Here's a passage from Betsy Lerner's book, the one I was reading on the train last night that was a birthday gift from Queenie. I don't mean to take her words out of context and imply that this is how she feels about Freygate, but I think her words are very interesting:

"Though the writer's aim is to convey the truth, it certainly isn't to tell the truth per se. There is simply nothing worse than a novice writer who cries out in his own defense , when a scene is criticized for not seeming real, that "it really happened that way." No, no, no. Everything you put on the page is a deliberate manipulation of what happened, written to keep the reader entertained, moved, sympathetic, horrified, scared, whatever. You are never writing what really happened. Instead, you are choosing words, building images, creating a rhythm, sense, and structure through which to move your characters and unfold your story. You are making a thousand minuscule choices that you hope will add up in such a way that your readers believe what they're reading is real. And this is why, when the writer is successful, the best fiction reads like nonfiction and the best nonfiction like a novel."

Betsy Lerner
The Forest for the Trees