January 18: Historical Fiction, hither & thither

I was really, really excited about this swap, first because I got to share a great book with somebody, and second because I could use a new fiction book (Big Box Swindle is still my daily non-fiction). Right now, my third reading of James Harriot's "The Lord God Made Them All" is sufficing; it reads like fiction. At this point in the author's life, he's returned from WWII and resumes his calling as a vet in rural Yorkshire. One chapter describes the odd help he got to put a cow's rear leg back in its socket, apparently a four-person job at least. There were no near neighbors to the farm, but the government had assigned prisoners of war to stay on farms until they could be returned to their countries of origin. In all cases, Mr Herriot relates, the prisoners were grateful for the hospitality (they ate fresh farm meals while other parts of the country were still on rations) and eager to help out around the place. To the day of his writing, their hosts still visit the prisoners in Germany and Italy on holiday. This does read like fiction: What if the government decided to quarter the people still at Guantanamo on farms?

All my books are in storage in the attic, but I had a good time visiting them in their boxes to find my beloved copy of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth about a farmer growing up and old on the meniscus of revolutionary China. I was actually looking for Marge Piercy's Gone to Soldiers about ten intertwined characters during WWII, or Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve about an Indian woman struggling to maintain family traditions in rapidly colonizing India. But I must have given those away already; they are three of my favorite books after all.

So I was sorely disappointed to open up this avon romance of all things, which was stuffed with "bookmarks" that were actually ads for more romances. Avon categorizes it as "historical romance," but it doesn't care enough to mention on the cover when and where it takes place, and even so, I doubt it pays any more attention to history than you would if your loins were quivering all the time. Oh well, I can pick my own books. Anyway, the message board for the historical fiction swap is full of references to (and only to) novels about middle-English royalty I wouldn't have liked either. Yes, I'm an intense fan Arthurian legend, but that doesn't count as history.