Sunday 30 September 2018
Czech fox
I have just submitted my poem Midday Fox for possible inclusion in an anthology.
I have often blogged about my local fox in my Czech blog. I will see our local fox making its way across the fields as I walk up from the bus or down from the woods. And I have come to associate it with creativity. One of my favourite poems is Ted Hughes' Thought Fox, which is for my money the best poem about the writing process I know.
As some readers of this blog will be aware one important reason why I bought my Czech house is that I needed somewhere to write. It is so to speak my den, my dark hole, built into the hillside, a hill called Fox's Lair. Over the last year I have indeed started to write again, and not just this blog, and superstitiously I have partly put it down to my fox companion. Even when I do not see him, I hear him in the woods above the house, tormenting the village dogs. "Ha!" he seems to be saying, "You have sold your freedom for a bowl of meat. I have the woods, all the roots and dark places as my kingdom." And at this the village dogs go mad with vain barking.
I have put his face on my door in the form of a brass knocker, he hangs on the wall as one of a set of horse brasses, I have drawn him in oil pastels. And the more I find out about him and his place in folklore and superstition, the more I think I have found the right familiar. A month or so ago I was telling my husband about this, and how strangely although I had been writing almost continuously, my fox had kept out of sight. My husband stopped me at this point "Look, look," he said. There in broad daylight no more than a metre away from the window my fox was strolling across the grass in the direction of the neighbours' chickens.
Thursday 10 May 2018
Walls
WALLS
Through the
walls
my
neighbours
make love.
Her cries
cling
like the
trail of snails
upon the
kitchen floor,
clear,
transparent,
hard to
brush off,
as I lie
empty in the
night.
This poem was first published in Joe Soap's Canoe and was included in the Grandchildren of Albion anthology. It was performed on BBC Radio 4 for which I received a cheque for less than £10. I didn't cash it, but kept it as a souvenir to show my grandchildren.
Monday 30 April 2018
The Stone Book
This review first appeared on my magic realism books blog.
A classic work of rural magic realism from one of Britain’s greatest children’s novelists.
Through four interconnected fables of a way of living in rural England that has now disappeared, Alan Garner vividly brings to life a landscape situated on the outskirts of industrial Manchester.
Smiths and chandlers, steeplejacks and quarrymen, labourers and artisans: they all live and work hand in hand with the seasons, the elements and the land. There is a mutual respect and a knowledge of the magical here that has somehow, somewhere been lost to us. These fables beautifully recapture and restore that lost world in simple, searching prose.
When I was a teenager I remember arguing that Alan Garner was a better writer than Tolkien. Now over forty years later I still think that there is a case to be made. At first it might seem ridiculous when one looks at the slim volume of this book (made up four short stories), but then the economy of Garner's writing is one of its strengths. He never overwrites, is never self indulgent, and yet he always writes enough to create complex layers. There is so much in this book that it is impossible for me to do it justice in this short blog post. If you are a reader who likes the writer to make life simple for you, who doesn't like having to think about what you are reading, then you probably will not appreciate Alan Garner's books. I found myself thinking about The Stone Book Quartet for weeks after reading it, which is partly why it has taken me so long to write this review.
The Stone Book Quartet is set around a specific area of Britain, a part of the county of Cheshire called Alderley Edge. It has been home for Alan Garner's family for time immemorial and it is where he still lives. The Stone Book Quartet is to some extent based on four generations of his family. Each quartet focuses on one young person from each generation - all are finding themselves and their place in a world that is changing. The first book in many ways is a benediction to a way of life that had not changed for centuries, but the good stone which generations of men in the family had hewn and worked is now running out. Masons of course have long been associated with secret rituals and in this quartet the central character, Mary, is initiated into a family secret, a rite of passage, in which she sees the hand of generations past.
One reason I love Garner's writing so much is the way history pervades his work. His is an understanding of history, I might say a intuitive feeling for history, that chimes with mine. It is ever present and acts as a recurring theme, not in a doomed way (as is the case in Garner's novels The Owl Service and Red Shift) but in a no less profound way.
The Stone Book Quartet is in part a celebration of handicraft. In the second book Mary's son turns his back on working stone and becomes a blacksmith. But there is still the sense of work well done, of hands mastering the world (and the elements) around them. It is a world that is constantly changing and yet is continuous. In the final book William, Mary's great-grandchild, is made a sledge by his blacksmith father. The sledge is formed from the handles of the forge bellows (the smith is retiring), from forged iron, and from some old wood which came from a hand loom used by Mary's uncle in a craft that was dying out even when Mary was a girl. The book ends with William sledging:
He set off. It had not been imagined. He was not alone on the sledge. There was a line and he could feel it. It was a line through hand and eye, block, forge and loom to the hill. He owned them all: and they owned him.
Of course the story of the family's craftsmanship does not end with William, Alan Garner is part of that story and, as I said in my first paragraph, you will not find a better master of the writer's craft. The stone book in the title is a book crafted for Mary with great love by her father from a stone. Mary's stone book was a prayer book and so might have been considered blasphemous, but it wasn't. For me Garner's Stone Book Quartet is a very spiritual and mystical book and I am reminded of the Victorian church in Vauxhall, London, where I used to work. Although it was a church full of beautiful craftsmanship, it was a church for the poor working class people of the neighbourhood. Everywhere, in the stone and wood carvings, the mosaics, the embroidered vestments and banners, the church celebrated the sacrament of working with your hands. "Remember," it said, "Jesus was a carpenter, a working man like you."
