Why I Read... Historical Fiction

My experiences with historical fiction began way back with one of the first books I ever read - Meet Samantha by Susan S. Adler. I was six years old, and my grandma had bought it for me at a yard sale. I instantly was enchanted by Samantha's fancy, Victorian life. I devoured all the books about Samantha (and got the doll as a present) and quickly went through all the other American Girls (although there are plenty of new ones now that I know nothing about!). I loved reading about other time periods - they seemed so glamorous and different from what I experienced in my day to day life.

Fast forward three or four years, when I discovered the Dear America series. I was in love with these books. First of all, for the longest time I thought they were real diaries. However, even when I found out that they were not, I was enamored with the beautiful hardcover books with ribbon bookmarks. Every month when book orders came out, I would get the new Dear America book. My teachers knew to tell me immediately if they bought one of the books for the classroom so I could be the first to devour it. I was obsessed. I might still be obsessed - I definitely just looked up a title I had never heard of in my library's catalog that I saw when I was looking for an image. Anyway, suffice it to say that historical fiction was my favorite. I was obsessed.

Then, I went through a little phase. I stopped reading it. Subconsciously, I think I began to see it as sub-par literature, perhaps because there are quite a few romance books that masquerade as historical fiction (not that romance books can't be enjoyable, but they aren't my cup of tea). I didn't read any historical fiction for about five years, with the exception of The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (which everybody read). (Parentheses are my drug).

And for some reason, this summer, I fell in love again. So without further ado:

Why I Read Historical Fiction:

* The romance of the past. I'm not sure why, but there is something so elegant and vintage about reading stories of an era that has passed.

* Learning. After my fourth or fifth major change, my father voiced his concerns about my becoming an "eternal student" (and his perceived obligation to support my eternal student habits). Fortunately, in my sixth year of college, I might actually become employable soon. But I still love learning, and historical fiction books present learning in such a palatable format. Obviously, care must be taken to be sure facts are being presented accurately. However, historical fiction is a great tool for getting the general atmosphere of a place.

Recommendations

* Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran. I was swept up by this book. It tells an unfamiliar story of the French Revolution, and you will rollercoaster through several emotions as you read this book, if your experience is anything like mine.

* Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. This is another book that tells a rather unique historical story, the story of Lithuanians imprisoned by the Russian government and forced to work in Siberia for over a decade. This book is very quietly written but shocked me frequently. It is a very powerful story.

* Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly. Or, quite frankly, anything by Jennifer Donnelly. Her writing is fantastic and she weaves her stories into history seamlessly. So seamlessly, in fact, that I looked up a couple of her characters, wanting to learn more about them, only to discover that they were fictional. (I was very disappointed). Revolution tells two parallel stories - one is of Andi, a troubled girl trying to deal with loss and disillusionment, and one is of Alex, the French Revolution-era writer of a diary Andi discovers. It is a strange but intensely powerful story. 

Want more recommendations? Visit...

Coffee and a Book Chick. She isn't exclusively a historical fiction blogger, but I frequently add historical fiction novels to my TBR because of her reviews. She also gives some background information on authors, which is fabulous. 

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

Title: The Tea Rose

Author: Jennifer Donnelly

Genre: Historical fiction

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003

Source: Library

Fiona Finnegan, a worker in Burton's tea factory, knows tea so well she can tell you what it is just by smelling it. Her dreams stretch beyond the factory to owning a tea shop of her own, and the handsome Joe Bristow wants to help her do it. However, as circumstances change and twist down unexpected paths, Fiona will take a turn away from Joe and into a life she never expected.

Oh, Jennifer Donnelly. You just have this way with you. At the beginning of this book, I was disappointed. The huge tome flitted back and forth between characters' perspectives in third person omniscient, a style I don't really care for that seems all too pervasive in historical fiction. I missed the strong, personality-filled first person voices of Donnelly's two young adult novels. And the drama that gave Revolution and A Northern Light so much passion at first seemed mawkish and over the top, with Fiona's loved ones dropping like flies. I almost felt like I didn't have to turn the page - I knew that someone was going to die, or some plan was going to fall through, or the money had run out, or the cows hadn't come home. After about 150 pages, I was ready to throw in the towel.

