Author of the Week
Joan Thomas
Although she’s written two novels set in the past, Joan Thomas is uneasy with the term “historical fiction.” “We currently apply the term to any book set (roughly) before the invention of the microchip,” she says. She’d rather limit the category to novels that concern themselves with events at least two generations distant, and that focus on real human beings rather than imaginary characters.
Historical fiction is sometimes criticized as nostalgic or conventional, but Joan believes the complaint is overstated. “It’s absurd to draw a line in time and consider only stories set in the current decade as interesting or relevant,” she says. “The present (any present) is a rickety scaffold screwed onto a construct of the past, and so trying to write about our own time often means reaching back to, and having another go at, events that were overlooked or misunderstood or half-digested when they happened.”
There’s no denying the pleasure that immersing oneself in a different historical period can bring. Writing Curiosity was “the most fun I’ve ever had,” Joan admits, and she was “often amazed by what a generous and accommodating collaborator history was; sometimes this book felt like a ‘found novel.’”
Still, she maintains, far from representing escapist fantasy, historical novels cast new light on present preoccupations. “Why use the past? For the same reason we write about the present: because we see a story we can’t turn away from.”