He set off. It had not been imagined. He was not alone on the sledge. There was a line and he could feel it. It was a line through hand and eye, block, forge and loom to the hill. He owned them all: and they owned him.
Of course the story of the family's craftsmanship does not end with William, Alan Garner is part of that story and, as I said in my first paragraph, you will not find a better master of the writer's craft. The stone book in the title is a book crafted for Mary with great love by her father from a stone. Mary's stone book was a prayer book and so might have been considered blasphemous, but it wasn't. For me Garner's Stone Book Quartet is a very spiritual and mystical book and I am reminded of the Victorian church in Vauxhall, London, where I used to work. Although it was a church full of beautiful craftsmanship, it was a church for the poor working class people of the neighbourhood. Everywhere, in the stone and wood carvings, the mosaics, the embroidered vestments and banners, the church celebrated the sacrament of working with your hands. "Remember," it said, "Jesus was a carpenter, a working man like you."
Wednesday 2 August 2017
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
This review first appeared on my Magic Realism Books blog.
Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of the Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.
Inspired by Bioy Casares's fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction's now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.
Goodreads description
The Invention of Morel is one of those books which exist on the boundary of genres - magic realism, science fiction, philosophical fiction. But that does not matter, so often the best books are the most uncategorisable. This is an amazing book: only 100 pages long and yet so full of ideas, published in 1940 and yet so modern, indeed it is prescient in some of the ideas and themes, and as for the plot, well all I can say is Borges was right, this is a masterpiece.
The book is written as a journal by a fugitive from the law, who in order to escape his punishment comes to an island that has the reputation of being a place of death, where everything, including anyone who visits, is dying. What crime the fugitive has committed (if any) is not made clear. Bioy Casares' approach is a class example of "less is more" in writing. A lesser writer might have been tempted to create a backstory, but by not doing so Bioy Casares not only keeps the story lean and to the point, but also introduces doubt and allows us to project our ideas on to the story.
One day the fugitive sees a group of people in the villa, known as the museum, on the hill that overlooks the island. Among these newcomers is a beautiful woman, Faustine, with whom the fugitive falls in love from a distance. As detailed in the Goodreads description, Faustine was inspired by the author's obsession with the silent movie star Louise Brooks.
‘To be on an island inhabited by artificial ghosts was the most unbearable of nightmares—to be in love with one of those images was worse than being in love with a ghost (perhaps we always want the person we love to have the existence of a ghost).’
The fugitive's account has a nightmare quality. He is both terrified that he will be discovered - indeed that the whole thing is a cruel trick on him by his pursuers - and unable to interact with Faustine and the others. He watches them from behind curtains, inside giant urns and as he realises that they cannot or will not see him. Then there are strange occurences - people appear and disappear, scenes are re-enacted, there are two suns in the sky, objects reappear in exactly the same place as a week earlier. And then there is the constant sense of death and decay - dead fish in the swimming pool, flowers wilting, etc. We and the fugitive begin to wonder what is real. Bioy Casares introduces some footnotes by a fictional editor just to add another level of uncertainty.
The most complete and total perception not only of the unreality of the world but of our own unreality: not only do we traverse a realm of shadows, we ourselves are shadows.
There is a reason for these strange occurences and that is the invention of Morel (Morel organised the group's island trip). More than that I cannot tell you without spoiling the book, although knowing will not prevent me from reading the book again. However I will read it with a different eye, seeing, I am sure, the brilliantly plotted clues that I missed or misread the first time, and enjoying the development of philosophical themes.
I commend this book to you.
I commend this book to you.
Sunday 10 January 2016
Laurus
This review first appeared on my magic realism books blog. It appears here as it is a book that rapidly became one of my favourite novels.
It is the late fifteenth century and a village healer in Russia called Laurus is powerless to help his beloved as she dies in childbirth, unwed and without having received communion. Devastated and desperate, he sets out on a journey in search of redemption. But this is no ordinary journey: it is one that spans ages and countries, and which brings him face-to-face with a host of unforgettable, eccentric characters and legendary creatures from the strangest medieval bestiaries.
Laurus’s travels take him from the Middle Ages to the Plague of 1771, where as a holy fool he displays miraculous healing powers, to the political upheavals of the late-twentieth century. At each transformative stage of his journey he becomes more revered by the church and the people, until he decides, one day, to return to his home village to lead the life of a monastic hermit – not realizing that it is here that he will face his most difficult trial yet.
Goodreads description
About a week ago I was listening to an interview with the author on BBC Radio and I immediately made a note to read it, so I was delighted to be granted a review copy of this novel from the publisher a few days later.
You can download a podcast of the BBC programme in which it featured here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037br7d The interview starts 10 minutes into the programme. I am not sure how long the BBC will offer this podcast, probably for a month.
I love this novel - it is already high on my list of favourite magic realist books. I have said in previous reviews how much I like Russian or Slavic magic realism. For me it actually has more appeal than, dare I say it, the Latin American version. I think this is because of the role magic realism plays in Russian novels - it is a way of expressing the alternative to the rational. This is particularly the case because it is a response to a world view (Communism and post-communism) that utterly denies the spiritual alternative. It is also deeply rooted in the pagan and Christian orthodox church beliefs of the country. You could say that there is nothing magical in this book - not the holy fools walking on water nor monks levitating nor Laurus' ability to heal by the laying on of his hands - it is merely the Russian orthodox view of the world.
