What's my New Year's resolution? Well, I'll tell you what it isn't. By Griselda Heppel.

A haunting atmosphere doesn't cover gaping plotholes.

Chatting to a friend about books over Christmas, I mentioned that I rarely read modern literary fiction anymore. Not because I don’t love fiction – of course I do, I write it for children! – but because it’s nearly always a disappointing experience. There’s something about beautiful writing – the chief characteristic of literary fiction – that seems to give the writers a pass when it comes to plot structure. Or even believable characters. Instead, finely crafted, often poetic prose and the power to conjure up a haunting atmosphere propel many a slim, pastel-teared-jacketed volume up the prize shortlists, with nobody seemingly noticing the gaping plotholes in the story. Or not caring about them if they do. 

But I care. If I can’t completely trust the world the author has created, what’s the point of reading on? If the letdown comes right at the end of the book, as it so often does, I’m left with a dispiriting sense of being had. 

Years ago, I read a prize-winning novel framed as the biography of a fictional artist, whose clever conceit was to hide the identity of the narrator until the very end. As, one by one, people in the artist’s life died off, the reader becomes increasingly intrigued as to who the voice – who knew the artist so intimately as to express her innermost thoughts at different crises in her life – could belong to. When at last the narrator’s identity was revealed, it felt like a slap in the face. No. That person would simply not have had such close knowledge of events in the artist’s life, most of which happened before the narrator was even born. For me the entire edifice of the story collapsed. It was, though, beautifully written. 

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift 

A less central problem, but one which caused me to lose faith just as much, arose as I neared the end of Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift.

 

I have to admit that this highly acclaimed novel left me cold. Jane, the servant through whose eyes the story unfolds, seems to have no personality of her own, only what her ‘masters’ expect of her. That is perhaps Swift’s point but it’s hard to care about her or in fact any of the characters, as they relate to each other with a detachment bordering on callousness.

 

Swift has taken immense pains in getting the 1920s historical setting right, depicting the social system by which a huge section of the population earned their living by being ‘in service’ to a much smaller, privileged group. He accurately gives Mothering Sunday its original purpose of being the one day off  in the year given to maidservants, to allow them to go home to visit their mothers. But he hasn’t noticed Mothering Sunday’s place in the church calendar as the fourth Sunday in Lent, three weeks before Easter, because in the story he places Easter Sunday just one week later. A tiny detail, you probably think, why should it matter? 

It matters because in the society and period in which Swift’s book is set, the church year mattered very much indeed. It was the norm to go to church and you would know exactly which Sunday was which. For Swift to have his characters celebrating Easter (or not, given the story) on the wrong day gives the lie – for me, anyway – to all his other historical details. Why should I believe any part of the story’s setting, if neither he nor his editor could be bothered to check such an easy fact? 

By now you’ll guess that whatever my New Year’s resolution is, it isn’t to read more literary fiction. I’m open to persuasion, however. There are, after all, wonderful writers whose tightly constructed plots rendered in beautiful prose don’t disappoint: A S Byatt, Jane Gardam, Anne Michaels, Walter Kempowski. If you can add to this list, please do! 

OUT NOW 

The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel

BRONZE WINNER in the Wishing Shelf Awards 2021 

By the author of Ante's Inferno  

WINNER of the People's Book Prize

www.griseldaheppel.com 

https://griseldaheppel.wordpress.com.