Currently reading
Perfect Strangers
The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir
The Captain's Daughter
The Trader of Saigon
Someone: A Novel
The Wolves of Midwinter
A Killing of Angels
Gravity of Birds Pb
The Return
The Twenty-Seventh City
Freud's Mistress
There has been a slew of historical 'speculative' fiction (my term for such books) such as The Chaperone, Mrs Lincoln's Dressmaker, Hemingway's Girl and now Freud's Mistress.I just find it very convenient that the story writes itself out while the author speculates and fill in the gaps since they are invariably based primarily on actual people/characters/situation but that little gap for imagination. And it does come across as being lazy as well.
One (the author/s) knows the beginning, the middle and the ending so let's just weave in bits and pieces over the parts that no one will really know.
Feels like a cop out to me and however artful the writer/writers might be, it just feels formulaic, without the rigours of historical non-fiction or the imagination of quality historical fiction either.