Laurus has an added appeal for me - it is a historical novel. I am a historian by training and am often disappointed by the failure of writers of historical fiction to present the world through the eyes of their characters. Too often characters have an all-too-modern scepticism about magic, when in fact they would have believed in it without batting an eyelid. Vodolazkin shows how historical fiction should be done and as a result the reader is utterly immersed in the world of late medieval Russia.
I had no problem with the author's fascinating use of language in the book, which at times becomes the language of the time and at others involves slang. Occasionally too the tenses change from the past to the present. Were this a self-published novel the author would be accused of not having used an editor, but this book has been superbly edited and translated. The shifts in tenses are appropriate to one of the major themes in the book - that there is no such thing as fixed linear time. Time is shown to be flexible and one's life through it is not just cyclical but spiralling. Several of the characters are able to foresee events and one in particular, Laurus's Italian companion on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, does so constantly, allowing the book to travel to the twentieth century at one point. It is as if the different centuries are concurrent.
To balance this temporal fluidity the central storyline is in many ways quite simple. It is the story of Laurus' life from young boy learning herb craft from his grandfather to ancient hermit in a cave. In this simplicity it mirrors the accounts of the lives of holy men of the time. And yet Laurus' character is so well-drawn, without pandering to modern sensibilities, that the book is a compelling read.
As you can see I am hugely excited by this novel. It seems to me that it takes magic realism into new territory and so I recommend it without hesitation to anyone interested in the genre.
I received this book free from the publisher in return for a fair review.
Tuesday 20 October 2015
A Kingdom of Souls by Daniela Hodrová
This review first appeared on my magic realism books blog.
Through playful poetic prose, imaginatively blending historical and cultural motifs with autobiographical moments, Daniela Hodrová shares her unique perception of Prague. A Kingdom of Souls is the first volume of this author’s literary journey — an unusual quest for self, for one’s place in life and in the world, a world that for Hodrová is embodied in Prague.
Goodreads description
I actually approached the publisher for a review copy of this novel. This is unusual as I normally receive my review copies via Netgalley or Edelweiss, but this is a book about Prague and I am a Czechophile. Prague of course was influential on magic realism, given the importance of Kafka. Indeed this is the fourth magic-realist book I have reviewed on this site that features that great city. As in many of Meyrink's writings the central character of this book is Prague and in particular a small area of Prague focused on an apartment block overlooking the Olsany cemetery.
I am writing this review in my Czech house in South Bohemia. In the shops and supermarkets at this time of year the shelves are packed with candles and candle containers. Along the journey home last night I noticed candles burning at roadside shrines to the dead. We are drawing near to All Souls Night and the Czechs are getting ready to remember their ancestors. The souls in the title are of both the dead and the living. The two "live" alongside each other in the house and in the pantry and as most of the action takes place between the time of the Nazi occupation and the Velvet Revolution some characters move from the living to the dead in the novel. This is not however a ghost story but merely a presentation of a world in which the dead exist alongside the living. That this world should be in Prague is not a surprise to me. I too have felt the presence of history there and the presence of those who have walked the streets before me. Hodrová's portrayal of this other city is realistic to my mind.
This is an extraordinary book - erudite, moving and poetical. At times a non-Czech reader, even this one who is relatively familiar with the city, its history and culture, will have difficulties picking up all the references. It helps to read the Introduction, which explains some of them, but I would suggest that footnotes might have been useful. But even without catching all the references it is possible to enjoy this book. The Introduction tells us that Hodrová is interested in Jungian concepts. This is apparent throughout the book and her use of archetypal symbolism allows us to respond to themes, even if we do not consciously know the specific references.
As the Goodreads description states, this is the first volume in a series by this author all focusing on Prague. The publisher very kindly gave me copies of the two books published so far (Prague, I See A City being the other). I look forward to reading more.
I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in return for a fair review.
Wednesday 29 July 2015
Magic in the Real World
This post is part of
the Magic Realism Blog Hop 2015.
For links to the other blogs taking
part, check out the links belowFor
three years I have been reading and reviewing magic realism on
the Magic
Realism Books Blog.
And the more I read, the more I am of the opinion that magic realism
is not a
genre, but a way of looking at and describing the world – the real
world. Gabriel Garcia Marquez said: It
always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the
imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in
all my work that does not have a basis in reality.
Magic
realism is a rejection of the modern Western rationalist and
scientific world view, which excludes the marvellous and
unexplainable. You can see this in terms of cultural differences
between the West and other cultures. But I believe that, like me, the
majority of people in the West actually have a magic realist outlook
on life. Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that: The
world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to
grow sharper. I
totally agree.
When
I am writing (especially when I am writing poetry, but also sometimes
when I write fiction) I am conscious that I am experiencing and
seeing the world differently. It is a form of heightened or extended
reality. Michel Ajvaz wrote: The
frontier of our world is not far away; it doesn’t run along the
horizon or in the depths. It glimmers faintly close by, in the
twilight of our nearest surroundings; out of the corner of our eye we
can always glimpse another world, without realizing it.
Fantasy
crosses the frontier and stays there. Magic Realism presents the
world with the frontier in place – glimmering in the twilight. It
does not deny reality but is, in Alejo Carpentier’s words, a
privileged revelation of reality, an unaccustomed or singularly
favourable illumination of the previously unremarked riches of
reality, an amplification of the measures and categories of reality,
perceived with peculiar intensity due to the exaltation of the spirit
which elevates it to a kind of “limit state”.
