I think when the fiction is as big a part of the story as it is in the two books you mention, they should be labelled as fictionalized and not as non-fiction. The lies in these two books only hurt people's feelings. If we allow this to go on, other supposed non-fiction books might hurt reputations (other that the authors') or destroy lives.

There is a difference between telling direct lies about oneself or one's contemporaries and interpreting events a long time after they happened. Biographers, historians and archaeologists all do this.

What I wanted to add was that we can never be sure of 100% accuracy in accounts of long-ago events, even in autobiographies, but that does not make it okay for authors to tell what they know to be outright lies.

The book group I was in read Mutant Down Under. None of us believed it was true. Interesting about a year later, it started appearing on the fiction shelves. And the author later admitted that yes, she made things up.

Frey originally tried to sell his book as a novel. No one would take it. His agent apparently told him to sell it as a memoir. It took. Did he deliberately set out to fraud the readers - not originally. But he did

I think what gets my goat is that there are hundreds of memoirs and biographies that get it right, and that are well written (my understanding is that this wasn't). Yet Oprah choses this one to represent someone with an addiction.

As far as accuracy - I expect it in non fiction, in biographies (as much as possible),in memoirs. Those last two prove problematic, because too often the authors embellish conversations, or come to conclusions that are based on very scant information (the book about Queen Victoria's daughters was a good example of this. The authors main premise was that the king and queen were terrible parents, and thus the children grew up to start WWI. Um, no) I thought the memoir of Katharine Grahm, and the biography of Gertrude Bell really shined as examples of how to write bios and memoirs.

I am easier with Historic Fiction (not talking Historic Romance here, which I really expect none). However, I expect accurate depiction of the the time period and place, characters should be making decisions based on the time period, and as close to possible following sequence of events in history. And I expect an author to tell me what she changed in her story. Sharon Kay Penman is an excellent example of this. Phillipa Gregory is an excellent example of the opposite.

Cindy

Cindy, can you remember the name of the book about Queen Victoria's daughters and the author please? It was certainly Q V's grandson,'Kaiser Bill' who had a big hand in starting WW1.

veer, no question there. But the author's premise was that it was all because the king and queen were bad parents. It felt like someone had been reading a little to much in their Psych 101 book.

To be fair, I didn't finish the book. I think I got to my 50 pg minimum and tossed it in my library return pile. Maybe it got better later on. But I didn't want to stick around to find out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Victoria's Daughters

I expect a book billed as non-fiction to be as accurate as possible. I certainly do not want to read a memoir that contains fiction. In historic fiction I want historic accuracy, or, as has been mentioned, the sort of caveat that Sharon Kay Penman delivers up front. I can't read Philippa Gregory's books, having read too many true bios of the women she fictionalizes. i find myself yelling at them.

Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packard.
I enjoyed it, and did not get the impression that the author blamed Victoria and Albert's parenting for WWI-however, the difference in Vicky's expectations and English philosophy and the realities of the Prussian Court clearly was one reason that they ended up on different sides of the war. This is borne out in several bios of Victoria I have read-Stanley Weintraub's and Carrolly Erickson's for example. Albert had a vision of a Europe ruled by his descendants according to his philosophy-he just forgot to tell Europe. Vicky was his favorite and most apt pupil.
I find Princess Louise to be more interesting, however, and Princess Helena to be the saddest.

I enjoyed The Da Vinci code as a light read although I didn't believe a word of his theories. But when I read Angels and Demons later I was disgusted because I have been inside and outside CERN in Geneva and Dan Brown obviously has not. The lack of accuracy suddenly became too striking for me to accept the rest of the book.

If a book is listed as fiction,I rarely accept much of it as factual. On the other hand,if it's a non fiction book then I expect it to be dead on.If it isn't,it's perjury and unacceptable unless the author has clearly stated that some of it is opinion.

I also expect a book billed as non-fiction to be as accurate as possible. Netla put it very well: There is a difference between telling direct lies about oneself or one's contemporaries and interpreting events a long time after they happened. Biographers, historians and archaeologists all do this.