And then, somehow, Donnelly lured me in. Despite my annoyance at all the drama, despite my sense of being jarred as perspectives switched from character to character (all in the third person, mind you), I became emotionally invested in the story. Despite my lack of interest in the business world, or the fact that it did seem ludicrous that Fiona was thrust into society with the monopoly giants of her time. Despite the fact that it seemed absolutely silly to me to claim that she'd invented iced tea as a sales tactic to the South. Despite the fact that for much of the book Joe Bristow seemed like an absolute word-I-can't-say-in-a-public-space and I couldn't understand why she just wouldn't get over him.

Okay, that is a fairly long list of "despites." However, at the end of the book, I couldn't stop thinking of it. Once again, Donnelly pulled her trick of weaving in a historical event with astonishing believability - this time, with Jack the Ripper, a subject I was surprised to see lending itself so well to the story as a whole. She also had her invented historical character woven into the plot, although in this case it was Fiona herself, a tactic I don't think works quite as well with a main character. And by the end, Joe had grown up a little bit, and I was able to accept him. I honestly never loved him, but I was able to grant him the right to Fiona's heart.

The real pull for me in this story, I think, was Nicholas Soames, Fiona's best friend and right-hand man. He was the reason I couldn't get the story out of my head days after finishing it. For some reason I am absolutely entranced by stories of strong, platonic friendship love between men and women. Maybe it's because my own life romance grew out of a platonic friendship into something more. It's the element in a love story that will always seal the deal for me, even if the relationship never becomes a true love story. Nicholas and Fiona's relationship was unconventional in every way, but it solidified what would have been only a weak inclination toward the book.

The Tea Rose is definitely a first novel, lacking the polish and passion of the other works I've read by Donnelly. However, it still made a lasting impression, and I look forward to finishing the trilogy. I'm only giving it a 3.5 because I expect better from Donnelly, but don't let that keep you from reading it.

3.5 stars

Warnings for the sensitive reader: Some f-bombs from dock workers, 4-5 sex scenes I had to skim over because they were too graphic for me

YA Friday: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

Title: A Northern Light

Author: Jennifer Donnelly

Genre: YA, historical fiction

Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books, 2003

Source: Library

Mattie Gokey spends most of her time keeping her family together. After her mother passed away, it's been hard to keep food on the table and all her sisters healthy and clean. However, she dreams of books and writing, hoping to attend college. Her teacher and best friend both push her to pursue her dreams, but family responsibilities and a potential romance have her wondering where her path should lead. Set against the background of the murder featured in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Mattie is required to make life-changing decisions.

Oh, Jennifer Donnelly. How I love you. And I have the first book in your adult trilogy sitting on my bookshelf right now. I'm curious to see how she writes for adults, because her YA books definitely have me hooked. I think the element of her books that I enjoy most is just the intelligence she uses to weave everything together. Mattie's life is the center of the action, but surrounding it we have the murder, which in some ways parallels some of Mattie's insecurities, and the mysterious Emily Baxter, one of Donnelly's invented historical figures that I wish was real so I could read her poetry. (A similar invented historical character is Amade Malherbeau from Revolution).

Donnelly is a master at creating strong characters. Mattie was very distinct from Andi, the main character in Revolution. In my (ever humble) opinion, if a writer plans on using the first person all the time, their different characters had better have different voices. I think this can be a difficult task to accomplish, but Donnelly does it well, bringing to the table a girl less troubled than Andi, a girl determined to keep her promises while breaking under the desire to fulfill her own dreams. At times she frustrates me, spending time with a dorkus (using words like "dorkus" is probably one of the reasons bloggers get pegged as unprofessional, but no other word describes my feelings adequately) like Royal who waves away her dreams by talking about soil and planting. Mattie isn't perfect - she is a teenager, after all, and who didn't make at least one stupid mistake in their teenage years? However, as she struggles through her oppressive circumstances, she begins to discover who she really is. The other characters are also fantastic, especially Weaver, Mattie's best friend, a boy who will not accept discrimination from others, no matter what the consequence.

Another element of this book that I adored was the sheer bookishness. (Remember what I said yesterday about authors always putting bookish elements in their books? I think for Donnelly it is sheer love of books). Mattie loves words and tries to use a new word every day. I loved the way she turned big, obscure words to fit her situations. I also loved her description of Emily Baxter's library - who hasn't felt that way on their first time in a beautiful bookstore or library?