Without magic, reality becomes two dimensional. The magic illuminates
and throws the “real” into relief. The real can only be seen
fully if you see it from different angles and perspectives, if you
can hold it up to the light and look into it and see that the magic
is inside and an integral part of it.
Friday 3 April 2015
Approaching Book Review Blogs
I have been reviewing
at least a book a week for two and a half years over on my magic
realism blog. I am also an indie author, so you could say I have a
foot in both camps. I try to support my fellow indie authors on the
blog by reviewing indie books as well as traditionally published
ones, but there are times when I wonder why I bother.
When I started out
reviewing, I was pretty naïve about dealing with requests for
reviews. I have become a lot more hard-nosed about it. I now get a
lot of requests for reviews, from indies and from traditional
publishers, and I also want to read some books that I choose for
myself. It takes time to read and review a book, as I want to do
justice to the book and the readers of my blog. That time is unpaid
and comes at the expense of other activities including my own
writing. I do it because I get pleasure from supporting other
writers, because I hope I am promoting the genre, to please my
followers, and also because I feel it helps my own writing. So let me
give you some tips on how to approach a reviewer like me.
TIP
1 Read the blog’s review policy
I only review magic realism books. The clue is in the blog title. And yet I am regularly sent emails asking me to review books that don’t seem to be magic realist at all. Either the author is just emailing every book blog going or for some reason thinks that I will make an exception for their book. Either way they will be refused.
I only review magic realism books. The clue is in the blog title. And yet I am regularly sent emails asking me to review books that don’t seem to be magic realist at all. Either the author is just emailing every book blog going or for some reason thinks that I will make an exception for their book. Either way they will be refused.
TIP
2 Follow the instructions in the review policy
They are there for a reason. Follow them to the letter. I ask people to put Review Request in the email subject line. Anyone who doesn’t do that, doesn’t get looked at. Not because I am pig-headed about it, although failure to follow my instructions doesn’t exactly endear you to me, but because my emails are set up to automatically put emails with that subject line in my review folder. I also ask people to explain why their book is magic realism, so that I can make a decision as to whether to accept the book on my to-review list. But again a lot of people don’t do that and so their books aren’t accepted.
They are there for a reason. Follow them to the letter. I ask people to put Review Request in the email subject line. Anyone who doesn’t do that, doesn’t get looked at. Not because I am pig-headed about it, although failure to follow my instructions doesn’t exactly endear you to me, but because my emails are set up to automatically put emails with that subject line in my review folder. I also ask people to explain why their book is magic realism, so that I can make a decision as to whether to accept the book on my to-review list. But again a lot of people don’t do that and so their books aren’t accepted.
TIP
3 Research beyond what the review policy says
If reviewers can see that you have actually read their reviews as well as the review policy, they are more likely to accept your review request. But there are other reasons for doing so. For example, every reviewer has genres they like and others they don’t. This may not be apparent from the review policy, but if you read the posts it will soon be so. Look at the reviews of books they didn’t like as well as the ones they did. You are looking for someone who likes books like yours. For example you may find that they like the story resolution to tie up all the ends or that they don’t like first-person narrators. Take note of these preferences and don’t submit a book which includes some of their pet hates. You might even find something that you can use to help make your case for a review, e.g., I see that you are a fan of Alice Hoffman, I believe my book is in the same style of magic realism
If reviewers can see that you have actually read their reviews as well as the review policy, they are more likely to accept your review request. But there are other reasons for doing so. For example, every reviewer has genres they like and others they don’t. This may not be apparent from the review policy, but if you read the posts it will soon be so. Look at the reviews of books they didn’t like as well as the ones they did. You are looking for someone who likes books like yours. For example you may find that they like the story resolution to tie up all the ends or that they don’t like first-person narrators. Take note of these preferences and don’t submit a book which includes some of their pet hates. You might even find something that you can use to help make your case for a review, e.g., I see that you are a fan of Alice Hoffman, I believe my book is in the same style of magic realism
TIP
4 What to say (and not to say) in your email
Address the reviewer by name if you can. Ask politely for a review. It is also a good idea to put book review request in the subject line. Sometimes it is not always clear to me what I am being asked to do. Be pleasant but not overly informal. Include in the email the book’s genre, your name, book title, a short blurb that clearly states what the book is about, awards (appropriate ones only), number of pages, and publication date. Do not include attachments such as the review copy, or cover (unless you are told to in the review/submission policy). Say that you can send the review copy in a variety of formats including Kindle format, epub and pdf. Check your email for errors before sending it. I suggest you include just one link in the email: to the book’s page on your website. On this page you can put more information, such as extracts of reviews, book cover, sales links, etc. You want to reduce the amount of work the reviewer has to do and having just one link does that. And lastly thank the reviewer for considering your book.
Address the reviewer by name if you can. Ask politely for a review. It is also a good idea to put book review request in the subject line. Sometimes it is not always clear to me what I am being asked to do. Be pleasant but not overly informal. Include in the email the book’s genre, your name, book title, a short blurb that clearly states what the book is about, awards (appropriate ones only), number of pages, and publication date. Do not include attachments such as the review copy, or cover (unless you are told to in the review/submission policy). Say that you can send the review copy in a variety of formats including Kindle format, epub and pdf. Check your email for errors before sending it. I suggest you include just one link in the email: to the book’s page on your website. On this page you can put more information, such as extracts of reviews, book cover, sales links, etc. You want to reduce the amount of work the reviewer has to do and having just one link does that. And lastly thank the reviewer for considering your book.
