he 18th century was an age like no other. Cold blooded and cynical on the one hand and touchingly optimistic on the other, it was a time of social, scientific and political upheaval. The Music of the Spheres, Elizabeth Redfern’s first novel, combines the elements of mystery and history to produce a masterful piece of period suspense fiction set against the aftermath of the French Revolution.
When the monarchy toppled in France, no crowned head in Europe rested easy without a network of espionage agents. England was no exception, with its own spies and rumors of foreign agents who infiltrated every walk of life to lay the groundwork for a French invasion.
Redfern’s central character is Home Office agent Jonathan Absey, a spy-catcher who had served his country well in hunting down England’s enemies. His inside track to promotion and his peace of mind are destroyed by the murder of his 15-year-old daughter, Ellie; catching her killer becomes his reason for living. Jonathan loses his balance on the tightrope between personal and professional duty when a series of murders of red-haired young women, so painfully reminiscent of his daughter, point not only to French spies but to a sadistic killer in their midst. In order to solve the mystery of his daughter’s death, Jonathan must track down the murderer of the other girls. The trail leads him to a group of French expatriates and their British friends, amateur astronomers who hide their personal demons behind a faÂade of scientific fascination with the mysteries of the solar system. Jonathan’s intuition tells him that this seemingly harmless group of stargazers conceals spies, possibly traitors, and almost assuredly, a psychotic killer.
Like Patrick Suskind’s Perfume and David Liss’ A Conspiracy of Paper, this intensely atmospheric historical suspense novel is alive with the sights and sounds of the day. The author’s years of research allow her to draw on a wealth of period detail from 18th century medicine, mathematics, astronomy and the British government’s secret intelligence network, including the science of encryption. Solidly grounded in the history of a perilous time, the novel’s imagery and characterization bring 18th century London to life with its contrasts of wealth and squalor, poverty and power, and people it with a compelling cast of finely drawn characters acting out an intricate and powerful human drama.
Mary Garrett reads and writes in Middle Tennessee.
he 18th century was an age like no other. Cold blooded and cynical on the one hand and touchingly optimistic on the other, it was a time of social, scientific and political upheaval. The Music of the Spheres, Elizabeth Redfern’s first novel, combines the elements of mystery and history to produce a masterful piece of […]
he early work of novelist Jeff Shaara was inevitably compared to that of his father, Michael Shaara, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel The Killer Angels. With his first two novels, Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, Jeff Shaara completed the Civil War trilogy his father had begun. The younger Shaara went on to write a best-selling novel of the Mexican-American War (Gone for Soldiers) and in his latest work, he shifts his focus to the American Revolution.
Shaara says his new book is the first of a two-part saga exploring the full sweep of the conflict that gave birth to this republic and routed the British after a brief but bloody war. Again choosing to go inside the minds of the principal players, he selects four of the most powerful personalities of the era: John Adams, Ben Franklin, George Washington and General Thomas Gage, the commander-in-chief of British forces.
Opening with a brief biography on each of the essential characters, Shaara leads us through the fast-moving American uprising that first protested, then sought to overthrow English colonial rule. Shaara uses the characters of Adams, Gage and Franklin to create a behind-the-scenes feel for the maneuvers on both sides.
The book succeeds in its effort to show how a real revolution is mounted, with men and women of varying personalities struggling to form a new nation under the penalty of reprisal and death. In much historical fiction of this period, the life of British society among the American colonials is shortchanged, but not here. Shaara provides a fascinating glimpse of the British ruling class in all its stiff, autocratic complexity. Some of the book’s finest scenes come when his supporting characters are allowed their time on the page, including such familiar names as Sam Adams, Lord Hillsborough, John Hancock, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Tom Paine and William Pitt.
Not content with a panoramic view, Shaara also explores how deeply the pressures of revolt cut into the social fabric of the day, splitting families and severing friendships.
