Stop Press:Are you English or What?

.Inspired by a typically thought provoking post from Norman Geras on the 'being English' debate I was inspired to think about my own identity and had these thoughts:

 Genetically I am quarter country Welsh, quarter country Scots, half central Englander. Culturally I was born into the urban northern working class, by choice I am a Francophile, European, post WW2, proto first wave feminist, an original fan of rockn'roll, teacher, historian, sociologist, occasional painter, professional writer, mother, grandmother, storyteller, ex- red-head. And several other things.  Oh  - and I am the granddaughter of miners and an auctioneer and valuer, the daughter of a psychiatric nurse and an electrician and the wife of a manager in industry.

Oh - and I am most definitely my evolved self.

Where Being English is in this I have no idea!  But at least  this list makes me as complicated as  we all are in the modern world. Anything else is too laughably, ridiculously reductive.

 Being driven by politics, even prejudice, to claim to be 'English through and through' seems to me to be against the subtle, complex, tacit identity of  the true citizens of these islands,

What list would come near to defining your identity, dear reader?

Sweet Suite Francaise Posthumous Triumph

Inside Cover: Irene's Manuscript

I would point out that in the Iconic reading group teased me that I read these books as a writer, not purely as a reader.  This is evident here, I think... I did protest to them that this was what I was: a writer!


Suite Francaise  - really a suite of two novels which might have grown been three -  was famously written by Irene Nemirovsky during the German occupation of France  before her removal in 1942 to Auschwitz and ultimate death. The rediscovery and  publication  of the work sixty five years later is a story in itself.

Irene - already a well known writer - embarked on the novel in the rural  village of Issy-l'Eveque where she and her husband and two small daughters lived, having fled occupied Paris.

I have just finished writing my latest novel - to be called The Art of Retreating - partly set in Occupied France and partly in the present day, so had read dozens of scholarly histories,  factual anecdotal memoirs and factual personal stories to get inside the particular experience of one of the six  main characters -  the aged writer Francine Costington.

I  kept Suite Francaise - at the far side of my table -  to read after I had finished writing my own novel.  This was because,  being fiction, this novel is essentially a secondary source; secondary sources are normally weak and can lead to thin storytelling and unconscious imitation..

Major novel Written During WW11

It turns out though that t Suite Francaise relates intensely to Irene's personal experience and could be seen to have memoir-ish insight, although -  as  I had to keep reminding myself as I read this triumph of a novel -  it was written living on top of the events it pictures. Also - very important for a modern reader - written with no fore-knowledge that the vicious tide of occupation of her country would recede and France would regain its sovereignty. She had no idea then that the Germans would not win the war.

The prose here is vigorous, detailed and full of energy. By page seven she has established the setting and the tensions and the place of pre-war Paris. She has reflected on the subtleties of the life and lifestyle of the different characters.

Material objects are important here. This involves lists: of what the mistress of writer Garbriel Corte  has to take  ... First she hid her jewellery ... over that she put some underwear, some washing things, two spare blouses, a little evening dress so she'd have something to wear when she arrived - she knew there would be delays on the road - a dressing gown and slippers , her make-up case and of course Gabriel's manuscripts. She tried in vain to close the suitcase...


(NB Gabriel's manuscripts lose the battle...)


And do read the  loading of Madame Pericand's car (Chapter 6 p 29 in my copy)  This is a masterpiece of listing to render great layers of meaning for the novel.

This is followed by this list '... groups of people appeared outside their houses - woman, old people and children, gesticulating to each other, trying at first calmly, then with increasing agitation sand a mad, dizzy excitement to get family and all the baggage into a Renault, a saloon, a sportscar...

This is a powerfully  French thick-textured novel  teaming with the people of Parisian  bourgeois society and their servants (often disrespectful) and their fellow travellers..