TIP
5 Wait
Don’t hassle reviewers if they do not respond to your email. If they don’t, put them down as not interested and move on. Even if they do accept your book, expect to wait for the review. As an indication my waiting time for indie reviews is six months.
Don’t hassle reviewers if they do not respond to your email. If they don’t, put them down as not interested and move on. Even if they do accept your book, expect to wait for the review. As an indication my waiting time for indie reviews is six months.
TIP
6 Submit a good, properly edited book in the format the reviewer
wants
When the reviewer accepts your book, send the book promptly in the format requested. But bear in mind that the review may still not happen. I have accepted books for review only to refuse to review them later, because I found them unreadable. I can forgive the occasional typo (not all reviewers are so forgiving) but if they are frequent I will not review. The other problem can be one of formatting. Actually this is a problem with books from traditional publishers as well as indies. Bad formatting makes reading too much of a task and, like editing errors, gets in the way of my appreciation of the book.
When the reviewer accepts your book, send the book promptly in the format requested. But bear in mind that the review may still not happen. I have accepted books for review only to refuse to review them later, because I found them unreadable. I can forgive the occasional typo (not all reviewers are so forgiving) but if they are frequent I will not review. The other problem can be one of formatting. Actually this is a problem with books from traditional publishers as well as indies. Bad formatting makes reading too much of a task and, like editing errors, gets in the way of my appreciation of the book.
TIP
7 Say thank you for the review
Your thanks can take several forms. In addition to a thank-you email, it can include a comment on the post, or promoting the post via Twitter, Google+ or Facebook. It could mean subscribing to the blog.
Your thanks can take several forms. In addition to a thank-you email, it can include a comment on the post, or promoting the post via Twitter, Google+ or Facebook. It could mean subscribing to the blog.
TIP
8 Don’t complain or have a go
The review is the personal opinion of the reviewer and you gave them a copy in return for a fair review. They have done you a favour and given up several hours of their life to read and review your book. If you don’t like the review, don’t fire off a comment. Walk away and calm down. Think about what they said. This is someone who reads a lot of books like yours (as you know because you read their blog, right?) and what they have said is worth considering calmly. Maybe you still want to reply. If you do, always start your comment with thanking them for their review. Is it a good idea to reply? Sometimes, but only if you can do it in a way that doesn’t look like you are arguing with the review. The readers of the blog will side with the reviewer, not you.
The review is the personal opinion of the reviewer and you gave them a copy in return for a fair review. They have done you a favour and given up several hours of their life to read and review your book. If you don’t like the review, don’t fire off a comment. Walk away and calm down. Think about what they said. This is someone who reads a lot of books like yours (as you know because you read their blog, right?) and what they have said is worth considering calmly. Maybe you still want to reply. If you do, always start your comment with thanking them for their review. Is it a good idea to reply? Sometimes, but only if you can do it in a way that doesn’t look like you are arguing with the review. The readers of the blog will side with the reviewer, not you.
Good luck.
Monday 23 March 2015
The Dark Tower by Louis MacNeice
I have just
discovered that Louis MacNeice’s verse drama for the BBC is
available on the BBC’s website –
here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03kpwv9
The play is inspired by a few lines in Robert Browning’s
poem Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower Came.
Listening
to it brings back happy memories of my teenage years and the Arts
Centre I belonged to. It reminds me of Garibaldi biscuits and tea
drunk out of chipped mugs. It reminds me of sitting on sagging
armchairs in the EOS room arguing about poetry and life. But we
didn’t just talk and argue, we also performed. And we performed
this play – not as a theatrical production but as a play for
voices. It is hard to see how the subject matter could be performed
for anything else but the radio. The play is play of the imagination
and where better for Roland to journey to the Dark Tower than through
the dark shadows of our minds? The actors’ accents may sound a bit
dated, but this is an extraordinary poetic play.There certainly was a
golden age in postwar British radio, when the BBC embraced experiment
and welcomed poets, using composers like Benjamin Britten to provide
the music and world-class actors, such as Richard Burton, to do the
poets justice. What has become of that patronage? Maybe the internet
will come to the rescue. Maybe the future of ebooks will include
performance. Let us hope so.
As I have
said in a previous
post we
also performed at the Young Arts Centre verse plays by Dylan Thomas
(Under
Milk Wood),
Lorca (Blood
Wedding)
and Christopher Fry (Boy
with a Cartand The
Firstborn),
to say nothing of verse plays by Euripides and Shakespeare. What a
grounding! Is it any wonder that I have written two verse plays or
poems for voices?
Monday 19 January 2015
Shadows in Story Structure
I was fortunate to have
as a mentor a story editor who was a Jungian. We had a number of
discussions about the Jungian concept of the shadow and its
importance to writers, which I hope to capture here. But first let me
just point out the Shadows that feature in my Healer’s Shadow
trilogy are not Jungian shadows. Are you sometimes surprised and
ashamed by your own behaviour? Do you say “I don’t know what came
over me. It was so unlike me…”? Do you sometimes take an
immediate dislike to a complete stranger? Now don’t lie – of
course you do, we all do.
So what’s happening?
