September’s Incomings…

I have to admit I actually had to hunt around the whole house to check that my eyes weren’t deceiving me when it came to putting this month’s incoming books post together. I couldn’t quite believe the two very humble piles of new books that had arrived this month. This doubly hit me when I heard it was ‘Big Book Thursday’ yesterday. No, I had never heard the expression before, which caused guffawing laughter and comments of ‘call yourself a bookish person’ from my family, cheers thanks a lot. Apparently yesterday was the day when all the books for Christmas came out? Sounds like bobbins to me, though it was on Radio 4 apparently.

Anyway back to books that have arrived here, and first lets cover the books from the lovely publishers, note there were five more than this but I am saving them for another two arrivals which are all getting a special post of their own…

• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender – This year I am loving Windmills books, ‘Forgetting Zoe’ by Ray Robinson was ace, if very dark, then there was the wonder of ‘The Borrower’ by Rebecca Makkai. Before Richard and Judy chose this I had been eyeing up this novel, about a girl who can taste the emotions of those who cook the food she eats, since I heard it raved about on Books on the Nightstand. I think this sounds really original so have high hopes.
• Pure by Julianna Baggot – Yes that book is actually plain bright white. This is a very, very, very advance (unsolicited) copy of an ‘apocolyptic’ book that’s out in February. It sounds intriguing but I can’t imagine I will read it before at least January as I will forget everything about it, but who knows.
•  Vaclav and Lena by Haley Tanner – The publicist at Windmill was enthusing about this so much when I asked for Aimee Bender’s book I simply couldn’t say no.
• Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs – This looks wonderfully creepy and comes with Victorian pictures interspersed throughout of ‘freak show’ characters from the olden days, sounds my perfect cup of tea and came all the way from America thanks to Quirk publishing. I think this will be read very, very soon.
• The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue – I was thinking ‘wow, she wrote this quickly’ when this arrived, apparently this came out a few years ago and is being reissued. It sounds like a wonderful Victorian tale, so possibly a perfect read for the colder darker nights.
• Collected Ghost Stories by M.R. James – I have a really battered cheap copy of this so I am welcoming its replacement and the nudge for me to finally read these spooky tales.
• The Sound of Gravity by Joe Simpson – I have to admit I haven’t even seen ‘Touching the Void’ but my family have a copy of the book and the film thankfully as I am interviewing Joe at a solo gig in Waterstones in two weeks so will be having a Joe Simpson binge in advance, I have a feeling I am going to be feeling very chilly and snowbound throughout this binge, so maybe wait till the Indian Summer Manchester is having is over.

Now for the books I have been lent/given or naughtily bought, again I should add I am missing two of these which are going in a post about something else and I will also be buying ‘The Slaves of Solitude’ today by Patrick Hamilton for a book group my friend Joe has started, we are going to be called ‘The Bookaholics with Beards’ and if you don’t have a beard you can’t come in, yes this group was started after one too many drinks but it’s a great book choice from what I have heard from others (and is £3 in Fopp!, what more could you need?). I digress…

• The Long Exile by Melanie McGrath – After having Melanie/M.J. at Bookmarked I was so enthralled with her tales of the arctic I was desperate to read ‘The Long Exile’ and thanks to her publicist Chloe I am, I have promised to send it back after. Thanks for the loan Chloe.
• The Game/Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King – I haven’t read the first of these Sherlock spin off’s but so many people have said I would love them that when I saw these pristine for 50p each I snapped them up.
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgensten – Lynne of Dovegreyreader said I needed to pop this up my TBR imminently, well I hadn’t been sent it (I think almost everyone has though, weird) but thankfully Paul Magrs has let me have his. So that’s one to read, though the hype worries me. I am trying to avoid it so the read will be based just on that, the reading.

So that’s it. What do you think? Have you read any of these? Should I get to any sooner than others? What have you had in the last month?

Discovering Daphne… A Reminder

Back in the month of June, which seems oddly much longer ago than it really was, the lovely Polly of Novel Insights and myself announced that we were going to be hosting ‘Discovering Daphne’ a whole month of Daphne Du Maurier delight, we won’t only be reading Daphne books all month though. Well it all starts in just two days, so I thought that I had best remind you all. I bang on and on about how brilliant Daphne is and so hoping lots of you will be joining in to celebrate her or try her out for the first time. Here will be treats and giveaways and post prizes along the way, all that to be announced on Saturday when we kick off.

