I was reading a great interview on CrimeReads.com the other day-Paraic O'Donnell talking to Lee Child, genius author of the Jack Reacher novels-and they has this wonderful debate about the unreality of fiction. When I say it out loud, it sounds obvious, but it came up twice. And Lee said: ‘The only two real people in the transaction are the author and the reader.'
It's absolutely true. Even if I put the Queen of England in the heart of my action-like in the ‘The Crown' on TV-it isn't actually her. It's a fictional appearance by a ghost of a real person. If I put the 16th century Catherine de' Medici on the page, a woman who history pretty much assures us was an embodiment of some kind of evil-and I do in The City of Tears-it's still just a ghost of her presence.
And yet ...