What exactly is a parallel narrative, sorry to be stupid. But not many stories have two separate stories running that have nothing to do with each other, do they?

Also, Zoot, if you don't like historical novels, why did you wet yourself over the Da Vinci Code?



Also, we have to learn from history, you can't just say history doesn't matter, of course it does coz everything that happens today can be explained through history in some form.

So that's not very helpful I know, but really I am being stupid coz I don't know what people mean by parallel narrative...

I guess it's about the label 'historical fiction' which implies a certain genre, which I don't think those two books fit. They're historical in the sense that they're set in the past, obviously, but not in the sense of the pleasures they offer which in historical fiction is to a good extent about the enjoyment of the depiction of a period, for example, and the expectation of a certain level of 'comfort' if you like in that enjoyment; nor do they contain the kind of suffusion of real or tough issues of the day (their day) that genre historical fiction might typically be thought of as offering... nor are they as interested in plot and story as compared to the ideas and reflections stimulated by plot and story, as genre historical fiction might be. I guesss it's about some arbitray line where at one end there's pure entertainment and at the other there's an intention to edify, reflect, challenge, contrast, so I suppose it's about where the intention lies partly, and beyond that in the execution.

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I think my ideas about historical fiction are probably quite uninformed and cliched by the way! I'd love to know about titles out there that would correct my prejudices. (TMOL by any chance? :) )

Really, really good point Davy. Thanks for that.

But not many stories have two separate stories running that have nothing to do with each other, do they?

No, but when they do, that's a parallel narrative: fundamentally, the two stories stand (more or less) on their own. Certainly the book's structured so you know which one you're reading, rather than the conventional way, where the various plots and subplots positively should weave in and out of each other.

You often get a quasi-parallel narrative when one story's a frame for the other - Wuthering Heights? (long, long time since I read it) - but it has to have its own life and development too, or to my mind it doesn't count. Or one story's expressed in some form other than conventional narrative - in Possession one story is made of letters and poems and fairytales and diaries, which the modern story spends finding, and reconstructing the story behind them. Some are an old person remembering a part of their past - Penelope Lively's Moontiger - others are finding-out-a-grandmother's-story: Birdsong? (haven't read it. Atwood's The Blind Assassin has a main drive of old-woman-remembering-life but there's a network of newspaper reports, from that big past event in her life, and also a completely separate myth/fantasy/quasi-historical narrative (I think, I never finished the book) which illuminates all the issues in another very consciously storyteller way. Some people say The French Lieutenant's Woman is parallel narrative, but I found the first chapter so incredibly irritating that I never got far enough to find out.

Emma

nor do they contain the kind of suffusion of real or tough issues of the day (their day)

Not sure what you mean by suffusion, here.

the ideas and reflections stimulated by plot and story ... edify, reflect, challenge, contrast.

If that's what you want in historical fiction, can I suggest that you'd really, really enjoy TMOL? Only joking.

According to my publishers it's literary-commercial crossover fiction, which just happens to be historical. It's noticeable that its cover (especially for the paperback) doesn't look obviously historical at all.

But you could try Peter Ackroyd. Hawksmoor is wonderful, and parellel like many of his later ones, and as challenging (and scary) as you like.

And Davy, yes, I agree - you can't understand what's happening if you don't understand how history works. And people and politics use history all the time to their own ends, so the last thing we should do is shy away from examining it properly and honestly.

Emma

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Zooter, I have to say - and I never mind if people don't read my work, I'm just pleased if they do - that if you did, and enjoyed it, you wouldn't be the first person who's said to me 'I thought I was going to hate it/it wasn't my cup of tea/I don't do hist. fic./my wife said I had to, but I loved it.

Yeah but Birdsong is mainly told from two seperate character's POV, at different times, granted, but all are intrinsically linked, the MC pre war, during war, and his grandkid, and if that's a parallel narrative then there are loads of them about. Also, there are other POV, Jack Firebrace and Michael Thingy-ma-jig, all in the War. So is that parallel, or just a story told over time? If it is parallel then Cloud Atlas would be one too, I think? Worth checking out I'd say.

I dunno, all too confusing for me, coz a story can have many facets to it, but a parallel narrative sounds like its something running at the same time but unrelated to the other story line, which would seem quite a bizarre thing to do, if the stories weren't linked, and I find it hard to think of one.

Birdsong is a f**kin great book by the way. So great I had to swear.

Except for the most cringeworthy sex scenes since the local geriatric swingers club last got together. Nasty.

Sorry...but it be strange out ere in the coun'ree.

Emma

I suppose by 'suffusion' I meant 'not really bothering with'!

Looks like you've done a sell on TMOL, maybe I'll go have a look. It sounds like it isn't historical fiction in that genre sense anyway...

