The Western Wind: A Novel

"Immediate transportation into the rural isolation and rough Catholicism of 1491! Speaking at the Borders Book Festival, Sam Harvey said she thought she’d written a novel about religion and was surprised to find she’d written a first-class historical novel. But that’s the best type of historical novel: when the writer is so deeply immersed that period setting is almost by-the-way. And immediate transportation was just the first of many things to admire, including the evocation of life in a village both sustained and cut off by a bridge-less river, the wonderful rural dean, and that’s before taking full account of the technical expertise required to tell a mystery story in reverse. Best of all, though, and almost miraculous, is the anxious, occasionally querulous voice of John Reve, the priestly hero, as he struggles with poverty, superstition, his temper and fear of redundancy. Here he is, railing against the medieval faith hierarchy: If there aren’t enough people to see to the land and animals, and if half the animals have died, the village starves, and if the village starves it looks to me [John Reve, the priest], and I look to him [the rural dean], and he looks to the archdeacon who looks to the bishop and finds nobody there. And people lose faith because their protectors have not protected them, and the Lord loses faith in the protectors, whom he appointed to keep him in the hearts of all. Once the Lord has lost his faith in you, you’re upriver with no raft and one leg. If you ever read a better 1491 priestly voice, I’d be surprised. Accuracy in historical novels only applies to certain facts: clothes; forms of transport; weapons; historical events, and of these only historical events are really fixed. Can we be sure, for example, of the exact date the first crinoline appeared on a London street? Or a phaeton was driven in Bath? Just because it’s recorded, can we really insist that firearms were first used in warfare at the Battle of Agincourt? Things appear before somebody notices them. Things happen before they’re recorded. As judges, historical accuracy is only a factor when it jars. Otherwise, though we may question it, it can’t be a deciding consideration, particularly when the most unlikely things often turn out to be true. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . That doesn’t mean research isn’t vital. I think Andrew Miller, another author on this year’s shortlist, speaks for many historical novelists when he likens research to beach-combing. Nobody who has read his The Crossing (2015) could have any doubts about his forensic dedication but, like flotsam and jetsam, there are things to pick up, and things to leave. ‘Imaginative accuracy’ is perhaps a better term for the research that scaffolds historical novels—contemporary novels, too. And let’s not pretend. Even the most skilful novelist can’t really get into the mindset of somebody living in another time, any more than somebody from the past could get into ours. Try getting a young person to imagine life without the internet. Full accuracy can never be achieved, and even if it was, is no guarantee of a good book."

"I think it probably is what draws a lot of people to historical fiction. It’s not the only thing. Of my book choices today, I think The Buried Giant is perhaps doing something a bit different because of its less realist nature. But I think most of the other books are aiming to produce a realist, immersive experience where you can feel that that you’re there. The Western Wind gives us an in-depth immersion into this small, rural village. It’s the only one of the books that I chose that is set in a village. It’s an exceptionally powerful description of a locale. It was something that I was a bit worried about when I was putting my list together. I think it would be quite interesting to know, in publishing terms, whether there are fewer women writing historical fiction about this era. Or whether they are they writing it, but it’s not getting picked up by publishers. I was thinking about what other medieval historical fiction I’ve read, by women. There is a very famous book called Katherine by Anya Seton , which is about Katherine Swynford, the mistress of John of Gaunt. That book gets a lot of people into the world of historical fiction. It’s not one of my personal top five, so I didn’t pick it for this interview but it is certainly an influential book. But overall I do think there is less medieval historical fiction written by women, which is a shame. The Western Wind is a really great book. I was very keen to put it on my list. What Harvey does is very clever: she tells the story backwards. It starts with a certain day and then it goes back in time through different days. It was billed as a whodunnit, though I actually don’t think that’s the best way of describing this book. It is much more about atmosphere and a particular world and uncovering the details of different characters’ motivations and ideas rather than solving what happened. If you were reading it as a mystery, it might not be satisfying because it leaves some things quite open, in ways that I think are quite brave for a writer to do. She writes absolutely beautifully. Some of her sentences are just so wonderfully crafted. She’s a very skilful writer. I think people like reading historical fiction from lots of different eras. It’d be interesting to know if there are particular eras that are more popular than others. With Hilary Mantel, and also the Shardlake books, there’s been lots of good early modern historical fiction, so slightly later than these books. I suppose people are often fascinated by books that are set at quite a temporal remove from our own time because it does offer that experience of making those imaginative leaps into a different kind of world. I think that’s very appealing. As I said earlier, people also often read books set in different periods in order to make connections with the present day as well, which I think all these books encourage us to do in many ways. There is this interesting tension, where you’re in this different world, but you see lots of things that are familiar as well. That combination is very powerful."