When I read The Forest Lover, which is about the life of the Canadian artist Emily Carr, I bore with the books-for-juveniles style of writing for the sake of what seemed to be facts about Carr's passion for the art work of Northwest Coast Indians. However, I recall feeling seriously annoyed when I read an explanation at the end admitting that the French fur trader that the book had Carr falling in love with was entirely fictitious. The author gets credit for telling the truth at all, but if I had read that comment at the start, I probably would not have read the book. Ah, well, it was probably the publisher's decision to put it at the end.

I can accept that an author dealing with relatively obscure long-dead people has to flesh out the account. However, introducing a character who never existed, just to add some love interest, is going too far. Let authors stick to interpretation; that is as far as they should risk venturing from the truth.

Writing something autobiographical and deliberately filling it with lies is quite another matter and unforgivable.

Fact is, I tend to believe everything I read, even when I know better. It is just human nature. As Frieda noted in another thread, thousands of people now think Vermeer's model for The Girl With the Pearl Earring was named Griet (sp?) Everything I know about the U.S. Army in Europe I learned from Tom Clancy; Everything I know about history I learned from Thomas Costain; Everything I know about spies I learned from LeCarre; Everything I know about cattle I learned from McMurtry.

Still, I think most of us can read The Davinci Code and know what is accurate, what is speculative, and what is invented to sex up the plot. How much is the author responsible for the credulous who might read his book?
Sounds like a number of critical readers doubted the accuracy of both Frey's and Morgan's books.

Several of us have read Small Island. Do any of us doubt the reality of the problems Gilbert and Hortense encountered as Jamaicans in England during and after WWII? Why do we believe it? I mean, I have no direct experience that suggests the truth of what she wrote. What makes her credible? What clues us in to those who are not? Why did everyone believe Thomas More's accounts of Richard the III? And why did I immediately believe Josephine Tey got Richard III right?

I agree that non-fiction should be as accurate as possible. I just read my first Phillipa Gregory, The Other Bolyen Girl, and won't be reading another.

OT, is anyone watching The Wives of Henry VIII on PBS right now? It is done by a narrator with characters dressed as Henry and the wives and a few other important people but with little to no dialogue.

Accuracy is a very over-rated virtue and lets face it most of us wouldn't recognise it if it crept up behind us and bit us on the bum.
How do we judge the accuracy or otherwise of anything we read? All we can go by is accumulated experience, what we have read in other books, the paucity or otherwise of our education and what we have seen with our own eyes - useless barometers of fact if ever there were any.
In fiction, biography, autobiography, memoirs, history, political or religious tracts, philosophy or books about celebrities I never accept anything as being factual. Anything between two covers is merely the author's version of the truth of matters and these fields more subject to a certain warping of the facts than others.
Ya gotta laugh when anybody says "it's an historical fact". No area is more subject to interpretation, misinterpretation, re-interpretation, bias - national, poitical or religious, or sheer bloody minded hypocritical blending of "fact", lies and acceptable dogma than history. I treat history as fiction with some footnotes and dates thrown in just to bolster the author's claims of accuracy.
I only expect true accuracy in books of science, ccokbooks and the daily sports pages. All the rest is a fog of opinion, imagination and non verifiable factoids. Enjoyable and mesmerising all the same.
All I ask of any book is that I be drawn into the author's world for a few hours, see things through eyes other than my own. that the author expresses himself/herself clearly and that he/she delineates the human condition with wit, compassion and some semblance of beauty. Claims of accuracy should be left to megalomaniacs, politicians, religious fanatics and radio shock jocks so we all know when to start laughing. Books should always have a disclaimer on the first page. "No guarantee is made for the acuracy of the contents. It's purely how I see things. Enjoy" Larry

cc, thanks for your comments about Victorias Daughters. To be fair, I am not a huge fan of bios. But I love history and thought this would be up my alley. I might just have to grit my teeth and try it again - esp if you didn't see what I saw, and maybe I saw something small and made a bigger deal out of it than it was (mmm, does that make sense?)

