Better Than Fiction is SimplySally’s Wonderful ‘80s Carol AU re-imagining. This fanfic placesCarol in a late ‘80s without taking anything away from the charm of the original story.
The AU is set in the rural Alabama, in the imaginary small town of Dixon. The fledgeling relationship between the star-crossed lovers has poverty, religion, alcoholism and prejudice as its backdrop.
Therese Belivet, the narrator, is the Dixon librarian struggling with the rigid limits of the Southern small town life. She feels out of place and longs for something to grant her freedom from the shackles of her stilted day to day existence.
Enter one Carol Aird, a bored, beautiful, red lipstick wearing, very unhappy and very lesbian wife of the new Dixon mill director.
Therese’s sheltered life is blown to smithereens by the arrival into town of the alluring and mysterious Mrs. Aird. Carol seems to be just as interested in seeking out the young librarian as she is in avoiding socializing with the locals, or the church or her own husband.
What starts as an innocent friendship between the two women quickly progresses beyond the confines of the strict social norms of the time and location. The pair find themselves in dangerous waters and with the whole world against them and Carol fighting for more than just her own happiness, how will they find their happiness?
Pros
The story is wonderfully layered. While the movie touches on some of the background of the characters, Batter Than Fiction gives Therese an amazingly poignant background. She knows loss and pain and struggle that shape her into a strong and resilient character. She is a surviver and while Carol makes an impact on her, akin to a meteor crashing into Earth, Therese survives all the tragedy of her life and the consequences of her involvement with Carol with grace.
The depth of the narrative is also reflected in the overwhelming realism of the setting: rural Alabama, steeped in religion, rigid norms and societal structures. The characters develop organically in this setting. They are both filled with fear, desperation and angst of the potential discovery, repercussions that it may cause and desire to break free.
The author manages to tell the story of anguish for freedom without depressing the reader and ensuring that hope is always flickering between the passages of the story, even in its darkest chapters.
The story also touches very sweetly and gently on coming out to oneself and one’s friends and how much trepidation that act contains. Therese’s revelations to herself and to her close ones are well and realistically written.
Carol – the movie – ends with the hopeful but somewhat unsatisfactory in its scarcity scene at the Oak Room. Better Than Fiction provides an utterly fulfilling epilogue where the pair get all they deserve and more and their happiness is shown in full.
A massive plus of this story is that Snow White is not part of this fandom. Otherwise, I’m sure she’d have been just as annoying here as she was in OUAT.
Cons
The fanfic follows the Carol movie storyline fairly faithfully and thus poor Therese is put through the wringer of angst and pain. As she is the narrator, we see only her side of the suffering while Carol’s plight remains off-screen, thus at times the story feels a bit one-sided.
Therese comes from a very cult-like religious background in this story and her initial acceptance and later renouncing of the cult can be potentially triggering. The story while acknowledging the experience, thankfully does not allocate too much time and space to it. The author acknowledges that “Better Than Fiction” follows her own spiritual journey and thus it has a very personal and well-informed feel to it.
Conclusion
It’s Carol Season! So everyone should be re-watching the movie and re-reading the book and all the glorious Carol fanfiction that is out there.
However, this story stands out in the multitude of wonderful Carol fanfics due to its maturity and the depth of the subjects it tackles. The realism of the backdrop and the beautiful angst it is filled with to the brim, makes it a must-read for any fan of the original.
The author manages quite delightfully to infuse the story with delicious longing and pining as well as smoldering furtive gazes and stolen moments.
Additionally, imagine Carol teaching scaredy-cat Therese to drive? It’s touching and sweet and heartbreakingly poignant.
Excerpt from this Wonderful ‘80s Carol AU
Better Than Fiction
She had just finished packing the cart with books for re-shelving when she heard the swoosh of the big glass front door. She turned her head, and her mouth dropped open when she saw the most gorgeous creature she had ever laid eyes on. She was tall, with beautiful golden hair and striking sharp cheekbones, wearing a tennis skirt revealing long, tanned legs and a sleeveless top. She was wearing large-framed sunglasses in movie star fashion.
Therese felt the rest of the room dim and narrow in to this one vision, as if there were a spotlight shining on her in a darkened room. She could feel her heart drop into the pit of her stomach as she watched the striking woman drop her sunglasses to her nose and scan the room for her daughter. She took in the full, red lips in that impossibly wide mouth, the way her chin was held upward, proudly, and her elegant strides across the library. She had spotted Rindy and Melanie and was headed their way, when, almost as if she could sense Therese’s stare in her peripheral vision, she turned her head sideways to return the look.
It was blinding, like looking directly into the sun, to have that icy blue gaze directed at her. She knew she should close her mouth, stop staring, but she was like an animal caught in the light of an oncoming train. She was paralyzed by her beauty. And then, incredibly, beautifully, the corners of the woman’s mouth turned up in a smile, an unspoken acknowledgement and … something else there. A sense of Therese being recognized, as if the woman had seen her before and already knew her down to her soul.
The woman had stopped in the middle of the library and was gazing at her, and for a second time stood still, Therese feeling an embarrassed flush creep over her neck at being caught stunned and staring, and then they both heard, “Hey, Mom!”
The lights in the room suddenly came back on, all the sound returned, the “Play” button in her mind had been pressed to resume the action. The woman turned her head and saw her daughter smiling and waving.
Therese cleared her throat, remembered to breathe, and absently picked a book up off the counter and juggled it in her hands. She went back to her work, or at least attempted to, but her eyes kept being drawn back to the woman now sitting at a long table with Rindy and Melanie.
And then, as she was stuffing envelopes with letters for people with seriously overdue books, she saw out of the corner of her eye that the woman was approaching. She dropped her pen, then knocked the box of envelopes off the counter as she leaned to retrieve it. The envelopes scattered all over the floor, and Therese cursed under her breath. She shoved them to the side with her foot and then stood again, bumping loudly into a nearby cart and raising her eyes to find the woman directly in front of her. She was blushing like mad.
The vision before her spoke.
“You all right back there?” she said, and winked, and Therese thought her heart might shove itself through her ribcage.
Find the full story here
Bits And Bobs
- Fandom: Carol (movie), The Price of Salt
- Length: 118,675
- Author: SimplySally
- Rating: M
Rating Guide: G= General, T = Teen and up, M=Mature, E = explicit
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