I don't know why we always do this but we do. We go looking for the true story behind the novel we just read & enjoyed precisely because it felt true. What we like is believing in a whole and contained world with solid walls and living people. And yet we ask: where'd you get the idea? And the author can't just say, "Well, it all happened." As a reader of literary biographies and interviews with writers and the acknowledgment pages at the backs of novels, I confess that I'm always picking apart the story to find the true parts and the made-up parts and the Terrible Childhood Events that inspired fiction. Even that isn't enough. I go on pilgrimage to the very places where the transformation from life to fiction occurred--to Key West or Chawton or Rome--so I can stare at the holy typewriter or handwritten manuscript page. When you're writing historical fiction, the sacred moments are the ones when you come across a photograph, artifact, or place that feels inhabited--haunted, really--and you hope somehow to hold out a wick to that still-burning candle and use it to light your book. That's what these pictures show: the candle flames.
1 Comment
Cara Irigoyen
3/7/2017 01:26:04 pm
You nailed it on the head. Perfectly! At 13 I read a novel that affected me to my very core. At 53 I still remember the goosebumps I got while reading it. It was piece of historical fiction. It taught me about the Irish people. When I finally had the opportunity to travel to Ireland I looked for those long ago read characters in every green pasture, smoke filled pub and tumbling down castle. I had to find those characters, I absolutely had to because they weren't fictional people. They were Real. To this day historical fiction is my favorite genre. I am so excited to begin to read The Practice House. I look forward to experiencing a little Laura McNeal magic again. Congratulations!
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July 2018
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Books by Tom and Laura McNeal