Stef Penney, first time British novelist, has won the 25,000-pound Costa Prize for the British novel of the year. Here's the thing: The Kindness of Wolves is set in Canada, and Stef Penney has never been to Canada. She's agoraphobic. Just going to the British Library to do research was a challenge for her.
There's been a debate in Britain about whether novelists really can write well about places they've never been. So far there does not seem to be much Canadian analysis of The Kindness of Wolves. But I recall how many Newfoundlanders viscerally disliked The Shipping News, written by a come-from-away, as not true to their place.
What I have not seen mentioned, however, is that The Kindness of Wolves is set in the 1860s. It's a western, apparently. Uh, folks, no one has been to the 1860s. Penney simply faces what every historical novelist faces: can you achieve verisimilitude in a context that is irretrievable gone?
Faces historians, too, but slightly differently. Writing non-fiction, we can acknowledge the uncertainty. History aspires to be an argument about the past, not a creation of it.
