Category: Book Review
The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction by James Alexander Thom
(Cover picture courtesy of Heritage Key.)
While a historian stands firmly planted in the present and looks back into the past, a historical novelist has a more immediate task: to set readers in the midst of bygone events and lead them forward, allowing them to live and feel the wonderment, fear, hope, triumph, and pain as if they were there.
In The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction, best-selling author James Alexander Thom (Follow the River, From Sea to Shining Sea, Sign–Talker) gives you the tools you need to research and create stories born from the past that will move and inspire modern readers. His comprehensive approach includes lessons on how to:
- Find and use historical archives and conduct physical field research
- Re-construct the world of your novel, including people and voices, physical environments, and cultural context
- Achieve verisimilitude in speech, action, setting, and description
- Seamlessly weave historical fact with your own compelling plot ideas
With wit and candor, Thom’s detailed instruction, illuminating personal experience, and invaluable insights culled from discussions with other trusted historical writers will guide you to craft a novel that is true to what was then, when then was now.
Well, to close off History Month here on The Mad Reviewer, I decided to review this non-fiction book on how to write historical fiction. Because why not? I picked this book up on speculation because I’m an amateur writer in my free time and I love to write historical fiction (which ends up being utter crap). So now I can review it from a reviewer’s and a writer’s perspective.
James Alexander Thom is a man that doesn’t fool around when he writes; he never sugarcoats the truth. The truth is, you will have to do you research on somewhere besides the internet, you likely will have to talk to experts and your journey to writing your novel will be a long one that isn’t always rewarding. To help readers understand what writing in the past is like, he uses a wonderful ‘river of time’ analogy that is surprisingly helpful. He gives practical advice on how to find good sources, dialogue (which always seems to be a problem in historical fiction), setting and historical accuracy. In my opinion, he gets a bit too high-and-mighty when it comes to historical accuracy, but that’s to be expected when you’ve been writing historical fiction as long as he has.
The best part of The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction is the real-world examples of the lessons he’s trying to teach prospective writers. One of the best examples he gives is when his wife was writing about her girlhood hero and got frustrated halfway through the research because she wasn’t the perfect hero she thought she would be. But when she researched more, she realized that the woman was flawed, imperfect, but tried to make the best of her situation and do what was right for her people.
That brings up an important point: historical figures likely are not who you thought they were once you start conducting research. For example, when I wrote a short story about Cleopatra, I did a lot of research. At first I despised her for being so stupid as to lose Egypt to the Romans, but when you look at her whole situation, it was amazing she held on as long as she did. That’s why James Alexander Thom emphasizes the importance of research both online and offline.
This is probably the best book I’ve read on writing historical fiction. I’d highly recommend it.
I give this book 4.5/5 stars.
Isabel: Jewel of Castilla by Carolyn Meyer
(Cover picture courtesy of The Flying Librarian’s Hideout.)
Segovia—12th of April 1466
After Mass this morning, I climbed the narrow, winding stone steps to a window high in one of the castle turrets. I often come up here to see what lies beyond my prison. Segovia is surrounded by four thick walls, each with a heavy wooden gate. The aqueduct built by the Romans more than a thousand years ago stretches to the horizon.
Far below the castle, the Eresma River rushes through a narrow gorge. Across the river, flocks of sheep seem to flow like a river themselves. The sheep bleat, their bells tinkle—I know this, even if I cannot hear them. In the fields beyond the walls, little green shoots of wheat are pushing up. How I yearn to be there instead of here.
Queen Isabel of Spain was both a woman to be admired and a woman to be hated. On one hand, she was an incredibly strong female leader for her time who actually chose who she got to marry. On the other hand, she was the very woman that started the horrible, bloody Inquisition that killed thousands of innocents and forced thousands more to flee their homes. Here in Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, Carolyn Meyer has attempted to explain both her strong side as well as her ruthless side that came from a combination of her deep faith and her hellfire-and-brimstone-preaching confessor, who later runs the Inquisition. She certainly succeeds in creating an interesting explanation for Isabel’s brutality in her later life.
Since the story is told from Isabel when she is young, readers aged 10-12 will be able to enjoy this book. It talks of her impending marriage and the civil war currently going on, but never actually touches on much sexuality or violence. I wouldn’t call this a fast-paced novel, but at least it is an interesting one. The dynamics between the characters (Isabel and her brother or Isabel and Queen Juana) are definitely realistic and very believable since the book is supposed to be Isabel writing her innermost thoughts about the people in her lonely life.
I never really knew much about Medieval Spain until I read this novel and I can assure you, I learned quite a lot. Isabel certainly was a complicated woman, but Carolyn Meyer has made her much more accessible to modern readers. Anyone who reads this will be entertained and learn a lot of history at the same time.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
Reincarnation by Suzanne Weyn
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
It starts in prehistory. A young man and a young woman fight over a precious jewel. Their time together is short, but the reverberations are lasting.