The languid, somewhat unpleasant character, writer Gabriel Corte, declares on page 16, 'A novel should be a street full of strangers, where no more than two or three people are known to us in depth.' But Irene Nemirovsky does not follow Gabriel's rubric; This novel sports a cast of dozens of people and by the time we have read the novel we feel we know many of these characters and share with them the annihilation of their bourgeois concerns. From the modern perspective it is poignant to overhear the discussion of the importance of keeping valuable carpet and furniture safe, of preserving the the inherited linen.

 By page 11 we are acquainted with all the characters, including Albert the ever reappearing cat and the aged grandfather of a family group M Pericand.who gets left behind and is later retrieved.
            'Nanny, my dear Nanny,' Madame Pericand groaned in a barely audible voice, 'We forgot ...'
           'What? What did we forget?'
           'We forgot my father-in-law,' said Madame Pericand, dissolving into tears.

So in the first book of the Suite Francaise - Storm in June - we have  people fleeing in refugee columns from the advancing Germans, stumbling along, attacked by low flying aeroplanes, meeting jobsworth guards at the crowded railway stations;  people who get lost, fade away, lose their precious possessions. The we witness many of them returning to an occupied Paris,. taking up their homes and their work where they can before the darkest side of the occupation begins to bite.

The second book here Dolce is an account of life in an occupied rural village - I imagine not unlike the village that was Irene Nemirovsky's refuge and where she began what would have been a greater, even more sprawling novel of France in World War 2, had she not been taken to Auschwitz.

What I loved about this book was:  the skillful, complex storytelling; the acute insight into the human motive which has relevance today; the wit and the lack of sentimentality; the energy and quirkiness of the characters and the fluency and energy of the prose rendered so well in this translation by Sandra Smith.

Highly recommended for readers and writers alike.

Afternote to Summer Book : Reading Groups

Good segment on this morning's Woman's Hour about Book Groups -  commenting on a Daily Mail article disrespecting this Reading Group idea. Jenny interviewed two very enthusiastic advocates of what is now a national pastime.. I agreed with everything they said except regarding the choice of books.. The speaker said the choices should be checked out by reading reviews, checking prize lists etc.

Of course this is the very opposite to what I said in the preamble to my last post (below) about reading The Summer Book.

Despite the magisterial authority of Woman's Hour I stick to my guns. One needs to appraise a book with a fresh mind rather than use the crutch of published opinion, Once you have read,the book you can see what the pundits have said and check it against your own impression. That adds to the literary fun and keeps your own mind independent.

An added bonus is that this can act to stop the emperor arraying himself in new clothes...

Mythic Style: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

When I read a new novel I make a habit of not reading any commentaries, reviews or introductions as I don't like to be told what I should think or feel about  a new book. I like to come to it afresh.  I may read such commentaries afterwards but my own first close reading is my reference for what the book means to me.

Reading for Myself...

But you can't close your ears and Tove Jannson 's Summer Book came to the Iconic reading group laden with insightful praise from my reading guru Gillian. She certainly made me want to read it.


As I read it  I admired its beautifully written spare, poetic tone. I found it  hard to sort out whether this was down to the elegant translation or the original writing by a writer, whose reputation is built on writing for children. Of course the best children's writers know in their hearts about diamond bright use of language  to convey precise, often deep meaning,. Tove Jannson certainly does this in this story about a small girl who spends the summer on an island on the gulf of Finland with her Grandmother, who is a marginally eccentric artist and has no problems rowing in the water around the island.


So the language is spare and cool, like the landscape which plays such an important role in  the novel: central to the narrative is the living nature of the sea ands the moving seasons. This builds to a climax quite naturally with a great and beautifully engendered storm. Bedded into this narrative are the details of the child's observations and her trusting, pert questions about the world and life and death. This child's eye view is the magnifying glass at the core of the narrative.


The grandmother is made more real by her artistic accumulation of objects and by details such as her false teeth and her corsets.  Such details alongside her ultimate very human exhaustion  lift her out of the mythic status endowed by the sometimes glacial style of the storytelling.  The subtext of past death and approaching death, clearly at the core of this book, is  sweetened by the grace of the writing and the glory of the natural world that infuses the story.