So here is the schedule…

• Saturday 1^st of October to Saturday 8^th of October 2010 – A special ‘Discovering Daphne’ week, with lots of guest posts, Daphne inspired reads, some interviews and some treats to giveaway. Sunday the 2^nd of October will see the first of the Daphne-read-along’s that we would like you to join in with her first novel ‘The Loving Spirit’. Then…
• Sunday 16th October: ‘The House on the Strand’ – speculative time-travelling Daphne showing how versatile she is.
• Sunday 23rd October: ‘Don’t Look Now & Other Stories’ – a collection of Daphne’s short stories which are always wonderful and rather dark.
• Sunday 30th October: ‘Rebecca’ – if you have read it before or if you haven’t already, we will be discussing possibly the most famous of Daphne’s novels which should prove a perfect way to end the season.

Polly and I are very excited, and we do hope you will be joining in? You can find out more here by the way. Do let us know if you are and do spread teh word as Daphne deserves to be discovered by everyone. Right I am back off to curl up with the joy that is Daphne…

Putting A Voice To The Face/Blog/Prize…

They normally say that its nice to put a face to the name, or a face to the voice or some such thing (pick that silly sentence apart at will, I am very tired) and as part of the Green Carnation Longlist ‘shenanigans’ going on today, and if you haven’t seen the list please do they are all cracking reads and ones I want to get everyone takling about, I did an interview with the lovely Gavin Pugh of Gav Reads all about the longlist. So after some coaxing I thought that I would share it with all of you, so if you want to have a listen then do pop here.

I don’t sound as silly as I felt at gone 11pm after a day of longlisting, I sound a bit tired and say ‘erm’ a lot though, apols. It has made me wonder if there is room for a British Book Podcast by some bloggers… but that is another project and post altogether and today is about the wonderful books on the Green Carnation Prize Longlist. Let me know your thoughts on the list, the interview… and even the idea of podcasts! Oh and do spread the longlist around, the prize needs all the love and support it can get, it’s only year two after all.

The Green Carnation Prize Longlist 2011

Sorry I have been off blog for a few days. Brussels completely relaxed me, though I didnt get as much reading done as I would have liked, and then I have come back to the whirl of books and been in the final discussions (through email, skype, phone, face to face meetings – you name it) and deliberating over the mass of submissions we had to make the Green Carnation Longlist 2011. So a drumroll please as here we have the thirteen books that have made this years rather diverse longlist…

• By Nightfall – Michael Cunningham (Fourth Estate)
• The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge – Patricia Duncker (Bloomsbury)
• The Proof of Love – Catherine Hall (Portobello)
• Red Dust Road – Jackie Kay (Picador)
• The Retribution – Val McDermid (Little Brown)
• Purge – Sofi Oksanen (Atlantic Books)
• There But for The… – Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
• Remembrance of Things I Forgot – Bob Smith (Terrace Books)
• Ever Fallen in Love – Zoe Strachan (Sandstone Press)
• The Empty Family – Colm Toibin (Penguin Books)
• Role Models – John Waters (Beautiful Books)
• Before I Go To Sleep – S.J Watson (Doubleday)
• Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson (Jonathan Cape)

I am very pleased with the list indeed, despite a few of my favourites not quite making it through and I am looking forward to getting back to all the titles as the re-reading starts before the shortlist on November 2nd 2011. You can find out more on the website here.

So what do you think of the longlist? Any questions (I will try and answer any I can without breaking the submission clause) you have? Which books are you suprised to see on there, which are you surprised aren’t on there? Which have you read and what did you think? Any that you particularily fancy giving a whirl? As ever I would love your thoughts.

Reading With Authors #8: At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill; With SJ Watson

  

Firstly Steve thanks for coming all the way to Brussels to join me, especially after you’ve just been travelling to Oz and back. It was a very last minute work trip but I have found a nice quiet café where we can have a good natter, what would you like to drink, I’ll get us lots of Belgian chocolates to have with it. Oh, was the Eurostar ok? 

Hi Simon! Yes, thanks, the Eurostar was fine. I slept for the entire journey. I’m still suffering with jetlag, I think. But it’s nice to be back in Brussels. I was last here for New Year’s Eve about eight or nine years ago. There were some spectacular fireworks and very nice beer. I don’t remember much more after that… 

By the way, no chocolates for me. I’ve returned from Australia about a stone heavier than when I went. They do look good, though.

Oh well, maybe just one…

When you chose ‘At Swim, Two Boys’ by Jamie O’Neill you actually saved it from a fate worse than a charity shop, as I had had it on my shelf for years and just thought ‘it’s huge, am I really going to read it?’ It felt like fate. Why did you want us to read this book together and with readers?