Sweeping and turbulent, Rise to Rebellion rarely fails to satisfy the reader who appreciates historical fiction done with style, accuracy, sensitivity and analytical skill. If there were questions about whether Shaara would live up to his literary pedigree, this should be the book to finally silence the doubters.
he early work of novelist Jeff Shaara was inevitably compared to that of his father, Michael Shaara, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel The Killer Angels. With his first two novels, Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, Jeff Shaara completed the Civil War trilogy his father had begun. The younger Shaara went […]
We begin each new reading year with high hopes, and sometimes, when we’re very lucky, we find our expectations rewarded. So it was with 2021.
It must be said that a lot of these books are really, really long. Apparently this was the year for total commitment, for taking a plunge and allowing ourselves to be swallowed up.
Also, it should come as no surprise that books-within-books frequently appear on this list. For all our attempts at objectivity within our roles as critics, we just can’t help but love a book that loves books. Amor Towles, Ruth Ozeki, Jason Mott, Maggie Shipstead and Anthony Doerr all tapped into the most comforting yet complex parts of our book-loving selves.
But most of the books on this list hit home in ways we never could’ve prepared for, even when we had the highest expectations, such as in Will McPhail’s graphic novel, which made us laugh till we cried, and Colson Whitehead’s heist novel, which no one could’ve expected would be such a gorgeous ode to sofas.
And at the top of our list, a book that accomplishes what feels like the impossible: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ epic debut novel, which challenges our relationship to the land beneath us in a way we’ve never experienced but long hoped for.
Read on for our 20 best works of literary fiction from 2021.
To those disinclined to question the role that economic exploitation plays in supporting our modern lifestyle, reading this novel may prove an unsettling experience.
In his collection of short stories set in the ag-industrial maw of central California, Jaime Cortez artfully captures the daily lives of his characters in the freeze-frame flash of a master at work.
Francis Spufford’s graceful novel reminds us that tragedy deprives the world of not only noble people but also scoundrels, both of whom are part of the fabric of history.
Jonathan Franzen is one of our best chroniclers of suburban family life, and his incisive new novel, the first in a planned trilogy, is by turns funny and terrifying.
With hints of Jami Attenberg’s sense of mishpucha and spiced with Jennifer Weiner’s chutzpah, Melissa Broder’s novel is graphic, tender and poetic, a delicious rom-com that turns serious.
Robert Jones Jr.’s first novel accomplishes the exceptional literary feat of being at once an intimate, poetic love story and a sweeping, excruciating portrait of life on a Mississippi plantation.
“There are few things more beautiful to an author’s eye . . . than a well-read copy of one of his books,” says a character in Amor Towles’ novel. Undoubtedly, the pages of this cross-country saga are destined to be turned—and occasionally tattered—by numerous gratified readers.
Devastating, hilarious and touching, Torrey Peters’ acutely intelligent first novel explores womanhood, parenthood and all the possibilities that lie therein.
What does it mean to listen? What can you hear if you pay close attention, especially in a moment of grief? Ruth Ozeki explores these questions in her novel, a meditation on objects, compassion and everyday beauty.
Lauren Groff aims to create a sense of wonder and awe in her novels, and in her boldly original fourth novel, set in a small convent in 12th-century England, the awe-filled moments are too many to count.
A surrealist feast of imagination that’s brimming with very real horrors, frustrations and sorrows, Jason Mott’s fourth novel is an achievement of American fiction that rises to meet this particular moment with charm, wisdom and truth.
Like Dante leading us through the levels of hell, Colson Whitehead exposes the layers of rottenness in New York City with characters who follow an ethical code that may be strange to those of us who aren’t crooks or cynics.
In her exhilarating third novel, Maggie Shipstead offers a marvelous pastiche of adventure and emotion as she explores what it means (and what it takes) to live an unusual life.
From slavery to freedom, discrimination to justice, tradition to unorthodoxy, celebrated poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers weaves an epic ancestral story that encompasses not only a young Black woman’s family heritage but also that of the American land where their history unfolded.