While I really appreciated all this and enjoyed the book - which is a very easy summer read but is strong enough to bear a second or third reading - I started to feel as though I was seeing all this through a lens smeared with Vaseline. I started to notice the distancing engendered by the use of the passive voice and (what I  felt to be) the over-use of reported speech. The voice here is the voice of the storyteller, not the characters.  I also began to notice with discomfort the overweening power of the 'wise' grandmother.


This made me realise that despite focusing on  adult values and concerns, the form  of expression in The Summer Book is that of a fairy tale or myth - a stately, condensed poetic delivery that  is accessible to children and adults alike.


Afterwards I was not surprised to discover this story has not been out of print since its first publication. It has the perpetual appeal of mythic story that lays bare the child in all of us.


The last word on this from the magisterial CS LEWIS:


'Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up...'

The Loss of the Exceptional Mary D

I have just heard from Jan Atkins of the death (aged 93) on the Isle of  Arran of my old  friend Mary Davies, a gifted painter, writer and healer.  My novel The Woman Who Drew Buildings was inspired by tales told to me by this wonderful  and somewhat  mystical writer and artist who  lived  in retirement on the Isle of Arran and who  also, in her time, drew buildings for a living. She was - remarkably -  a note taker and reporter for architectural historian Niklaus Pevsner and in her time helped to save important buildings from demolition.


Drawing from Mary's stories, experience and documentation the novel takes place in Poland in 1981 and Britain in 2006 . What’s it about? It’s about  the consuming nature of art, the shadowy place between now and the hereafter; it’s about passionate encounters arising from a confluence of cultures and the long journey of a mother and son to mutual understanding.  

Mary and her Polish friend Halina  on my inspiration board

I met the exceptional Mary Davies at a workshop I ran in Cumbria and She kept in touch. Later in her seventies she published and sold out three novels including the very telling and sensitive Still Waters. I visited her several times on Arran, including once when she regressed me to an earlier life. She believed she herself had gone through several incarnations. 



Always a spiritual person, she was a member of the Quaker Community and towards the end of her life she embraced the very inclusive Ba 'Hai faith.  On this coming Monday she will attend own her funeral in the card-boards coffin,  decorated with flower paintings by her friends at a party she held some years ago. When I last visited her it was standing in the corner serving the purpose of a cupboard.




In my little writing room I have a board plastered with influential pictures and texts. Mary's picture, with her Polish friend Halina, has been there at its centre for six years. So she has remained - and will remain - a true inspiration. I am hoping now that The Woman Who Drew Buildings will act as a tribute to this exceptional woman, this very good soul.




I find myself wondering which world Mary  will grace in her next re-incarnation.

 

As a further tribute to Mary I have re-printed here the post I put up when the novel came out. In the extract the list of objects which the boy finds in his mother's flat is the exact list of objects which Mary brought me in two carrier bags and told me to make of them what I would. ... And I did...

The Gift of the Exceptional Mary D

My new novel The Woman Who Drew Buildings is dedicated thus:
‘For the exceptional and inspirational Mary Davies - painter, writer and healer.’




This novel has been in the making for five or six years, when the exceptional Mary D gave me a box of materials about her travels and experience in Poland in the 1980s.


Mary knew I was interested in the idiosyncrasies of letters, notebooks, images and ephemera that I used to inspire my novels. I was, she said, to use them as I wished. We had long talks about her experiences and the the dilemma of using them as inspiration, for what I knew would be - in fact -pure fiction.
]It has taken me some years to develop my imaginative take on on all this material and all these ideas in order to allow the novel to emerge of its own volition. It became more fluid – easier - when my purely imagined characters got to grips with the material of their true to life inspiration.


The Woman Who Drew Buildings is the outcome of all these processes.