There were a few reasons. I’ve been reading a lot of crime fiction, lately, so I fancied a change, and when it came time to decide what type of book I’d like to read I realised that it’s been a while since I read anything with gay themes. I remember loving things like ‘The Swimming Pool Library’, Edmund White’s books, ‘Becoming a Man’ by Paul Monette and so on. They were tremendously important to me as a teenager and in my early twenties, so I thought it might be nice to try something similar. Plus, if I’m honest, ‘At Swim, Two Boys’ has also been on my shelf for about five years – my partner loves it and has been nagging me to read it for all that time – so it felt like a good time to give it a go.

 But there’s something about a book that’s so long, isn’t there? It feels kind of daunting…

 Oh tell me about it, I was thinking ‘I am never going to manage this in time’. How did you get on with it as a read?

 Well, my first problem was finding it. We moved house earlier this year and haven’t unpacked all the books yet, plus I’d helpfully labelled all the boxes Miscellaneous. In the end I had to buy it again, out in Australia, so I began reading it on a beach in Sydney, on one of my days off. That was sort of weird, especially as the opening pages are so dense. I had no idea what it was about, so it was a bit of a struggle to get into it. But straight away I loved the poetry of the language – I think in some ways it’s a book to be read aloud – and that carried me through until I settled into its rhythm and started to understand the characters and their world. 

I thought this was going to be a real struggle for me for several reasons, the first being that it opened slightly like ‘Ulysses’, which I have tried and failed to read at least three times, I was expecting to be confused… then I was… and then suddenly I wasn’t did this happen to you? O’Neill introduces a lot of characters very quickly, but quite vaguely, so I was doing a lot of flipping back pages and keeping notes like ‘who on earth is Gordie’? Was this just me?

No. Exactly the same happened to me. It’s one of those books that creates its own world, but it’s not an easy read. Compared to many books today it asks a lot of the reader, but even in the early pages you can tell it’ll repay your investment.

How’s your coffee, by the way? I gave up caffeine while I was Melbourne so I’m kind of jealous. I did it on a whim, but I’m starting to wish I’d given something else up instead. Like chocolate. 

How can you give up on caffine, are you bonkers? It’s lovely, I am feeling very cosmopolitan right now. The book starts in 1916 as the famous ‘Easter Rising’ starts in Ireland, for the book is set in Dublin. I say famous, actually I had never heard of it and had to stop reading the book at about page 100 to go and find out. I don’t think the book sets it up for you, which I struggled with a lot, I was loving the characters (we maybe loving some, like MacMurrough who we will talk more about, is a bit extreme) but thinking what on earth is all this political/religious stuff? It was hinted at rather than explained for me.  

I agree. I was also pretty ignorant about that part of Ireland’s history. One of the things I loved about the book is that I feel I have a better understanding now of what happened at that time. But you’re right – the book doesn’t really give much of the religious and political background away. When writing it can be tricky to know how much background needs explaining, and how to explain it in a way that feels true to the story. You don’t want to end up in a situation in which characters are having conversations they wouldn’t have had, just to inform the reader about what was going on at the time! On balance I think the way O’Neill did it works, as the book is first and foremost a human story. 

What did you make of Brother Polycarp? I thought perhaps that was one element that felt unfinished, or unsatisfying at least. 

Did you, I thought there may be still waters running deeper, but he wasn’t a focus, or maybe I missed a trick? Once I got my head around the backdrop, which I would have liked O’Neill to paint in more detail, or maybe more clearly, the novel suddenly started to really set off. I think for me this was after the two boys, Jim and Doyle who are the great love story at the novels heart, finally met and also with the arrival of Anthony MacMurrough to the area after his release from prison, though this was about 100 pages in… 

I agree. I did wonder where the book was taking us in those early chapters. I didn’t get frustrated, as such, but I did feel that the story moved up a gear when Doyler and Jim met. I think it was because I still wasn’t quite used to the pace of the book. It’s almost languorous in places, and all too often we’re used to books with a bombshell on every page.  

More drink? Fancy some more of those chocolates, the pralines are lovely…

Thanks. I’ll have a hot chocolate, I think. And I will try a praline, but only because you’ve told me how nice they are. Oh, and pass me one of those marzipan fruits, would you? They’re fruit, so therefore have no calories, and quite probably contribute towards one of my five-a-day.

Hahaha, I have just eaten six of them so I won’t need the gym… this month. Hem, hem, moving on! I loved how the love story between the two boys developed, Doyler teaching Jim to swim seemed to me a great metaphor, and the aim of getting to Muglins Rock, a climax of sorts, though I was worried what would happen after… why is it there must always be a sense of dread in a love story, especially a homosexual one, why would I instantly think ‘uh-oh’? Did you, and did you enjoy how the love story developed?