Most of the books on this list hit home in ways we never could’ve prepared for, even when we had the highest expectations. Read on for the 20 best literary fiction titles of 2021.
“I suppose I prefer being in the thick of it,” American heiress Nanée Gold explains when asked why she hasn’t fled the dangers of Nazi-occupied France. She’s a flamboyant, daring character who flies a Vega Gull airplane and entertains friends with her beloved dog, Dagobert, who barks ferociously whenever he hears the name “Hitler.”
In The Postmistress of Paris, Meg Waite Clayton fictionalizes the fascinating story of Mary Jayne Gold, a wealthy American socialite who spent the early years of World War II helping to finance and shelter 2,000 Jewish and anti-Nazi refugees near Marseille, France, and aiding in their escapes over the Pyrenees. Gold worked with American journalist Varian Fry as part of the Emergency Rescue Committee, obtaining fake passports and planning escape routes to Spain and Portugal for luminaries such as Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt. Clayton is well versed in this era, having written bestsellers The Race for Paris, about two female American journalists in 1944 France, andThe Last Train to London, about the Kindertransport rescue.
Clayton excels at creating fictional worlds, weaving historical details with lively dialogue and rich scene-setting details. Readers meet Nanée in 1938 as she flies into Paris on a freezing cold night, quickly swaps out her wool stockings for silk and throws on several strings of pearls. She’s headed to a surrealist art exhibition, where she sees the works of Salvador Dalí and plays party games with André Breton. Danger is at the doorstep, but life is a joyful whirlwind for Nanée—until the Nazis invade Paris, abruptly forcing her to escape to the countryside near Marseille, where she rents a villa to house her artist friends.
Nanée falls in love with fictional Jewish German photographer Edouard Moss, a widower with a young daughter named Luki. Much of the novel focuses on Nanée’s attempts to rescue Edouard from a French labor camp, reunite him with his daughter and get the pair out of the country. While Clayton superbly crafts banter, parlor games, romance and philosophical discussions among her cast of talented, intellectual characters, her writing is at its sharpest whenever Nanée faces great danger—which is often. Tension builds throughout the novel, culminating in a grueling, dangerous escape attempt that’s full of surprises. Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris.
Meg Waite Clayton superbly crafts banter, romance and philosophical discussions, but her writing is at its sharpest when Nanée faces danger—which is often.
he buzz surrounding Lee Martin’s stunning memoir, From Our House, left readers and critics alike eager to see what the author would do next. His first novel, Quakertown, a fictional retelling of an actual event in North Texas history, captures the bitterness, malice and emotional confusion found in two communities, one black and one white, during the reign of Jim Crow in the 1920s. Quakertown tells the haunting story of two childhood friends, Kizer and Camellia, separated by both race and class, who fall in love but can never publicly acknowledge their feelings because of the color barrier.
One of the novel’s strengths is Martin’s ability to re-create small town life with its easy pace, recognizable characters and picturesque locales. Kizer Bell is the son of the town banker, who is a distant father to his son, and an emotionally troubled mother, who likes to drink a bit too much. One of the causes of her drinking problem is Kizer’s crippled left leg, a birth defect that plagues her with guilt.
When Martin turns his attention to the Jones family, the black counterpart to the Bells, his skills as a novelist allow him to capture the inner lives of Little, Eugie and Camellia Jones with the same pinpoint accuracy that he applies to other characters. Camellia is not a cardboard cut-out character, but a real woman harboring deep fears of isolation and loneliness. She worries that her wedding day will never come and that a career as an old maid schoolteacher is all that awaits her.
Throughout the novel, Martin reveals the high cost paid by those who dared to defy the strict code of segregation. Despite the risks, Camellia allows herself to fall in love with two men, both of whom could have a dire effect upon her and her family. Ike, her African-American love interest, is handsome, resourceful, outspoken and fearless in the face of white bigotry. Kizer is more fulfilling emotionally, but Camellia’s affair with him, while thrilling, is taboo.