The extract below describes the moment when Adam, the estranged son of Marie Matheve (who has problems of his own) comes upon just such a cache of materials as his mother lies in a coma in hospital:

… Adam’s eye moved to the wardrobe and the pile of boxes above it. Now this he could disturb. He climbed on the dressing stool and started to pull down the boxes. He worked swiftly and as he worked his spirit lifted. He started to drop the boxes so their contents spilled on the polished floor – books, notebooks, papers, brochures, travel documents, bundles of clothes, bright scarves, packets of photos, sheaves of drawings in a disorganised pile….

… he took a second bottle of wine from the fridge, took a new notebook from the pile in her bottom left desk drawer, came back and began to make a careful list of the things that had spilled out of the boxes. His face was burning with wine drunk too fast, his brain was racing, his hand was shaking, but one by one he listed the items from the brown cardboard box:

· Article in Esperantist magazine by Marie Mathéve, recounting her ‘Study In Poland.’

· A newspaper article about the visit of Marie Mathéve’s visit to Poland on a Siropotimist grant to consider buildings.

· Photo of Marie and a younger (very pretty)woman leaning towards each other, making a triangle. On the back Marie has written; Jacinta Zielenska and me in the Cherzov flat.

· Small published book of drawings of Krakov marked Ex Libris D. Adama Zielenski` Paperback with a brown paper cover to protect it.

· Photographic slides, small and hard to see, with viewer,.

· Poland’s Progress edited by Michael Murray first pub 1944 this the third ed 1945

· Krakow by Edward Hartig 1964. Coffee table book.

· Poland by Irena and Jerzy Kostrowicki

Official 1981 guide to Krakow

· Official guide to Katowice

· Notebooks, many notebooks

· Two small red Sylvine notebooks still with their 30p price tag on. Marked Poland Diary 1981

· One Winfield exercise book marked Paris Diary 1985

· Daler Sketchbook full of Marie’s drawings eg: Cherrzov From My Bedroom; steelworks; estate withTabac in foreground; old steelworks; coal mine looking towards Katowice; done in coloured markers, making her usual style brighter and bolder. But style is unmistakable.

· Spiral Bound Daler Sketchbook with more subtle drawings from Brittany, Paris Luxembourg gardens, View from my window 8^th floor Rue de Rennes; Paris. Louvre 1985.

************

( 

If you fancy it, The Woman Who Drew Buildings (ISBN 978-0-7553-3380-6)

is published by Headline Book Publishing

and is available in all good bookshops.


 On Kindle to pre-order now. Out 2nd August.

WX

STOP PRESS for Gardeners, Readers & Writers

Don’t forget to join me this Sunday at Noon on the 3^rd June to The Writing Game  on Bishop FM where Gillian, Avril and I dig into the inspiration of the garden.

This month on The Writing Game we are making the connection between the creative processes of gardening and writing. Many gardeners are writers and many writers are gardeners. Both activities require a combination of inspiration, hard work, creativity and patience. The only way to become accomplished at both writing and gardening is  actually to do it – not think about it or theorise about it but to actually practice the art. Some people would say that in both cases you have to be willing to get your hands dirty!

On this month’s programme we visit the garden in Low Etherley of Mary Smith who is both a great gardener and a member of Wear Valley Writers. ..  – read more  at http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/

The Rise and Rise of a Pitman Painter Now on Kindle

The Story Behind the Story...

The Rise and Rise of a Pitman Painter

The widespread international success of the Pitman Painter drama reminds me that my novel, originally called WHERE HOPE LIVES, now retitled GABRIEL PAINTING was writtenbefore that play was produced. It focuses on the same extraordinary phenomenon of working men being inspired to be painters. Like the Pitman Painters story, my story springs out of true events in the history of mining art.


I thought you might enjoy it here on Life TwciceTasted:


In 1963 eminent painter Gabriel Marchant recalls his beginnings as a painter in the dark days of the 1930s and pays tribute the man – the Magician – who made it possible.