I think the sense of dread, or threat, is probably vital in most love stories, if not all. Fiction has to have conflict, or else why read on? If they’d met and everything had gone swimmingly (pardon the pun!) then it would have been an unsatisfying read. But it’s interesting what you say about homosexual love stories. Maybe in some way the stakes seem higher, particularly in a story set in a time when homosexuality was totally unacceptable and gay people were regularly imprisoned, because there’s a feeling that these two boys have been incredibly fortunate to have found each other, against the odds, in secret, and that for their love to work they have to transcend a repressive and hostile society.

Of course things are better now, in the UK at least, but that’s still true to a large extent. And we mustn’t forget that there are parts of the world where even today Jim and Doyler would be imprisoned for life or even put to death for loving each other. But one of the things I love about the book is that it’s first a foremost a love story. The fact that it’s a love story between two men is almost immaterial

Of course the path of true love never does run smooth does it?

Certainly not in books, no!

I loved the MacMurrough’s even though I shouldn’t. Anthony is just letcherous and opportunist, whilst also almost mirroring the things that happened to Oscar Wilde, yet he is fascinating to read. His aunt Eveline is also a wonderful, if rather scary, character too. They were just so immensely readable I found, did you? I think the book needed them and not just for the plot.

I agree! I couldn’t stand Anthony at first, but his character opened up very quickly and I realised what a good person he is at heart. By the end he’s really teaching the boys how to love, and how to be who they are, knowing that their love for him will pale into insignificance next to their love for each other.

And Eveline? She follows a long tradition in fiction of slightly bonkers posh women that I love. I love them in real life, too, though I don’t meet them often enough. Maybe I’d meet more of them here in Brussels? More chocolates, by the way? I ought to get a box to take home with me. You know, as a present? Or maybe two. Just in case.

I did cry at the end, don’t take the mickey, but I did. Did you?

I didn’t, if I’m honest. I thought the ending was intensely moving, and I did have a lump in my throat, but I’m weird about what brings on actual tears. I think it’s more to do with me and the mood I’m in than the book. Sometimes I can cry at Coronation Street, other times I can be the only person in a cinema not blubbing away. But I would never take the mickey! I love it when books do make me cry. Isn’t that why we read, on some level? To be moved?  

Right, this is definitely my last chocolate.

Jamie O’Neill turned the book around for me. Initially I thought this was going to be a book I wouldn’t enjoy. It seemed a little pretentious and confusing, yet after the initial hurdle of 100 – 150 pages I was swept up in it and the last 400 or so pages flew by. Did you find this?

I did, yes. But, unlike with some books, I wouldn’t say those first 100 or so pages ought to have been edited. I think they were necessary to the book, in order to introduce the reader to its world.  

I wonder if the plodding start has put other people off and what makes you persevere. I don’t think I would have had we not read it together, so thank you. Will you be picking up any more of Jamie O’Neill’s novels? 

I’m sure the beginning has put people off, which is a shame. It’s really a fantastic book, poetic and beautiful and amazingly rich. I think I will pick up some more of O’Neill’s work, but I also intend to re-read ‘At Swim, Two Boys’ one day. I read it in less than a week, and with jetlag, so I think there’s a lot there that I missed. I think it’s a book that rewards the time you give it, so I’d like to give it more time at a future date.   

I’m glad you enjoyed it, though. It was a lot of pressure, choosing a book, so I’m glad I went for one that surprised both of us!

J’adore Brussels…

I have not been in Brussels long, in fact not even half the time I’ll be here, yet I am already quite smitten.

It’s a beautiful city (two people I know said it was dull… Wrong), the people are lovely, the food is fantastic and it’s really, really sunny! I’ll be reporting back in more detail with a tour after I go sightseeing tomorrow.

As for all things bookish… I’ve already been bookshop hunting, and I am meeting The Sleepless Reader later today for coffee and bookish chat! What more could I ask for? And I’ve still days to go!

Though speaking of books I have committed one epic fail, when I unpacked which book had I left at home (aren’t the hotel cushions fancy?)…

…Villette! I could kick myself am most cross! I’m instead charging through The Loving Spirit by Daphne Du Maurier for the start of ‘Discovering Daphne’ which starts next weekend!

What are you all up to this weekend?

The Strangers Child – Alan Hollinghurst

I have been sitting on this review for months, well ok not literally sitting on it but certainly debating if I should put it up. I then thought, as I am out of the country, why not? You see my relationship with Alan Hollinghurst’s latest novel was one of excitement (as I got a bound copy before the advances came in), self hype of my own making, the hype upon release and then the joy of the first hundred pages, before sadly it all began to fall apart. Plus, the books sold a shed load now and I am well aware me being a little grumpy review wise about it won’t do it any harm, and its not really a normal Savidge Reads review, rather a bit of a disappointed grumble. 