And how is this relevant to the storyteller’s art? What is
happening is that your shadow is showing itself. According to Carl
Jung, who coined the phrase: Everyone carries a shadow, and
the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the
blacker and denser it is. As children we learn (and are taught by
our parents and society) that certain behaviours are unacceptable and
these we repress – jealousy, prejudice, anger, greed, certain
sexual fantasies. They haven’t gone away, they have been thrust
into the subconscious and form our shadows. They stay in the dark
waiting to burst forth. They do this in our dreams, at times of
stress and as projections on to others. So when we say, “It was so
unlike me,” alas that isn’t true, it is like us, because our
shadow is part of us, but we are blind to it.
Firstly
the tension between the subconscious shadow and our conscious
projected selves is at the heart of drama. The shadow could be said
to be the hero’s fatal flaw. Remember that the shadow emerges at
times of stress and inevitably that means that it will appear when
our protagonists are under pressure. These outbursts put the
protagonist in danger, as it does for example, with a heroine who
keeps falling for dangerous men. Or at the very least they will
result in the protagonist hurting those who love her. An
understanding of the shadow helps us to create fully formed
characters and to place them in danger. In some books the conflict
between the shadow and the conscious self is externalized – most
obviously in Jekyll
and Hydeand The
Wizard of Earthsea.
Secondly
the encounter with the shadow is part of the story structure. Jung’s
analysis of myths and fairytales, which informed his development of
the shadow, was further developed by Joseph Campbell in his seminal
book The
Hero With A Thousand Faces and
this in turn was popularized in Christopher Vogler’s. The
Hero’s Journey is
divided into a series of key stages, in which the encounter with the
hero’s shadow is core. The reasons for this are various. Maturity
requires an acknowledgement of the shadow within us, so facing the
shadow is part of the hero’s maturation. The shadow can contain not
only negative aspects but also one’s true potential and so the hero
gains the treasure that he seeks. Furthermore our antagonist and our
protagonist are linked psychologically. As one can project on to
others elements of one’s own shadow, so an antagonist is likely to
display elements of the protagonist’s shadow, and when the hero
confronts the antagonist he is confronting his own shadow at least in
part.
Thirdly I have spoken
so far only about the individual’s shadow, but civilizations also
have shadows. These collective shadows express themselves through
wars and persecutions of minorities. We carry within us a mix of our
personal shadow and the collective darkness. It is the reason why we
can behave so out of character when in a group. If your novel is
concerned with such matters, it helps to understand this. The shadow
then is central to conflict in any story. I was hugely excited when I
discovered this truth and I hope this post helps you understand the
shadow better.
A version of this
article first appeared on the now defunct Indie Exchange website.
Tuesday 30 December 2014
A Poetry New Year Resolution
For
my magic realism review blog I recently read and reviewed Larque
On The Wing by
Nancy Springer. In it a middle-aged woman is forced to confront her
10-year old self. The child reminds the woman of the early dreams and
aspirations that she has abandoned. It made me think what that girl
in the centre of the photo above would have thought of the adult me.
That Zoe was confident in her ability as a poet with reason. By the
time I was 13 I had been published and was getting noticed. I had no
fear about what I wrote, no self doubts. I took the plaudits without
embarrassment or question. When the Director of the Cheltenham
Literature Festival told me that Philip Larkin, no less, had said I
was the best young poet in Britain, I was pleased but not surprised.
I didn’t realize what a big deal it was and made no effort to get
that in writing. How many times have I regretted that since!
What happened? Well –
life in many ways. My gift was too easy, too natural. It came and
went without my being in control. I can go for years without writing
a poem and trying to force it just doesn’t seem to work. I have
intermittently written several major pieces of poetry in a flurry of
white-hot words, sufficient to make a body of work, but there are
long periods of non-production. These periods were filled with
career, motherhood and all the other joyous demands on my attention.
But shouldn’t I also be doing something about placing my poetry in
the public domain?
Two years ago I had a
serious and life-threatening health emergency. I had always thought
that I had time to promote my work, but as I lay in the hospital bed
hitched to a monitor it was pretty clear that that was a false
assumption. I published one of my long poems for voices –Fool’s
Paradise – as an ebook with Amazon and won the EPIC
(Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) award for best poetry book
in 2013. But I have not published it as a physical book.
As a poet I am very
aware that even the books of the most successful poets have limited
print-runs, so I know I won't make a great deal of money from poetry. But poetry is my first love.
But what must I do to reach out and make my audience aware of my
presence? It means going public, of marketing, of pushing my work and
that does not come easily. How I wish I had that young girl beside
me, to give me the confidence and the necessary chutzpah I find I am
so lacking now. Ironically it is not that I doubt the quality of what
I have written, I have never lost that inner belief. It is the
translation of that into some public action that is so difficult. So
here is a New Year Resolution – I will get off my insecure butt and
face this. I am not yet sure how, but I will do something.
Monday 24 November 2014
First-Person Narrative Some Issues
My battered copy
One of my favourite
books and certainly one of the most influential on me as a writer
is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I loved that book
as a teenager and I still do. The narrator of the book is Jane
herself and she speaks directly to me and the millions of Bronte’s
fans. There is something wonderful about the way the character
engages us in her story: it is as if Jane is in the room with us. She
is as honest a narrator as she is a character and you are immediately
on her side. That immediacy is one of the strengths of first-person
narration. But there are downsides, as I discovered when I wrote my
trilogy The Healer’s Shadow.
