Reviewed by Andrew Farkas

Paul Lynch's article title and argument are the same: "There's No Such Thing as Historical Fiction." Having read novels in this genre, however, I'm sure you're confused just like I am, until he points out how arbitrary the designation can be (Why are only works before 1950 included? Couldn't a book set in 2000 be considered historical?). Lynch then goes on to unfold his major points: no one from another time period would recognize themselves in a book written hundreds of years later; it's impossible to write truthfully about another era because we are inextricably stuck in our own time period; and, in the end, no matter what, historical fiction is about the present.  

And yet, having read Leah Angstman's wonderfully exciting and (yes) brutally intense Out Front the Following Sea, and seeing that it is a finalist for the Chaucer Early Historical Fiction Award, I wonder if Lynch is right, or if maybe he just wishes his books weren't labeled thusly.

So, let's take up his points. First, I admit that Angstman's protagonist, Ruth Miner, doesn't feel like someone from 1689 New England; she seems more like a time traveler who has forgotten that she's a time traveler. After all, Ruth is very much a feminist, who regards the brimming war between England and France as absurd, who has denounced slavery, who believes colonization is terrible, and who thinks American Indians have been treated very poorly (nightmarishly so). Am I saying no one had these beliefs in the seventeenth century? No, but they didn't have these beliefs to the same degree that Ruth has them. Is she therefore a super character who can do things the rest of us can't do? Not exactly.

Instead, I would argue that Angstman uses Ruth to show us how difficult it really is to think outside of your own time period's box. After all, when we meet Ruth, she has to escape her hometown because, after the death of her last family member, the community, who previously decided a good neighborly activity was to get together and brand Ruth with the letter W (for witch) on both of her legs, is coming to kill her. Once she finally manages to get aboard a ship, the friendly sailors plan to gang up on her to show her how welcome she is, a horror she only avoids because her lone friend (and later lover), Owen, claims Ruth as his. Finally away from her murderous birthplace and the potential sexual assault cruise, Ruth tries to get a place by herself, only to find that, if you're not a man, you can't really own property. And whereas she does end up with a little plot of land, there's constantly the threat that it'll just be taken away because she forgot to pick up one of those Y chromosomes. And since Owen, whom she does fall in love with on the ship, isn't around (lousy sailors!), she decides to befriend Askook, a Pequot Indian, even though it's illegal for her to so much as learn the Pequot language, let alone be seen with him. Speaking of Owen, he's part French and it's illegal for Ruth, a British citizen, to learn French!

In other words, Ruth is the embodiment of the person who brashly proclaims, "If I lived back then, I wouldn't be a jerk like everyone else!" Except not exactly. The point of Ruth's character is to show anyone who might use that line that actually you probably would've been a jerk back then and likely you wouldn't even know it. Instead, surrounded by a bunch of people who think slavery is fine and that American Indians are "savages" who deserve whatever happens to them, it's so much easier to go with the flow. In that, I do not think Ruth is specifically supposed to be a character recognizable from 1689; she's supposed to be a comment on our easy view of history that bolsters our sense of superiority.

Which brings me to another of Lynch's points: it's impossible to write truthfully about another time period because we're always stuck in our own. Now, do I know for certain whether or not Out Front the Following Sea is 100% accurate to 1689? I do not. But I think the portrayal of the time period, which is accurate enough for metaphor, shows us how far we've come. Through Ruth, we see how difficult it would be to go against the grain in 1689, meaning most of us couldn't cut it. On the other hand, Angstman's portrayal of the time period proves to us that we have gotten better as a society (not all of us, sure, but still). Even if Lynch is right and we can't depict a different era with precision, we are still able to imagine it well enough to compare ourselves, our practices, and our institutions to the past and say, "Well, at least we don't do X anymore."

But then Lynch says historical fiction isn't actually about the past, it's about the present. Since a similar thing is often said about science fiction (only with the future), I hardly think this is a damning critique. Instead, through Angstman's book, I am now convinced that historical fiction is about our view(s) of the past ("Why didn't everyone back then act the way I do now?"). Yes, that means it's about the present (since our views of the past are contemporary), but we must depict whatever bygone era we choose in order to make the comparison. And whereas that depiction might not be perfect, it's close enough to ponder how we have improved (if we have) and how we can keep improving.

Along with being an exciting adventure tale, then, Leah Angstman's Out Front the Following Sea shows us and Paul Lynch that the historical fiction category is not some sideshow (Lynch at one point compares the genre to prestidigitation), but, instead, a way for us to think specifically about the past (its influences, its dangers) and ourselves compared to it. Angstman, eschewing Walter Scott and Colonial Williamsburg, does a phenomenal job, then, of reinvigorating the genre with heart-stopping prose and a theoretical approach that should put Paul Lynch's mind at ease.