chris, it worries me that you believe what you see in fiction! Oh my, that could get a person in a heap of trouble! I like my fiction to have an accurate background- whether its the deptiction of SF in Carter Beats the Devil, true depiction of living in small town Ohio in Dawn Powells books, or how Penman brings the 12th century to life in Here Be Dragons. The authors you mention indeed bring that background to their works. But I'd ask questions before I assumed it to be real

There are times tho that a book has sparked my curiousity. I'll do a bit of research (bless the inventor of Google, that link is a life saver) and often realize that some of what I read was true. But more often than not its just in the minds of the writer.

>Do any of us doubt the reality of the problems Gilbert and Hortense encountered as Jamaicans in England during and after WWII? Why do we believe it? What makes her credible? What clues us in to those who are not?

I think that depends on the background one has, as Larry said. A book like this, or Time of our Singing which is about the civil rights movement, were pretty much on target with what I already knew, so what I didn't know for sure I felt comfortable believing. Knowing people the way I do, I had no question about race relations at that time. Not sure what clues she gives us, thats a good question.

>Why did everyone believe Thomas More's accounts of Richard the III? And why did I immediately believe Josephine Tey got Richard III right?

Coz history is generally written by the winners. Losers in battles not only get killed, they also get libeled. I havent read Tey, but I think Penman gets him right in Sunne in Splendor. Why? Past expereince with the author, maybe. But again, your questions are very good. I'll be curious what others say.

To me, fiction can do whatever it wants. Heck, Jim Crace wrote a whole novel (Devil's Larder) with completely invented insects, so why not. So DaVinci Code didn't bother me about inaccuracies - except that he takes a small bit of a puzzle that others have worked out and puts them out of context. I enjoy learing about the early Chuch and suspect Brown does too, and I think his book has given more people the same interest. What worries me tho is how many people think everything in the book is true.

>Books should always have a disclaimer on the first page. "No guarantee is made for the acuracy of the contents

Certainly novels do that. I think most folks don't notice that. Most folk want to believe, and so they assume what they read is accurate, esp when reading historic fiction or memoirs. I am always...

Interesting topic and one that I brought up at my book discussion club meeting last Thursday. We were discussing HamletÂs Dresser by Bob Smith which is his memoir. Critics have reviewed it as being a story about how a man, now in his 60Âs, survived a difficult childhood by finding redemption through Shakespeare. Personally, while I laud his pleasure in the bard, I think he would have been better off with a therapist.
(There are some times as I grow older that I think I have become more cynical but I think it is that I have lost the idealism of youth and instead see things in grays rather than black or white.) I mention this because at this book club meeting I stated that I preferred referenced biographies to memoirs or autobiographies and most people were surprised. So I explained that rather than seeing this particular novel as inspiring or a story of redemption, I thought it was a tragedy. Part of that stemmed from what was not said in his memoir -- the authorÂs failure to deal with the particular issue of his own sexual orientation, and a tendency to blame his parents for what was essentially a family tragedy that made all of them victims. Bob Smith is a tragic character, IMHO..
I expect that the nature of memoirs leads to inaccuracies: over time we remember things so often that falsehoods can become truths, and we often prefer to put a slant on those memories that the original participants probably wouldnÂt recognize. As a reader of a memoir I am intensely interested in the author and I want honesty I donÂt think that often happens. Therefore my preference for biographies. Even then, it is better if the subject matter is dead and canÂt threaten lawsuits etc.
I like fiction and historical fiction because no one is trying to bamboozle the reader. If you want to be an idiot and accept things as truths, go ahead, but often these kind of novels serve as jumpstart for an exploration of the truth. Whatever that is. Many have mentioned Dan BrownÂs novels, which have now spawned other novels that debunk what he says or shed more light on the topics he dealt with. I think Mr. Brown, who is probably sunning himself somewhere on a beach with bikini-clad hostesses and not worrying about his bar tab, should be congratulated for starting that kind of exploration. I forgive him for becoming a millionaire even though he is a terrible, awful writer.

