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Larkin was fifty-one now, almost the same age as his father was when he’d died a quarter century before. And in the last while Larkin had been thinking about his own mortality. About how the past could feel more present the further away you got from it.
Larkin turned and stood motionless, looking at the dark that hid the open fields and beyond them the dense bush surrounding the farm. He was remembering.
This novel began in an antique store when I fell in love with a reproduction poster from May 1874. The splendid horse, young Netherby, was available as a proven foal-getter at $4 a single leap. I was charmed by the poster but also intrigued by the idea of a farmer advertising his horse’s services in this way. I began to wonder about the farmer and gradually Larkin’s story revealed itself and the novel unspooled.
I recently read Robert Penner’s The Dark King Swallows the World, a novel set in Cornwall during World War II. I liked it a lot, and was surprised to learn that a few (of the otherwise uniformly positive) reviews had called it out for a lack of historical accuracy.
My initial response was: who cares? Complaining about historical accuracy in a work of fiction seems, to me, like bragging about being the best at doing homework. Missing the point, a little obnoxious.
