What's true?

The recent controversy about James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces has prompted tons of interesting commentary on the nature of "truth" in a memoir and the ethical obligations of authors and publishers.

But it strikes me that James Frey's problem is almost exactly the opposite of the awkward problem facing novelists. He wrote a supposedly true story that people have doubts about. Novelists write fiction, meanwhile, but people somehow still believe it is true!

I once sat through a conversation among several aspiring novelists that illustrates this. One of the women in the group had written a story in which the main character's husband played guitar. The man sitting next to her thought a technical aspect of the guitar playing was described wrong and he turned to the author's husband, who was also in the group, and asked if it were correct. We all turned to look expectantly at the husband. Remember we were all writers. We understood the concept of fiction. And yet, we turned to her husband to see how he answered this.

"I don't play the guitar," the husband said.

The writer blushed and apologized and we all cringed for realizing that we had -- for a moment -- assumed that the husband in the book was the same as the husband in real life.

It's a hard impulse to overcome. When the cover of my book first started circulating among friends, I was surprised that people asked why the woman on the cover was wearing jeans with high heels. "You never wear jeans and high heels," people said. Well, no, I don't. But I'm not Princess Isabella of Bisbania either. The woman on the book is.

For a first novelist like myself, this is a somewhat terrifying phenomenon. No one could possibly think that my story of a minor European princess is about me. That is what I tell myself. But then I reread a passage about a battle between the princess and the queen and I wonder if my own mother-in-law will think that I'm talking about her. Later, as I think about the man who haunts the princess on sleepless nights, I realize I gave him dark hair. But my husband's hair is light. Will this mean that every dark-haired boyfriend from my past will assume that he haunts me on sleepless nights. (The answer to any ex-boyfriends reading this is: Sorry, but no. If I can't sleep, I'm usually haunted by things like: "Did I lock the front door? Did I give the cat her insulin shot? Is it just me or is Simon Cowell even ruder this year?"

The truth is, of course, that there are aspects of the Princess that I share. (Fine, fly-away hair that is hard to control.) But there is a little piece of me in every single character in my book -- both the men and the women, the young and the old, the good and the bad. But my mother-in-law is very nice. And I don't think about ex-boyfriends late at night. And I will never, ever wear high heels with blue jeans. And that's the truth.