an earlier post (on mysteries), I have always been an Anglophile (perhaps not surprising for a person born in Canada and raised in barely postcolonial India). So much of the literature and culture that means the most to me comes from England. Although I have only visited a few times, I feel I know London, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, Brighton, the English countryside, the English seaside, the English cliffs...I have read about them so very often in the novels I love. They are the settings portrayed so vividly by Austen, the Brontes, Eliot, Dickens, Hardy, Mitford, Pym, Thirkell, and so many more English authors. These places will always be part of my mental and emotional geography. These are the settings that draw me in; I am sure all readers have their own such lists...