Post books that perfectly capture the geography and sense of

Or what?

>tfw London commuter belt
Uh... something by Ballard, maybe. Although I can't think of any books set in the cultural desert that surrounds London.

>>9043707
Ever read Unlimited Dream Company bro?

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>New England

Literally my diary, desu

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"A Pair of Pruning Shears" by Alden Nowlan

The trees around this house are killing one
another. This summer, the maple and the fir
suck the life from the spruce, having first
shut it off from the rain and then walled in its roots
with theirs, so that at last it died in a desert
five feet in diameter. The maple still
bears wounds from that struggle, a withered limb
for instance, and now the fir has turned against
its old ally and bars it from the sun,
while, a little distance away, the young birches
gnaw away at the beech and will bring her down
unless she succeeds in smothering them first;
and, afterwards, the winners will go at it --
"You ought to have pruned them," a neighbour says,
who knows about such matters. "It's the same
with everything," he tells me. "Even rhubarb.
Look at that fine patch you inherited from the former tennants, gone to weed because
you didn't take a knife to it. It needed
to be cut back almost to the root last season.
Now it's too late." So I start with the rose-bushes that were so elegant when we moved here but now have sprouted hideous tentacles, each of them
black and bare except for a few red flowers
at the tip where, if this were a different kind
of horror story, there would be a mouth.
I take a knife, a saw, a pair of shears,
waiting until it's almost dark because,
being awkward at such tasks, I'd rather not
be watched, and drinking a quick double gin
because I'm loath to destroy anything,
never knowing where it might lead or end;
I take a knife, a saw, a pair of shears,
and soon I'm breathing hard and there is sweat
in my eyes and my heart is saying no, no, no,
reminding me that this body of mine is
a rickety Empire, in no shape for war,
Byzantium in 1450, Turkey
in 1914; I saw off the tentacles
and scissor at the live, green undergrowth,
the thorns making me think of Gulliver
and the Lilliputian archers; there is blood
on my hands and forearms when I stop; the walk
is buried in debris, with a few spots
of red on the black and green: they're the flowers
that ought to have been mouths; because of them,
it is as if the bushes had bled too.

I'm still sitting when the stars appear,
another drink beside me on the steps,
my heart rested now saying yes, no, yes,
but in a little while I'll go inside
to wait for spring. How good it would be then
to come out and look down at the black stumps
of the rose-bushes, stumps like rotten molars, and see there in the grass a different shade
of green, one touched with gold, new growth,
the fresh stalks as supple as the partner in
a boy's lascivious dream, and glorious,
glorious and absurd, in the way of all
such living things that reach up to the sun
to touch it, though they've risen only scant
inches above the earth -- an argument,
perhaps, although admittedly a weak one, against the rumours, widespread and persuasive,
of Death's total, unconditional victory.

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>>9043900
or, tl;dr

"St. John River" by Alden Nowlan

The coulour of a bayonet this river
that glitters blue and solid on the page
in tourist folders, yet some thirty towns
use it as a latrine, the sewage
seeping back to their wells, and farmers maddened
by debt or queer religions winter down
under the ice, the river bottom strewn with heaps of decomposing bark torn loose
from pulpwood driven south, its acid juice
killing the salmon. August, when the stink
of the corrupted water floats like gas along these streets, what most astonishes is that the pictures haven't lied, the real
river is beautiful, and as blue as steel.

>>9043367
Gilead has some pretty apt descriptions of Iowa.

>>9043707
Most British literature is written about the London commuter belt

Cement Garden is one that comes to mind straight away.

The Pale King is set in my hometown