Martin skillfully plays out the dual romances of the shy, lovestruck teacher dangerously juggling the affections of men in a game no one can win. Still, it is the tenderness, compassion and emotional depth found in Martin’s writing that makes this remarkable debut novel a pleasure to read. There are many lessons here about life, love, tolerance and family, as well as some glorious moments for anyone who appreciates fine storytelling.
Robert Fleming is a journalist in New York.
he buzz surrounding Lee Martin’s stunning memoir, From Our House, left readers and critics alike eager to see what the author would do next. His first novel, Quakertown, a fictional retelling of an actual event in North Texas history, captures the bitterness, malice and emotional confusion found in two communities, one black and one white, […]
Cloud Cuckoo Land (15 hours) by Anthony Doerr chronicles the intersecting lives of an orphaned teenage girl and a village boy living in 15th-century Constantinople, an elderly librarian and a troubled teenager in present-day Idaho, and a young passenger aboard an interstellar ship generations into the future. It’s a dreamy, dynamic interweaving of stories about conflict, grief and hope.
Narrators Marin Ireland and Simon Jones make each character’s story feel personal, valid and alive—a challenging task with a cast this extensive and settings that span hundreds of years and miles. Ireland’s performances anchor every chapter in a myriad of voices and accents, surrounding the listener with an immersive experience. Between chapters, Jones playfully narrates excerpts from a fictional ancient Greek text whose relevance to each storyline is revealed gradually.
Listening to Cloud Cuckoo Land will transport you. It is magical and comforting, and likely to leave you with a new perspective on the power of resilience and the meaning of human connection.
Thirteen-year-old Weldon Applegate (as remembered by 99-year-old Weldon Applegate) is the unlikely hero of Josh Ritter’s The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All (7 hours). Set in Cordelia, Idaho, a lumber town at the end of the lumberjack era, and populated by ghosts, witches and demons, this rollicking tall tale is as true and honest as the honed edge of a jack’s favorite ax.
Ritter is a renowned singer-songwriter, and his language is exquisite, especially when describing the grandeur of a winter forest or the subtle evil of a greedy man. His nuanced narration gives an authentic voice to both young and ancient Weldon, endowing him with wisdom, humor and valor while never losing sight of the terrible beauty of his vanished world. Ritter’s talents as a ballad singer make this audiobook, which includes an original song, a special pleasure.
Josh Ritter’s talents as a ballad singer make this audiobook, which includes an original song, a special pleasure.
As Patti Callahan’s Once Upon a Wardrobe opens, it’s December 1950 in Worcestershire, England, and 8-year-old George Devonshire knows he’s not going to get better. His congenital heart disease is worsening, and there are no treatments left.
George, an ardent fan of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, wants his adored big sister, Megs, to answer his question: Where did Narnia come from? Megs, who’s busy with her mathematics studies at Somerville College, Oxford University, tells her brother that she has no time for children’s books. But after reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Megs changes her mind. And as George reminds her, Lewis just happens to be an English literature tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Megs finds a way to introduce herself to Lewis and his older brother, Warnie, who live together outside Oxford, and she begins to visit them and listen to their stories about growing up in Ireland and their roles in the two world wars. Megs brings these stories home to George, who in turn narrates them to the reader: “Hours in bed have taught George how to find the soft edges of the facts and drop himself into the worlds he hears about or reads of. He closes his eyes, sets his mind’s eye on the words, and floats on them like a raft.”
Once Upon a Wardrobe pivots between Megs’ and George’s perspectives. Megs takes in the Lewis brothers’ stories and slowly develops a friendship with Padraig, a literature student from Ireland. George listens to Megs and then spins out the tales for the reader. It’s a gentle novel with some beautifully cinematic images of snow, Lewis’ childhood and Oxford’s medieval colleges. Some readers may wish for a little more conflict (for instance, between Megs and her parents, or even between Megs and George), but the novel offers a strong sense of the defining moments in Lewis’ life, as well as the mythical sources for the Chronicles of Narnia. It also shows how a writer’s life can inform fiction, and how stories offer meaning in times of trouble.
