Today I'm delighted to welcome Jean Fullerton to my blog. Her new book, 'Call Nurse Millie' is out on 23rd May. I was fortunate to be given a copy by Jean for my birthday and I read it in a day and a half. This book about the life and loves of a post-war nurse is her best book so far - and all her Victorian books were very good. Over to you, Jean:
As historical authors one of the things my good friend
Fenella and I are constantly struggling with is how much historical detail to
put in and how much to leave out of a story. It’s a conundrum and no mistake.
After all, isn’t it the history that the reader is after? Well up to a point
yes, but if they wanted just pure history then surely they would be better off
with an history text book of a non-fiction account of a particular period of
event?
Although, readers of historical fiction quite rightly demand
that historical fiction be accurate to the time, place events and social
attitudes of the period the story is set. And the operative word there is ‘story’.
Even if based around actual people and events historical fiction is still
fiction and it’s over all purpose is to entertain.
Now of course, the best historical fiction also educates and
challenges you along the way but if it has failed to do what it says on the tin
and you’re bored ridged by chapter three then…well, there’s probably too much
history.
As I can get historically interested in a 1960s London
Underground ticket for me there can never be too much history but when I’m
reading I want the protagonists’ story to predominate.
I can understand why historical authors fall into the trap
of squeezing in history and squeezing out the story because you do find out
some brilliantly interesting period details.
The research I undertook for Call Nurse Millie had two
strands one was the period the story is set in, from VE day 1945 through to
December 1947, but also my own profession, district nursing. After gathering
together and reading dozens of 1940/50s nursing and medical text book and nurse
biographies I understood the various techniques and procedures used by the
profession in the 1940s.
For example: I knew the way district nurses set out their
equipment on a table before dressing a wound and the method for boiling
syringes to give insulin to a diabetic patient but how to include this in the
story without holding up the narrative with big blocks of description by
telling the readers all the minutiae of the procedure. That’s the
trick.
Well, the answer is that as a fiction author you have to build
the historical world enough to ensure the reader stays in the period as the
story twists and turns but not so much as they feel they’re in a history
lecture. The secret is to slip in the details so the reader doesn’t’ even
notice. Talk about the wireless not the radio. Your heroine picks up her meat daily
from the butcher, vegetables that are in season – something we never think about
today.
For the nursing detail I have Millie putting old newspaper
under the bed sheet to absorb moisture, soaking her glass thermometer in
Dettol, re-corking the bottle of iodine and rubbing surgical spirit on a
patient’s sacral area to toughen the skin.
I also have her standing up when the matron walks in to the room and
worrying if Alex Nolan, who she’s terribly keen on, will think she fast if she
lets him kiss her on their third date.
Weaving in period details is very difficult and can tie you
in knots. I wanted to show how important radio was in everyday life during the
late 40s and spent hours searching for the correct timing for programmes like
Workers’ Playtime and ITMA. There is always the temptation that instead of
showing through dialogue how pregnant and nursing women had green ration cards,
is to just explain the way the war-time rationing worked. If you want your
reader to lose themselves in your story you have to wrap it around them like a
warm blanket so they never what to leave.