In 1935, haunted by a dream he once had underground, 19 year old Gabriel, an unemployed miner, finds help and support for his lifelong desire to paint.at the local Settlement. Visiting German artist Rosel von Stielenberg nurtures the extraordinary talent of this young man whose experience in the mine has left him obsessed to express in paint darkness and light and the power of colour,.


Gabriel is persuaded by the charismatic director Archie Todhunter to help with a Settlement play which will be performed before the Prince of Wales. In the play Gabriel plays opposite clever, plain, schoolgirl Greta who sees him as her doorway to maturity. 


But Gabriel is obsessed with painting and he finds the dark face of his dream in Marguerite Molloy, who is the model for the controversial painting which will make his national reputation and disturb the community in which he lives.


As the day of the performance looms, the lives of these women and the choices Gabriel makes are played out against the long shadow of the First World War with, if they knew it, the clarion calls of the Second World War echoing in their ears. 


Note: Although my characters here are invented, in the 1930s and 40s the Spennymoor Settlement, under its charismatic leader, did indeed nurture the talents of young men who gained national respect for their art, including painters
Tom McGuinness and Norman Cornish, and writer Sid Chaplin. WR

Treasure Trove: Discovering an Unknown French Version of My Studs Novel

2003 French Edition
 Just discovered by me (2012)
Hachette?

Now here's  funny thing!

I am about to put a young adult novel of mine The Real Life of Studs McGuire onto Kindle so I am checking out existing editions of this book. 

It was published by Hodder & Stoughton in the Seventies and seemed to have traveled all over the place. My son-in-law (who surfs the net more than I do ) once emailed me to say did I know it was on the required reading list of some outback education authority in Australia?

There was a French edition published by Hachette  under the title  Pour Venger Mon Copain (Avenging My Mate/Buddy)  (See cover below)  I had letters from French readers singing its praises.. Apparently it was on some French Schools' recommended reading.  Being such a Francophile I loved this. My story in French. Great!      
 

Original French Edtition - Hachette

Its popularity might just have been down to the universality of the story of Studs hunting down the gang of boys who enticed his best friend Tony to sniff glue which made him jump off the high roof of a car-park. Tony spends the whole of the novel in a coma while Studs, bit by bit, finds the culprits.

I have a son (and grandson now) and used to love teaching boys. I  loved Studs. and admired him. The novel is set on the day  he and Tony leave school  and shows two boys can love and admire each other as a normal part of growing up under all kinds of pressure..

All this means I was delighted  that the novel proved popular across the planet.


But this week, on my Kindle research I find a newer French Edition of  Pour Venger Mon Copain  published in 2003. And with this spanking new cover.

I have to say it looks great - the cover, cool, contemporary and well keyed into the novel - I love it. But all I have is an image of it (courtesy of Amazon). I don't even have a copy of it!  Of course I will check all this out with my agent and maybe she can hunt down the whys and wherefores of this. (Stop Press later - and so she did! - thank you J!)

Still it's great to see Studs living and thriving years after he was out of print in the UK. Somebody has loved him. It warms a writer's heart.,

And it bodes well for the Kindle of this novel -  maybe some insightful publisher will scoop it up again! - And I will ask Fiona who designs my Kindle covers to be inspired by this cool 2003 French Edition of THE REAL LIFE OF STUDS McGUIRE.

Original Paperback H&S

Look out for Studs on Kindle. I'll let you know.

The original Hardback
 Hodder & Stoughton

My Cruelty Games now on Kindle

Who is the victim? To buy

I have just extensively re-edited and revised for today my 1997 novel Cruelty Games for the new 2012 Kindle edition. This was a challenging book to write but it was very popular both as a paperback and as a library choice. I hope the new Kindle enthusiasts will  like it just as much.

As I revised it I reflected on the fact that the writing of Cruelty Games pre-dated the events around the Jamie Bulger affair but strangely pre-echoes it.

