drawing a line for historical fiction
Ask anyone resident in Oxbridge about something called the X5 and you’ll get two things in rapid succession: a shudder and an anecdote. The X5 is a bus service, the only direct means of conveyance (failing a car or a coach and pair) between Oxford and Cambridge, and follows what’s known as the Misery Route, running through countless roundabouts and stopping in such cities as Bedford and Milton Keynes where, at 6:00pm, if you ask where you can buy a sandwich, the response you’ll get is, ‘What, at this time of night?’
The train is more comfortable, but requires the following (if you’re going from Cambridge to Oxford): a train from Cambridge to London King’s Cross, a tube ride to Liverpool Street station, and another hour’s train to Oxford. A return trip on the X5 is £15; the train will run you closer to £60.
All of this is in aid of saying this: I was in Oxford a month ago for a doctoral workshop. I had gotten there on the X5.
There is a Borders not far from the coach station, and I thought I’d indulge myself with a book for the perilous return journey, so in I went. Sometimes I buy a book, sometimes an audiobook; sometimes I just go into bookshops to survey the landscape. I usually traverse the entire shop some three or four times before I’ve taken everything in and can make a decision, if I make a decision at all.
One reason I take so bloody long in bookshops is my shallow attention span, coupled with the general character flaw of paralytic indecision. The other reason is that about half the time, I’m looking for good historical fiction, and it’s fucking impossible to find in any shop bigger than the palm of my hand.
A friend who used to work at Chapters-Indigo, a major bookshop chain in Canada, told me that historical fiction doesn’t have its own section in bookshops because there is no real consensus on what constitutes ‘historical’ fiction - how far back can you go? Should a novel, written now and set during the Vietnam War, be considered ‘historical’?
(Yes, if.)
Now, I’ve had to have a crash education in publishing, and I confess I know very little of what there is to know. But I’ve gotten this far in life without putting the palm of my hand on a hot element or trying to lick a flagpole in subzero weather, so I credit myself with some minimal measure of common sense, and it strikes me that it would behoove authors, the consuming public, publishing houses and major bookshop chains for said presses and chains to agree on a few simple definitions.
Historical fiction is, very simply, this: a story set before the author’s lifetime. Novels don’t become ‘historical’ novels just because they get old - Jane Eyre is not historical. The Picture of Dorian Gray is not historical. Nevertheless, A Tale of Two Cities is historical, as is Barnaby Rudge - both were set (during the French Revolution and the Gordon Riots, respectively) before Charles Dickens’s lifetime. A simple rule, yes? So a novel set during the Vietnam War could legitimately be called ‘historical’. If.
See, this is what bothers me. Agents invite queries from authors of historical fiction, a solid category of fiction. Agents then pitch to editors who invite pitches for historical fiction, still a solid category. A historical novel is sold because it meets a given standard and sparks interest or pleasure in an editor at a press and his or her superiors. Throughout this entire process - writing the novel, the query process, the pitching process, and the acquisitions process - the work itself remains a work of historical fiction.
The happy ending for this novel is that it goes into bookshops and gets lost.
Philippa Gregory has done historical fiction an enormous service by sparking renewed interest in the genre with her novels. Sarah Waters and Hilary Mantel, both nominees (and Mantel the winner) on the Booker shortlist this year, have performed similar feats. Historical fiction is a big genre right now. But what if the reader’s interest is sparked and he or she wants to read something else? Where to turn? People who like historical fiction are no different from people who like crime fiction or science fiction or fantasy fiction (all understood categories in bookshops), and yet they have to sift through massive FICTION sections in bookshops to find something that might maintain this interest. The end result is that it’s very difficult to break out in historical fiction, because people know to look for Gregory under G, but can’t browse for anyone else without getting lost.
The reason I started this post with a pointless anecdote about Oxford is that in the Borders I browsed through (ultimately buying nothing), there was a section taking up half of one wall called TEEN VAMPIRE NOVELS. I can tell you I just about lost my shit. I am friends with people who write books which will end up on that shelf; I respect them and like their writing. I also understand that ‘teen vampire novel’ is a category not requiring a lot of deduction or ingenuity to define. But seriously: historical fiction doesn’t require that much more ingenuity. If an author and a press together decide to market a book as historical fiction, doesn’t it just pants everyone involved if the book can’t easily be found by its target audience once it’s on sale?
The best readers of historical fiction can do at the moment is share their finds: my favourites, for the record, include Suzannah Dunn, Hilary Mantel, and Patricia Finney. Historical fiction isn’t by any stretch all I read, but when I want to read it, I’d like to know where I can find it.
And so ends my shabbos rant. Till next time, &c &c.