I soon discovered that
not all readers are fans of first-person narration. One reviewer told
me categorically that she didn’t like first-person narration
because there was no suspense – she knew that the hero/heroine
would survive to the end of the book. Actually that isn’t always
true, but I can understand where she was coming from.
I also discovered that
not everyone understands some of the devices and rules of
first-person narration. One criticism my book Girl in the
Glass has occasionally received is that the tense sometimes
changes to the present, even though the majority of the book is
written in the past tense. This happens when the central character is
talking about an incident which is particularly vivid to her. This is
acceptable in a first-person narrative, because the narration is
reflecting what happens in real speech. When we start to relive the
past, we will often start talking in the present tense. I could play
safe and not shift tenses, but I feel that loses something.
I was reminded of the
problems of first-person narration recently because I was reading a
lovely book also written in the first person – When Rosa
Came Home by Karen Wyld. The problem first-person narration
gives a writer is that you can’t jump out of the head of the
narrator and into someone else’s, which means that the story is
filtered by what the narrator can see and know. At the macro level
this means either the narrator has to see what happens or be told it
by someone else who has seen it. Some readers (and reviewers) believe
that a good book explains everything at the end – they want to
understand the motivation of all the main characters, they want to
know what happened to so-and-so who leaves the narrator’s world at
the end of part one. If you are using a first-person narrator you
will either disappoint them or create a narrator whose omniscience is
not credible. Be honest – do you understand your own motivation,
let alone anyone else’s?
Of course there is an
upside to this problem and that is the games you can play with your
narrator misinterpreting other characters and circumstances: an
unreliable narrator as they say in the trade. It does seem to me that
all narrators should be unreliable (to varying degrees) if they are
human beings. My central character regularly gets things wrong and
part of her character arc over the trilogy is how she comes to
realize how wrong she has been.
On the micro level
there are certain things that I have learned to look out for when I
am going over my books. The most obvious of these are descriptions of
things that are not visible to the narrator. These can be quite
minor, but I find they can jolt me out of the first-person narrator’s
consciousness. Another issue I try to tackle is the overuse of
phrases such as “I saw”, “I heard” “I tasted” etc. In a
way they are redundant in the first person – of course I saw it, I
wouldn’t be describing it otherwise. There is a very real danger
that you will overuse the word “I” in first-person narration,
which is just as off-putting in a novel as when you are listening to
someone. First-person narration’s very strength – its immediacy –
can be negated by the overuse of the word.
First-person narration
is a minefield for the writer. As I have outlined above, you will
alienate some of readers just by using it, and others you will upset
because of the limitations of the first-person narrative. There are
even some agents who refuse to accept manuscripts written in the
first person, but then some of the most successful books ever written
recently and in the past have had a first-person narrator.
Wednesday 6 August 2014
What Magic Realism Means to Me
I am running a magic
realism bloghop again this year. Some twenty blogs are signed up to
take part and if last year’s bloghop is anything to go by, there
will be some fascinating posts.
Over
on the Magic
Realism Books blog I
have scheduled posts about magic realist fiction available free from
the web, about useful magic realism resources and a review of
Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita,
which features on all the magic realism lists as one of the most
important magic realist books ever written and is one of my all-time
favourite books. Despite having written three posts for my other
blog I want to write a more personal post here on my personal
blog about what magic realism means to me.
Of course there is good
and bad magic realism, magic realist books that last for ever in your
mind and others that are easily forgotten. But as a general rule I
find that the magic realist approach to portraying the world is one
that I respond to and I recognize that it reflects my own experience.
That is not to say that I have seen people ascend to heaven, been
followed by crowds of butterflies when I fell in love or watched a
relative turn into an item of furniture. But rather that I believe in
allegory and metaphor, in imagery, in archetypes and in a heightened
awareness that extends beyond “physical” reality.
For me, realism is
overestimated. It excludes the profound. It does not allow my soul to
soar. Nor does it take me to the depths beyond pain. I am and have
always been a poet and a bit of a mystic. For a while, as a student,
I neglected that side of my personality in favour of the rational and
the academic. I stopped writing. It didn’t last. The
subconscious has a way of hitting back and my health suffered. Unable
to think straight because of the pain, my reason dropped away and I
was left with only instinct and intuition to fall back on – magic
one might say. The poetry came flooding back. The result was my cycle of somewhat mystical poetry Poem for Voices.
Monday 28 July 2014
The Cover as Writing Aid
I find that working on
the cover image of my book helps me work on the text itself. Right
now I need clarify my feelings about the book.
The book’s working
name is Mud and it is set in modern Prague. At first
I was playing with classic images of Prague – Charles Bridge and
moody spires, but they didn’t feel right. For starters the story
isn’t set in tourist Prague, but in the lovely but less well-known
area of Holesovice. But I didn’t want to identify that area
particularly.
One of the reasons for
playing with the cover is that it helps me identify my audience and
genre. For many writers that is easy, but I write magic realism which
isn’t easy to slot into genres and can appeal to a range of
audiences. The book is partly a psychological mystery (a main
character is a Czech detective) and partly paranormal (the book
touches on the Golem legend). I searched for books of these genres
with a reference to Prague and got a load of books with moody spires
or darkened streets. Maybe I should copy them – if it works… But
I don’t want to.
