sarah eve kelly

I’m coming to you live from Strathmore Court SW19 today, where I have finally gotten things More or Less the Way I Want Them. This involved a lot of standing blankly in rooms, fingers in my mouth; a few orders from Amazon and Argos; and my husband leaving the country. (I love him so much, you know I do. But I and my table- and picture-arranging muse must be alone to work at best capacity.)

Now I have my own study (which is also a guest bedroom). Behind my monitor is blank, parchment-coloured wall. Out a window to my left is a view eerily not unlike looking north across the North Saskatchewan River. Now: for some real work.

I was sad to leave Cambridge. It never quite felt like home, but I think things would have gone worse for me if it had, because Mike and I could never live in a cloister. All the same it’s a beautiful place with some remarkable, remarkable people in it. I thought being back in London would make me feel closer to the centre of the universe, but so far I only feel closer to the Co-op, which is the grocery store one street up from us.

We lived in Wimbledon Park before, though, and there’s a reason we came back. No one knows about this little pocket of south west London (sshhhh, don’t tell). We have the most wonderful neighbours, and I’m delighted to be back with old friends. Finally, this flat is an amazing little splash of real estate. I’ve never seen a place so logically and beautifully laid out. There is double glazing, my friends. There is a kitchen that three - count ‘em - people can fit into. Comfortably. And there is my study, from whence great things will come. In just a minute here.

(A brief explanatory note: my studies at Cambridge are my no means finished. I still have two yawning, gaping years left. I have relocated to London because all, all, all - almost all - of my research is here. The archives and libraries and gravesites I need to visit, the language courses - just about everything. It’s better to be here. It’s all about the research. I’m still a student. They didn’t, you know, kick me out.)

And now that my long hiatus has been so deftly explained (see? see how I did it?), onto today’s real topic: the best kind of historical fiction.

Readers, I have a confession. It is something I realised only very recently, with the acquisition of a new book. A trend in my reading likes and dislikes. It is this.

My favourite historical fiction comes from authors who don’t normally write it.

I put off reading Hilary Mantel’s WOLF HALL for months. Months! For two reasons. First, it’s about Thomas Cromwell, possibly my favourite male historical figure, one of the most intriguing personalities in the already-intriguing landscape of English history. Cromwell is one of the principal characters - lovingly rendered - in THE FIDELITY TRIAL. I didn’t want another novel about Cromwell to mess with my mojo - this is a sound instinct, yes? You don’t read at your genre’s ground zero when you’re trying to write in your own voice.

Second, I knew it would be really, really good, because Hilary Mantel is really, really good. And there are times, you know, when you just want to enjoy a good book, instead of torturing yourself with it. This was never going to be the kind of book I could read idly or experience on one level alone. The better it was, I knew, the more I would suffer.

It stood like a red brick rescued from Hampton Court Palace in the bookshops, the first thing I saw when I walked into one. It’s a massive book, a bright book, not the kind of thing you can ignore in perpetuity. Heavy as a brick, too. Sometimes I would pick it up, flip it to a random page, and its heft was a brick’s heft. A big book.

And then it got shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Books on Booker shortlists cross continents, get read, become known, and it was at this moment that I thought: I must be strong, I must know what she’s said and how she’s said it.

Also I was dying to read it.

I’m almost finished. I’ve been slow with it because it’s the kind of book that begs to be read aloud, and this is what I’ve done, almost all 600-odd pages of it. And we live on the third floor now and WOLF HALL is so good that I’ve thought earnestly several times about hurling myself off the railing beyond our front door.

Here is someone who researched and researched. Who says, of accuracy in historical fiction, that you should never commit anything to the page that is wrong. (I say you should never commit anything that’s implausible, but that’s because I, a Cambridge postgraduate, actually have lower standards for this than Mantel, who has honed the voice of a luminary, and from whom I might learn great things). An historical novelist fills the spaces of what is known, provides the context, peers into people’s heads. And in this way, she has brought a human being to the page. She has perfected the historical novelist’s task of resurrection. Thomas Cromwell, a man I’ve gotten to know so well in the last ten years of my life, breathes through moveable type.

And here’s the kicker, here’s the thing that makes me suffer: she doesn’t always write historical fiction.

OK, that’s not the only thing that makes me suffer. Really, seriously good books always make me suffer a little. But here’s a good, quick story: the first novel Mantel wrote is called A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, a novel set during the French Revolution. The first novel she wrote, yes, but not the first one she published. It had to wait until 1993, when her career was a decade old. In the meantime, she cut her teeth on other stuff.

WOLF HALL has made my top-two-ever list of favourite historical novels. The other one is THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE by Michel Faber. Who also doesn’t make a habit of writing historical fiction.

And so I’m driven to believe that what makes historical novels good is not the history, not the farthingales or heaving bosoms, not the political or social situations. It is the skill of the writer, and his or her understanding of the human condition. That’s what has to come first - that’s what has to inform the history, not the other way round. And there are a lot of career historical novelists who don’t put this first.

Thomas Cromwell works on Mantel’s pages because he is a widower, because he has children, because he has ambition, because he has friends and enemies. Because he looks at the world in a certain way. There are elements of this kind of character construction that are timeless: the past is another country, but its citizens are not foreigners. They are informed by the values of their age, yes, but that doesn’t stop them being like us; that doesn’t reduce them to specimens beneath a microscope. The miracle of the historical novel is that you open it and you see a foreign place, a new (old) place, a place you don’t recognise - and you find yourself inside it, your cares and your fears and your joys.

I think this is true of just about all genre fiction. You create a universe - in historical fiction, in fantasy, in paranormal, in whatever - but the people must come before the setting. The setting, the situation - that’s more than window dressing, but it’s not the most important part of the story. Mantel and Faber and writers like them do this with all of their fiction, so (I imagine) when it came to writing something in a historical setting, the primacy of the human element came naturally. When I ask people what they hope to get out of historical fiction, the most popular answer, far and away, is ‘I want to feel like I’m there’. It is people, not palaces, that puts you there.

And that’s it from me. This book is terrifying: it’s that good. If you haven’t read it - even if you don’t like historical fiction - I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Read it out loud; use all your voices.

And when you’re done, of course, read my book. More news on that as it develops.

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c

Related posts:

1. drawing a line for historical fiction
2. so who’re your influences (redux)
3. the matter of detail
4. on fanfiction
5. corners