What does the term ‘historical fiction’ mean? Are the stories made up or are they real? We know that readers enjoy true stories based on real characters. Historical fiction is usually just that: true stories based on historical facts with elements that the author makes up. Of course, non-fiction works will always have the upper hand in the race for credibility, but historical fiction will usually come in a close second since they are based on the known facts about the period and the characters. On the other hand, a purely fictional story doesn’t come close even if it is inspired by similar situations or characters.
Authors of historical fiction do a lot of research to get the facts right and often cite the historical record in their notes. This is because readers are out looking for the passenger plane in the sky of the first Gladiator movie and will go after an author who makes a mistake or plays too loose with the facts. This can lead to reader frustration. I recently finished Peter Robinson’s Before the Poison which is the story of a nurse who poisons her doctor husband and is hanged in Britain in 1953. Remember they were still hanging women in the UK back in the 1950s. At first, I thought it was a true story, inspired or based on a true story, but this is not the case. I read the book convinced that the real story would be revealed at the end, but no. The book is a work of fiction. As an author of historical fiction, I found this troubling.
I had a similar reaction a few years ago to a fictional work that I was convinced was based on fact. This was Tom Keneally’s The Daughters of Mars about the Durance sisters who were nurses on the frontlines in the war in France during WW1. I enjoyed the novel but felt Iet down when I read that the story was entirely fictional. The Australian nurses were so real. Keneally was inspired by the journals of several nurses who fought in the Great War. To base a novel on the journals of real nurses who existed and then not name them, seemed in my mind to be a bit of a cheat. Another novel that gave me similar trouble was Kristin Hannah’s hugely successful Nightingale. The story was inspired by the accounts of a Belgian woman, Andrée de Jongh, who helped downed Allied pilots escape Nazi territory during WWII. Hannah’s story is entirely fictional. I enjoyed the read but found the ending bizarre when the author switches out the sisters. Again I felt cheated because the real story of de Jongh was not being told.
I am sure I am not alone in this kind of complaint. The feeling of being duped by a story that is not real or based on historical fact. I love fiction of all kinds and read dozens of fictional books each year in different genres, but I don’t like fiction masquerading as historical fiction. If it is not a true story or the character never existed, then I think the author needs to warn the reader that the entire story is fictional. Readers spend a lot of time getting to know the characters and places in a novel. The characters are in their heads and the story inhabits their imagination. Then suddenly the author reveals that characters never existed. It can be a major turnoff for a lot of readers.
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