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?

I read a lot of trashy romance novels, the type that often ends with a wedding. Drives me bonkers when the American author, who has set it in Devon or somewhere in England, has the men in tuxedos and the bridesmaids walking down the aisle with the groomsmen before the bride. It's not how we bloody do it over here! Or they get married on a clifftop or something like they do in the US.

I remember when the only airline showing Rain Man was Qantas.

Fay Weldon published a (rather bad) novel called The Bulgari Connection aeons back, in which, for an ‘undisclosed sum’, she was contracted to name drop Bulgari (who commissioned it, and brought out a limited Toruń to distribute at a party) a minimum twelve times. In fact, as reviewers kept noting, she exceeded her contract and mentioned it 34 times. Characters kept giving one another Bulgari jewellery and quipping things like ‘A Bulgari ring in the hand is worth two in the bush’, said X’.’.

Dickens is saying that Fanny and Squeers are vulgar - in a “phone for the fish knives, Norman” way.

Yes, but by this point in the book (chapter 42) I don’t think we need him to say 'gender' to make the point that they’re vulgar!

I have just finished read Jodi Picoult's Vanishing Acts.

A glaring mistake is Delia's mum's age. 47. But Delia vanished 28 years before, aged 4, so is now 32. And the mum was 19 (I think it said earlier) when she had her, not 15.

So the mum is 51ish.

Really annoyed me that with all the processes the book must go through before publishing, no-one had picked this up 😂

Hmm, my MIL used to tell us that her mother had had her 'at only 19', but Ancestry records said otherwise!

Very true @Terpsichore :)

I read one last week where someone supposedly got married on a beach in Cornwall! No, not happening - in the UK you have to get married in a licensed building.

That's true of England and Wales however you can get married on a beach in Scotland (could be chilly!) or anywhere else the officiant agrees to perform the ceremony.

Age inconsistencies REALLY annoy me! And they're so common! I'm a Maths geek, so I always work out ages from dates given, and they often don't match up with the stated age!

Useful to know, thank you! I'm already married but Scotland has such beautiful beaches, I'd brave the cold to get married there.

The book I was reading was firmly set in Cornwall - with lots of detail about Cornwall; I don't know Cornwall well enough to verify its accuracy but that part sounded well-researched if not based on local knowledge - a shame the 'beach wedding' jarred!

I didn't know this! I wonder if I could convince my wife to divorce me and then remarry me on a beach in Scotland...

I've remembered another American female author's blunder. She, and I've forgotten her name, had adopted Sherlock Holmes to the extent of legally defending her rights to him, I think. Anyway she has him living in East Dean, keeping bees, as per Doyle, when a murder occurs in a chalk pit, which is when I got suspicious, because the plot hinged on that pit, by Exeat Bridge, and I had to get the downloadable BGS map out to check where there were outcrops of Clay-with-Flints or Lenham Beds or other things on the top of the Chalk, not down in the Cuckmere Valley. If you're going to outdo Doyle, you should get the map right, even ordering a paper one. I got fed up with her female partner to Holmes - much too young - and gave up after that. I found the printouts in my study the other day. She had, I think, used the OS maps for local topography, so forgive her that.
I even went and field walked a bit to see if she had and picked the clay or whatever it was and transposed it. Nope.

Not a book but a film, live action version of 101 Dalmatians. Obviously set in UK because there’s lots of shots of London early on. However, later on., in the countryside scenes, they had raccoons and a skunk. We don’t have them in the UK (apart from zoos). Enjoyable film though.

@BronzeAge interesting. Thank you.

See, that is the level of research about errors that I really respect and admire. When Downton Abbey was airing the Guardian had a column critiquing each episode, and the discussion and level of knowledge some people had about minutiae was astonishing - such as 'yes, you could get to London and back by train in x number of hours in 1922 using <name of train company>.'

When Downton Abbey first got well known, I switched the channel one day to see an upper-class woman in pre-WW1 times use the phrase “I’m pregnant” at which point I swiftly turned back over.

Picking out what appeared to be anachronisms was a minor sport with that series - despite the '100% historically accurate' claims.

Ah it was great though!

I saw it as an alternative universe, anyway, with the whole ‘benign aristocrats living under the same roof as servants they consider as completely equal as one whole big happy family’ thing.

One for Newcastle residents. I read a book a couple of years ago where the narrator walked from the Crow’s Nest pub to the quayside in “a couple of blocks” and also lived above a “tire shop” in the city centre.

And another book where a character from Sunderland described himself as a Geordie - we would never!

@EddieMunson (great name BTW) there's a great article on the University of Sunderland's website about the really very recent origins of the word Mackem.

I love the niche local ones like @EddieMunson's and @BestIsWest 's earlier one about the lanes on the M4.

@SevenSeasOfRhye if you want niche Lorraine Kelly has recently released a new book set in Orkney called The Island Swimmer. The blurb says 'When Evie's father falls desperately ill, she finally returns to the family home on Orkney and the wild landscape she left as a teenager, swearing never to return.' Which sounds fine to the casual reader. However, nobody who lived in Orkney would call their daughter Evie because it's a parish. It would be like living in Edinburgh and calling your son Craig Miller or (to reference a recent thread) living in Cambridge and calling your daughter Magdelene. And Lorraine Kelly should know better because she visits Orkney regularly.