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.

A Mystery Solved--Loving Someone A Lot Will Make You Epically Fail

Photo: Pilot Ejecting from the Crashing Jet.  This is the epitome of an epic fail.


I break the aforementioned pattern of blog posts today, for a reason that will be obvious as you read.  Or, if you will, consider this a mystery solved.  It isn't a mystery with a crime, or with any suspects.  It's a mystery about growing up, I suppose.  About human nature.  About what it is to be a loving, caring person.

I used to think that my father's gift to me one year, when I was a kid, was the worst I'd ever gotten.  The problem was that it was a large present, and big to a kid means awesome.  My mother watched from her ever-constant chair, wearing a little frown, but my father watched with glee as I attacked the wrapping.  I remember saying, "It's...it's...it's..." as I came closer to undressing the present.  Finally, holding the large gift in hand, I said:

"It's...it's...a giant box of Corn Flakes."

And it was.  A giant box of Corn Flakes.  With a red plastic handle at the top.  Inside this box were TWO large boxes of Corn Flakes.  Two.  Corn Flakes.  For Christmas.

"I told you he wasn't going to like it," my mother said.

"But he loves Corn Flakes," my father protested, bewildered at what today's teens would call "an epic fail."

For the following 30 or so years I'd considered that the worst Christmas gift--the worst anything gift--ever.

Now I know better.  My mother has been dead for over 10 years now, and my father has been diagnosed with cancer in more than 5 different areas of his body, including both legs, a lung, and his skull.  And I've had several epic fails of my own since that Christmas, over 30 years ago.

What I take from it now--what I couldn't take from it then--was the totality of well-meaning ridiculousness that caring will drive you to.  It'll make you buy a humongous box of Corn Flakes that actually contains two very large boxes of Corn Flakes, and it'll make you believe that your 9-year old son will actually want that for Christmas.  Loving someone a lot will make you epically fail.

The gift now is that epic failure.  Other people have parents who do not epically fail.  Primarily this is because they do not care enough to fall off the cliff to begin with.  My father did, he always has, he does now.  His paramount caring will be his everlasting monument to us.  He cared enough to fail, and oh my goodness did he ever, at times.


I remember those times now with joy.  I care about someone enough now to make incredibly stupid judgments.  I've bought my own share of Corn Flakes.  She's not a kid, so she appreciates those plummets off the cliff for what they really are: Such a huge amount of caring that I'm willing to look like an idiot for her.

And do I ever.  Just like my Dad did.