And now back to Birds Without Wings, which I started reading yesterday, and will start the discussion this Wednesday unless Frieda wants to go ahead since she initially suggested it. J

In my opinion, an author makes a contract with the reader, and he owes it to the reader to keep that contract to the best of his ability. If he says "This is true, as far as I can tell based on my experience or research", then it had better be so. If on the other hand he says "What if this had happened" or "Let's pretend" or even "Once upon a time", then progressively less accuracy is required.

I am perfectly willing, even delighted, to suspend belief for the sake of a good story, providing the author and I both understand that is what is happening.

Rosefolly

carolyn-I'm watching it-the narrator is David Starkey-he's written several well-received and (apologies to Larry) well-researched bios of the Tudor time. He, Carolly Erickson and Alison Weir are three "experts" of the time that I respect and read. Both Starkey and Weir have written "Six Wives" books thatsit next to each other on my shelves-I do think I hear the occasional growl from up there.
Larry-I do agree that "history" in literature is the accumulation of repeated stories-hence the propoganda that is Richard murdering the Princes in the Tower. History is not stagnant-a combination of research, new discoveries and educated theories constantly revises it. However, I would differentiate between a paucity of historical evidence and the book that started this discussion-marketing it as a first person true memoir while purposely lying to jazz it up is dishonest and I don't want to add to his wallet.

Alison Weir and Alison Plowden are two of my fav authors when it comes to the Tudor period. I love just about anything Antonia Fraser has written. But having read so much I didn't feel the need to see the show. Was it a repeat of the one a few years back, or with new information?

BTW carol, when you spoke of Thomas Costain - were you referring to his novels or his histories? Because his four volumes of his Plantagnet series is absolutely excellent. I had just read Penman's trilogy of Wales and England during that time period, and reading Costain afterwords helped put things in perspective, and helped me realize how much research was done for her work.

Goodness what a thoughful bunch! (give me a minute to gush, I'm new here) I'm enjoying your responses greatly and I wish I read them yesterday when my bookclub met and I brought up the subject because I would have sounded like a genius!

I want to add my two bits about Dan Brown. I think he puts together a good plot but he strings together lots of things that don't belong together, hence the inaccurate stories. I live in France right now and last summer I ran into a few tourists who were on a Dan Brown "tour" which took them to a little church where no tourist ever went before since it's not all that impressive (besides the devil carved on the altar.) There are French commerçants in the boonies who worship Mr. Brown!

Cindy, don't worry too much about by gullibility. Because I know this tendency, I tend to be much more critical that the average bear. My point is that we all tend to believe what is presented to us by the people we like or that we recognize as authorities. That is part of the reason, I suspect, that Oprah had to backpedal and remove her support from Frey. She needed to maintain her moral authority. I was glad to see it, frankly. I've been a bit concerned by society's current tendency to embrace the "fake but accurate" meme. To borrow from everyone's favorite wimp: "For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." We seem to have transformed that into there is nothing either right or wrong, but that "our" agenda makes it so.

I am informed by both Costain's histories and his novels. He is probably responsible for my love of history. I have always read histories such as his and historical novels with a stack of history books by my side to see what others have said about the period. I am a researcher by nature.

Okay-who has my copy of Victoria's Daughters? I want to reread it and it's missing from the Victorian book shelf. Time to rack the brain.

I do the same thing, chrisinthevalley-historic fiction will send me searching, usually for a minor character. Geoffrey Chaucer's daughter is one I'm searching for now-did she really grow up and marry the Earl of Suffolk?

> hence the inaccurate stories

Well, its fiction. They are not meant to be accurate. Tho I was thrilled when he talked about Temple Church. I have read some history of the Templars, and a few years ago was able to visit that church. Fun to 'see' the church again in his description..

BTW, did anyone scream 'its mirror writing' at the book when he was trying to figure out Da Vinci's note?