Picador, hardback, 2011, fiction, 576 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

Before I go into what I hope will be a fair critique of ‘The Strangers Child’ I should really discuss the premise of it. The novel is really a tale of people of years and years, the novel itself is told in five sections each relating to a different decade. The two main characters, well I thought they were the main force of the story though others may disagree, Cecil Valance and Daphne Sawle meet, along with Daphne’s brother George who is equally smitten with Cecil (this made me think of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ though apparently that’s not something you should say to Mr Hollinghurst, oops, but it does give the book a slight feel of ‘oh haven’t I been here before?’) and really we follow their lives from their first meeting and join them at various points in time as the book progresses.

As much as I am being vague to not give any spoilers away, I was also slightly at a loss as to why we meet these characters when we do, and why they tend to wander off. Yes, that’s real life… well possibly real life if you are very rich and can spend life being unlikeable yet fabulous.  These points in time, to me, didn’t seem pivotal, and I couldn’t get a hold on them. I didn’t mind the fact they were all rather unlikeable but as the novel progressed I just kept thinking ‘where is this going, and do I care?’ Some will say the rather random way in which the book is written is one of the cleverest points of the novel, really? I don’t expect my books linear at all, yet I sometimes wonder if ‘clever’ (which is the word I have seen in many reviews) is a good way of describing ‘we don’t get it and so it must be the authors intention to be a little unconventional, it’s the art of the book… how clever’. Hmmmm.

I can say the writing is utterly stunning, yet ‘stunning’, ‘beautiful’, ‘elegant’, ‘effortless’ (as the reviews keep on saying) prose can only go a certain way and I honestly feel in the middle of the book it became all about the prose and it simply didn’t stop. The beautiful prose started to drag and the effect of it started to sag and I thought ‘I’m not going to finish this’. Yet I did and as the last third starts the book indeed picks up again. The random plot threads make a little more sense, then they don’t and tantalise and then they sort of do.The characters stay being dislikeable yet readable and I liked the way it ended. Yes the way it ended, not the fact it ended.

This of course has left me very torn. There is no doubt that ‘The Strangers Child’ contains some utterly gorgeous prose, no question of that at all. I just wish there had been a much tighter edit on the book as with about 200 pages taken out of it, or several thousand of those wonderfully worded words, this book would have become a possible favourite of mine, I do love an epic after all. Instead I became rather bored, if somewhat beautifully.

Savidge Reads Grills… Rebecca Makkai

With my Savidge Reads Grills guests I like to have authors, and their books, that I am really passionate about. Rebecca Makkai has become such an author since I read her delightful debut ‘The Borrower’ a few weeks ago. Easily in my top five books of the year, if you haven’t read ‘The Borrower’ then you should (and I am giving some copies away today – one of the answers is in today’s post) because if you are visiting Savidge Reads you are most likely a book lover and ‘The Borrower’ is a book lovers book, no question. Anyway, I managed to catch up with Rebecca for a nice bookish natter, I hope you’ll enjoy…

Can you describe the story of ‘The Borrower’ in a single sentence?

A Midwestern librarian with Russian-revolutionary genes inadvertently kidnaps (or maybe is kidnapped by) a ten-year-old boy who’s been forced into anti-gay classes by his fundamentalist parents.

How did the story come about? Was there anything in particular that inspired you with this novel?

About ten years ago, I first heard of the phenomenon euphemistically known as “reparative therapy” – in other words, the classes designed to turn gay adults and adolescents straight, or to keep children from turning out gay. Apart from my private political reaction, which was… let’s just say “quietly violent”… I was fascinated by the fictional possibilities of those dynamics. I could have taken a closer view of that situation, of course, but what spoke to me was an outsider’s narrative, one where we see not the therapy but its results.

It’s a road trip tale of sorts isn’t it? What made you decide to take the story in that direction?

For one thing, Lucy, the librarian, lives in world of literary references – there are the more obvious riffs on young children’s books, but she also just thinks in terms of literary tropes and quotations – and so the fact that she launches out on a skewed version of the classic American road trip seems fitting. She’s escaping town, but not the literary prison of her own brain. I had fun playing with echoes of the road trips of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Lolita and Huckleberry Finn, and even a little bit with the wandering around in Ulysses. Trips give a story an extrinsic structure, which is a nice thing to have, but it turns out they’re also incredibly hard to pull off because you’re at the mercy of the map and the speed limit. There were times I wished I’d kept them home, but that wasn’t the story I wanted to tell and in the end I loved giving them that journey.

There is so much that ‘The Borrower’ is about, you have the ‘anti-gay camp’, the history of a Russia we don’t hear so much of, religion and all it can do, both good and bad… How did you fit this all in together and also manage to make it entertaining rather than tragic, though it has highly emotional moments in it too?

