I’m afraid I saw the film of Restoration fairly recently and didn’t particularly enjoy it due to the strange casting of Meg Ryan and Robert Downey Junior so I came to the book with some trepidation. The miscasting was confirmed when I read the book and unfortunately it was difficult to put the filmic image I had of Merivel in particular out of my mind. I also found that I was constantly comparing the narrative structure of the film with that of the book and found the differences irritating. I read somewhere that Rose Tremain was not happy with the adaptation and I can see why. Maybe one shouldn’t see the film of any book before reading it although I did recently have great problems in getting into The Shipping News by Annie Proulx until I’d seen the film. Should a film be better than the book it is based on?
I’m not a great fan of historical novels and much prefer more modern fiction – something I can more easily relate to. I always wonder how accurate the historical background of a story is? Has the author just brushed up on a period with some deft research or do they really know what they are writing about. It would seem such a distraction to worry about getting the details right if you have not immersed yourself in a historical period for years and can just write about it as if it is the modern day. I think some authors can do that without much effort for example Peter Ackroyd but I didn’t get the impression Rose Tremain was truly confident in the period. Some of the details particularly of the food and clothing seemed a bit wooden - straight out of a text book.. Maybe her later books are more confidently written.
The inherent “academicness” of historical novels is also a problem for me as I wonder whether an author is also being ‘clever’ in other aspects of the story. For instance what did the scene where Merivel puts his hand on the man’s beating heart mean? A friend suggested it was some kind of Biblical/Quaker reference. I’m not sure I can be bothered wondering! At least with ‘high brow’ writing set in the present day such as for instance that by Ian McEwan I can have a good guess at what the author is ‘getting at’.
Copyright © 2007 Archant Regional Limited. All rights reserved. Terms and conditions