>Because I know this tendency, I tend to be much more critical that the average bear.

Hee, yes it does pay to know oneself! (btw I reread my post and realized how condescing it must have sounded. It wasn't meant to be, and I probably should have worded things differently - I am sorry (yes, I know there is the opporutnity to edit...:)

>My point is that we all tend to believe what is presented to us by the people we like or that we recognize as authorities.

This is very true. And when we find out that these people mislead us, trusting them again is almost impossible. This is also problematic - for if people always trust authorties to tell the truth, they might be less likely to hear another truth.

>We seem to have transformed that into there is nothing either right or wrong, but that "our" agenda makes it so.

Oh you are so right - this stands with religion, politics and jsut about anything else. And we've become a society where everything is black and white, there is no middle ground, so if you disagree with me, you must be a horrible person of some type. No one wants to listen to the three or four sides of every issue. They just assume that they must be right.

After reading Costains histories, I picked up every one of his novels thinking I was in for a treat. I was really disappointed - and it probably was that I was expecting the same writing in his novels that he used in his histories. I may have to try them again, as they really would have been right up my alley

>I have always read histories such as his and historical novels with a stack of history books by my side to see what others have said about the period.

Yep - or at least easy access to Google (and if its on the internet, it has to be true, right...?)

cc, I am not sure about his daughter, but his sister was Katherine, mistress to John of Gault. Anya Seytons wrote a novel about her, her long time affair with Gault and her relationship with Chaucher. Fascinating stuff - think there might be info about his daugher there?

BTW, since we were talking about the DaVinci Code, the latest issue of the New Yorker (Feb 26) has a rather lengthy article about Mary Magdelene - thought some might be interested in checking it out (I haven't had a chance to get to it yet)

Katherine was Chaucer's sister? I read that book in high school and missed that connection entirely! She and John spawned the Beaufort boys, right?
oh great-I've got tons of real and grad work to do and now I have to go look this up!
grad work-fun research-professional writing for a deadline

tough choice.
back later........

this is what I found:

did you really think I was going to go write my paper?

John espoused, in 1396, Catherine, daughter of Sir Paine Roet, Guienne King of Arms, and widow of Sir Hugh Swynford, a knight of Lincolnshire.

For our purposes, the story of the Roet Family coming to England begins in the early 1300s, when Payne Roet, father of Katheryn Roet Swynford and Philippa Roet Chaucer,

Got it! She was the sister-in-law of Chaucer! Wow. Small world!
hehehehehehehehe!
okay-back to the real thread.

My book club just read the book Shadow Divers and in that non-fiction book, two of the characters (are they characters if it's non-fiction?) do research in D.C. and discover that after WW II, if there were unconfirmed facts about U2 boat sinkings, that whoever was accumulating the facts just filled in the blanks! (I was astounded! to learn that such a thing happened!) AAANNNDDD...that these filled-in-blanks have become accepted historical "facts"! The two characters were able to correct many things.
Also-DS is doing his term paper on Slaughterhouse Five and in his research, has discovered that after the war, when Vonnegut, who survived the bombing of Dresden, asked for info from the Air Force about the bombings in order to write the book, he was told that the mission to Dresden was a secret. A secret! From who?
More and more, I fear that history is often fiction with longevity.

Katherine de Roet Swynford was actually Chaucer's sister-in-law, the sister of Chaucer's wife, Phillippa de Roet. Edit I see you've already found that.

Cece, I've tried to track down Chaucer's daughter, too. Some biographies say he might have had two daughters, one became a nun (part of her nun's dowry was paid by John of Gaunt). I recently read Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery by Terry Jones, et al. Well, it confused me mightily because it states that Chaucer just disappeared from history and could possibly have been murdered. Yet, other biographies state explicitly that Chaucer died on 25 October 1400 and was buried in Westminster. Some say only a plaque was placed in Westminster several years after his demise. I hope to sort this out!