Callahan is well-versed on the subject of C.S. Lewis; she’s the author of the bestselling Becoming Mrs. Lewis, an account of the American poet Joy Davidman’s midlife friendship and marriage to the author. Once Upon a Wardrobe would make an ideal companion for family book clubs reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe together.
Patti Callahan’s gentle novel contains beautifully cinematic images of snow, C.S. Lewis’ childhood and Oxford’s medieval colleges.
“I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal,” Mr. Emerson tells Lucy Honeychurch in E.M. Forster’s novel A Room With a View. It’s a beautiful sentiment, one that Sarah Winman incorporates into Still Life, along with other enduring realities, such as the transcendence of art and the pain of war.
Winman’s fourth novel is a gambol through some of the major events of the mid-20th century, and much of the action occurs in Italy. It opens in 1944, as Ulysses Temper, a young private in the British army, is driving through Florence. Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old English art historian, waves down his jeep. She’s in Italy to “liaise with the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives officers” and locate artworks sequestered from museums and churches. He gives her a ride.
From there, Winman takes the reader through 35 years of world history, from World War II to the moon landing to natural disasters in Florence, as seen through the eyes of her characters.
After the war, Ulysses returns to London, where he resumes work on the globe-manufacturing business he took over from his father. He spends time at a pub called the Stout and Parrot, where denizens include Col, the owner; piano player Pete; Ulysses’ unfaithful spouse, Peg; their daughter, Alys; and a blue parrot named Claude.
An unexpected inheritance prompts Ulysses to leave London and return to Florence. Winman’s plot at times relies too heavily on moments of serendipity like this one, but readers will nonetheless be charmed by Ulysses’ attempts to set up a pensione, as well as by Evelyn’s parallel story and her many lovers, and the ways in which her life and Ulysses’ become linked.
Still Life is, ultimately, a celebration of Italy, with loving descriptions of its buildings and countryside, of old women gossiping on stone benches, of Tuscany’s “thick forests of chestnut trees and fields of sunflowers.” It’s light yet satisfying, like foamed milk atop a cappuccino.
Sarah Winman’s fourth novel is light yet satisfying, like foamed milk atop a cappuccino.
“The Arctic had a way of reminding you that your life was unimportant, expendable, and easily extinguished,” writes Nathaniel Ian Miller in his stellar first novel. He knows this harsh environment all too well, having lived there as part of the annual Arctic Circle artist and scientist expeditionary program. During his residency, he happened upon a century-old hut where a hermit once lived on an otherwise uninhabited fjord. Although biographical details of the man are sparse, the discovery inspired Miller to write a fictional account of his life. The result, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, seems so authentic in both detail and slightly archaic narrative voice that it’s easy to forget it’s not an actual memoir.
Growing up in Stockholm, Sven Ormson is determined to escape an unhappy life of “menial drudgery.” He dreams of polar exploration and reads not only famous, heroic accounts but also all of the “terminally dull voyage narratives” he can get his hands on. At age 32, he sets out for Spitsbergen, a Norwegian archipelagic isle in the Arctic Circle, where he begins working in a dangerous, soul-sucking mine. Before long, a horrific accident leaves him not only disfigured but also “resolved to spend [his] life alone” as an Arctic trapper. And he’s hardly a gifted trapper.
Thus begins a truly walloping tale of solitude and survival told in visceral detail, a combination of Miller’s wild imagination and his beautifully precise prose. By design, the novel is so full of lengthy descriptions that a certain amount of perseverance is required of the reader. But Sven is an insightful yet comically ironic narrator, and there is often great excitement in his story, including “ice bear” attacks, near starvation, northern lights and the haunting sounds of calving glaciers.
