Inaccuracies in fiction

[HoppyHat]

Do they bother you? I realise I am annoyed/disappointed by simple "mistakes" which surely a decent editor should notice?

A couple of examples

A very very popular novel. Set in modern day London. Character regularly gets the bus from A to B along a named road all of which exist in real life. But they don't use the correct bus number! Nothing bad happens on the bus, the driver isn't awful, nothing libellous. So why not use the correct bus number?

I've just finished a book which I really liked. The author is American. But part of the book is set in a posh English school in the 1950s. The headteacher calls the season following summer "Fall". And says (more than once) "you need to write your sister" (or similar) not write TO.

To me these things are so obvious and quite jarring. Anyone else?

@LadyPeterWimsey I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that the American pronunciation of “herbs” as “erbs” was the way the English said it up until the nineteenth century.

@HilaryThorpe how could Lady Peter forget you, when you were clearly the teenage draft of her? 😀

(if you believe the suggested timeline of Conundrums for the Long Weekend, the New Year’s Eve part of The Nine Tailors fell between Harriet’s first and second trials…)

I would be boastful about predating you both, but I’m too tired from keeping house and home together single handed 😀

Yes! And I think there are loads of others, if I remember the Bill Bryson book correctly.

@SheilaFentiman You had it tough, that's for sure.

Very off-topic now, but I think the story of the Fentimans junior was DLS being very aware of the effects of the war on both men and women, and writing them very effectively.

Roast onions being described as crunchy.

Lynne Murphy who is an American linguist at the University of Sussex has an excellent book on this subject called The Prodigal Tongue.

Reverting to a previous user name to say I wish we had seen more of Hilary.

And yes, Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club was very good at showing the impact of the War. And the long term impact on Peter himself throughout the series, of course.

I’m sure I’ve read lots of things that have annoyed me but I can’t think of any specific examples now. Except the general language point that very, very few writers - even some extremely good ones - seem able to grasp the difference between 'prone' and 'supine'.

'She lay prone, her hair streaming back from her face and a beatific expression on her sleeping features' is the sort of phrase guaranteed to make me launch the book across the room (and not just because it’s crap - it’s wrong! 😠)

I started reading these in the 80s when they were hard to get hold of, and read Autumn Term first, then Cricket Term - and the dual timeline really threw me at first! Steam trains in the last one I'd read, Top of the Pops in this one, yet less than two years seemed to have passed. The fact that Karen, who'd been preparing for Oxford in A.T. was now married with three stepchildren added to the general confusion. It wasn't until the advent of EBay and Amazon that I was able to fill in the puzzling gaps with the missing books.

Antonia Forest has an author's note in some editions, doesn't she, explaining the timeline. My books are upstairs, and can't be bothered to go and look.

I still remember the joy with which I seized Falconer's Lure when I saw it in a library sale in the town where I was living back in the '80s. I'd had it from my own local library as I grew up, and never managed to find it again.

We have had swallows in our barns for years and I have never seen them perch in trees and I am fairly sure it is not swallow behaviour. When not in their nests in the sheds and barns they seem to favour wires, roofs, eaves and sometimes fences. It seems as if the author just assumed all birds behaved the same way. It honestly has put me off.

I suppose it’s possible. I still reckon they messed up. 😄

From Sussex, where the county badge has martlets in it, I recall it was believed they did not have feet, swallows, martins or swifts (no wires anciently) and spent all their time in the air. Should have stuck to starlings.

I really came back about Peter Tremayne, who, while using Irish names for things like satchels, and food, uses blasted metric for measures. I know Ireland has gone metric for distances but not back in Fidelma's time. He could have character explain distances in time for the journey, or someone explain to Eadulf the Saxon in miles, and if he has to be modern, include a table along with the pronunciation of names. It brings me up with a jolt every time.

Yes, it's something like 'For those who prefer accuracy where they can get it' and relates specifically to Peter being a naval cadet at Dartmouth; by the time of the later books, Dartmouth had stopped taking under 18s but short of expelling Peter, AF had no option but to leave him there anachronistically.

Peter's an anomaly in any case. There can't be much more than 18 months between Ginty and the twins, and he has to fit in there. Mrs M. must have fallen pregnant very quickly both times, and the twins must have come very early - not implausible for twins, of course, and would fit with them having been considered 'delicate' in their early childhood.

I've looked up Old English Backstroke, which I had never met, sort of frog kick plus upside down butterfly arms. I always did the arms under water, so it could be used in rescue, which I have never needed to do, thank goodness.

A few years before I retired, after teaching starters for all my school career, with techniques taught me in college, I was required to get qualified with a set of courses, and a book, and cards. It was all based on getting children to competitive standards, instead of confidence, faces in water, feet off the bottom, etc. Not relevant to children who had never had a bath, only showers, for instance. I remember being taught to demonstrate back stroke on the side of the pool with a little twiddle of the hand as it returned to start moving up again. The children didn't need twiddles, they didn't have the motor skills. And they should have the fingers of the hand slightly apart. I had enough trouble getting them to use the hand as a flipper, and not fingers splayed. Bit of a derail, I suppose, but I don't think it is possible to visualise Charles or anyone using an actual, approved by the swimming authorities stroke. Or dog paddle. I think there's an early teaching book with illustrations from the 17 century, but the magazine which referred to it didn't show much.

Absolutely nothing to do with inaccuracies in books, but I did find this wonderful old film on swimming strokes when I was looking up Old English backstroke, which I thought some other posters might appreciate!

Yes, Geoff must have impregnated Pam moments after delivery!

What about very easy mistakes? Reading an alphabet book with my toddler and "R is for rainbow" has a picture with the rainbow completely backwards (eg red on the inner curve) - how hard it is to get a rainbow right?

Yes, she's such a great character, and Peter is so good with her whilst still being completely himself.

I love all the DLS character nicknames on here. There are really quite a lot of us

Child me was bemused by this, because I didn’t share Nicola’s reverence for the Navy and would have been quite happy for both Peter and ghastly Giles to go down with Surfrider, so it seemed nit-picky for her to be explaining Peter as Dartmouth anomaly and less obviously bothered by teenagers with memories of the Blitz buying cool gear with pea-green swirls or pretending to be punks etc.

I hope at least some of the AF fans on here were on Trennels on Livejournal when the Giant Fight about whether Pam Marlow was selfish to buy Chocbar and Catkin…😀

I hope at least some of the AF fans on here were on Trennels on Livejournal when the Giant Fight about whether Pam Marlow was selfish to buy Chocbar and Catkin…

I wasn't, but that discussion has reverberated around various places on t'internet.... I suppose it's the elongated timeline again, when AF wrote that, she didn't know that in thirteen years time, she was going to write The Cricket Term, which takes place only a few months later.

(Trennels was entailed; I wonder who would have inherited if Giles and Peter had gone down with their ship?)

"Fall" for Autumn is another one and appears in Shakespeare. And of course there is the always infamous on MN "gotten."

Was it entailed male? Perhaps Karen gets it, moves to Trennels proper after Geoff dies, and exiles her mother to the Tranters’ house, and Rowan to a staff flat carved out of the Shippen.

But probably some cousin in Canada.

In Richard Armitage's 'Geneva', he refers to a main character dying their hair a completely different colour, and the change is effected within 5 minutes... no Richard, it takes me longer than that just to do my roots!!

Another book I read recently made a big thing of one of the characters not having been to the seaside much as they lived in the 'landlocked county' of Lancashire. Which came as a surprise to my family in Blackpool