Canon Spaces
The key settings of novels from a growing library of contemporary writing, place by place, with what critics have found in them.
In many great novels of catastrophe, the most memorable and essential elements are settings: the gymnasium in The Handmaid’s Tale, the rubbish caught in the fence at the end of Never Let Me Go, the airport in Station Eleven. Critics return to these places again and again. Canon Spaces collects them one at a time.
Each card says where the setting appears in the book, what it does for the novel, and what critics have argued about it, with a link to the scholarship. You can filter the cards by novel or by the setting key each place demonstrates: one building, a room never entered, a fault line, a vector (a small thing, such as a rumor or a supply truck, that carries the catastrophe from place to place), occupancy (what the catastrophe costs the people who live in it), or the salvage sublime (beauty found among the ruins). You can also search for a kind of place, such as a gym, a field, a museum or a road.
Quotations from the novels are kept to a single short line. Each critic’s argument is explained in full sentences, so a card makes sense without the article in front of you. New novels and settings are added as the research is completed.