 About the story

Rachel, an idealistic young teacher in 1963, tries to make changes in the lives of her tough pupils. The school - tough as it is - is a haven for Rachel’s pupil Ian Sobell, whose mother neglects him and whose grandmother abuses him.  One of Rachel’s adventurous projects leads her class to a place where, two hundred years before, a boy hung for days in a gibbet until he died in agony: a punishment for the murder of his employers children.

Events on this day have a disastrous impact on the lives of  both  Rachel and Ian:  a shock  which lasts nearly two decades before they both move on to some kind of resolution, triggered by Rachel meeting Ian again after sixteen years.

This novel was inspired by my experience teaching in schools where I worked with pupils like Ian who soldiered on under great difficulty, walking the line between violence and normalcy every day. I also know that their desperation and stress is often mirrored in the plight of good, sensitive teachers who have to deal with the ambiguity of children who may be seen as evil.


Extract from Cruelty Games for you:
'... This worked. The two of them clambered up onto crumbling high points, Michael having difficulty because of his short legs, which had still not quite shed their baby roundness.

‘Now I count!’ Ian started to count in a loud voice. ‘. . . now I come, ready or not!’ 

The game that followed was full of shouts and squeals from Michael and Jonno, yells and whistles from Ian. As he was so much bigger, he caught them quite easily. He had to slow down to let them catch him when they were on. He found it boring, being chased. He liked to be the one doing the chasing. 

One time, when Jonno was  on, Ian lifted Michael onto a high section of walling, left like a pinnacle at the bottom end of the Baths.  Michael waited while Jonno counted carefully to ten, then looked round wildly. ‘I can’t get down! I can’t get down!’ he shrieked. 

Ian, who had found his own high spot, jumped down and went across to look up at the little boy, who screamed, ‘Get us down, Ian!’ 

Ian grinned up at him. ‘Why should I?’ 

Michael started to cry. ‘Gerrus down!’ he shrieked. 

‘No. Jump!’ 

‘Get him down, Ian’ Jonno came puffing across, and  pulled at Ian’s arm.  Ian flung the smaller boy away with some force, so  that he sprawled on the ground. ‘He’s gotta jump. Jump, Mikey!

From The Iconic Book Group

Dorothy M. hits THE ROAD

Dorothy, a valued and very informed member of our Iconic Book Group  lives in Littletown near Durham City.  Now retired she worked for Durham County Library Service for over 40 years and lists books and reading as one of her great passions.  She reviews books for the website www.whichbook.net - do give this a try if you don’t know it – it is a very original way of suggesting books for readers.  

Here's Dorothy: 

 'The Road is a brilliant novel and a great work of literature – but first and foremost it is an amazing experience.  I was totally immersed in this grim world and in the story of a man (who is dying slowly and ... (more) ..

First Date Ensemble

(Still working on this...)

Pure white wool blanket
straight out of
the asylum, and

cut with sharp scissors
shaped, Singer-sewn, the lining
carved from red silk off-cuts

long roll collar, Raglan sleeves
blue scarf shoulder-draped  -
all knotted fringes

I wear the whole ensemble-
complete with corsair swagger -
cracking image in the mirror

The tall boy smiles,
lifts a hand towards me -
tucks in the naughty fringes
curbing their message
of madness.

Listen Again to Sylvia's Story

Sylvia's Autobiography

We had a fabulous response to Sunday's Writing Game Programme where Sylvia Hurst, aged 90,  tells us how she arrived here on the
Kindertransport from Germany - on one of the trains which rescued threatened children from Nazi Europe.To listen again click HERE
Hope you  like it
w
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a

Paulie Smith Gets a New Cover!