This all started because I enjoy the Sister Frevisse mysteries-she is portrayed as a niece of Chaucer, brought up in his home with his daughter Alice, who married very well twice-but in the books, she is the wife of the Earl of Suffolk, who is deep in nefarious political chicanery.

>oh great-I've got tons of real and grad work to do and now I have to go look this up!

Hee, been there, done that on more than one occassion (but whats more fun?) Yep, forgot that part (its been ages since I read it) so I conflated those two (ironic that we are talking about accuracy here :) Thanks for the correction. I do remember the four of them were quite close. Very good book for anyone interested in the time period.

>I fear that history is often fiction with longevity

I like that line, and am afraid you might be right. Happens throughout history. If a Roman emperor newly crowned wanted to erase his predessesor from history, he commanded that any building or monument with his name on it be chiseled away. Certainly the Soviet Union was doing some major touching up of photos and articles. And we have our own misinformation currently in progress. And since history is usually written by the victors, it should be expected, and questioned. The problem is that we usually don't know when we are looking at it.

So the question above is still a very good one: how do we know what is accurate? What are the clues to something that is either playing around with the facts or an outright lie? How much searching does one need to do to be sure, and what happens when so many primary sources conflict? (Chris, this is why I'd love to be a researcher. My problem is I'd start from one point, and then my search would lead me into five different directions. This caused many problems during my grad school years...)

Welcome Jolimont! Are you living in Paris?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Alice (wife of the Earl of Suffolk) the grand-daughter of Geoffrey Chaucer; daughter of his son Thomas Chaucer?

aha! another clue!

Interesting comments above.

I think what I care about is not so much accuracy as honesty. That's why I'm quite upset about A Million Little Pieces. He sold that book and gave interviews about his life - and the whole thing was a sham. I'd be prepared to argue that his behaviour is criminal - in the UK, he could probably be charged with obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception.

In a non-fiction book - then of COURSE accuracy matters.

Do I care about accuracy in a novel? Not as long as the author doesn't put a in foreword or afterword saying "all the facts are true; the rest is just a story". But if he or she does put in such a foreword/afterword (as Dan Brown did in the Da Vinci Code) and then it turns out that the major facts are NOT true, it comes under the heading of dishonesty.

I wish I could remember names and dates but here it goes. In Australia, a white man pretended to be a Aboriginal girl when he wrote a novel. In Britain, an Anglican clergyman wrote a fictional memoir about a Muslim girl growing up in England. In both cases, the books were widely praised by critics and others for their "authenticity" and "insight". When the hoaxes were revealed, the authors were widely reviled by those who were taken in. A few critics thought that these were great jokes that illustrated the inanity of the idea that only members of a minority could write meaningfully about the experience of being in a minority. What do the rest of you think of this? Are these men frauds who got their books noticed by pretending to be something they're not, or are they good authors with great imaginations who would have been dismissed as inauthentic because of their race?

It proves, perhaps, that some writers have great empathy. Or that they recognize the universal truths that unite us. The scandal comes, I suspect, from the bond we form with writers. An intimacy develops as we follow the thoughts of their characters and we form an image of who they are and how we respond to them. How can the personal betrayal be any different from that of finding out one's intimates are not who we think they are?

>I think what I care about is not so much accuracy as honesty

Ya know, thats a good point. Yes.

cj, its too bad both of those men chose not to be honest, and wrote their books as memoirs. If they had written novels, they would have still received the praise for authenticty and insight, as well as praise for being able to understand a world that they are not part of. I suspect they are good authors, who might have been afraid of the 'you can't write about X because you are not X' bs. I have never understood this. I have read male authors who so got a woman's character (Bernard McLarty does so in Grace Notes) and many women authors who did the same with male characters. One of my favorite books, Time of our Singing, about the civil rights movement and much else, isn't black. And it didn't seem to matter one bit.

So its too bad they fell for that. If its a good book, I don't care what gender, race, nationality, religion the author is. In fact I am liable not to remember the name of the writer. But I'll remember the book.

Mummsie, I live near Toulouse, south west France.