If You Like….
We have a special treat for If You Like today: a guest post from historical novelist Beverly Swerling.
Beverly is the author of a trio of books set in my own beloved New York (City of Dreams
So, without any further ado, Beverly Swerling:
IF YOU LIKE HISTORICAL FICTION DOES IT HAVE TO BE EUROPEAN KINGS AND QUEENS?
In modern publishing few things are more fraught than deciding what kind of a book a book is… Truly. Genre—what the industry calls BISAC codes—is a make-or-break decision. The only thing that is maybe more laden with angst in the months before publication is the title.
We got started down this particular yellow-brick-road back in ye olde 1970s when the chain bookstores began to exercise growing power. Their business model did not allow for knowledgeable salespeople who could talk to customers about books the salespeople had actually read. That’s what the trade calls hand-selling, and it was not a crazy idea back when bookstores looked to serve particular segments of the reading public, not stock everything in print.
The chains, however, spent money on real estate rather than staff. They created super stores in malls, and hired entry-level employees to stock their miles of shelves. What the people unpacking the boxes needed was a simple way to know where a book belonged. They were instructed to go by what genre was written on the spine. That requirement changed the nature of publishing. We all became enslaved to the overriding importance of assigned categories, one of which was—and still is—historical fiction.
Except that some books are really hard to categorize. And many, a great many, fit into so many “categories” it’s impossible to know which is the most important.
Pretend you and I are strolling the bookstore aisles. I want to suggest something wonderful for you to read. Do you like historical fiction, I might ask.
“No, never! All those kings and queens…”
“Well,” I might say, “did you like Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller
These stories have in common that they center around a woman, who is confronting her present (and finding it wanting, else there would be no story) and discovering that the roots of her dilemma are lodged in some event in the past. One that involved a family member.
Picoult’s hallmark is to examine a fraught moral issue from a multiplicity of sides. In The Storyteller
In Willig’s The Ashford Affair
So are these novels historical fiction? Depends on whom you ask, but I can tell you for sure that the skills required to make a bygone era come to vivid life on the page are evident in abundance in both books.
I am particularly aware of all this because just now I’m bringing out a series of e-book Encore Editions of some of my own earlier novels. The first is Mollie Pride
We meet Mollie in 1926 when she’s a little kid in her family’s vaudeville act. She gets into early radio, and the great challenge of her life will be reporting from London during WWII at the height of the blitz, while her marriage falls apart, and terror and treason stalk her every word. Juffie Kane
Not a king or a queen in sight, but in my view, historical fiction every one.
Thanks so much for that thought-provoking post, Beverly!
Now that you’ve got me thinking about it, so many of my favorite books fall into that amorphous zone of “is it historical fiction or isn’t it?” (or, as I like to refer to my own books, genre stew), like Anya Seton’s Green Darkness
Perhaps we need a time slip category in the bookstore?
What are your favorite “is it historical fiction or isn’t it?” books?
Those “is it historical fiction or isn’t it?” books are kind of my favorite!!!
There are yours, Lauren, but I fell in love with those books with Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth and Neville’s The Eight.
Then, there is Overseas, that I loved so much… and Kate Morton’s books…
I’m always looking for new books like that! I’m pretty sure I’m going to write down many titles with this If you like!
C.J. Ware’s “Cottage by the Sea,” which goes back and forth from modern time to (17th)? Century Cornwall. Barbara Michaels “Patriot Dreams,” which is another back and forth (1970’s to Revolutionary War). Erin Morgensterns “The Night Circus.” It really defies categorization. “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. How far back does it have to go to be considered “historical?”
Jane Austen’s work was contemporary fiction at the time, as was Dickens and several others. Besides the mind-numbing category of “Classic”, would they fit into historical now ? I am thinking also of The Last of the Mohicans, which has romance and history….esp that movie version.
Yes historical fiction is a tricky genre.
I always think there should be separate term for people writing historicals and people writing contemporaries that turn historical.
for example, Jane Austen’s works are often consider historical even though she was writing them set in the present time she was living (or close enough). For my two cents, there should be a separate term for Jane Austen’s work who wrote in the present that is history than for someone like Lauren who about the past that is long gone when she writes.
Also modern day history can still be history. I really enjoyed Danielle Steele’s Message from Nam, about the Vietnam War. I was born a decade and a half atleast) from Vietnam and it seems like history to me.
I have a friend who likes Edward Rufferfurd, who writes long histories starting a one end and finishing in another. Her favorite is New York.
Also Kate Morton and Outlander?
I really enjoyed this post.
Good grief! Pick a favorite? How?? There are so many good historical writers and their series, I would be all day narrowing the field. And to actually decide how historical it is…that’s harder still. Almost anything set prior to, say the 60’s, would qualify. For strict history – yes, with the Kings and Queens, etc. – I’d vote for Sharon Penman. But if you come forward in time, there’s Imogen Robertson, Lauren (of course), Tracy Grant, C S Harris…then even further forward into mid-1800 or later for Deanna Raybourn, Tasha Alexander…etc. There are so many authors now writing about early to mid 20th century – Kate Morton is a great example. (Downton Abbey probably triggered a new interest in that time frame.) In other words, almost all work that is not strictly contemporary, could be considered historical. And most people would read it without even thinking about the time frame its’ set in. A good tale is a good tale, no matter!! Good characters(Miss Gwen?) and an enticing plot are all anyone needs, I think.
Historical fiction is my favorite genre, and yes, it has a wide range. As a reading teacher, we identify historical fiction as anything set in a specific time period of history with fictional characters/plot – may have true historic characters too, but the key is the time period and its authenticity. There are so many authors that I’ve read, and have learned so much about history through their research. I agree with Lynne that Sharon Kay Penman is a master, from her English/Welsh trilogy: Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow, and The Reckoning (beginning in the late 1100’s – 1271) to her medieval mysteries starring Justin de Quincy as The Queen’s Man (Eleanor of Aquitane is the queen)and 3 more mysteries. Jennifer Donnelly has a wonderful trilogy set in East London 1888 (The Tea Rose)then followed by The Winter Rose which spends some time in Kenya, and then The Wild Rose beginning in London 1914, but traveling to the desert with T E Lawrence (yes, of Arabia). I have enjoyed Tracy Chevalier – many eras, but love The Virgin Blue which travels from modern day to 16th century Paris (ancestor connection). Anne Fortier takes readers back in time to Italy in Juliet with her modern heroine having an ancestral connection to Shakespeare’s Juliet. S J Parris has a trilogy (soon to add 4th)that begins in England 1583 (Heresy) with its main character true life monk Giordano Bruno who has escaped the persecution of the Catholic church in Italy – mysteries surrounding Queen Elizabeth, Protestant Catholic intrigue/politics – not for the faint of heart. There are so many more authors to mention – Syrie James, Julie Klassen, Darci Hannah, Titania Hardie, but I have taken too much space already.