My Poetry Collection Owl Unbound

 

My collection Owl Unbound (pub Indigo Dreams Publishing) was launched on the 23rd October at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. And I was joined by three very special poet friends - Fiona Sampson, Anna Saunders, and Adam Horovitz. It was a wonderful night. 

Now comes the business of selling it! You can buy a copy direct from me for £9.50 (postage is free in the UK) by emailing me on zoe.brooks@googlemail.com. If you want I can sign it for you. Alternatively it is available from my publishers Indigo Dreams or most online bookstores.

The launch reminded me how much I love reading to an audience and I actually quite enjoy reading on Zoom, so if there is anyone interested in my reading at a poetry event, please email me on the above email. 

Desert Island Books - Jane Eyre

Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane’s natural independence and spirit – which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a choice. Should she stay with him and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions, even if it means leaving the man she loves?

Jane Eyre was the first “grown-up” book I read. I must have been about eleven, when I discovered I could read adult books. I loved the book and reread it regularly through my teens and still read it occasionally. I think Jane Eyre is an ideal book for teenage girls. I identified with the heroine, as did Charlotte Bronte. Like Jane I felt unattractive and awkward in society. I admired her resilience and spirit and I was delighted when Rochester expressed his love for her. My love of the book was reenforced by an excellent BBC TV series starring Sorcha Cusack in the title role and Michael Jayston as Rochester. It was shown in the early evening on Sundays, and I was always worried that I would not get back from rehearsals at the Arts Centre, but I didn’t miss any of it. It was only later that I discovered that Elizabeth Webster, the director, was also a fan and so stopped rehearsals with time to spare. Michael Jayston was the ideal Rochester, not particularly handsome but with the sexiest voice! He was my first crush.

Now that I am mature woman I find new depths in the book. The psychology of the book is spot-on. What is it that attracts a rich man of the world like Rochester to the plain inexperienced Jane? He has been surrounded by women who flatter him because he is rich, Jane is totally unlike them, she speaks the truth. He does not know what to make of her and wants to know more. But there is more than unfamiliarity – on the surface Jane is reserved, but underneath she is capable of passion. In the second scene between them Rochester examines Jane’s weird paintings in which her imagination takes her to the northern seas. How like the book’s writer: her imagination escaping the restrictions of her life?

The Jane Eyre plot is a classic Cinderella/ugly duckling story.  There are only so many plots and this is one of the most common. It is a plot that I have used in my trilogy The Healer’s Shadowtrilogy. Some people say that Jane Eyre is a Cinderella meets Bluebeard plot, but they are wrong.  Bluebeard is a psychopath that destroys the female, Rochester may have a first wife in a tower, but she is alive, as Jane discovers to her cost.

Desert Island Books - Weirdstone of Brisingamen

A tale of Alderley

When Colin and Susan are pursued by eerie creatures across Alderley Edge, they are saved by the Wizard. He takes them into the caves of Fundindelve, where he watches over the enchanted sleep of one hundred and forty knights.

But the heart of the magic that binds them – Firefrost, also known as the Weirdstone of Brisingamen – has been lost. The Wizard has been searching for the stone for more than 100 years, but the forces of evil are closing in, determined to possess and destroy its special power.

Colin and Susan realise at last that they are the key to the Weirdstone’s return. But how can two children defeat the Morrigan and her deadly brood?

Amazon description

This (and Moon of Gomrath, the second book in the Alderley trilogy) has to be my all-time  favourite book from my childhood.  I remember arguing with my teacher Elizabeth Webster that Alan Garner’s stories were better than Tolkien’s.

What makes this so great is the authenticity of the stories – they are based on real localities (Alderley Edge) and local myths. They are fantasy, but their roots are in the hills of Cheshire and British mythology. Garner arguably gave me my first introduction to magic realism, the genre in which I write. I could have chosen other books by this writer – The Owl Service, Elidor and of course the great Red Shift, but Weirdstone was how I first experienced Garner’s work and so it holds a special place in my heart.

Whether the book had such a strong hold on me (which it retains) because it chimed with my vision of the world – history and myth woven in to the present – or because it informed my view is impossible to say now. But I read this book over and over again throughout my childhood, delighting in Garner’s wonderful descriptions – the account of Colin and Susan’s journey through the disused mineworkings of the Edge beats the journey through the Mines of Moria into a cocked hat.

After many years Garner has just published the sequel – a book for adults called Bonelands. It’s on the list of what I want for Christmas. That’s if I can wait that long.

Magic Realism Blog

Just after I had published Girl in the Glass I went to an alternative literature festival in Leicester. I was still incredibly green about publishing and was unclear what sort of story I was writing. I knew it didn’t fit neatly into the usual genre headings that one gets on Amazon. I had got as far as knowing that it was a) women’s fiction and b) not quite fantasy. I was having a soup for lunch when I got chatting to another writer, who asked me what I wrote. I gave a short description and he repled “Oh you write magic realism.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Well Terry Pratchett described it as fantasy for people whose friends went to Oxbridge.”

“Oh,” I said thinking that indeed many of my friends were graduates of Oxford or Cambridge.

I wrote the genre down on a piece of paper, stuffed it in to my handbag and continued eating. When I got home, I could not find the paper nor could I remember what genre he had said I wrote.

A month or so later I found a review of the book on Amazon. The reviewer Iain M. Grant said:
“Zoe Brook’s novel is a true magic realist story. Its setting is a world that is not ours but is nonetheless recognisable. It is a novel in which the almost magical and vaguely supernatural are an accepted reality. Reading it, I couldn’t help but be reminded favourably of other authors. The setting and Anya’s sprawling and occasionally grotesque family put me in mind of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Having said that the harsh, epic landscape of the story and the fable-like quality of a narrative held shades of Paulo Coelho.”

Lawks a mercy me! Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my all-time favourite books. Now armed with the name of the genre I did a Google search and discovered not only that I wrote magic realism, but that I had been reading it for years and not knowing it. There still seemed to be a lot ambiguity in my mind about what constituted magic realism, but I think this was because the term gets used wrongly. I decided that I would get to know my genre better. But how would this be achieved?

I knew that in order to do it properly I should set myself a task, one which is public and which I would feel obliged to complete. So I decided I would read one magic realist book a week for a year and that I would record my progress and what I found out about magic realism publicly on a dedicated blog. For the purposes of selecting books for the blog I chose the simplest definition I could find.

It’s now a month since I started and I’m loving it. I have drawn up a to-read list, following suggestions taken mostly from Goodreads, where there are at least two Magic Realism groups and several booklists. The books are very diverse – some literary, some for the popular market – which adds to my enjoyment. The requirement that I review what I read has proved extremely useful in solidifying my thoughts on the book and the genre.

So after all that work what is magic realism? I’m glad to say that the definition I chose is still remaining true: “Magical Realism is a literary genre that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction.”

Please do visit the Magic Realism blog and check it out, better still join me in my challenge or at least part of it. It’s on https://magic-realism-books.blogspot.co.uk