Quote:
Originally Posted by Little.Egret
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fiction_novel
The non-fiction novel is a literary genre which, broadly speaking, depicts real historical figures and actual events woven together with fictitious conversations and uses the storytelling techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely defined and flexible genre. The genre is sometimes referred to using the slang term "faction", a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction.
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Quite a lot of James Michener too
American author of more than 40 books, most of which were fictional, lengthy family sagas covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and incorporating solid history.
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I have a name that I use to refer to it, too. But I can't repeat it in polite company. Just kidding.
Let me quickly try to redeem myself for that last paragraph.
I have a lot of respect for outstanding writers of that kind of fiction. It takes a huge amount of research to write an historical novel like you described--one that is true to details, "true to life," that could have actually happened, but didn't actually happen. It might take almost as much research to write one of those as an actual history. Maybe more, because in addition to engaging in research about things, down even to the minutiae, the authors have to invent an interesting, cohesive story. Without ever having tried to do it, I still know that that must be an enormous challenge.
I still don't care to read historical fiction. In the way of a story, I want to read something that really, really happened.
I've actually dipped my toes in the historical fiction subgenre a time or two. Once I even started reading Michener's
Alaska. It is a historical novel, set in--you guessed it--Alaska. The time was the late 1700's or early 1800's or so (just before Seward's Folly," in which the U.S. Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln so "foolishly" bought from Russia the "worthless" piece of property that is Alaska). But the book was just too long for my short attention span. I gave up on it after about pages. But I learned some things). I am amazed at the details that Michener had at his command.
I think that the subgenre that you're talking about is the one that tubemonkey (rest his soul
) simply called "historical," when describing the genre/subgenre of audiobook historical novels.
(Sorry to be so talkative. I'll blame it on what was is now an empty cup, sitting next to me, that just a few minutes ago was filled nearly to the brim with espresso. I'm wired. I need to calm down, get out of the house, and go somewhere--maybe the 24-hour Walmart down the street. No, on second thought, I'm not
that desperate).