Asking the Wrong Questions

We all know that history is written by the victors, but the matter doesn't end there.  History is also written by the powerful, the educated, the privileged.  By people who toe--and sometimes the ones who shape--the party line.  People of the wrong gender, race, class, or nationality not only don't get to write history, they often don't even get to appear in it.  It's one of the tasks of historians to address the gaps and deficits in the official record, but this is also where historical fiction can come in, giving a voice to those who were denied it at the time.  In the last few weeks I've consumed two different works that take on the same historical period with this goal in mind, but from two different perspectives.  The BBC's ten-part miniseries The White Queen tells the story of the Wars of the Roses by stressing the role of women within them, highlighting the fact that in a dispute in which marriage and succession played such an important role, women'...

Here's a recommendation: even if you've already read it, take the time to reread Wolf Hall before reading Bring Up the Bodies .  This is less in order to be reminded of details from the first volume of Hilary Mantel's projected trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell--Mantel is actually quite good about catching up readers who haven't read Wolf Hall or read it a while ago, and anyway the broad strokes of the history it describes are well known--but because such a reading actually shows both books in the best light.  Wolf Hall is a much easier novel to appreciate when freed of the hype that surrounded its Booker nomination and victory in 2009, and even more than that, when approached as the first volume in a trilogy rather than a complete novel, and Bring Up the Bodies feels like a more complete, more polished work when compared to its accomplished but undeniably baggy and overlong predecessor.  This is, of course, largely down to subject matter and scope-- Wolf Ha...

In my post about The Children's Book , I suggested that historical fiction might be broadly defined as fiction that takes place in a time and setting not directly experienced by its author.  Within that definition one can distinguish between different kind of historical novels according to how close they come to recorded history, to the people and events in the history books.  A historical novel can center entirely or for the most part around fictional people living ordinary (for their time) lives in the past ( The Little Stranger , Sacred Hunger , Possession ).  Or it can describe fictional people being caught up in momentous events ( Octavian Nothing , Year of Wonders , The Children's Book ).  Or it can place fictional characters at the epicenter of the great changes of their time, sometimes rubbing shoulders with historical figures, sometimes taking their place (Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles , The Baroque Cycle ).  Or it can dispense with fictional cha...

Writing in The New Scientist several weeks ago, Kim Stanley Robinson caused a bit of a stir when he argued that the Booker juries were ignoring the best and most vibrant British literature by neglecting science fiction. These juries, Robinson wrote, "judge in ignorance and give their awards to what usually turn out to be historical novels." Sometimes these are fine historical novels, written by tremendous writers; I particularly like Roddy Doyle, John Banville, Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh, and my favorite was Penelope Fitzgerald. But working, like all of us, in the rain shadow of the great modernists, they tend to do the same things the modernists did in smaller ways. A good new novel about the first world war, for instance, is still not going to tell us more than Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford. More importantly, these novels are not about now in the way science fiction is. There followed several discussions about the relative merits of literary and science fictio...

Sarah Waters and I have had our ups and downs, mostly due to the fact that I read her first three novels in reverse order of their publication--from the twisty, superb Fingersmith , through the intense but punishing Affinity , to the borderline unreadable Tipping the Velvet . However unfairly--since, after all, Waters had been improving as a writer--I found myself reluctant to go any further with her, and gave her fourth novel, The Night Watch , a pass. Positive responses to it, as well as the slow healing of the wounds left by Tipping the Velvet , persuaded me to make a stab at her latest effort, The Little Stranger , and I'm glad I did. Fingersmith remains my favorite of Waters's novels, and I have serious problems with Stranger , but there's no denying that it is both absorbing and intense--shockingly so, given the ordinariness of its setting and the matter-of-fact way in which its events are reported. Even more importantly, it demonstrates--as the first three novel...

"This war touches people that your congress holds in the same contempt that King George reserves for the people of Boston. I mean women, and yes slaves too, for that matter. Though I'm sure you wish I would not mention that subject, as it might upset your southern friends." Abigail Adams, John Adams , "Independence" In Matt Cheney's review-slash-meditation on the second and concluding volume in M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Story of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation , he expresses a sentiment that I've come back to several times in the last few months: the difficulty and trepidation with which a reader returns to an author whose previous work has astonished and delighted them. "Merely replicating the experience is not enough. Once a mind has been blown, it develops tough scar tissue, and a larger force is necessary next time." And, Cheney is sad to conclude, the second Octavian Nothing volume, The Kingdom on the Waves , doesn...