The arctic landscape is mostly barren, but Sven encounters a parade of quirky yet meaningful characters who appear, disappear and sometimes reappear in his life. He also offers a surprising amount of social commentary, touching on corporate greed, the plight of workers, the tragedy and senselessness of war, the rewards of canine-human relationships, the necessity of intellectual pursuits and more.
Although The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is a vastly different book from Peter Heller’s The Guide, these two novels may appeal to the same audience: readers who love exquisite nature writing and crave no-holds-barred, extreme outdoor adventures. Miller goes one step further, however, by imbuing his novel with an unforgettable narrator who asks essential questions of human connection, a remarkable achievement for a novel ostensibly about solitude. What makes a family? What makes a devoted friend? What makes a great life?
Like the arctic landscape itself, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is beautifully stark and unimaginably rich, a book that will long be remembered by its lucky readers.
Like the arctic landscape itself, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is beautifully stark and unimaginably rich, a book that will long be remembered by its lucky readers.
First allow me to say that I had nothing to do with our current financial meltdown. A few years ago I found myself starting a novel about a family of bank robbers set during the Great Depression, a story that would become The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. At the time, our stock market was briskly accelerating, the wind in its hair and its wrist casually dangling out the window. My house had almost doubled in value, along with pretty much everyone else’s, and people at parties traded ideas for the next great investment (redo the kitchen? buy nanotech stocks? get a second house?).
While casting about for an idea for my second novel, I read a history of bank robbers during the Great Depression and was intrigued by colorful characters like John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd. I next read a number of books about the Depression itself and marveled at the stories. Fistfights at the offices of employers who announced they needed to hire two men and found themselves fending off a riot of hundreds of applicants; long lines of laid-off white-collar workers waiting on city sidewalks for a free lunch, shamefully shielding their faces from view; families facing desperate decisions about how to simply stay alive; angry young men robbing banks and redistributing wealth the old-fashioned way.
This all seemed so otherworldly to me as I read about the ’30s from the comfortable vantage of 2007. And it had seemed so otherworldly to the people living it, too. People in the Great Depression, particularly the early years, felt utterly unmoored. Their world had been turned upside down. One year, shoeshine boys had been trading stock tips; the next year, stockbrokers were taking walks out their 20th-floor windows. Countless people were dispossessed, out of work and literally starving. How had this happened? We were a nation in complete and utter shock. All of the foundations of normalcy had been torn down—faith not only in capitalism but also in democracy; the belief that hard work would be rewarded, that the American Dream could be achieved. Our most basic assumptions had been revealed to be no more than empty myths.
One year, shoeshine boys had been trading stock tips; the next year, stockbrokers were taking walks out their 20th-floor windows.
I had always wanted to write a novel centered on a typical American middle-class family unexpectedly derailed by economic disaster, but had struggled with figuring out how to do so without being too depressing—and had wondered how I might make the story interesting to readers who were themselves living in the strongest economy ever known to man. The larger-than-life bank robbers of the Depression, I realized, presented me with a perfect opportunity. My fictional family could be a shop-owning clan in a small Midwestern city, ruined by the father’s horribly timed real estate speculation. In response, two of the three sons become bank robbers—and, soon enough, folk heroes to the legions of angry souls who blame the banks and the government for the hard times—and a third son can stay home to try supporting the family legitimately. The domestic tension, the sibling rivalries, the cool bank-robbing scenes, the fedoras and Tommy guns and fast cars, the mythology of the ’30s bank robbers, the sense that all of America’s founding principles had suddenly and irrevocably been called into question, a nation that seemed on the verge of revolution—all these were rich in narrative possibility for the novelist, even in 2007. I had no idea that any of this might also become frighteningly relevant to my own times—after all, as I wrote the rough draft, the Dow was above 13,000.