On Amazon For You

One of the small pleasures of Kindling for yourself is the fact that you can design and develop your own covers and also your can if you wish, go back into the manuscript and improve things. When she downloaded my my kindled novel LIZZA, my eagle-eyed writing friend Avril spotted a dreaded typo on the second page and  - this being a Bank Holiday - once the new plants were planted in the garden, I went back into my manuscript, made the changes and there is LIZZA, even more perfect in my eyes especially with the new cover designed with me by my friend artist Fiona Naughton.

This crossover novel is A  Rights of Passage  story  framed in the strong characters of Lizza, her loose-living sister Ivy, their stern mother and their principled brother Bernard. It was very well received when it was first published in hardback and softback versions in 1980 and for years after.  Its message of self-belief, growth and survival is as relevant today as it has ever been.

She is selling well  - If you read LIZZA and enjoy it I would be very touched if you would take a moment to make a comment on Amazon. I am finding that getting the word out there is crucial to this process. Learning all the time!

On Amazon For You

Then my eye strayed down the Amazon column to PAULIE'S WEB,  So - it still being Bank Holiday -  I decided to brighten up her cover, because although this novel has some serious themes, Paulie and her  prison friends have bright optimistic, sometimes comic personalities, so I thought I would give her a brighter cover. It's nice to know that this novel is getting out there to  some appreciative readers. I think Paulie likes the new cover.  Gave me the thumbs up! I hope you give it the thumbs up too.

On Amazon by the end of the week.

And now this coming week I am about to put my novel CRUELTY GAMES on Kindle. Fiona has come up with a beautifully unique cover design. What do you think?  This is a strong story about a teacher and her pupil and savage events that have a profound impact on both their lives. It should be up by the end of the week and I will post more about it then. I suppose I should say Watch This Space...

My long time publisher Headline are putting books from my backlist on Kindle so it is all a glorious mixture for interested readers to enjoy.


I hope you enjoyed your Bank Holiday as much as I did...wx

I

WIP : A Daughter's Tale

 My father Billy died when I was nine years old and, it seems to me now, has permeated my life ever since, as my memoir The Romancer (see right) probably demonstrated. I miss him even now.

This is a poem about him which I have worked on for some time now

                            

                           Billy: A Daughter’s Tale

We walked along, your  giant’s hand in mine,  

long fingers up inside my woollen sleeve -

I remember nights she left the house

when you read the paper and I scaled your knee

settling, birdlike
into that rustling space.

I remember how we cut out pictures

for the Panjandrum book. And you read us stories -

your voice going up and down

What would you think of our young one?

Tall in Tai Kwan Do gear

white clad and obliquely oriental -

Or ready for cricket

complete with pads and faceguard,

grave and somewhat pedantic – a family trait

When I passed the age of thirty seven

- a lifetime since -

it dawned on me how young you were -  

yet at that dying time

you seemed to me so very old -

it did not feel too terrible.

wr

Endgame: The Eight Day Novel

For me,  researching and writing a novel can take anywhere from eighteen months to two years. More! If you take all the inklings and stirrings and brainstorms that precede a novel you can add another three years to that.
My new novel AOR* was just a twinkle in my eye about five years ago and it's a couple of years since I started to write sketches - actual sequences that could end up on a page in the final novel; dialogue (ditto); idiosyncratic biographies which would help me to become intimate with my characters: I also gathered notes, poems metaphors, analagies, images, quotations. maps, images and drawings.


Every day something new occurs to me, Some of this stuff goes on the wall, some on the table, some in boxes.


The more I go through this process the more things come to me - gathering like iron filings on a drum. (I am reminded that psychology there is a process called set presupposing perception. That’s when you think of something and then you notice it everywhere...)


In this way I begin to build up a mass of relatively shapeless inchoate material which has sprung out of that the original inkling: that first twinkle in my eye.


There comes a time when the mass becomes critical. In The Romancer I described this point as like fragments in the interior of a kaleidoscope. You shake those pieces and a distinctive shape emerges,


To develop my iron filing analogy - at this point you put a strong magnet under the drum and the iron filings shift into coherent and meaningful shapes and patterns.


