What makes a good historical novel? A story deeply grounded in the socio-political landscape of the time? Characters who are really of their time rather than modern people transplanted to century x? A perfectly realised world – where you really believe that this is what it was like to live at that time and in that place? Language which seems time- and place-appropriate?
All of the above?
OK, I read a lot of historical novels and I’m voting for all of the above. And I’ve just read one: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. The year in question is that between ‘leaf-fall’ of 1665 and the same season in 1666 and the ‘wonders’ come about because plague has arrived at a Peak District village. What will the villagers do?
The story is based on the real-life Derbyshire village of Eyam which cut itself off from the world so as not to spread the plague to neighbouring villages and beyond.
In her aferword, Geraldine Brooks says that surprisingly little is known of what happened in the village during their self-imposed quarantine but that a few traditional tales were handed down through the centuries and that, in writing Year of Wonders, she drew heavily on source materials like medical texts, journals, sermons and social histories:
'My library now includes tomes such as A History of Lead Mining in the Pennines, which Is not a volume I ever expected to own.'
And the result of her reading, travelling to Derbyshire (she is an Australian Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and journalist who now divides her time between Sydney, Australia and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts) and just good, old-fashioned imagining, she has created something quite outstanding. The voice she has found for Anna, her viewpoint character, feels so authentic and Anna herself comes over as so much a woman of her time, untainted by twenty-first century notions of what a woman’s life might be, that it’s hard to remember that you are not reading a first-hand account of what happened.
The vocabulary Brooks uses seems authentic without resorting to gadzookery and I liked the way she didn’t explain unfamiliar words. If you couldn’t get the gist of what they must mean from context then you could jolly well go and look them up!
Whisket, toadstone, barmester, spud (not a potato), pipkin, stemple – such English words – I loved them and the feel of earthy authenticity they gave the fabric of the book.
Nobody reading this novel will know, first-hand, what it is like to live in a village shut up with bubonic plague, a plague in which two-thirds of family and their neighbours will die around them during the year. But, having read this book, I feel as if I do know what it was like. The reaction Brooks describes – from wanton promiscuity through witch-hunting to despair and self-flagellation all seem horribly realistic. You don’t want to think that you might succumb to one of these maladaptive ways of dealing with things but, faced with a disease whose transmission, natural history and provenance was so little known as to appear to be a Biblical plague sent as a punishment for sin, who knows what expedients any of us would resort to?
Historical detail, voice and character apart, Anna’s story – over and above the story of the village and its battle with plague – is beautifully told and does not follow the course it seems set for. Anna is a victim of circumstances but her circumstances become so extraordinary that it makes for an extraordinary life.
Don’t imagine that this book will get you down because it’s about plague. It’s a book about the human spirit and the good – and bad – of which it’s capable. Read it if you love great historical fiction. And read it if you want to write good historical fiction – it’s a master-class.
As a PS to this post, you might like to know that Geraldine Brooks has a new potential bestseller out – People of the Book. It’s gone straight to the top of my ever-expanding ‘books to buy’ list...
All of the above?
OK, I read a lot of historical novels and I’m voting for all of the above. And I’ve just read one: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. The year in question is that between ‘leaf-fall’ of 1665 and the same season in 1666 and the ‘wonders’ come about because plague has arrived at a Peak District village. What will the villagers do?
The story is based on the real-life Derbyshire village of Eyam which cut itself off from the world so as not to spread the plague to neighbouring villages and beyond.
In her aferword, Geraldine Brooks says that surprisingly little is known of what happened in the village during their self-imposed quarantine but that a few traditional tales were handed down through the centuries and that, in writing Year of Wonders, she drew heavily on source materials like medical texts, journals, sermons and social histories:
'My library now includes tomes such as A History of Lead Mining in the Pennines, which Is not a volume I ever expected to own.'
And the result of her reading, travelling to Derbyshire (she is an Australian Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and journalist who now divides her time between Sydney, Australia and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts) and just good, old-fashioned imagining, she has created something quite outstanding. The voice she has found for Anna, her viewpoint character, feels so authentic and Anna herself comes over as so much a woman of her time, untainted by twenty-first century notions of what a woman’s life might be, that it’s hard to remember that you are not reading a first-hand account of what happened.
The vocabulary Brooks uses seems authentic without resorting to gadzookery and I liked the way she didn’t explain unfamiliar words. If you couldn’t get the gist of what they must mean from context then you could jolly well go and look them up!
Whisket, toadstone, barmester, spud (not a potato), pipkin, stemple – such English words – I loved them and the feel of earthy authenticity they gave the fabric of the book.
Nobody reading this novel will know, first-hand, what it is like to live in a village shut up with bubonic plague, a plague in which two-thirds of family and their neighbours will die around them during the year. But, having read this book, I feel as if I do know what it was like. The reaction Brooks describes – from wanton promiscuity through witch-hunting to despair and self-flagellation all seem horribly realistic. You don’t want to think that you might succumb to one of these maladaptive ways of dealing with things but, faced with a disease whose transmission, natural history and provenance was so little known as to appear to be a Biblical plague sent as a punishment for sin, who knows what expedients any of us would resort to?
Historical detail, voice and character apart, Anna’s story – over and above the story of the village and its battle with plague – is beautifully told and does not follow the course it seems set for. Anna is a victim of circumstances but her circumstances become so extraordinary that it makes for an extraordinary life.
Don’t imagine that this book will get you down because it’s about plague. It’s a book about the human spirit and the good – and bad – of which it’s capable. Read it if you love great historical fiction. And read it if you want to write good historical fiction – it’s a master-class.
As a PS to this post, you might like to know that Geraldine Brooks has a new potential bestseller out – People of the Book. It’s gone straight to the top of my ever-expanding ‘books to buy’ list...
