USA Today’s Bob Minzesheimer looks at roman a clef novels that the authors swear are anything but. Meghan Daum wonders if memoirists should even bother documenting their self-absorbed lives when they can walk into Starbucks and see Ishmael Beah‘s book for instant, sobering perspective. And SF Chronicle Book Editor Oscar Villalon wishes publishers would stop blurring the lines between fact and fiction because, he says, “all this legerdemain over categorizing books implies that there’s something second-rate about writing and reading fiction.”
Or, recognizing that this may be a distinct market, we could just come up with a brand new name for a brand new category of books that straddle the line, that present facts in a blurry way, with clear narratives but enough deviation to satisfy novel and non-fiction junkies alike. Blurry Books seems a bit over-the-top, and Crossover has other connotations altogether. I like Not Quite True (or NQT for the acronym happy) but suggestions are always welcome…