Challenge Your View Of Reality!

by Lynn Bushell
|
7 books
Because my interest isn’t exclusively in historical fiction, my list includes books that don’t all sit comfortably in that category. One thing they have in common is that they challenge our notion of reality with a central character or situation taken from ‘real life’ and explored through the imagination.
Read more... Read less...

The Romantic

A novel
William Boyd, 2023
Boyd likes to tease his readers by not telling them whether his characters actually existed or not. His account of Cashell Ross, the bastard son of an Irish baronet and a Scottish governess, is based, he tells us, on documents that revealed enough to pique his curiosity but not enough for a biography. He did what any writer would do, taking what he could and making up the rest. We follow Cashell as his search for who he is brings him into the circles of Lord Byron, Shelley, and a woman who will haunt him ever afterwards. A thoroughly absorbing read.

A Terrible Kindness

Jo Browning Wroe, 2023
When I read the cover and saw that the author had grown up in a crematorium (‘we learned not to look too alive’), I couldn’t resist buying the book. William Lavery is 3rd generation in a family of embalmers and so in love with the profession that you wonder why you never considered yourself. The story recounts the harrowing tragedy of Aberfan, when a coal waste tip slid down a hill, engulfing a school, and the utterly self-sacrificing role played by embalmers in 'restoring' the dead children to their parents. There is also romance, betrayal, and the usual fall-out from a dysfunctional family. This is a book that educates as well as entertains. I found it fascinating.

Paradise Undone

A Novel of Jonestown
Annie Dawid, 2023
It would be easy to sensationalize the Jonestown Massacre in which 917 people and their leader - the messianic Jim Jones - killed themselves and their children. Jones ruled his little kingdom like a despot whilst still persuading his followers that he had their interests at heart. His long-suffering wife comes across as a candidate for sainthood. Jones slept with almost everybody in the inner circle – man or woman - whilst castigating gays and suggesting sex drained vital energy. It didn't seem to drain his. How could such a flawed individual come to wield so much power? But there are so many instances of this in history. For anyone interested in delving deeper into the mystery of mass hypnosis and what we can learn from it, this is a must-read.

Small Pleasures

Clare Chambers, 2021
The ‘plot’ of the story comes from a newspaper article. It’s beautifully written with not an ounce of pretension, and, to those of us who grew up in the 1950s, a marvelous evocation of the innocence, austerity, and (comparatively) gentle chauvinism that my father's generation thought was simply gallantry. I loved its gentle irony and understatement.

The Muse

A Novel
Jessie Burton, 2016
I liked this book because, for once, the 'genius' is a woman and the muse a man, though it's not that simple. The man, in this instance, has been credited with a masterpiece painted by the woman who feels she can best maintain her artistic freedom by not becoming famous. Well, what man turns down the chance of recognition? The book also looks at factors influencing the decision as to whether a painting qualifies as a masterpiece – whether the artist is male or female being high on the list.

Square Haunting

Five Writers in London Between the Wars
Francesca Wade, 2021
is about four women – ‘H.D’. Dorothy Sayers, Jane Harrison, and Eileen Powers. who lived at different times in the early 20th century in Mecklenburg Square. Each aimed to 'have a room of their own' where they could write and develop their talents. We learn of the difficulties they confronted, the chauvinism they encountered, and the successes they enjoyed. A romantic, often bohemian existence, but not in any sense of the word, an easy one

The Magician

A Novel
Colm Toibin, 2021
Thomas Mann spent much of his life going in and out of fashion; no surprise given that his early career as a writer in Germany coincided with the rise of Hitler. He's mainly known for 'Death in Venice', but Toibin's biography is so fascinating and engaging that you don't have to have read anything of Mann's to keep turning the pages. Fundamentally gay but never quite admitting his sexuality even to himself, he had six children, several with the same proclivities and four of them dangerously outspoken, which, for a man who spent his life sitting on the fence, must have been unnerving. His eldest daughter married W.H.Auden for political convenience, an event orchestrated by Isherwood ('the pimp'), and there are some deliciously bitchy descriptions of the two.