(no subject)

[skygiants]

A few months ago, somebody -- was it you, plinythemammaler? -- recommended me Monica Ali's Untold Story on the theory that its premise is very weird and it reads a bit like a Gothic.

...and both of these things are true! (Well, more like a noir than a Gothic, I would argue, but the point stands.) This book is basically ... a canon-divergent AU RPF fanfic about Princess Di? (The princess in question is technically not named but the surrounding references are very pointed.) What if, the premise goes, Princess Di did not die in a car crash ... but instead recruited a lovelorn assistant who was conveniently dying of brain cancer to help her fake her own death on a boat .... and attempted to build a new life for herself as Mysteriously Beautiful Lydia in a small American town in the middle of nowhere? WHAT IF. Maybe she could be happy, working at a dog shelter among a circle of aggressively ordinary people who love her just for who she is despite her many, many secrets! OR maybe the paparazzi will once again tear it all apart!

Honestly, if there was a 1940s noir film with this premise, I would probably eat it up with a spoon (especially the ending, in which Lydia comes this close to murdering the obsessive photographer who's uncovered her secret, but instead gets her aggressively ordinary housewife friends to outwit him and send him on his way so that she can maintain the life in which she's more or less content. Great! Good for them!)

As the book that it is -- well, honestly, it helped me to clarify for me where my lines of discomfort lie in reading works of fiction about real people. Princess Di died ... wow, 23 years ago, which is, in fact, a long time ago, but is nonetheless well within my memory. If the book had been about someone who died 43 years ago, it might well have fallen outside the scope of my sensitivity; if I was ten years younger, I might have no problem with it at all. But for me, all through, I couldn't shake the feeling of 'too soon?? TOO SOON.' People can be dead a little longer before we start writing fictional fix-it fic of their lives.

Comments

[sovay]

Honestly, if there was a 1940s noir film with this premise, I would probably eat it up with a spoon

Agreed. It could have starred Grace Kelly and produced a whole weird wave of irony-conspiracy in hindsight of her life, as pre-1963 assassination thrillers became paranoid and ghostly in the wake of the death of JFK.

[skygiants]

It ABSOLUTELY would have starred Grace Kelly. Gloria Grahame, Mary Astor, and Marie Windsor could be her circle of small-town pals and Fred MacMurray the sleazy paparazzo and it would be a stellar and retrospectively haunting film.

[sovay]

Gloria Grahame, Mary Astor, and Marie Windsor could be her circle of small-town pals and Fred MacMurray the sleazy paparazzo

PHOTOSET.

[osprey_archer]

This sounds delightful. There are so many old Hollywood films that Hollywood unfortunately neglected to make that I would love to see.

[innerbrat]

I think there's also possibly an element of "How much do I already know about this real person?" that affects the comfort level?

Like in your summary here, I was thinking "okay but does Lydia have a gorgeous Egyptian husband? Because otherwise it's not canon compliant enough" and it turns out that what I really ship is Diana/someone she actually chooses.

[skygiants]

It does mention the doctor who was the tragic lost love! But instead she has a new OC boyfriend who has not got much personality except being pleasant and wanting her to open up to him and tell him facts about her backstory.

There were also a lot of moments where it was like -- the author would put some words in Diana's mouth or some thoughts in her head, and I'd sit here unsure whether I should be bristling on her behalf or not, or whether the author was pulling on a documented thing. Like, Diana's friend hands her a stack of nineteenth-century novels about women and their choices and Diana's like "I'm not clever enough to read these" and I'm stuck between '... you really think Princess Di never read Pride and Prejudice?' and 'well MAYBE Princess Di said she wasn't clever enough to read Pride and Prejudice -'

[innerbrat]

UM.

[skygiants]

I MEAN I DON'T KNOW. I assume Monica Ali has watched more Princess Di interviews than I have! But also ... yeah.

[shark_hat]

I haven't read it so this is only about the specific issue, not the general point, which is true for many biographies!
She wasn't academic or "bookish"- she failed her O-levels twice and then left school at 16 (the equivalent of not getting your high school diploma, maybe?). I don't think any Austen was on the curriculum then, and I can easily see her A) not reading classic books off her own bat and B) both thinking and saying that she wasn't clever.

[bookblather]

I feel like.... if someone has immediate family still alive you probably shouldn't write fix-it fic of their life. That seems like it could be deeply upsetting.

[skygiants]

Yeah, this is sort of where I fall too -- and it's interesting because people make biopics well within living memory or indeed at the time that their subjects are alive all the time (the Queen of England, to take a relevant example, has been portrayed SO many times, and nobody's mad at The Crown! Or if they are, I haven't heard about it.) But this feels different and it's sort of hard to put my finger exactly on why; something about the combination of her relatively recent death, and the attempt to get so deeply inside her head when she's not around to say anything about it but her people are still very much alive to feel things about it.

[bookblather]

Yeah, I think you've nailed it on that last subject. Biographies and biopics tend to stick as close to facts as possible and often (not always) consult either the people they're about or those people's friends and family, but this premise feels... very fanficcy and not in a good way.