I’m currently reading the final pages of The Child from the Sea by Elizabeth Goudge. It took me ages but I did love it, her turn of phrase was just magical in parts.
It’s a book about Lucy Walter, the mistress or wife of King Charles II (17th century) and it’s renewed my interest in historical fiction. Now I’m wondering: those of you who read historical fiction (HF), how do you deal with the rift between history and fiction while reading? The author can never know the character’s innermost thoughts and while this is fine in other fiction, in HF I can’t help but feel offended on the real character’s behalf, like they’re being misrepresented somehow. And sometimes it takes me right out of the story for that reason.
Similarly, in books about events or people that aren’t very well researched, I need to keep reminding myself that some of the things that are being described are just made up and again, while obviously fine in regular fiction, I feel it can be misleading in HF.
So if these things aren’t stopping you from reading HF: does this just not bother you? Or how do you suspend this nagging feeling?
by Empathomat
17 Comments
A lot of the time I remind myself that we’ve been doing this since Homer at least. Picking historical characters and making up stories about them is part of storytelling! And compared to something like Forever Amber I suspect Lucy got a relatively fair depiction (I haven’t read the book). I also guess I always feel like aristocrats are sort of fair game, not least because they were in their own time – as I understand it there were plenty of scurrilous songs about Queen Elizabeth etc. being sung in taverns back then, celebrities have always been subject to fanfiction of various sorts (which is probably a terrible way to put it).
I actually have a lot more trouble with it, though, as it comes closer and closer to the present day. Especially when it’s ordinary people who suffered some sort of tragedy. I just don’t feel I guess at this distance like you can victimize Empress Josephine with your forgettable paperback, but when you write about ordinary people you should be more responsible?
I remember that key word fiction in historical fiction.
I make notes about my questions. Overall I remind myself that books written in this time are taking a history and changing it some to make it entertaining for our time. If it was too close to facts I’d get bored. Especially with things like women’s freedom. Read a book set in the 1500s and had to remind myself “there was no leaving your husband and getting on the pill.”
If it bothers you that much, you should stick to fiction that doesn’t include historical people.
Personally, I don’t care when the people have been dead for a long time. It’s documentaries and vaguely fictionalized shit about people who are still alive or whose friends and relatives are still alive that bothers me.
As said by others, it’s fiction with a starting point that appeals to some. History books are also good.
Like you, I have a hard time suspending belief.
If it’s a minor thing here and there, I can roll with it. (Since, eh, writers are humans and not everything is going to be perfect.) But if it’s like…a Roman princess waltzing into the forum in her purple velvet ball gown, I throw the book at the wall and give it a nasty review on Amazon for wasting my time.
Now when it’s that the author has a different take on a historical event than I do well…that’s fine. I clearly don’t know how, say, Lucrezia Borgia felt about her marriage in her deepest thoughts. But if it feels like the author just clearly couldn’t research, it’s over for me. OVER.
You’ll find authors that are better at leaning towards historical (Sharon Kay Penman is generally quite good), rather than fiction, or authors that lean into the fiction and let their work become fantasy set in familiar historical settings (Guy Gavriel Kay comes to mind). I tend to use historical fiction as an introduction to a particular subject, and if I find the setting particularly interesting I’ll look up some non-fiction works for additional context.
The teixk is to find an author where you can suspend your disbelief. If an author takes a POV that’s just out to lunch I don’t read them anymore.
I don’t read historical fiction where the protagonist is a historical figure. They can make appearances or be minor characters but not the ones we can hear their thoughts and emotions.
I just don’t care. I love stories, and I don’t consider those things to be very important to the overall story. They’re just set work. Everything may as well be set in Camelot for all that I pay attention to the dressings.
If I’m seeing the gaps a lot, and it’s taking me out of the story, I generally will put the book down. There’s no law that you must finish all books you start.
If I finished the book, I most likely wouldn’t read other work by that author, or other work in the same vein. For example Phillipa Gregory really put me off most books about 16th century British royalty. I’m sure someone out there is really nailing it, but just seeing the name Anne Boleyn in a blurb is a turnoff for me at this point. I might even branch out to any “historical hot royals” fiction, because I got tricked into reading a book about Nefertiti that was similarly obnoxious where historical believability was concerned.
I prefer historical fiction works that are about either fictional characters or people who are attested in the historical record but who we maybe don’t know a ton about, for the reasons you highlight. I think it’s hard to get completely inside the head of a very well known historical figure, and get the history right, and write a compelling narrative, and for it to be marketable to the public (which is unfortunately important).
I’m willing to make a lot of exceptions if it’s clear the author is making deliberate choices for reasons, whether of style/genre (was Florence Nightingale a detective? no. Would I read a book where Florence Nightingale solves a mystery? yes.) or as a commentary on something else. For example I just recently watched Ben Elton and David Mitchell’s historical fiction sitcom about Shakepeare, *Upstart Crow*. I know for absolute certain that it’s riddled with historical inaccuracies, and especially in terms of how Shakespeare is characterized, it’s clear that the choices they made are less to do with what we know about William Shakespeare the historical person, and more a commentary on what the public knows about Shakespeare, how people feel about Shakespeare, and in what ways Shakespeare is relevant today. And that’s OK. It’s clearly not supposed to be a documentary. There are lots of nonfiction works about the historical Shakespeare. I can enjoy a silly comedy where the Bard complains about the commute between London and Stratford.
Well if the fiction is any good then you already are without realising it, you’re in that period of time and historical period.
I’m in the Aubrey-Maturin series and I just imagine the entire thing is made up. Any corollaries to real events are just neat. A good book is a good book.
If I read historical fiction, I read about characters who never existed. Yes they may mention whatever real king was ruling at the time, but the king isn’t the POV character.
It does not bother me in the slightest.
I reconcile it by internalizing that any historical fiction is still fiction. It’s just has a historical theme – it’s not presented as an actual history, nor should it be read that way
I really enjoyed Musashi by Yoshikawa Eiji, but I consider it to be a fictional account of a fictional version of that historical figure, even if however, it is based on what was known about him
Treat it like it’s a “Game of Thrones”-inspired fantasy.
Since most Game of Thrones inspired fantasy is just “Historical Fiction – but without all the research needed” anyway. That way, the author can include all the violence, sexism&Bigotry they want and get away with “But that’s how it was back then!” while simultaneously including anachronisms like potatoes in pre-17th century Europe.