I wanted a moody
picture but not a conventional one. So I wrote down the key elements
of the book. They were
- the extreme storms and floods of 2013
- the Golem
- Prague
- missing female
- male detective
Then I searched for
photos on 123rf.com which had combinations of the above phrases. It
didn’t work until I used the word “rain” and “Prague”. That
generated a photo by Czech photographer, Jaromír Chalabala. I
clicked on his name and there was this photo:
It was just what I was
looking for. There’s even a hint of a Golem in those
reflections, don’t you think?
Now all I’ve got to
do is finish writing the book!
Tuesday 13 May 2014
Write What You Know
“Write
what you know” is a piece of advice to new writers that can be very
inhibiting. What do we know? If writers restrict themselves to
writing about their experience, we would have a lot of boring books
about humdrum lives. Whole genres would not exist: fantasy, science
fiction, paranormal. But there is a grain of truth in the saying. We
should write what is real, even if what we write is fantasy. So how
do writers do that? This is a question that fascinates me.
In some cases the
answer is obvious: Tolkien may have been living the quiet life of an
academic in Oxford, but he was a world expert on Anglo Saxon and
Norse mythology. However the Lord of the Rings is
more than a rehash of old stories. The book is seen through the eyes
of the hobbits. Their tale is profoundly influenced by Tolkien’s
experience as a young officer in the trenches of World War I. The
hobbits are the British regular soldiers, whose stoicism and good
humour Tolkien so admired. As an officer Tolkien had led them over
the top into the Mordor-like landscape of no-man’s land. They bring
a sense of reality to the book.
Most writers do not
have such rich personal sources on which to draw. But we do have the
reality of our fantasies. We can take that reality and spin it into
something much larger. The Bronte sisters’ novels are a good
example of this.
I have three main
sources of inspiration for my novels. Mother of Wolves was
a historical fantasy novel, so clearly history is a massive source of
material for me. History gives an almost unlimited range of themes,
settings and storylines. For Mother of Wolves I drew
on the history of the persecution of the romanies (gypsies) in
Europe. I discovered that in the 18th century they were hunted by men
with dogs and guns as if gyspies were simply vermin. Such a hunt
features in my book. The central character is a woman who rises to be
a gypsy queen, so I used the examples of great women leaders, such as
Boudicca and Elizabeth I, to help me understand what it takes to be
such a woman. As these women are extraordinary, I could never hope to
meet one in person.
The second source is
the landscapes, towns and peoples of the world. Travel can be a great
aid to the writer, but it is also possible to use the landscapes of
one’s homeland and elaborate them. In my magic-realism book Girl
in the Glass I created a fictional city. The city is a large
port set on several hills and on one hill stands a university which
lives in an uneasy relationship with the rest of the city. I have
been asked which city it is based on, as it seemed so real to the
reader. The answer is that it is several cities combined: Istanbul,
Oxford, Victorian London to name three. In Mother of WolvesI
came closer to home and set the story along a fictional river, which
was based on an enlarged River Severn and the history of the people
along its banks.
The third source is my
personal experience and those of people I have met. I have been
blessed with a loving family and a life untroubled by war, disease or
other misfortune, but for about twenty years I worked with people on
the margins of society. I am able to draw from their stories of
fleeing their homes and countries, of persecution, of homelessness.
I’d like to think that I don’t just use them, but I am a writer
and writers will find inspiration everywhere.
So should a writer
follow the advice “Write what you know”? If we read, study,
travel and listen, what we “know” is only limited by our capacity
to understand.
Sunday 12 January 2014
Self doubt
I am currently working
on the first draft of my next novel. I say “working” because that
is very much how it feels: the words just aren’t flowing. Nor are
the ideas. Nor is my confidence.
The new book is very
different to my previous ones. My first four novels were all set in
the same world, and three were narrated by the same character –
someone I knew so intimately that I could just slip into her mind and
voice without thinking about it. This book is set in the real world –
in Prague in 2010 – 2013 in fact. There are two very different POVs
in it – one a male detective, the other a young British woman –
and both are totally unlike yours sincerely.
In November I took part
in NaNoWriMo and hit the 50,000 word target for this book, but then I
lost momentum. One reason was that I needed to do some research. This
was achieved with a stay in Prague and questioning various Czech
friends. But still the log jam did not shift. I came back to the UK
to Christmas, an elderly father in hospital with a broken pelvis and
the rest of the family collapsing with various bugs, so no work was
done for several weeks.
Now I no longer have
any excuse, apart from the usual ones of work and family pressures.
But still I can’t settle down and start writing again. This is more
than the usual problem of starting the engine post-Christmas. I just
can’t work out what is stopping me. I have at least booked my
flights for four weeks in my Czech writing refuge. But my plan was to
spend the month rewriting, not writing from scratch.
I have a number of
methods of overcoming writer’s block:
- going for a walk often works, but with floods and torrential rain that isn’t really an option,
- boarding myself up in my Czech cottage (see above),
- writing first thing in the morning, indeed working on the story even before I get up (a friend of mine swears by it),
- forcing myself to sit down and write, which so far has been unproductive,
- writing something else (such as this!).
I fear it all comes
down to self-doubt. I am worried I have not the skill to finish what
I have started. There is always in my experience a point in writing
my books (usually at 30,000 words) where I have a dark night of the
soul, where I doubt my ability to finish. I wonder whether this
50,000 crisis is worse, because the NaNoWriMo target made me press on
through the 30,000 word barrier, when I should perhaps have taken a
break to reflect on where I was going. I don’t know.
Will I come through
this? Watch this space
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