Why we need fiction

Spoiler: Sanity!

Something has happened in the last twelve months. At least here at my house, where one journalism major (moi) lives. This news junkie has just about had it. Ten years ago I watched three newscasts every night, two network news shows and one PBS Newshour. I never thought 30 minutes was enough to get anything but the scantiest of headlines. So I morphed into a full cable news junkie over the following years. Give me analysis! Give me the deep take! Reporters, lawyers, and more please!

This past year has broken all that. Occasionally I will turn on a national news show but I often turn it off within 15 minutes. I. Just. Can’t.

Is it my age? I have lived through some very difficult moments, like the 60s and the Nixon/Watergate years. Maybe it’s the ubiquitous nature of news culture these days. It’s impossible to get away from it, especially if you want to be an informed citizen. I believe in journalism, in news gathering, in truth telling. Not ‘my’ truth or ‘your’ truth but the actual facts.

Yesterday I took all the BREAKING NEWS!! notifications off my phone. This is part of the problem, the constant barrage, right there in my hand. I can still read the digital versions of newspapers at my leisure, but not RIGHT NOW LOOK HERE. I have developed a bad habit of looking at my phone during meals which my husband hates. And rightly so. I have a terrible urge to ‘ask Uncle Google’ everything!

I admit to feeling a bit distant from writing as well, since the publication of A Filthy Rich Affair. This makes me scattered, as if the act of crafting an imaginary story gives my own life meaning, or at least some fuzzy outlines. I actually believe it does. It concentrates my mind in a weird way, keeping it from dashing off on dangerous paths liked a coked up squirrel. I’ve been traveling quite a bit, which can make one tired, cranky, and distracted. Besides two weeks in France, we gathered for Christmas in Montana then did a week of grandparenting. All these were the good things, the things you hope for in your dotage, such as it is. (Yes I have a birthday coming up and am feeling the dotage.)

I am not ready to retire yet though. Do not assume a quiet period from me means no more stories! There will be more. I did not do a proper Bennett Sisters novel last year and I really missed Merle, Pascal, and the gang. I have begun a story in letters between Merle and Pascal. So far I love writing letters but I’m not sure where it’s going. We shall see, as they say.

Can fiction save us from the ravages of current events? Possibly not. But reading fiction makes us more compassionate and understanding of others, something badly needed in this cruel world. Fiction is the essence of the inner life, not only of the characters and their various goings-on, but the inner life of the writer and the readers it touches. Finishing a meaty, exciting novel is the best feeling, as a writer and a reader. Events have transpired, gotten complicated, gone off on tangents, then resolved themselves. People have learned something, about society, or themselves. You have been on a journey as a reader and will never be quite the same. Plus you didn’t watch the news while reading! Score!!

Here are a few books I enjoyed recently.

Please add your own favorites in the comments!

Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron

I read this while in Europe because I had started the television series but it was slow to release. I needed some closure! The ending of the book is a bit different than the show (which I watched after finishing the book) but it was all good. I wish I’d gotten the edition with Emma Thompson’s foreword! I love Emma. Fun read, very entertaining. More available in the series and also in Herron’s Slow Horses series.

So Far Gone by Jess Walter

I am a huge Jess Walter fan, not just because he writes about the inland Pacific Northwest (Spokane and environs) that gets little notice. He often writes straight out the headlines but gives us justice and closure and a real, calm ending, unlike life. (I discovered Walter when I read The Financial Lives of Poets, inspired by the banking meltdown.) This is the best part of fiction, setting the world right again! Jess is very funny too, which really helps all writing.

This book is about a middle-aged reporter who gets sideways with his adult kids and goes to live in the woods by himself until life eventually pries him out of his isolation. Very topical (militant cultists etc) yet humorous.

The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatrix Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White

“A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance…” Three writers write about, well, three writers, all of whom have good reasons for hating the man found dead at the Scottish castle they’re visiting. So many inside jokes about authors, conventions, tours, editors, you name it. I loved it for that angle but it also was a clever mystery that kept me guessing. And Scotland!

This was my airplane book on my way home from snowy Montana. So fun.

What are you reading during these long, January nights? Do tell!

Missed those filthy rich Americans in France? Find it wherever you get your books.

Set in picturesque Malcouziac in the Dordogne region of southwest France, where Merle first stumbled into mystery and romance, A Filthy Rich Affair delivers a fresh twist on the Bennett Sisters world: new faces, old friends, flirty encounters, luxurious digs, and plenty of bad behavior.

Hang in there! Read a book, you’ll feel better!