I always think about building an echo chamber for every story and novel I work on. You put certain elements in the room together, and if you keep them there long enough and play around with them, they’ll start to echo off each other, speak to each other, and enhance each other.

Some of my short stories have been quite a lot darker than this novel, but there was something that was fundamentally amusing to me about the way the pieces of The Borrower were relating to each other. I suppose I could say that I found they were having a rather raucous party in the echo chamber.

Ian is a wonderful character, and he is the drive of the novel. If he hadn’t been a child at Lucy’s library she wouldn’t end up in the scenario she does. How hard was it to make Ian so utterly precocious and yet adorable in one?

I do teach elementary school, and so even though Ian isn’t based in the slightest on any particular child I’ve known, I have logged an enormous number of hours with ten-year-old boys. I believe they’re the funniest people on the planet, and I had a ball creating a fictional one. Yet although Ian is funny and bright, he’s also incredibly manipulative and doesn’t quite live in the real world. It was important to me that he not just be some angel child we’re all feeling sorry for, but a complex and damaged and hard-headed person. The paradox of Ian is that some of his more irritating traits are the same ones that will probably see him through childhood intact.

There is an assumption by most people in the town of Hannibal that Ian will be gay, his parents want to ‘straighten’ him out, how hard was writing about a boy who is prepubescent and yet is ‘already headed up the yellow brick road’?

The strange thing about Ian’s situation is that his parents are responding not to his sexual proclivities (he’s ten, after all) but to his effeminacy and bookishness. Lucy herself is not fully convinced that Ian will turn out gay, but I did as the writer have a lot of fun showing some of those very traits that led his family to be concerned (though to me those quirks were endearing, not alarming). My only struggle was to resist putting more of those moments in the book. I never worried about what he should do next as a character, because he always just showed up and did it, quite insistently.

Lucy is an accidental heroine, and an accidental librarian but by no means a stereotypical one. Where did she come from? Was there anyone you were basing her on?

I’ve only ever based one character on a real person, someone in an as-yet-unpublished story. Beyond that one instance, my characters are pure invention; and it’s the invention of character and plot that are the most appealing things to me about writing fiction. I have a few things in common with Lucy (I’m a second-generation American, and I work with children), but a lot of her character (her haplessness, for instance, and her lack of ambition) stands in direction opposition to mine.

Actually, in the interest of accuracy, I should admit that I’ve also based a dog in my novel-in-progress on a real dog. I didn’t do much to disguise his identity, but I’m not worried as I’m fairly sure the dog can’t read.

‘The Borrower’ is definitely a book for people who love books. I was taken back to my childhood and visits to the library and how it was a world of wonder. Was that feeling of nostalgia something you wanted to plant in the reader? Were you a devourer of books as a child?

It was, and I was. I did have to make a decision, in writing the scenes where Lucy recommends books to Ian, of whether I’d keep her recommendations very up-to-date (and thus more realistic for a modern librarian) or bring up some of the old classics that would take readers back to their own childhoods. I chose the latter, making Lucy a devoted pusher of those timeless old chapter books like The Egypt Game and The Hobbit. On my tour I’ve been reading the part of the book where Lucy fills Ian’s backpack with contraband books, and it’s been wonderful seeing the audience react to those titles. In some cases they’ve run to the bookstore’s children’s section after my reading and gone home with five old favorites stacked on top of The Borrower.

Before we discuss books further, lets discuss writing! When did you first know you wanted to be a writer? How long have you been writing for?

I started writing stories when I was three, as soon as I could hold a pencil and make letters. Both of my parents were college professors, and my father was additionally a poet, so the typewriters were constantly going in our house and I just assumed that writing was something people did about as regularly as eating. I was around thirteen when I realized it wasn’t a bodily function but a potential career.

Right, back to books… Which current contemporary authors do you really rate?

This is such a hard question, and my answer changes every time I’m asked. As of today… They’re not exactly  my contemporaries, but  they’re in their writing prime, and if I had three Nobels to hand out tomorrow they’d go to Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie and Alice Munro.

What is your favourite ‘guilty pleasure’ read?

I wish I had time for one! I have two very young children, so I’m under pressure to make my reading time count. My guilty pleasure right now is showering.

Describe your typical writing routine, do you have any writers quirks or any writing rituals?

I really have to get out of the house if I want to get anything done, or I’ll end up with someone small in my lap. Beyond that, I just sit there and plug away. My grandmother was a writer (the Hungarian novelist Rozsa Ignacz), and I’ve seen a picture of her working at an outdoor desk at a summer house with a typewriter and a coffee pot on the table, a cardigan over the back of the chair, and a cigarette in her mouth. Apparently she worked like that all summer, chain smoking and drinking coffee. I deeply envy that setup, and I envy her living in the time before they knew what cigarettes did to you. Caffeine gives me hives, cigarettes are out, and my computer screen would glare in the sun… So I guess I’m down to the cardigan.

