So I just got done reading House of Leaves, and while I have a lot of thoughts on the book (most of them incoherent, to be honest), I think the biggest thing I took away from the book as a whole is how cool it is to see a completely made up story presented as non-fiction, along with the formatting and structure you expect from a non-fiction book. There's a certain academic dryness and aloofness (as in question are asked, but not always answered, and motivations are explored but never explained, as just like in real life, we usually don't have access to the characters inner-most thoughts) to the tale one would expect in non-fiction, along with the footnotes (when they don't go crazy that is) and the somewhat pretentious and speculative tone the author takes that I just find so personally intriguing.
Some of my favourite books I've ever read have been non-fiction (King Leopold's Ghost, Lawrence in Arabia, The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon), and while I do adore them for what they are, there is always the unfortuante element where unlike fictional events where the author is free to choose whatever ending they think would work best, non-fiction authors are stuck in the real world, where they don't get to choose if an ending is satisfying or not, and as we all surely know, sometimes things in real life can just… fizzle out with no conclusion. But with a fictional tale presented as non-fictitious, you get all the sort of tropes and features that I like about non-fiction, with the added bonus of being able to craft an intriguing story and worthwhile ending (Plus as I tend to gravitate towards more historical non-fiction, I tend to know how most of the books I read are going to end. I already knew in Lawrence in Arabia that the middle-east would end up divided and Lawrence would ultimately fail in his mission, even if I didn't know all of the finer details, for example.
The two closest things I can find that are similar to what I'm asking for would have to be House of Leaves, as I already mentioned, and World War Z, which scratches the same sort of itch I'm looking for, but is instead formatted as a series of interviews instead of an impartial examination of something that has actually happened in the authors reality.
Anyone else know of more books that fit with this sort of thing?
by Archies_Mail
5 Comments
The original Dracula novel is written as a series of letters and almost feels like reading an investigative journalism piece
Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones is a travel encyclopedia for a fantasy realm, played completely straight like it’s an actual nonfiction guidebook
Ella Minnow Pea is a book about a society that starts banning letters of the alphabet, written in the form of journal entries and letters from people in the society
**In Cold Blood** by Truman Capote
Not exactly what you’re looking for but I think is relevant to this discussion.
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet is exactly this. Court transcripts and all sorts.
Carrie by Stephen King is told through articles, newspaper clippings, and eyewitness interviews as if someone is researching the events in the future. I loved the way the book was formatted having been a fan of the movies for a long time before reading.
I think the *Lady Trent Memoirs* by Marie Brennan should answer, along with the supplementary novel *Turning Darkness Into Light*, despite the flowery title.
As the series title (and the first book, *A Natural History of Dragons*) indicates, it is formatted mostly as the memoirs of a natural scientist, with occasional excerpts from in-world sources. She describes where she goes and what she learned about dragons there, and the various hazards involved in tramping the wilderness pestering large predators. There are periodic interjections about how the world has changed in the decades between the when the author was doing things vs the present where some of it is old hat, or mentions some big event, which the author wasn’t there for, so here’s a (fictional) source for more.
*Turning Darkness Into Light* is in that future, where the protagonist’s grandmother just published her memoirs, nut what’s really important is translating this ancient inscription (that might have implications in a modern political/religious controversy). Has diary entries, academic notes, news clippings, etc