Historical Novels Offer Insights Into the Past That Textbooks Can't

Here's an article from Cynthia Crossen, a regular columnist for Wall Street Journal, with her recommendations on historical fiction. Thot I might get some of you interested....

June 2, 2004;

I once thought history was boring. Then I started reading historical fiction.
History textbooks for my high-school and college courses focused primarily on political and military events -- wars, elections, beheadings, territorial disputes. Most of the authors didn't even bother trying to describe how those vanished worlds smelled, sounded or tasted, which made history seem drab and two-dimensional. Oddly, though the texts claimed to be faithful recitations of objective fact, history seemed unreal.
A good historical novel, however, transports readers, as though by a time machine, to a world where not only the curses, hairpieces and grog are authentic but also the beliefs and prejudices of ordinary people. However repugnant or alien they may seem now, the characters must be both believable and true to their time.
Presuming to understand the minds of people who lived two centuries ago -- ground where historians properly fear to tread -- is the job of historical novelists. Here are books by 10 different authors who have done that job very well:
"Regeneration" by Pat Barker. The first of a trilogy, this austere novel takes place in a mental hospital, where shell-shocked victims of World War I are cured so they can return to the front lines. One man has been declared insane because he opposes war; a psychiatrist with a conscience labors to heal him.
"Voyage of the Narwhal" by Andrea Barrett. A ship leaves Philadelphia in 1855 bound for the arctic, where it will search for survivors from an earlier expedition. The ship, commanded by a swashbuckling and reckless captain, becomes icebound and must wait nearly a year before a thaw releases it. The combination of infinite horizons and horrific claustrophobia mirrors the souls of the adventurers and those they left behind.
"Jack Maggs" by Peter Carey. This homage/reaction to Dickens's "Great Expectations" starts in London in 1837 but backtracks to the Australian penal colonies, where its antihero, Maggs, learns about villainy and revenge. Hard-boiled and thrillingly creepy, "Jack Maggs" meticulously evokes a world shrouded in fog, where everyone hides a dark secret.
"A Very Long Engagement" by Sébastien Japrisot. An irresistible blend of history, romance and mystery, this novel drops you into the trenches of World War I, where five traitorous French soldiers are punished by being sent into No Man's Land without weapons. Two years later, a fiancée of one of the men begins doubting the official story and launches an investigation. She finds bravery, corruption and forgiveness.
"English Passengers" by Matthew Kneale. Read it and weep, I might say, considering its biting depiction of the English colonizing Australia and, more brutally, Tasmania in the 19th century. But you're as likely to laugh at the farcical clashes between aboriginal and Western cultures. Ambitious, unlikely and deeply compassionate, "English Passengers" illustrates how fiction can bring back to life worlds long gone and overlooked by historians.
"After the War" by Richard Marius. This novel demands patience and attention, but give it 50 pages, and you might well settle in for 621. The unlikely setting is Bourbonville, Tenn., just after World War I. The protagonist, a traumatized Greek veteran still recovering from a head wound, seeks a refuge from his battlefield memories. Instead, the racial and religious conflicts of the world erupt in his small town.
"Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry. Join two former Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. Along the way, you'll meet every possible Old West character -- varmints and rustlers, prostitutes and virgins, friendly Indians and hostile ones, not to mention dust storms and disagreeable beans. More than 900 pages later, you'll still be wishing you had more time with Call and McCrae.
"The Tree of Life" by Hugh Nissenson. You can buy this out-of-print book for $1 on the Web -- a great deal for you but a literary travesty. Mr. Nissenson invents the diary/accounting ledger of a frontier whiskey distiller who settles in Ohio in 1811. There he records the transactions -- commercial and emotional -- of the settlers and their enemies. The language is so spare it verges on poetry.
"Sacred Hunger" by Barry Unsworth. A sweeping but minutely observed account of the 18th-century slave trade, this novel follows a ship from its outfitting in Liverpool to the African coast, where it picks up its wretched cargo, then across the Atlantic to Virginia. As engrossing as it is harrowing, "Sacred Hunger" has elegant style, a hair-raising plot, motley characters and meditations on greed, grace and what it means to be human.
"Lincoln" by Gore Vidal. Most Americans have had Lincoln's biography pounded into their heads, but Vidal shines new light on the man. Undeniably courageous, Lincoln was also a shrewd, tortured, cynical mortal with feet of clay. How Lincoln navigated the treacherous political crosscurrents of Civil War Washington, D.C., and ultimately held the nation -- and his family -- together is a breathtaking story.
Write to Cynthia Crossen at cynthia.crossen@wsj.com