Historical (Mystery) Fiction Done Well--Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost

An Instance of the Fingerpost

Before this, the only historical fiction I'd read was Eco's The Name of the Rose--also a great book.  This one is slightly better: It made me feel like I was physically in every scene.  Really immerses you into the time.  The four different POVs are also ingenuously used.  This one made me want to write an historical novel--a task I am not yet up for.  Maybe someday...Actually, I'm trying to do a couple now.

An ingenuously written book that has much to teach writers--or would-be writers--of the genre.

1.  Totally immerse your reader into the time by describing everything to the point where the reader feels he's in every scene, as mentioned above.  This is impossibly difficult because you don't want to bog the reader down with detail, detail, detail; that'll stop the plot from moving foreward and bore your reader.  Yet, you can't sustain the suspension of disbelief for over 700 pages if you don't.  So how does one toe that line?  I don't know, but I DO know that the answer is in this book.  I'd have to read it again, with the eye of a writer this time.

2.  The time described has to be made interesting, in of itself.  Otherwise, why get immersed in it?  The era here is fascinating: England, Protestants vs. Catholics.  The Papists.  The monarchy.  The spies.  The battle between the starkly divided social classes.  It's all here.

3.  The mystery has to be riveting enough to continue reading about.  Immersion takes work for the reader, too.  The writer has to prove to the reader that it'll be worth his while.  This one is simple: What happened to the girl?  Some guys love her; some guys hate her.  The latter actually hate her because they love her, and the power she has over them.

4.  The writing itself has to be very good, and very interesting.  This one is told from 4 different POVs, each one taking up hundreds of pages, each one an interesting charcater, each one variously unreliable.  You care about each one, even the very unlikeable one.  And the Truth that shuffles them all together is exemplified by the final narrator, in the final pages--with a last, lasting mystery on the last page.

Once again I am seeing more and more that I should be learning from what I'm reading, and not just enjoying what I'm reading.  The Name of the Rose sort of gave birth to Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost, and it's difficult--and perhaps unnecessary--to tell which one is better.  They're both great.

Next post will be on Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone, and don't forget to check out my previously unpublished short story, and the prologue and Chapter One of my own mystery novel, at my website.

Dan Brown's Robert Langdon Trilogy (So Far)

Photo: Da Vinci's The Last Supper.  Go to the back of the class if you didn't know that.  But don't be ashamed if you didn't know that the real name is Cenacolo.  You didn't expect a guy who spoke Italian and Latin to name his painting in English, did you?  Did you?!?


A couple of comments on Dan Brown's Robert Langdon Trilogy:

Angels and Demons:

Maybe better than Code.  One of the better 1-2 punches in recent literary history.  I wish the public could've let Umberto Eco or Iain Pears do the same for the genre, but at least someone put the genre on the map.  I'll bet the better writers like Eco and Pears benefited from Brown's success.  Creepy bad guy, and Brown shows how pace and history/description (with the occasional hysterically false entertainment) can be done.  Again, like Code and Harry Potter, it made non-readers want to read.  That's good enough.

And the Annotated Angels and Demons is even more cool.  Buy it, and Google the interesting stuff.  It's like having Wikipedia in a cliffhanger book.  You know how you read some books for the recipes, or for things that have nothing to do with the story or writing?  Read this stuff for the interesting artwork, (occasionally correct) history, and real-life historical people, and then Wikipedia them or Google them.  I'm nerdy like that.

The Annotated Da Vinci Code:

Much cooler than just the novel alone.  Great pictures of artwork a must to see what Langdon was seeing.  Good page-turning pot-boiler that isn't meant to be more than it is.  Intelligently gripping, though not quite intellectual.  Nice Gnostic touches, though, and a little bit of common sense never hurts.  The intelligent reader will be able to sift through the material and separate nuggets of intelligent coolness from the hysterically false entertainment.  Made non-readers want to read, so what's not to like about that?  Cardboard characterization a la Crichton, but the best of its type.  Angels and Demons may be better.

I repeat the Wikipedia/Google comments here.

The Annotated Lost Symbol:

Disappointing sequel, but anything really was going to be after such mega-sales from the previous two.  Made me see D.C. in a different way, though I knew much of the history in the book already.  Didn't know about the creepy, Washington-as-God painting.  Googled it--really weird.  But the most disappointing thing about it is how Brown (aka Langdon) immediately backed down from the controversy Code made about the Church.  (SPOILER!)  Third-person POV says that Langdon was surprised at the public's occasional vitriol towards him because of the controversy "he" made by publishing "his" book about what happened, but, hey, c'mon, Brown wasn't TOTALLY off-base, and it helped make the Vatican at least a little culpable about the other, more real and modern-day problems it has.  It all made some people (outside Bible-belt America, apparently) doubt and take a step back--and actually think for a moment.  What's wrong with that?  Don't back away from that!  Be proud of it!  Weak "author intrusion" made an already-disappointing book worse.  Put a bad taste in my mouth about it.  ::sigh::