I don’t really like much historical fiction. Basically unless we go pre-1800, there’s already loads of brilliant novels written by people who were actually walking those streets on those exact days. I adore the highly contemporary fiction of Dickens, Eliot, Nevil Shute, Jackie Collins. I love the little asides in Sherlock Holmes where Watson tosses aside, eg, ‘we walked from Baker Street to Cheapside’ (which would be considered something of an outing these days but of course was par for the course back then). Whereas I have read no fewer than FOUR world war two- set novels where the protagonists are involved in the Criterion Piccadilly bomb.
I hate the inability of even the best historical novelists to avoid pointing things out. People are always putting their fucking hats on and off- BECAUSE THEY ALL WEAR HATS- or noticeably smoking cigarettes. It’s like someone in the future writing about us and saying, ‘they constantly pulled their phone in and out of their bag. Even though it was called a phone they made hardly any calls on it.”
Also I really hate people talking cod- historical, with lines all full of GREAT IMPORT my liege. It makes me itchy. In the interests of balance, my dad, an Edward Gibbon autodidact hates anything where people aren’t talking cod-historical as he thinks it isn’t proper. Throughout our lives I am quite proud that this is the worst fight we have ever had. Although there is one brewing about Department Q* that threatens to leave everyone bleeding out on the carpet, but I digress.
There are tremendous world war two set novels of course- I liked Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave and never felt it quite got the audience it deserved, and Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein is tremendous, thanks Jill Mansell, who presses it on everyone.
But they are not quite as good as Fair Stood the Wind for France by H.E. Bates, which was written in 1942, before anyone even knew how it would end, or The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson, one of my favourite authors of all time.
Anyway I am breaking my general rule for something INCREDIBLY GREAT which I think I am forgiven for as it is set in the period about forty years following the invention of the printing press where you had Morte d’Arthur, the bible and… well, that was pretty much it so. But this is a proper OMG SO GOOD book that ruins everything you try and read afterwards because it is not as good and poor old following books just get hurled aside.
It is called the Pretender by Jo Harkin and is about a young boy posing as some duke for an uprising on Henry VII. It’s based on real history but that bit really doesn’t matter, I totally lost track of who was who’s uncle, and it didn’t matter a whit. Basically it starts out as a hilarious Plantagenet Adrian Mole- his friend who wants to be king so he can get an automaton giraffe is completely hilarious- then deepens into, well, I won’t say. Not a bit, not to even indicate one way or another. But I will say I was overbrushing my teeth, a habit my dentist despairs of, because I couldn’t stop reading it. I loved it like a friend and can offer no higher praise.
Speaking of praise, I am on planes trains and automobiles at the moment, but I’m not working on anything (hence my ingrained need to ‘just keep typing’) which is usually how I pass that grey time, so I am sinking into general joy with Ben MacIntyre on audio, whilst my fingers busy themselves with Balatro, (an addiction that has taken hold on me so voraciously I am now delighted I have never tried heroin).
GOD Ben is so good. Most writers aren’t that fantastic at reading their own books but he really really is and I love his ability to pull out the most interesting features of any given set of circumstances. All his men- and they’re all men- with their crazy names and mad feats of derring do. I came straight off Colditz, bounced straight into the astonishing Spy Amongst Friends, and am now well into Operation Mincemeat and they are all an unrelenting good time. I see Ben from time to time at author events and it’s embarrassing, like we have a bizarrely intimate relationship of me listening to him lisping closely and eruditely in my ear and him NOT KNOWING ME AT ALL - but he is just so good at what he does.
Embarrassing author story of the week:
Moderator at an onstage interview: So, do you treat writing as a job?
Me: that blinky winky meme for about twenty minutes as I tried to work out how to answer it without making anyone feel bad.
Love,
Jen xxx
*Me: pro