How relevant do you think book blogging is to the publishing industry? Do you ever pop and see what people have thought of your book or is it something you avoid at all costs?

I wish I could say I’d had the fortitude to avoid online reviews, but I’ll see them occasionally if they pop up on my Google Alerts.  For any author, there’s a lot of frustration and unhealthiness involved with the crowd sourcing of reviews, if only because there are so many and a certain percentage will inevitably be cranky, and a certain percentage will praise you in ways you don’t deserve. In my case, I think I’ve gotten a bit of a magnified effect on the reactions simply because it’s such a politically charged book. A few of the “reviews” out there online aren’t really reviews at all, but arguments about homosexuality and religion. The longer the book has been out, and the greater the volume of stuff out there, the more I’ve been able to turn my back on all that. As an author you want to be focused on your next book, not obsessing over the last one.

I was quite heartened, though, to learn the sheer number of book blogs out there, and to see the sharing of reviews on sites like Goodreads. So many of the changes going on in the literary landscape are scary or frustrating, but this is a genuinely good one: a shift from reading in isolation to reading and discussing together, around the virtual campfire. 

Which book, apart from your own, would you demand Savidge Reads and readers run out and buy right this instant, a book you would call your favourite?

Well, being American I really wouldn’t call anything my “favourite,” as we’re rather biased against the letter U over here. But picking a sadly U-less favorite from the book shelf opposite me, I’d say that anyone who hasn’t read Fun Home, the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, ought to find it immediately.

What is next for Rebecca Makkai?

I’m putting together a story collection, at long last. It’s called Music for Wartime, and the stories are linked thematically by… well, music and war. Or, more specifically, the response of the artist to a world at war. And I’m about a third of the way into my second novel, which is tentatively called The Happensack. It’s set at a defunct artists’ colony, and the narration moves backwards in time from 1999 to 1900. I’m having way too much fun with it right now.

A big thanks to Rebecca for taking the time to do an interview when she is very busy with young children and writing a new book. Please pick up ‘The Borrower’, or try and win a copy, because honestly it is wonderful.

Give Away… The Borrower – Rebecca Makkai

I don’t only like to share books I love with you by writing about them, when I can I also really like to give you the chance to win some of them too. Well, thanks to the lovely people at William Heinmann I have four copies of ‘The Borrower’ by Rebecca Makkai, which I reallym really loved, to give away wherever you are in the world (as I am aware you Savidge Readers come from all over the shop). It’s a real book lovers book, so you are in for a treat.

All you have to do is answer two questions. First, which book does Rebecca recommend you all read in her Savidge Reads Grills and second, which book you have read this year would you demand all book lovers simply MUST read?

Leave the answers in the comments here and I will pick a winner when I get back from Brussels on Tuesday. Good luck. Can’t wait for your recommendations. 

The Borrower – Rebecca Makkai

I really try to tone down and contain the amount of times I say ‘oh I’ve read the most amazing book, you must read it’ either on this blog or out in the real world. One such book is ‘The Borrower’ by Rebecca Makkai which after finishing I wanted to almost scream ‘read this now’ to everyone I passed. This feeling can fade but several weeks on I am now going to urge you all to ‘get this book now’.

William Heinemann, trade paperback, 2011, fiction, 336 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

I would imagine that if I mentioned the words ‘road trip’ in context with a setting of a book it might put some people off. In fact it would probably put me off if I heard that same description. Yet ‘The Borrower’ is a road trip upon which ten year old Ian and his local librarian Lucy find themselves on after they accidentally kidnap each other. Sounds bonkers (current favourite word) doesn’t it, but it’s just brilliant.

Lucy, as she likes to remind herself and us, is not your typical librarian. In fact she’s an accidental one in a small town called Hannibal. As the person in charge of the children’s section she meets ten year old Ian, a bookaholic and slightly precocious boy who everyone believes is ‘already on his way up the yellow brick road’. It’s his melodramatic nature and bookish addiction (which also reminded me of me aged ten, and now at twenty nine, ha) that leads his parents to believe the same, something which won’t do and their religious views won’t permit, so they start to send him to classes that stop people being, or possibly being gay. When Lucy learns of this and Ian runs away, to the library, the pair become caught up in a mutual kidnapping and running away drama that spirals further and further out of control.

