in other news, oops.
I wound up wandering into the bookstore the other day. Well, it wasn't precisely wandering, as I wanted to buy a belated birthday present for a friend, and a ticket to an upcoming bookstore event. But somehow I came out with, in addition to those two items, a copy of John Guy's new book on Thomas and Margaret More. Sigh.
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=689476
Because that's really what I needed, another distraction from grading. But I have wanted to read it for a little while now, and it was on display in a prominent spot... I read the first bit, when I got it home, and it looks very enjoyable. It's funny, because I recently bought a used copy of a novel about Meg Giggs, More's adopted daughter. The novel is Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett:
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061251832/Portrait_of_an_Unknown_Woman/index.aspx
and I probably bought it (for a bus trip) because, yes, it's famous-people-fiction--which I don't really like--but at least she isn't terribly well-known (I certainly don't know much about her), and so possibly this wouldn't irk me. And I like the idea of fiction written around historical objects... But I think what I really wanted, without knowing it, was something much more along the lines of John Guy's book. And I really couldn't get into the novel, despite reading the first two chapters; the tone is so modern that it's presenting a barrier to me. I'm sort of weird about this in historical novels; I can overlook it if the characters grab me hard enough, but something about Meg seems flat to me, so far. Perhaps I'll come back to it at some point. After I read John Guy, maybe.
I also finally finished reading My Just Desire, the recent biography of Bess Throckmorton, since I'd recommended it to someone else on the strength of the first hundred pages and thought that now was as good a time as any to finish. So I've been thinking about the many lacunae present in that biography, and how hard it must be (partly because the author draws our attention to these moments) to write a biography about a woman who was so close to the center of events, and yet, because she was a woman, is effaced from the record in a lot of ways. Both Guy's book and this biography are marketed as books that restore the women in them to their rightful places in the historical record. I can see why fiction would appeal, in those circumstances: to be able to fill in the gaps with something more than supposition. This doesn't mean I'll be any fonder of famous-person-fiction (I still think I'll prefer the biography, even though, yes, I am aware that historical narratives are constructed as well), but I see why one might be drawn to it. Still, I'd like to be able to read about lives, even imagined ones, that aren't in the record at all--the people who don't get biographies written about them. And if I could avoid having to deal with a mystery plot while I'm at it, bonus. (This may be why I like YA historical fiction so much. There are certainly YA novels about Princess Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey and even Anne Hathaway--and it's telling that while I have checked out several of these, I've never made it through one*--but you also have novels about boys in theatre companies and girls who want to be booksellers. Real historical figures are on the outskirts of those novels; they make cameos, but they're not the focus.)
If anyone has any suggestions for novels with famous people that I should read, though, I'm all ears. I've been thinking, too, for various reasons, about how little historical fiction I've actually read (probably because of the famous person problem), even though I like the idea of it tremendously. (My mother's new life plan for me, to help me avoid grading, is as follows: "You should get a job and teach for a few years, until you write your period novel. And then it'll get turned into a movie." Ha.)
*I always feel like I'm waiting for The Moment That Turns Them Into Historical Personages, instead of getting a proper story. This may not be the fault of the books themselves, I realize--but it's tricky to avoid when the ends are already determined. I already know that the only reason I'm being told a story about Anne Hathaway is that she married Shakespeare, so even if the goal is to bring her to life in some way, I still can't help feeling that I'd rather read a novel about some other sixteenth-century woman, one whose interest for us isn't already predetermined in this way.
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=689476
Because that's really what I needed, another distraction from grading. But I have wanted to read it for a little while now, and it was on display in a prominent spot... I read the first bit, when I got it home, and it looks very enjoyable. It's funny, because I recently bought a used copy of a novel about Meg Giggs, More's adopted daughter. The novel is Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett:
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061251832/Portrait_of_an_Unknown_Woman/index.aspx
and I probably bought it (for a bus trip) because, yes, it's famous-people-fiction--which I don't really like--but at least she isn't terribly well-known (I certainly don't know much about her), and so possibly this wouldn't irk me. And I like the idea of fiction written around historical objects... But I think what I really wanted, without knowing it, was something much more along the lines of John Guy's book. And I really couldn't get into the novel, despite reading the first two chapters; the tone is so modern that it's presenting a barrier to me. I'm sort of weird about this in historical novels; I can overlook it if the characters grab me hard enough, but something about Meg seems flat to me, so far. Perhaps I'll come back to it at some point. After I read John Guy, maybe.
I also finally finished reading My Just Desire, the recent biography of Bess Throckmorton, since I'd recommended it to someone else on the strength of the first hundred pages and thought that now was as good a time as any to finish. So I've been thinking about the many lacunae present in that biography, and how hard it must be (partly because the author draws our attention to these moments) to write a biography about a woman who was so close to the center of events, and yet, because she was a woman, is effaced from the record in a lot of ways. Both Guy's book and this biography are marketed as books that restore the women in them to their rightful places in the historical record. I can see why fiction would appeal, in those circumstances: to be able to fill in the gaps with something more than supposition. This doesn't mean I'll be any fonder of famous-person-fiction (I still think I'll prefer the biography, even though, yes, I am aware that historical narratives are constructed as well), but I see why one might be drawn to it. Still, I'd like to be able to read about lives, even imagined ones, that aren't in the record at all--the people who don't get biographies written about them. And if I could avoid having to deal with a mystery plot while I'm at it, bonus. (This may be why I like YA historical fiction so much. There are certainly YA novels about Princess Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey and even Anne Hathaway--and it's telling that while I have checked out several of these, I've never made it through one*--but you also have novels about boys in theatre companies and girls who want to be booksellers. Real historical figures are on the outskirts of those novels; they make cameos, but they're not the focus.)
If anyone has any suggestions for novels with famous people that I should read, though, I'm all ears. I've been thinking, too, for various reasons, about how little historical fiction I've actually read (probably because of the famous person problem), even though I like the idea of it tremendously. (My mother's new life plan for me, to help me avoid grading, is as follows: "You should get a job and teach for a few years, until you write your period novel. And then it'll get turned into a movie." Ha.)
*I always feel like I'm waiting for The Moment That Turns Them Into Historical Personages, instead of getting a proper story. This may not be the fault of the books themselves, I realize--but it's tricky to avoid when the ends are already determined. I already know that the only reason I'm being told a story about Anne Hathaway is that she married Shakespeare, so even if the goal is to bring her to life in some way, I still can't help feeling that I'd rather read a novel about some other sixteenth-century woman, one whose interest for us isn't already predetermined in this way.