Years pass. Generations pass. Centuries pass. But fate keeps drawing them together. Whenever their paths cross, there is that strong attraction. That unexplainable affinity. That feeling that they’ve been together before.
Theirs is a love haunted by history. From Egyptian slavery to Greek society. From Massachusetts witch trials to Civil War battlefields. From Paris in the 1930s to the present day. Circumstances will fight them…but a greater force will reunite them. Because some people are meant for each other—no matter how long it takes.
This is not a book you read for historical accuracy, fast pacing or an unpredictable plot. This is a book you read for guilty pleasure. And as long as you keep that in mind, you’ll enjoy Reincarnation.
Suzanne Weyn’s novel is by no means historically accurate. For example, when they are in ancient Egypt—she a singer named Tetisherti and he a Nubian slave called Taharaq—it made me snort aloud when he called Thebes ‘Luxor’, claiming that was its ancient Egyptian name. Bull crap. Thebes was called Weset. And the idea that Taharaq saw the pyramids when he was coming up from Nubia to Weset is enough to make an Egyptologist cry. And for reasons unknown, Suzanne Weyn calls Abu Simbel ‘Abu Simpel’ and Sekhmet ‘Sempkhet’. I have never, ever seen those names translated in such a way (even in the Wikipedia articles I’ve linked to). Utter nonsense. But again, this is not meant to be historically accurate.
One thing that actually made me enjoy Reincarnation was the characterization. All of the different reincarnations are three dimensional and sympathetic. The attraction between them was very real and the romance actually didn’t feel forced. There were certain traits that stayed with the characters in all of their lifetimes, but their circumstances in those different lifetimes were very different.
The plot is predictable, no doubt. Come on, you know how stories like this are going to end. However, because of the nice writing style and interesting characters, I actually enjoyed Reincarnation as a sort of guilty pleasure. It’s never going to win any literary awards (nor should it) but as long as you take it as what it is—light reading—you’ll enjoy it.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor by Kathryn Lasky
(Cover picture courtesy of Longitude.)
November 10, 1544
I have been living with this constant fear of exile now for two days. So far I have heard nothing. Plans seem to proceed as normal for our move to Ashridge. This palace, too, is becoming quite filthy, what with all the banqueting and people and gambling between Michaelmas Feast and the feast of All Saints’ Day. The roses bloom in our garden with such vigor, but the stench from the courtyard over the wall outside the kitchen is unbearable.
Kat is mumbling something about baths again. The woman is becoming a fanatic. I think we have had half a dozen baths since summer…
Queen Elizabeth I. Pretty much everyone knows she was a good queen and some people know what she accomplished during her reign (like outlawing wife-beating after 10:00pm, according to one of my Bathroom Readers), but not many really know much about her childhood and teenage years. In this installment of the Royal Diaries, Kathryn Lasky presents a Rated G version of Elizabeth’s teenage years for people ages 10-12.
This book really contains no new information for me, but readers who have yet to discover the wonders of historical fiction will love it. Elizabeth is a good main character and a very interesting narrator as she is strong even when she is betrayed and mistreated by her own father, King Henry VIII. We really see the woman she will become later on as she learns skills that were unusual for women of the time, like archery, falconry and languages like Greek and Latin. And we also see how she yearns for her father’s acknowledgement of her, how she treasures every smile or every bit of encouragement he gives her.
The plot isn’t what I would normally call fast-paced, but it is interesting enough. Young readers will sympathize with Elizabeth while learning a great deal about Tudor England. Really, what more could you ask for in historical fiction?
I give this book 3.5/5 stars.
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
(Cover picture courtesy of The Halifax Reader.)
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten-year-old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door-to-door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard—their secret hiding place—and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released.
Sixty years later: Sarah’s story intertwines with that of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist investigating the roundup. In her research, Julia stumbles onto a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own romantic future.
There are two words to describe this book and neither of them are particularly eloquent: meh and predictable. As much as I hate to say it, once you’ve read quite a few books on the Holocaust, they all start sounding the same. Sarah’s Key is an average book, but it is incredibly predictable and there’s nothing in it that really distinguishes it from other Holocaust-related novels. I stand by my first impression: meh.
Using a boring series of cardboard cutouts Tatiana de Rosnay tells the story of Julia, a modern-day American journalist living in Paris, and Sarah, a ten-year-old Jewish girl during the Holocaust. There is nothing exceptional about either of these characters and you don’t actually care about them until halfway into the novel because the first few chapters are basically information dumps that leave the reader slightly confused, especially in Julia’s point of view. I feel that novels dealing with the Holocaust should show some new insight into that horrific period in history or at least raise new questions about it. Sarah’s Key does neither of these.
The plot is slow but fairly consistent, so I’ll give de Rosnay that at least. But much like the characters, it is entirely predictable with nothing new added to it. This is partly because I have read quite a few novels on the subject and because every Holocaust cliché ever written is thrown at you in the course of the novel.
I give this book 2.5/5 stars.