At least two reviewers I've read call Geraldine
Brooks' writing "magic." Perhaps that’s why "historical
fiction" seems too restrictive to describe the four novels of hers that I
have read.
She applies her magic to historical truths with
amazing characters who find their ways through real history, not some academic
recitation of it, nor just a bow to something distant. Her success comes by
letting the reader be as close to that history as possible. To me the real magic
comes from her extensive research and clever use of words and even sentence
structure as they probably were used in the times she is telling. Here’s an
example:
…He could tell
such tales: of Barbary seamen who wrapped their copper-colored faces in turbans
of rich indigo; of a Musalman merchant who kept four wives all veiled so that
each moved about with just one eye peeking from her shroud. He had gone to
London at the end of his apprenticeship, for the return and restoration of King
Charles II had created prosperity among all manner of trades… (Year of Wonders)
People of the
Book was the first of Brooks’ books I read, and I
was hooked. Next came her Pulitzer prize-winning March, an amazing work that overlays a Civil War-era tale with the
denouement of Little Women, if you
can imagine.
Then I read Caleb’s Crossing with its vivid descriptives and beautiful story line set in the early days of Massachusetts Colony, and how a young Indian brave became the first of his people to graduate from Harvard College.
Now I've just completed Year of Wonders, a gripping, honest, and respectful work set in a 17th Century rural English village besieged by the plague. More than half the town's residents die in awful suffering. But it is a redemptive work because of Brooks' "magic," her wonderful development of Anna, a true heroine, and the amazing feeling of somehow being uplifted as a person for having taken the journey with her through and to the other side of a living hell. Year of Wonders gives a whole new dimension to the concept of "cinematic" writing. And I was there.