A very unfunny thing happened during the final revisions of The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers—the world economy collapsed. I had, alas, not seen this coming (one glance at my retirement account will prove my point). But as I read and reread my book in the final months of copyediting and proofreading, it was eerie that so many things I had once considered borderline fantastical were becoming commonplace in 2009: entire neighborhoods foreclosed and vacant; a modern-day Hooverville popping up beneath a highway overpass in my childhood home of Providence, Rhode Island; populist rage at government and banks, along with accusations and counteraccusations about the merits of socialism and the failures of capitalism; the sense that we had, for the last few years or decades, been deluded fools, recklessly living according to a set of fictional principles that had finally crumbled in the face of reality.
When writing The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, I had not been trying to tell the future or draw parallels between a distant time and our own—and I think the book works even for readers unconcerned with such analogies. But it also proves that no matter how hard a writer might try to tell own his story and control his characters, there are always more powerful forces at work. The best you can do is tell your tale and let it loose upon a world that we’re all trying to make sense of, even as it changes around us, day after day.
Thomas Mullen made his literary debut in 2006 with the award-winning novel The Last Town on Earth. His second novel, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, has just been published by Random House. Mullen lives in Atlanta with his wife and two sons.
First allow me to say that I had nothing to do with our current financial meltdown. A few years ago I found myself starting a novel about a family of bank robbers set during the Great Depression, a story that would become The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. At the time, our stock market […]
People always ask why I spell Kleopatra’s name with a K. In fact, it’s the original Greek spelling. Kleopatra was not Egyptian at all, but the last of a Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt for almost 300 years. The unusual spelling is entirely appropriate: I want people to rethink the very idea of Kleopatra right down to the spelling of her name.
In a recent speech, the esteemed writer Susan Sontag claimed that "the writer’s first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth . . . and refuse to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation." Not all writers not even those who chronicle history subscribe to Ms. Sontag’s sentiments. Mitigating factors bias, distort and color both history and its characters. Who was in power when the history was written? What was the political orientation of the historian? What were the prejudices of the age? Of all the women distorted by history and myth, Kleopatra is the most vivid example. Far from the seductive, treacherous archetype of feminine evil who lives in the popular imagination, Kleopatra was one of the ancient world’s most brilliant and powerful rulers. She survived blood-curdling family rivalries, single-handedly ruled a rich nation and kept Egypt independent while all its neighboring countries had been annexed to the Roman Empire. She spoke nine languages, patronized art, drama, athletics and the sciences, and had the loyalty of her subjects rare for the members of her dynasty.
The Kleopatra handed to us by history was the victim of a smear campaign by her rival and mortal enemy, Octavian (who became Caesar Augustus). Octavian feared with good reason not only Kleopatra’s power as the Queen of Egypt, but also her influence with Julius Caesar, and later, Mark Antony. But history is written by the winners, and Octavian, in his war against Antony and Kleopatra, won. After her death, he destroyed all written histories favorable to her, and her story was rewritten by his court historians. The more I found out about the historical Kleopatra, the more infuriated I became. Women have virtually no role models who have held Kleopatra’s great power, and I could not accept that the most powerful woman in history, with the possible exceptions of Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, has been remembered only for the men with whom she slept. The more I learned about the real Kleopatra, the more I raged on to friends and anyone who would listen. Finally, a fellow writer—perhaps tired of hearing the diatribe—suggested that I turn my passion into a book.
I enrolled in an inter-disciplinary graduate program at Vanderbilt University where I could study with classicists, historians and women’s studies scholars. I traveled to Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Rome, walking in Kleopatra’s footsteps. I dragged my 60-something mother into the dizzying heat of the Egyptian desert, escorted by a tour guide and a truckload of men with machine guns! At the outset, I had no idea what it was going to take to write this book with integrity, but after nine years, two graduate programs and all my travels, a two-volume novel was born.
