Madeleine McCann: Selling Books And Fact As Fiction
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann, Kate McCann and Gerry McCann
WHILE the tabloids splash news of Madeleine McCann – our Maddy/ Maddie – on their front pages, spinning the single thread story into a news sensation, the Guardian uses the missing child as a touchstone for arty matters.
Just recently Madeleine has been in Edinburgh for the performing arts festival, and not. Like last year.
Today John Morton muses: “Can fiction tell the truth?”
Can fiction be fact? Anyone care to help Mr Morton before he gives this too much thought?
Many novelists have sought to dramatise the blurring of real life with drama, but this could obscure as much as it explains.
But novels are just a list of facts, right? Our man in the know is considering Kate Summerscale’s recent Samuel Johnson prizewinning book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
Summerscale’s book is at least in part an attempt to demonstrate that media frenzy over child abductions is not a new phenomenon (as the book concerns the abduction of a child, the parallels with today are clear – witness the fevered reaction to the disappearance in 2002 of two young girls in Soham, and the near-constant speculation over the fate of Madeline McCann).]
Can journalists ever blur fiction with fact? Discuss…
Posted: 15th, August 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann Comments (566) | TrackBack | Permalink
