Searching for Books in Which No Bad Things Happen – tor.com

A friend was asking the other day for books in which no bad things happen, because sometimes you want your reading to be all upbeat. But yet, there arent many books where nothing bad happens. Myself, when I want comfort reading, Ill settle for everything all right at the end which leaves me a much wider field. Nothing bad at all is really hard. I mean, you have to have plot, which means conflict, or at least things happening, and once you have obstacles to defeat theres almost certain to be something bad.

Keep reading, because I do actually think of some.

Childrens books, suggests one friend.

Ha ha, no. Apart from the fact that some of the scariest things Ive ever read have been childrens booksCatherine Storrs Marianne Dreams and William Sleators Interstellar Pig for exampleI realised some time ago that I am never going to be able to read Louise Fitzhughs Harriet the Spy without crying. I mean I am never going to be grown up enough to get over it, there is no mature state in which I am still me where I will be able to read Ole Gollys letter without bawling. Gary Schmidt, a childrens writer I discovered recently, is absolutely wonderful, but terrible, terrible things happen in his books, and its not even reliably all right at the end. Hes the person who made me think you have to earn your unhappy endings just as much as your happy ones. And William Alexanderagain, terrific writer, terrible things happen.

There are some childrens books that almost qualify. One of my comfort reads is Arthur Ransome. He wrote a long series of books about kids messing about in sailboats on lakes in England in the 1930s, and nothing actually bad happensexcept theres a fog on the hills once, and theres the time when the boat sinks in Swallowdale and John is so humiliated, and there is the scary bit where they get swept out to sea in We Didnt Mean To Go To Sea. (And its the 1930s, so their father in the Navy is going to be in WWII, and every adult in the books is complicit in appeasement and there are terrible things happening in Germany already) But just on the surface, thinking about that little sailboat sinking, it makes me think you have to have bad things to overcome or you have no story.

So how about picture books for tiny kids?

Nope. In Martin Waddell and Barbara Firths Cant You Sleep, Little Bear? the Little Bear cant go to sleep and the Big Bear consequently cant settle down and read his book, and all this is because Little Bear is afraid of the dark. Being scared of the dark is a bad thing, even if it gets happily fixed by the end of the story. In Penny Dales The Elephant Tree the elephant gets sadder and sadder on his quest to find his tree, until the children make a tree for him and make him happy. Dont even think about Dr. Seuss and the terrible anxiety of having your house turned upside down by the Cat in the Hat or being forced to eat icky things by Sam-I-Am. (I dont believe he actually liked them. I used to lie like that all the time when forced to eat things as a kid.) Then theres Raymond Briggs The Snowman, which confronts you with mortality and the death of friends, thank you very much no. When I think of the picture books that are actually fun to read, they all have conflict and bad things. They certainly come into my category of all OK in the end, but they definitely have bad things.

Incidentally, apart from the fact theyd be very boring stories, I think kids need those bad things to learn from, and sometimes those awful moments are the most vivid and memorabletheres a moment in Susan Coopers The Grey King which will be with me always, and its a bad moment.

But there are some stories that qualify, I think.

Romance. Pretty much all genre romance is everything is OK at the end but bad things happen in the meantime. But some Georgette Heyer has plots that work because bad things seem about to happen and are avertedthis is different from everything being all right in the end, the bad things never occur, they are no more than threats that pass over safely. Cotillion does this. Two people are separately rescued by the heroine from iffy situations that could potentially become terrible, but they dont. I think this counts. (Its funny too.) That makes me think of Jane Austens Northanger Abbey in which the worst thing that happens is somebody exaggerates and somebody else has to go home alone on a stagecoachthats really not very bad. Right up there with the bear who cant go to sleep.

Then theres Good King Wenceslas. Somebody notices an injustice and sets out to redress it and succeeds. (OK, the page gets cold, but that also gets instantly fixed.) Zenna Hendersons Love Every Third Stir is a version of this, though what the story is about is discovering the magic. Im sure there are also old clunky SF versions of this. I want to say Clarkes Fountains of Paradise. But I think there are others: person invents thing, everything is solved. Mostly more sophisticated versions of this are it creates new problems.

Utopiasomebody visits utopia and it really is. So Mores Utopia and Bacon, and Callenbachs Ecotopia and other early naive utopias of this nature. Which makes me think about Kim Stanley Robinsons Pacific Edge but the way that book works without being naive is to have the actual story be sadthe softball team loses, the boy doesnt get the girl, the old man dies in a storm. The worst thing that happens is gentle regret, but thats bad too. But check out older utopias.

And now, my one actual real solid in-genre example of a book where nothing bad happens!

Phyllis Ann Karrs At Amberleaf Fair is about a far future where people have evolved to be nicer, and theres a fair, and a woodcarver who can make toys come to life, and there is sex and love and nothing bad happens and everything is all right. Its gentle and delightful and I genuinely really like this odd sweet little book, and unless Im forgetting something I dont think anything bad happens at all.

If you have any suggestions please add them in commentstheres at least one person actively looking for them.

Originally published in March 2020.

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. Shes published two collections of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections, a short story collection and thirteen novels, including the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Among Others. Her fourteenth novel, Lent, was published by Tor in May 2019. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here irregularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal. She plans to live to be 99 and write a book every year.

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Searching for Books in Which No Bad Things Happen - tor.com