OK, I admit it, I know more about history from reading novels than from reading nonfiction. But what’s wrong with that? If you read novelists who are sticklers about historical accuracy, you can enjoy a good story, immerse yourself in a different time, and learn something in the process.
Unlike some readers who never want to stray from a certain time period and place – Victorian England, say – I like almost any historical fiction that transports me to a different era. I want to know what it felt like to be alive in a certain time and place. The exact time and place is less important to me than the vividness of the details – the creaking of the wooden wagon wheels, the smoky air from the sconces, the smell of the straw-covered dirt floor.
My favorite author of historical fiction is Sharon Kay Penman because her novels set in medieval Great Britain are lush with historical detail and fully-drawn characters. Her mysteries featuring Justin De Quincy, a sleuth in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, are good, but I like her meatier – and longer – fiction even better. There is some romance woven in, but romance doesn’t take center stage as it does in Philippa Gregory‘s enjoyable but light novels that focus on tempestuous intrigue amongst the royals in medieval Britain.
An exotic world – 17th century Persia – opened up to me through the book The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani. After the death of her father, a teenage girl and her mother must leave their village to live as servants in the household of the girl’s uncle who is a wealthy rug-maker for the Shah. The girl, who is a gifted but untrained carpet-knotter, wants to learn her uncle’s craft. Meanwhile, she is being pressured to accept an undesirable temporary marriage contract. What mesmerized me more
than the story of marriage and social caste were the descriptions of carpet knotting, color dyeing and the rich cacophony of the ancient bazaar.
Another novel filled with lush historical detail is The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant. In 15th century Florence, a prosperous cloth merchant has commisioned a young painter from northern Europe to paint the chapel walls in the family’s palazzo. The merchant’s daughter, Alessandra, is an unusually educated young woman and an aspiring painter as well. She becomes fascinated with the young painter at the same time that her parents are trying to marry her off to an older man. I found the love story to be merely a backdrop, though, to the more interesting details of life in the palazzo and in Florence. The descriptions of how painters mixed their paints from natural materials – burnt almonds, eggs, lead – are intriguing, as are the depictions of richly colored tapestries, spiced wine, medicinal herb gardens and rosewater perfumes.
Switching gears to 19th century rural China, I enjoyed Lisa See’s historical novels Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love. Both of these books deal with love and heartache. I could have been depressed by their plots except that I was too busy absorbing the lavish period details of sequestered women’s chambers, silk fans and secret writing (Snow Flower) and court life, jasmine tea, and opera (Peony in Love).
Another captivating novel, set in colonial America, is Patriot Hearts: a novel of the founding mothers by Barbara Hambly. This richly textured historical novel brings to life four fascinating women who influenced the American Revolution and the birth of a new nation from behind-the-scenes. Political philosophy and personal relationships are deftly interwoven in these linked portrayals of Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Sally Hemmings and Dolley Madison. Many “big issues” pertaining to the founding of our country are raised, but as usual for me it was the domestic details – Lady Washington’s coffee set and Thomas Jefferson’s seashells and fossils displayed on a glass shelf – that made it all come alive.
In fact, in the opening chapter Dolley Madison (unbeknownst to her, I’m sure) nicely voices my appreciation of concrete domestic detail in historical fiction. She is discussing with her friend Sophie the personal items that past First Ladies have left behind in the White House, and their importance:
I mean things a man would not think important, perhaps. Things that are part of what they were, of what we were. Insignificant things, meaningless as the dolls and ribbons and the cups we drank from as children. We need those, as much as papers and speeches, to remember where we came from, and who we were, if our hearts are to survive.”
For more reading suggestions, check out the historical fiction (and other) reading lists in the Reader’s Corner section of the Library website.
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