This is the point where I find at last where the novel will begin;, what might be the issues; the possible low points; the possible high points; the ultimate climax; a possible ending. This is also when I discover significant gaps in the meaning and the structure of the narrative.
So begins a new brainstorming process to create credible links and  substantive new material to make the prose and the narrative work.

Clue to AOR:New Novel

Earlier this year with this current novel, AOR*, I felt as though I had more than enough material and the novel was going out of shape again. I could feel the energy of the novel outstripping its form. This can be quite a worry,


Somehtimes, at this stage working at home one can get stuck in the rich alluvial soil of a novel. For An Englishwoman In France at this stage I  went to France for two months to clear my mind to sort this out.


 This year my solution to this problem was - with my good writing friend Avril - to spent five days in the peace and quiet of Balliol College in Oxford to regain control of this mass of writing, material and inspiration and make my novel work.


And in that academic peace and quiet the final shape of my new novel did emerge. Reaching this point can be truly magical. This time it was like a key clicking in a lock: a door closing behind me. I knew that was it. I had the shape: all I had to do now was finish the novel,


ALL! Well there you go.

Oxford Wall Plan

On element that emerged in Oxford was that this novel would take place over an eight day week. While I was there I made a wall chart that showed me how all my parts fit into the whole.


I am now working in and on the crucial Saturday in the lives of my characters.


Phew!




*Title under wraps just for now, but it’s a good one.


PS Next!  - a work in progress extract from the end of the novel...

The Boy Who likes Chocolate and Academic Life...

Mismatched socks cool

‘A’ the boy who likes chocolate is visiting from university where his life is exciting, fulfilling, challenging, surprising: all one would wish. The usual subjects are covered: food, girls; a girl; studying; games; training. (As the game in question is American Football there is much to learn.)

 He plays me beautiful new sounds on his acoustic guitar which remains his relaxation in this welter of activity. He restrings his acoustic guitar. He takes to pieces his electric guitar and puts it back together again. It still works.

Secret Student

We talk quite bit, as is our custom. We get to genetics - his central study at the moment. He teaches me some very basic facts about genetics, with diagrams to  make it accessible. This is a world where the language is signs and concepts that can only be explained graphically.  New words emerge, which have a poetry all of their own: genotype, alleles, epistasis, diploid...

We discuss the  potential magic of intervention in the womb which could bring about the end of life-threatening genetic conditions. Inevitably we move onto ethical concerns and how medical ethics will be an important part of his future study.

Of course we move onto the way in which  nurture (my field) interacts with genetic predisposition. We talk about my own lifelong interest in twins – quite significant in the research into child development, which was once my own field of study.  My obsession was possibly due - I say - to the fact that my oldest siblings were twins,  christened the moment they were born  who died close to their birth.

 In the subsequent generation at the time of their birthday my mother would talk about them. The Twinnies would have been sixteen today … the Twinnies would have been twenty one today…  Calling them Twinnies made them seem so alive. She told me once that when the second twin died she stopped believing in God.

A man from around here once told me a story about an old woman, referring to her as ‘the Third Twin’, meaning the third of identical triplets. I looked it up and found that the likelihood of identical triplets was one in two million. That notion is at the core of my novel Family Ties. No novelist could resist it. Come to think of it my novel The Lavender House involved in-depth research into the Kray Twins, whom I used as models for two characters in that novel.  I suppose the notion of twins is closely linked to the nature of identity, which is a theme in so  many good novels.

‘A’ and I have played Scrabble together from when he was about four years old. For a few years I would manufacture sequences so he could make good words.  But soon we were playing  for real, which he enjoyed as,  despite being a quiet person, he is intensely competitive (think Rugby and American Football...) We played Scrabble this week-end. I banned two letter chemical formulae as it gave him an unfair advantage. It was a long, high-scoring game. 

Needless to say, he won.
wx

Once, in France