Where do we draw the line between fiction and non-fiction in books? How can writers marry history and fiction without compromising each genre or misleading readers?
I recently read Margaret Forster’s Diary of An Ordinary Woman. The title is indeed tantilising. As the title suggests, the book is the “diary” of an English woman, Millicent King who diligently kept a diary for 80 years. In those volumes are titbits of her life in 20th century England, meticulously recorded. In the entries that record the tidbits of Millicent King’s life, the book suggests itself to be a woman’s history 20th century England. Indeed, Diary is undoubtedly a rare historical find given that women’s voices are traditionally marginalised in history and contains the much sought-after archival gems by historian.
Reviewers and those who read it recommended the book as a wonderful insight to the history of the 20th century, seen through the eyes of an ordinary English woman who has lived through and recorded it. Despite the rave reviews, I abandoned the book when Millicent was 30 years old, still whinging about what to do about her life. It was hardly a page-turner and Millicent was certainly not a lovable character, or for that matter, one who can sustain a reader’s interest in the rest of her life.
The reason I abandoned the book was the troubling understanding that the book is an absolute creative invention; for all its worth, the book is not a “real” diary, but a creation of Forster’s. It is one thing to create a fiction based on non-fiction, i.e. generally set or based in a historical context. It is quite another to non-fictionalised fiction to give the impression of a fiction being non-fiction.
In the book, Forster keeps up a pretence that the novel is a diary. In her introduction she described how she came across King’s diaries and her decision “to make something out of” them. She even included a reference list for further reading at the end of the book.
There were two clues that the Diary was not what it seems. They were the words “a novel” on the front cover and the word “edited” in quotation marks. If you’ve missed them, the sheer luck of having an almost complete history spanning the most of 20th century Britain, written by a woman, and having the vocabulary and insight far beyond the diarist’s age made the authenticity suspect.
What bothered me was the presentation of it all – it is fiction masquerading as non-fiction. Diary of An Ordinary Woman was touted as the collective history and “authentic record of how a century of English women were shaped”. The social context of the “diary” was accurately constructed, given that Forster is a competent biographer and social historian. But there was no explanation of how the historical materials were used. Yet, the lack of truthfulness about how the historical materials on which the book is based is troubling. Only later editions of the book made it clear that it was fiction; the words “a novel” on the cover were not included in the first edition. Was there an element of deceit? Or was it just a clever way of writing history in a more accessible manner? Or is it a mere marketing ploy? (Remember Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha?) The answer is probably a combination of these reasons.
While I am dismayed, many of her readers (see Times Online and Amazon reviews) hardly seem bothered by how the book was presented. Although some were slightly annoyed and disappointed, most applauded Forster’s efforts in seamlessly weaving history and fiction. As for me, I feel the book is a weak attempt at being creative about how to write history, if that was Forster’s intention at all.
The other reason I abandoned the book was that Millicent King’s life was hardly ordinary at all. King’s experiences were supposedly an amalgamation of the lives of many of the women who lived in England during the 20th century. While the individual experiences might have been ordinary, the end result – Millicent King – was hardly ordinary at all! In fact, her life can be considered as extraordinary, even by today’s standards.
The fictionalised memoir is not new. (Even Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote one – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich). Truth be told, not many people are keen to read cut-and-dried accounts of who-did-what and this-happened-when. Exposés top selling lists, fiction sells well but history is a hard-sell. But is this the reason for packaging fiction as non-fiction? Where do we draw the line between the two? The most important question is perhaps how can we write history creatively without appearing deceptive?
~ Jaime
