Dust and Light
On the Art of Fact in Fiction
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025
The National Book Award–winning writer’s intimate exploration of how fact is transformed into fiction.
Hailed as a "genius-enchantress" (Karen Russell) and winner of the MacArthur Fellowship, the celebrated novelist Andrea Barrett has for decades reached backward to find inspiration from the past and written acclaimed and prizewinning works of historical fiction. In Dust and Light, the first work of nonfiction of her extraordinary career, Barrett draws from that deep well of experience to explore the mysteries, methods, and delights of the form.
Inspiration found in the past, she argues, can illuminate fiction, just as dust scatters light and makes the unseen visible. Barrett writes of lessons gleaned from the classic work of some of her guiding lights (Willa Cather, Henry James, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf), as well as the work of such contemporary masters as Hilary Mantel, Toni Morrison, Colm Tóibín, and Jesmyn Ward. She reveals how she created some of her own beloved works, taking readers on a fascinating journey into some of the largest questions in the genre: How does a writer find meaningful subject matter beyond the confines of their life? How are scraps of history found, used, misused, manipulated, and transformed into a fully formed narrative? And what are the perils as well as the potential of this process?
Building on pieces originally published in leading literary magazines and featured in The Best American Essays, Dust and Light is an elegant exploration of the hazy borderlands of fiction sewn from the materials of history. Filled with profound insights, it will be a delight for any devoted fiction readers, and of great use to aspiring writers too.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
National Book Award winner Barrett (Natural History) expounds on her approach to historical fiction in this edifying meditation. She argues that while getting the facts right is important, writers' paramount concern should be capturing the intangible feeling of what it was like to live through a particular era, and she recounts how she read early 20th-century medical texts about tuberculosis and accounts of Americans who fought in WWI while developing her novel, The Air We Breathe. Reading widely can lead to unexpected sources of inspiration, Barrett contends, discussing how she discovered the 19th-century British physicist Oliver Lodge, around whom she built the short story "The Ether of Space," while researching a different piece. She warns against "dutiful adherence" to the historical record, positing that fiction writers should focus less on bringing historical figures to life and more on rendering them "ambiguous" and "mysterious" enough to serve as vehicles to explore broader themes. Barrett's reflections on her process provide glimpses of a master at work, and she supports her observations with sharp analysis of how other authors tackle historical fiction ("Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell succeeds so well in part because in addition to being absolutely, obdurately himself, he also illuminates the processes of power"). It's a bracing inquiry into the purpose of fiction and its relationship with truth.
