Fiction Addiction: The Larnachs - fact or fiction?

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Opinion

I have to confess to a soft spot for historical fiction.

I enjoyed history at high school but the curriculum was never as interesting as it could have been. The human element was always secondary to the national or global significance of events, which could seem dull or irrelevant in the absence of an inspired teacher.

A few years ago I went through a phase of reading Philippa Gregory's novels about the Tudor and Plantagenet queens. Gregory writes compelling and deeply personal stories of these largely neglected figures, bringing to life all the intrigue and insecurity, the political posturing and the manipulation of life at the royal court, where the emotional, strategic and physical stakes could be so high.

It's one thing to know that Henry VIII had six wives and had two beheaded. It's another to feel Anne Boleyn's anguish at her repeated miscarriages, stillbirths and failure to produce a male heir; to witness the growing strain as her husband turns his affections to Jane Seymour and Boleyn's future prospects become all too clear.

The historical novel is history-lite, the easiest of entrées into another time and place. It can make history palatable - even enjoyable - especially to an audience who might not touch a text book.

Of course, there's also a danger in taking the work at face value, of assuming the accuracy of the depiction. But then even historical "facts" are often derived from personal papers, from diaries and journals, or correspondence. Who is to say that the "factual" version in any way reflects the objective truth (so far as such a thing exists)?

This month my feature book is a New Zealand novel founded in historical events. The Larnachs by Owen Marshall tells the story of the love affair between Constance, the third wife of politician William Larnach, and Dougie, Larnach's adult son by his first marriage. The book, writes Marshall in the opening pages, is neither history nor biography. "It is a novel: the imaginative interpretation of a situation experienced by real people."

The declaration is wise. Conny's voice is so convincing that in the first chapter I felt I was reading her journal. It was something of a relief to embark on chapter two and switch to Dougie's voice, and be reminded that this was indeed imagined. Had the book been pitched as based on personal diaries or letters, I might have felt like a voyeur, privy to something that was never intended to be made public.

The book reads as a series of personal revelations, as Dougie and Conny tell of their growing affection and transition to a physical affair. Their secret trysts in snatched moments of privacy, the breathtaking thrill of a fleeting connection in public, told in what Kelly Ana Morey described in the Herald on Sunday as "an awful lot of lovely, restrained writing", which feels entirely appropriate to the Victorian setting.

"As we stood in the shade house among the greenery and listened to the curator's recital of plants," says Conny, "it was Dougie's discreet and passing hand pressure on my back I was most aware of, and which gave me the most pleasure. "

But if the specifics of the affair are imagined, there are many other details that appear to be based on historical fact. William Larnach's business dealings and his relationships with Richard Seddon and Joseph Ward, Mark Twain's visit to Dunedin, Conny's support of the women's suffrage movement and the nature of Dunedin society at the time.

It's impossible to tell where the fiction leaves off and the fact begins. I'm hoping to explore this in further detail in my upcoming Q&A with Owen Marshall. In the meantime I'm about two-thirds of the way through and enjoying this little window on life in "the colony" a little over a century ago.

Next Tuesday, look out for Bronwyn's next blog on her feature book, Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff. She'll also announce the winner of this month's competition.