Tag Archives: Lev Termen

One Comment

Don’t Pay the Theremin – Until It Gets You to the Other Side

  By

US CONDUCTORSus conductors
Sean Michaels
Bloomsbury, July 2015, RRP $29.95

There are a number of different ways to write a novel based on historical characters. You can go for a modernisation of the characters and follow the general story but change bits of the plot – Susan Kay’s Elizabethan Legacy, which is a total romp and hugely enjoyable despite it’s lack of accuracy.

You can interweave an imaginary character into a historical narrative; Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon introduces Lawrence Waterhouse into the development of the code breaker during WWII to such an extent that I have no longer any idea what really went on because my memory of the history is so tarnished by reading it. Loved that book: I have a cat named after Enoch Root, one of the minor characters. Continue reading

  • You might also like

    • The Place Where God Does Not Exist

      SNOW Orhan Pamuk (trans. Maureen Freely) Faber and Faber (2004) ISBN 978-0-571-25823-9 Of Orhan Pamuk’s many gifts as a Nobel-awarded writer, one of the most fascinating is his ability to blur the lines between real life and fiction.  Though the people he creates in his novels can speak and behave … Continue reading