In Volume One, Kleopatra, I wanted to tell the becoming of Kleopatra, to chronicle the events and circumstances that went into the making of this towering and fascinating woman. Traditionally, her story begins as she rolls from the legendary carpet, landing at Caesar’s feet. But Kleopatra had an extremely exciting story before she came spinning into Caesar’s life. Volume Two, Pharaoh (due out in August 2002), begins when Kleopatra is thrust into the center of history’s great stage. It’s been both strange and illuminating to spend a decade of my life with someone who has been dead for 2,000 years. But I hope that I’ve contributed to the ongoing dialogue about the ways in which women have been ignored, misinterpreted or discredited by the telling of history. I felt it was time to set the record straight.
Karen Essex’Kleopatrais being published this month by Warner Books. A journalist who wrote a well-received 1996 biography of pinup legend Bettie Page, Essex lives in California.
People always ask why I spell Kleopatra’s name with a K. In fact, it’s the original Greek spelling. Kleopatra was not Egyptian at all, but the last of a Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt for almost 300 years. The unusual spelling is entirely appropriate: I want people to rethink the very idea of Kleopatra right […]
How to Be an American Housewife is a work of fiction, but includes incidents that were told to me by my mother. So why did I write a novel and not a memoir? Wouldn’t it have been easier to compile the stories my mother told me?
Most every writer and reader has seen Truman Capote’s quote: “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” In writing this book, my truth came from fiction, as strange as that may sound.
A memoir, culled strictly from real life, would have taken place only from my very limited perspective, not my mother’s. A memoir would have had its ending in my mother’s hospital bed, with her telling me, “You can do what you want. I am proud of you,” and me standing there, trying to reconcile years of rockiness with these fond words.
In a memoir, I would not have been free to imagine a whole other life, to see through another’s eyes. In fiction, I created characters that are like me and my mother, but not. They don’t exactly act like we did, and they certainly lead different lives. I felt it was important to have the book take place in Japan, to have the character Sueexperience viscerally what it was like to discover a whole existing family where before there had been a void.
Creating characters also allowed me the distance to carefully consider my relationship with my mother. To pull out what was important. To make up a plot with themes I wanted to emphasize, rather than the actual events, which might have been rather lackluster and lacking in insight.
Anyway, in many ways memories turn into fiction. Everyone remembers things differently. People leave out important details because they forget, or it’s not important to them. For example, even today, my father tells me additional stories of my mother and Japan that I never knew: that her family was a shogun (samurai) family, that many Japanese women who married Americans were of the untouchable class and had no prospects in the country. (And sometimes I say, Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I could have included that in the book!)
Nonetheless, I did choose to include some actual events in the novel. My mother told me stories of what it was like coming of age in wartime Japan, and of living among former enemies in the U.S. She told me how she worked for Americans, how her father wanted her to marry an American and actually did have her take photos of all her prospects so she could choose my father. Like the mother in the book, she told me these stories beginning in my childhood. I never liked to hear of her hardships.
And of course, there was the inspiration book: The American Way of Housekeeping. My mother had a copy of the book, written in Japanese and in English, telling housekeepers how to keep a proper house for the military occupying the country. Yes, housekeepers. The book was made for housekeepers, but was also a handy guide, apparently, for new Japanese brides marrying Americans. It was popular enough to go through several printings and editions and be sold at the PX, or military base store; one book I found online had the PX stamp and an inscription to a wife.
I used the nonfiction book as the basis for my fictional How to Be an American Housewife, which turned into a nice structure for the novel, the skeleton, so to speak. But the real stories are in some ways secondary to the meat of the book.
What the book is really about is how a mother and daughter overcome years of miscommunication, gaps real and imagined in both language and culture. It’s about how to come to terms with wanting what you have, not what you wanted to have. And it’s about living with hope and finding redemption, both themes that perhaps would have been less possible to have in a memoir.
How to Be an American Housewife is Margaret Dilloway’s first novel. For more on Dilloway, who lives with her husband and three children in Hawaii, visit her website.
How to Be an American Housewife is a work of fiction, but includes incidents that were told to me by my mother. So why did I write a novel and not a memoir? Wouldn’t it have been easier to compile the stories my mother told me? Most every writer and reader has seen Truman […]
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