There were dozens of names I didn’t know. Eliot. Zola. Whitman. Wilde. Yeats. Sand. Dickinson. Goethe. And all those were in just one stack! There were lives in those books, and deaths. Families and friends and lovers and enemies. Joy and despair, jealousy, envy, madness, and rage. All there. […] I could alsmost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

Much as I am gushing about Jennifer Donnelly, the book wasn't perfect. I struggled with the back-and-forth between Mattie's time at the hotel figuring out the murder, and her time at home trying to get to the hotel. I thought it was an interesting device, but I didn't understand the point and found it to be generally distracting. And while I liked Mattie herself a bit better than Andi in Revolution, this book didn't hold the same intensity and passion for me. It was a good book - a great book - but it didn't cause me to put down the book and just think when I was done with it.

All and all, though, this is an excellent read. The bookish will especially enjoy Mattie's obsession with words and her enchantment with new books.

4 stars

YA Friday: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

Title: Revolution
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Genre: YA, historical fiction
Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2010
Source: Library

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly tells two parallel stories. The first is that of Andi, flunking out of her senior year, floundering in a broken family after the death of her younger brother, and solaced only by her guitar. The other is that of Alexandrine, a young revolutionary in eighteenth century Paris. The girls' stories combine in a terrifying and moving adventure that teaches both the meaning of rising above a world that can be dark.

This is one of the smartest books I have ever read. Page after page, I was blown away at Donnelly's finesse in bringing together Andi and Alex's stories. The plot is complex and multi-layered, but never obscure or confusing. She interweaves the two main story lines with a third character that intersects them both - the (unfortunately fictional) classical guitarist Amade Malherbeau, subject of Andi's senior thesis and Parisian contemporary of Alex. The story is structured into three parts, following Dante's Divine Comedy and prefaced by quotes - Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Andi's Brooklyn world and Alex's Paris world are both meticulously detailed, making the story come to life in a vivid way.

The characters Donnelly created were also compelling, although the plot is the star of this story. Andi's friend Virgil is a fascinating character, someone who has already achieved what seems to elude her - the ability to have stability and grace in a mixed-up, unfair world. Virgil is edgy with his graveyard cab driving job and his intimate knowledge of the catacombs, yet sweet with his need for music and concern for Andi. I also loved Malherbeau, the guitarist Andi studies, although I think if I explain why I will spoil some of the best surprises of the story, so please read it and find out exactly why I loved him. Alex was also an interesting character - she was propelled by many different motives, and played many different roles, a fitting life for an actress. She changes drastically from the beginning of her account of the revolution to the end, and makes an interesting case for herself as one who is by no means innocent but seeks to redeem herself.

I liked Andi, too, but she became a little tiresome for me from time to time because of all her anger and raging and pill-popping. However, it wasn't the character that annoyed me - it was her personality. Does that make sense? I think Andi had to be that way, and Donnelly did a great job of realizing her. She's just a frustrating character at times. However, she especially goes through a lot of growth in the novel, which is always a good sign for me.

As I said before, Donnelly does a fantastic job of incorporating small details to make the world come alive, especially the eighteenth century of Paris (I've never read such vivid descriptions of smells). However, occasionally the writing annoying to me in a nit-picky way. This may be because Andi was narrating in the first person for most of the story, and occasionally Andi would start to bother me. Some of the descriptions are told in a breathless, fragmented style that seemed a little melodramatic for me. Example:

One note, just one note. That's all I need. But it's hard tonight. So hard that I stop playing. And look up at the sky instead. It's black. No moon. No stars.

Like I said, nothing technically wrong with this, but it didn't work for me. But Donelly definitely redeems herself with some gorgeous and unique passages, like this one:

Vermeer and Rembrandt and da Vinci put together couldn't do it. Even if they got the shade right - a clear, startling Windex blue - they'd still fail because Truman's eyes were totally transparent. That whole windows to the soul thing? That was him. When you looked into his eyes, you could see everything he thought and felt and loved. You could see Lyra and Pan. The Temple of Dendur. Bottle rockets. Garry Kasparov. Beck. Kyuma. Chili cheese dogs. Derek Jeter. And us.

Nit-picking aside, this book blew me away and was quite possibly one of my best reads this year. It was one of those books that, after I finished, I didn't want to start reading another book because I just wanted to keep thinking about this one. It made me want to learn more about the French Revolution and Amade Malherbeau (until I googled him and found out he wasn't real... sadness). Cheesy tidbit - I went to the piano and started playing through some of the Bach preludes I played in high school because Andi always talks about playing Bach. It is a book that makes a powerful impression.

Readability: Very readable.
Plot: 5
Characters: 4
Writing: 4
Personal Response: 5
Overall: 4.5