A good novel is a treat; a great novel a delicacy. This past week or so, I've been enthralled with Emma Donoghue's great new novel The Sealed Letter based on "the details of a scandalous divorce case that gripped England in 1864." It's by far one of the best novels I've read this year. Reading The Sealed Letter had me thinking about the genre of historical fiction (of which I read a lot). As with anything, there's great historical fiction, interesting historical fiction and what seems like gratuitous historical fiction. Gratuitous historical fiction is often fun to read and can usually be identified by the recurrence of lines like "The nurse put the baby in the perambulator, a remarkable new device that had been invented just last year." Good historical fiction conveys the time, place, and ideas evocatively, accurately and convincingly and uses historical detail deftly. Sometimes good historical fiction is better history than fiction; sometimes the needs of conveying history seem to override the needs of a well-crafted novel. I'm starting to think that great historical fiction not only recreates a time, place or character evocatively but that it also guides you through the nebulous areas of doubt, contradiction and ambiguity of that time. I think one of the recurrent shortcomings of historical fiction is that it suggests that eras before our own were simpler: that life made more sense, pieces fell into place and everything added up. Donoghue is clearly a gifted fiction writer but she's also a gifted historian. At the end of the novel, we understand that nothing has ever been simple. We are not offered answers but questions. We need to think not only about the events and characters she has brought back to life in this fine novel but also about the very act of telling and conveying history and how we shape and are shaped by history or histories.
