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?

@Abouttimeforanamechange Is that Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley series? I thought it was not bad given that she is from the US, but the constant references to "Lady Helen this" and "Lady Helen that" - never just "Helen" - started to grate on me. I can't remember what "Lady Helen's" family background was supposed to be though

Reading Notes from a Scandal by Zoe Heller made me think that the author had never been in a modern day state school in her life - the school scenes did not correspond to reality of national curriculums etc , but still thought it was a good book.

That's what I think, too. I can't find my ancient paperback of Gaudy Night, but I did a word search in my Kindle edition, which seems to have only changed to American English spellings, but left everything else intact. I found the "garbage dump" reference as well as the "corporation dump" references, but I also found two uses of "rubbish," one referring to rubbish in its sense of things disposed of and another in the sense of someone talking rubbish. "Rubbish" in either sense is not often used by US speakers of English, so I think might have been changed if an editor were "Americanizing" the language.

In "The Girl on the Train" the train stations and suburbs are fictional - maybe because the writer didn't want it to be a specific place and didn't want people to point out errors (😂) but one of the place names is an actual real town in another part of the UK. One which ironically doesn't have a train station.
One of the authors earlier books (published under a different name) has parts set in a specific town and there are many references to real places (the name of a road etc) but then had reference to a large department store with doesn't exist in the town. It's weird it was so accurate with the road number ("A 123" or whatever it was) yet this bit of the story is so inaccurate!

My guess is that it's not Elizabeth George. She is very accurate on titles of nobility. I agree that she doesn't need to constantly refer to "Lady" Helen, but Helen is the daughter of an earl in the books, so that title is correct. George is also correct on the titles of Lynley and his family members, even referencing Lynley's viscount title (before his father died) in some of the books.

Is that Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley series?

No, a different author. Thought that 'Lady Bloggs' would cease to be known as 'Lady Bloggs' when her husband died and the title (whatever it was, don't recall) passed to her son. Also talked about faucets and drapes.

@BronzeAge above is correct that these lapses aren't the editor's fault. Editors are meant to spot inconsistencies, and will sometimes spot factual errors just through their own general knowledge. But they can't check everything - can you imagine the time it would take to fact-check an entire 80,000-word historical novel? The budget would never allow for it.

A fiction editor's most important job is to make the story so good that you won't notice or mind any little details that are out of place.

Oh, and a character dying after marriage, but as she hadn't rewritten her will her obnoxious sons inherit everything. Rather than the will then being invalid and her husband actually inheriting something.

Anthony Buckeridge - I read Jennings to my classes at times, and I had to go searching to find early editions with proper money. You could not buy enough rock to share round the dorm with 2 1/2 p, when they could with 6d.
Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones. I wanted to put a copy inn my book corner, and had to through with Tippex and a fine black pen to eliminate tires, trunks, sidewalks etc. In a very British setting, published by a British publisher.
And one fantasy novel set in Arthurian times. You can get away with a lot of anachronisms in such work - Malory did, after all. But this one had a feral girl living off the land, and killing a squirrel. Not so odd, except it was a ground squirrel. And she made an enormous number of meals with it and kept some for the future. Related to the Derby Ram, I suppose. Or the author had seen the giant ground squirrel in Crystal Palace Park.
And one novel set in the 16th century, in which a critical plot point depends on a characters arms being visible as he swims. And the crawl didn't make it here until the 20th century, though one might, I suppose, have a character having learned it once the Southern Hemisphere had begun to be explored, or at a pinch the East Indies. Southern indigenous peoples all did it. I had to go and look it up.

And one novel set in the 16th century, in which a critical plot point depends on a characters arms being visible as he swims.

I think I might know who you're thinking of. (Don't want to say who, because of spoilers.) If it is him, he might well have met someone somewhere who'd seen it done around the coast of Africa or in the East Indies. A Portuguese sailor, perhaps.

That's just creative license. I'm working on something where I am deliberately inventing details as I wouldn't want to slander real people.

Dh is a railway nut, and always notices (and points out) when characters are on a train, but the interior and exterior are different trains. Extra points are available if the trains only run on preserved railways, not regular services.

A few years ago there used to be a whole thing in the letters page of The Times (or maybe Guardian?) about incorrect Routemaster buses in historical TV dramas 😂

I always wondered how they could film someone on a train but also film it from the outside, coming into a station. So now I know!

Ironically I’ve just started reading a book on the kindle app where the main character is freeing a sheep trapped in barbed wire who is “making sad plaintiff moans”…… He also walks down to the beach and sits “on the shingles”

That’s true. I knew people who went to Australia in sixties to work. They went on a shop. Took weeks I believe

Six to seven weeks when my great aunt went out in the early sixties.

Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) is a plant extract with a group of molecules known as aescins, which are beneficial to circulatory health. Supplementation of horse chestnut appears to be beneficial for varicose veins and veinous insufficiency.

I, too, rant at the TV when this happens - fortunately I am married to a fellow railway enthusiast so we can moan together! We enjoy playing 'identify the heritage railway' when it's a steam train filmed in modern times - often on a single line track when the supposed route would be on the mainline!

I suppose it’s possible (though this was about 15years ago), but seems more likely the American author didn’t realise that Mexican food is not commonly available in many other countries like it is in the US.

technology is another bug bear - tv not a book- but 20 years ago iPhones weren’t ubiquitous and the thought a bunch of teens would all have one was not realistic

I just read a book where one character, who is a teacher in London tells her friends that to become a teacher she just needs basic gcse english and maths. It really annoyed me.

Well, I learned something from this. I didn't know that the crawl was a relatively recent development in Europe. I remember from history that King Charles II swam in the Thames nearly every day for exercise. So he would have been doing the breaststroke or backstroke?

The backstroke would have been old English backstroke with breaststroke legs and both arms turning together.

The crawl is very modern, the Native Americans did the crawl arms but I think the crawl legs came from the Australian Aborigines. And butterfly is the most modern and is a variation of the breaststroke.

Interesting!

Old English backstroke sounds a lot more difficult than the version we currently have - not surprised it isn’t used any more

Can't imagine anyone writing a book set in my town now (although I assumed Girl on a Train was my local trainline until she started naming towns which threw me).

Us Three by Ruth Jones was quite enjoyable until the story moved to Guildford and it was completely unlike the Guildford I'd lived in during the same period. No idea why she did that.