Inaccuracies in fiction

In one of the Chalet School books, someone’s ’name is put down for Oxford’.

Totally plausible in London too! And everywhere else I’ve lived. Always found it baffling that people thought it wasn’t.

In A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, teenage Pip applies to Cambridge and gets 'one of the very first offers to come in'.

But Cambridge makes all its offers on a single day in January, so how did she know?

John Rowe Townsend's Widdershins Crescent (1965) was later published in an updated version (and retitled Goodbye to Gumble's Yard). In the original, 15 year old Kevin is forced, thanks to his guardian uncle's fecklessness and dishonesty, to leave his secondary modern school and take a job to support the family when he had been hoping for a late transfer to a grammar school. The updated version just has him not going into the sixth form of his comprehensive. The original thus had a political point which the update has lost - and some of the grit of the book with it, even if the political issue is now largely dead.

Yes but not O levels two years before.

I guess he could have taken A levels in that small window of June 51.

In Robert Westall's Falling into glory, set in the early 1950s, the main character is about to take his A levels, two years before has taken his O levels, then one morning in assembly they pray for the king and all his ministers.

O and A level replaced General and Higher School Certificate in June 1951; King George VI died in February 1952. So I reckon you can have any two of those things but not all three.

As to American words in British books, I would commend the publishers of the US edition of Jan Mark's Handles, who preserved the full-on British English, Norfolk dialect and all, and simply provided a glossary at the back. I don't want my American books anglicised; US readers should not want their British books americanised.

Haha I saw Billy elliot on Broadway, the usher clocked we were "briddish" and said we'd have to let them know what we thought of the accents.....I made sure to avoid him on the way out to avoid being rude 🤐

I once read a book by an American writer where the main character puts Billy Eliot on for her ballet mad daughter and friend to watch but the girls lose interest because they can't understand the "Scottish accents."

An audiobook error which had me confused then cross: the audiobook had two or three narrators and it took me ages to realise that there was just one character called Summer. It must have been written as Somer which can, of course, be pronounced the same as Summer.

Trouble is one narrator pronounced it Soh-mer and a different narrator pronounced it Summer. I thought they were two different characters for a good half of the book.

I don’t know whether this is exactly an inaccuracy, either - more poor usage, really - but it’s amazing how many writers confuse 'prone' and 'supine' (and how many editors don’t notice).

I read one recently (set in Wales in WW2) and had the same reaction. I think they were about but I was not convinced that the organisation (school or guides, can't remember which) would have got hold of so many packets in pre cash and carry days.

It’s not exactly an inaccuracy, but I remember reading a book set in a hospital, where the author mentioned a patient having an intra-nasal naso-gastric tube!

I did exactly the same!!

I love Raynor Winn's books but partway through "Landlines", I was virtually yelling "it's Bridgwater, without the "e", not Bridgwater"!
How could the proofreaders have missed spelling the name of the town correctly?

Possible I guess. First commercial production was 1910 in America and I suppose they must have put them in bags, even if they were brown paper bags.

I’ve just remembered one set around WWI where bags of crisps were eaten at a picnic. I’m pretty sure they were not around then (unless homemade).

Definitely the Virginia colony and its dreadful infiltrating ways. (See also ‘gotten’ and Halloween).😀

Who steals my purse steals trash

Shocking early influence of the Virginia colony or standard English?

I've read a handful of books recently by British authors set in Britain where Americanisms such as trash are used.

Really makes me mutter to myself crossly.

😆

I’d forgotten Bridget Jones had a brother!

So did Helen Fielding....

SPOILERS

I’d forgotten Bridget Jones had a brother! Long time since I read it though.

The Agatha Raisin books were terrible for continuity and plausibility at times. A few characters disappeared without explanation or had completely different back stories to when they were first introduced.

The plots just got sillier too; in ‘The Dead Ringer’ someone clonks her over the head, she wakes up in a coffin at her own funeral. No one to declare her dead, no death certificate, being buried in a strange parish by a vicar she doesn’t know in a church she doesn’t attend and all her friends just turn up and accept this as normal.

I used to love Agatha, she got me through some tough times but I couldn’t even be arsed to read the latest one as the plots became far too ridiculous.

Also, the people who think 'gender' is the polite word for 'sex' are likely to be the same people who think 'myself' is a more formal/polite version of 'me' eg 'That would be myself, Lord Sugar'.

The people who think middle-class Marianne going to the same school as the working-class Connell in Normal People is a 'mistake' either aren't Irish or are, Dubliners without much experience of small town life. It isn't a mistake. It's entirely plausible.