I have enjoyed Patrick O'Brien and he's supposed be the kind of 'high-brow' end for want of a better phrase, within the historical fiction, but I don't think he ever steps out of the genre into anything that might be called 'literary' even though the writing is of a high literary standard, if you know what I mean.

Skyflyer thanks for those thoughts...

Well you have to have some kind of link, or the reader spends the whole book wondering why these two stories are in there together at all. That was why I ended up hitching the two strands of TMOL with the letters. Interesting, a propos storytelling, Zooter, that readers/listeners demand that the rules of storytelling - that everything links, everything makes sense - apply here too.

There's obviously a wide (thick?) grey area. I think I'd say that you need to know which strand you're in at any one time, and that the strands of the narrative have to have their own shape and development, and both be important, so that they interplay thematically as well as structurally and plot-wise. If all it is is a very old lady sitting down and saying 'let me tell you what happened when I was young' it doesn't count.

I did pick Birdsong up once, but found the prose didn't do it for me. There are too many books in the world with prose that does make the hairs rise on the back of my neck for me to have time for the others. But I know an awful lot of people who feel about it as you do, Davey

Emma

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Sorry, that was answering Davey.

Zooter, if you do have a look, I'm always particularly interested to know what people think who don't normally go for this kind of thing.

Well in that case I'd say Cloud Atlas is definitely a great example.

And no probs Zoot, so long as we all agree that Birdsong is in every respect, historical fiction! And I accept Dan Brown doesn't write historical fiction, only hysterically bad fiction.



But the thing that confuses me about all this, is by that definition His Dark Materials is a parallel story line (quite literally!), or, say, Lord of The Rings?

Or does it only apply if it is a historical setting, or if two characters have seperate journeys? I mean I'm not being awkward, just interested, because if it was the latter, then most stories told in the third person have parallel narratives don't they?

a propos storytelling, Zooter, that readers/listeners demand that the rules of storytelling - that everything links, everything makes sense - apply here too.

Mostly true but not always: in short fiction ambiguity or even consternation can be a desired effect at the end of a story.

Well you have to have some kind of link, or the reader spends the whole book wondering why these two stories are in there together at all.

Mrs Dalloway contains an interesting example of this sort of link, when Lady Bradshaw tells Clarissa about a young man killing himself and suddenly death is at the party, uninvited.

Mr Flyer

My understanding of it is that in true parallel narrative the two (or more) stories have no literal effect on one another, they are to all purposes separate stories, nothing that happens in one can change what will happen in another, which isn't true of LotR for example. (another book where we could find endless scope for disagreement methinks let's not start...)

Z

"no literal effect on one another, they are to all purposes separate stories, nothing that happens in one can change what will happen in another"

Well I can't think of any in that case, except maybe Cloud Atlas. But I won't go there for fear of spreading spoilers! Like last night I woz getting slightly, um, inebriated with a mate and we were talking about Harry Potter (saw the trailer for the new film which looks pretty good I reckon) and I said I hadn't read the Half Blood Prince (I called it the Mudblood Priest, which amused me slightly) and he misheard, or was too spaced out to realise what I was saying, and said "yeah, well X is the prince anyway so..."

And oh how we laughed, with much use of the words what, a, and c**t.

Sorry for lowering the tone once more.

Hey, not sure what you're implying there Zoot, but I really like LOTR, it's one of the most important books ever, to me, coz without it, I may not read much, and not write at all. So I think we'd agree, I think...

I haven't read LOTR so can't really comment but as I understand it there are various sets of people wandering around, but they basically exist in the same world, and their paths do cross, which has an effect on their stories.

I wonder if you define the difference by saying that in a true parallel narrative the two (or more) stories don't have reciprocal effects on each other. Obviously in something like Possession the older story has an effect on the modern one, but not on purpose, as it were. It has its own shape and coherence, and any effect it has on later times is a side-effect. Nor can the modern one change the old one and in a physical sense the two don't interact. Well, unless it's a ghost story, I suppose.

With a modern parallel narrative...

Hey, here's a modern one, sort of - Changing Places by David Lodge!

... as I was saying, in an all-in-one-time parallel narrative I think you would really struggle to keep it coherent if the two strands were connected enough to make the reader understand why they were in the same novel, but not so much that the stories started affecting each other, at which point it ceases to be a parallel narrative. The Lodge is the only one I can think of, and even that's pushing it. Of course, that kind of campus satire is happy to be very over-determined, so any air of strain about the structure is arguably just all part of the fun.

Emma

I would honestly say, without meaning to be fawning, that now and again you can read a book out of your chosen genre and be swept away by it. TMOL was one such book, for me, and I wouldn't really classify it as a historical novel per se, even though that is half the background. More, it is a thesis on love and healing, laying the past to rest and embracing the future. As such, it was an incredibly moving portrait of the human heart against a backdrop of war and isolation, and certainly stood head and shoulders, in term of quality and style, over what you might think of as the historical romance novel.

JB