Inaccuracies in fiction

There is actually some debate over who was the older sister. The evidence shows either could be true.

I've been trying to read a book on and off for the past year but keep having to stop because it contains so many inaccuracies that drive me up the wall. The book is Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon, it's had great reviews, it's a novel based on the life of the WW2 spy Nancy Wake.
The author ( an American) admits she has changed some details and timings but it's not that that bothers me, it's things like a wartime RAF officer having mayonnaise in his sandwiches, when it would have been salad cream as mayonnaise didn't arrive in the UK till 20 years later, British people talking about flatware instead of cutlery, or using the American names for vegetables in their conversation, and constantly making wartime British people use Americanisms and phrasing from the modern day.
That's just a few examples of what I remember but it was happening throughout the book which stopped me from getting into it because my blood was boiling every few pages. I've never before seen a book which has done this but I can't recall reading many, if any by Americans about British characters. I think her editing team has done an appalling job, I suspect they're all American and young and haven't got a clue about Britain and certainly Britain in wartime. I keep thinking I'll write to her publisher to tell them what a bad editing job they've done.

I think it was The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve when a character needed their passport to cross the Irish border from North to South (or vice versa). That has never been needed, and it really irritated me.

Does anyone here look at the "Goofs" section of IMDb? They are amazing and some of the people are quite harsh with their strictness.

It's one thing when they point out a continuity error or something glaring but some are, I paraphrase, "the character was driving a blue mark 1 lagonda and it had a hexagonal rear view mirror. However, this film is set in November 1933 and that particular rear view mirror was not available until December 1933 in the blue colour”

I mean, it is an error, but somewhat more pedantic when some props person has had to source a period car. Rather than just an author needing to do some research!

I’ve heard Peter Wimsey complaining about a ‘garbage dump'.

And I think that this sort of translation is completely unnecessary. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of Americans who read Dorothy Sayers have a basic knowledge of British English. Or can figure it out from context.

Re Americanisms, Douglas Stuart ( I can't recall if it was in Shuggie Bain or Young Mungo) mentions one character "visiting with" another.

I rate him as a writer - although I'm hoping for a different theme in his third book - however nobody in Scotland visits "with" someone else. You've lived in the US too long Douglas.

Both of them, according to this. Late 16th century.

Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth has a character in England grinding horse chestnuts into flour in 1135. I read it immediately after Phillips Gregory’s Earthly Joy which has the Tradescants introducing horse chestnuts to Britain in the 1400s.

One of them must be wrong.

I got very irritated by the inaccuracies in that stupid book called The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or something like that.

It's supposed to take place in the UK and Guernsey in 1946, at a time when the country was pretty much bankrupt, there was full-on rationing and people had next to nothing.

One of the characters, an editor, has some business to do in Australia and goes there by air several times during the story. The thing is that in 1946 very few people were flying anywhere from the UK. Heathrow was still just a few huts in a field. Flying to Australia would have taken weeks and cost an absolute fortune! The book lost all credibility at that point (not that it had much to begin with, to be honest)!

I mean, Scottish people do go out for walks! As long as they described it as dark, freezing, and miserable then it seems fair enough.

I totally agree OP. I've read a couple of books set in towns I've lived in. Both made such irritatingly simple geographical errors that I couldn't finish them.

Oh, I agree they’re brilliant.(Or mostly — there are a few he’s just misreading or plain wrong about, but the ‘enjoyably silly speculation’ ones are great fun, like whether Black Beauty is a gelding and whether Lady Bertram’s pug is male or female etc.

’The Other Boleyn Girl’ makes Mary Anne’s younger sister when she was actually the elder of the two. Why? It doesn’t make any difference to the plot, but it had me spitting tin tacks.

It wasn’t a bad book as these non historical novels go, but the pointless switching just annoyed me on every page.

Also, there is no evidence that Thomas Cromwell was in favour of women’s education, whereas Thomas More was famous for it ( and regarded as a bit mad, tbh, although it may have influenced Henry VIII to ensure both Mary and Elizabeth’s very rigorous education in languages). Hilary Mantel shouldn’t alter history imho

Grrrr

This is a wonderful thread. Love the one about sheltering in the Jubilee Line during the Blitz.

@BronzeAge no but in the spirit of things not sitting right. Plus interesting if literature is your thing.

But his aren’t mostly plain inaccuracies.

I remember reading a book set in the elizabethan court where the author had one of the major female characters not only marry her husbands in the wrong order, but actually married her to her own son, as she clearly hadn't looked at the timeline properly. It completely threw me out of the story, it was such a basic thing to get wrong!

It’s the minor errors that tend to get me.

Can’t remember the titles of the books, but remember one where someone was travelling by train to Bath and the train somehow went from Paddington to Didcot to Reading.

Also an apparently non-fiction book set in an office building I worked in which kept referring to some department being on the 17th floor. The building only had 14 floors…

I remember being irritated by a series on tv set in World War II, when a body is found with some ‘2nd class stamps in her pocket’.
1st and 2nd class post only started in 1968 - before that there was only one class.

Oh God, “Sir Smith” gives me the rage so much!

Re the author not remembering their own plots, Bridget Jones’ brother completely disappeared from the second book, as did her schizophrenic granny, and Jeremy & Magda’s children kept changing ages.

Eastenders also screwed up on a character’s name. There was a minor character called Lorna. She left and came back….now called Laura! After some months, another character made a throwaway comment about the name change, but it was obvious they’d just realised they’d messed up.

You all need John Sutherland and his literary puzzles

A particular bugbear of mine is titles. So many novels have ‘Sir Winston Smith’ forever after referred to as ‘Sir Smith’ and his wife, Lady Julia (who is a Lady simply by virtue of her marriage).

Also one in which an important plot point relates to a lease coming to an end. One of the main characters was a lawyer who had clearly never heard of the Leasehold Reform Act (and didn’t event think to check the legalities around the ending of a lease)

Oh yes OP this sort of thing can ruin a good book for me! Just read one now ( wont name it) set in West Yorks but they use phrases that nobody would use!

I read a thread on here slating an author for not researching Mumsnet properly and assuming it was something you posted on and people do the 'you ok hun?' type of response.

I'd never heard of the author - JD Kirk - I've now read (well, audiobook) all his books and am eagerly awaiting the latest release. So that mistake earned that author at least one new reader.