This also a book about books and anyone who enjoys reading them. It’s this love of books that makes this unlikely duo become such friends, add in Lucy’s outrage when Ian’s mum comes with a list of books he can’t read and demands books with ‘the breath of god in them’. It also made me really nostalgic of the books I loved as a kid and those precious visits to the library.

‘Somewhere on Route 80: “Let’s talk about books.”
“That’s a great idea. Okay, books. What’s the next thing you want to read?”
“Well I think I want to read The Hobbit. This one guy, Michael, in this class I go to, he said it was very good. Have you ever read it?”
“You haven’t read The Hobbit?” I practically screamed at him, missing my chance to talk about his “class”. Of course he hadn’t read it, I realized. He wasn’t allowed to read books with wizards. Not real wizards, at least. Oz the Great and Terrible was probably only acceptable for being a humbug. I said “Once we’re back in Hannibal, I’ll check it out for you.” But I really couldn’t envisage a scenario anymore when both of us would be back in Hannibal and I’d still have my job and Ian would gallop down the steps everyday to see me. “So you said your friends name was Michael. Is he your age?”
“Yeah. But that’s not really what I meant by talking about books. I mean fun stuff, like if you go to heaven and it turns out that one of the things you can do there is you can be anyone in any book, whenever you want to, but you can only choose one person, who would you pick?”‘

Rebecca Makkai is certainly a big fan of books of all genres, this adds to her prose and not just in the words and descriptions she uses but also the style. We have a letters and one of Ian’s short stories interspersed in some chapters, there are also chapters in the style of other books such as ‘Choose Your Own Fiasco’ where Lucy gives you her current scenario and you have to decide for her by going to ‘number three or go to number five’ like those quest books I used to read. It’s a really inventive way of writing the book, there is even a table or two in there, and adding another dimension to the whole experience of reading, in some books this doesn’t work, in this one it did.

I could go on and on, in fact how have I missed the story of Russia’s history which is part of the book through Lucy’s father? Instead I will simply, yet strongly, suggest you read ‘The Borrower’ it’s a funny, moving and thoroughly enjoyable book and one which is going straight into my top five of the year.

Bookmarked Crime Night… The Report

Last week was the second Bookmarked Literary Salon and what a criminally good night it was. You all know how much I love a good crime novel so to have the legendary Val McDermid and wonderful debut novelist M.J. McGrath (or Melanie as I’m now allowed to call her) was bliss for me. I went and did that silly getting nervous thing again, fortunately it didn’t last long and we were soon chatting away between having our photos taken together before it all started off.

After each author had done a reading it was time for a good old natter, you may notice we changed the seating from last time so it’s less authors vs. hosts. The conversation flowed and it all went far too quickly.

Val had some really interesting insights into how crime is changing through technological advances and not just in the case of solving crimes but in what you write. Her son has been reading some of her earlier novels and after reading about Kate Brannigan hunting down a phone box for a few pages asked why she didn’t just use her mobile phone? We also discussed social media, how psychopaths are using it to their advantage. Apparently there is now a twitter account called Vance On The Run which is apparently Jacko Vance, Val’s own creation, who is trying to follow her! How mad is that? Mind you I follow Jackson Brodie on twitter, erm let’s move on…

Melanie had tales to tell from quite another world, the arctic, and how her friends can Facebook her and tell her they have a dislocated shoulder but can’t get to a hospital or drugs delivered because they are so remote. As she spent lots of time in the arctic as a journalist (and wrote ‘The Long Exhile’ which I am now desperate to read) she also had wonderful tales to tell of the Inuit life and how she became a figure of fun after locking herself out her house, with only ten minutes till she would freeze to death, and getting to grips with peeing when it becomes an icicle mid-flow. Oh and a brilliant semi-tragic tale about a hunter who met his match with a polar bear he was after. It was utterly fascinating.

Too soon and it was all over. Time to sign books for the wonderful audience who came along, including Polly of Novel Insights, and made it such a wonderful event we didn’t want to end.

In fact we loved it so much we might just be having another meeting of the same minds next year, we shall see. Val and Melanie have said they will and Melanie even wrote a contractually binding comment in my copy of her book, so I’ll be holding them to that!

Thanks again if you were in the audience, I did speak to some of you but not all. It was a wonderful evening and if you couldn’t make it I hope this post gives you a feel for the night. I’m loving this salon malarky, can you tell?

Bookmarked will be back in just under two weeks, time really flies, on Monday the 3rd of October for a Victorian themed evening (with two of my favourite books of 2011 and their authors) of ‘Sensational Stories’ as Jane Harris will be discussing ‘Gillespie and I’ and Carol Birch will be talking about ‘Jamrach’s Menagerie’, as well as all things Victoriana based, to say I am excited would be an understatement. I hope to see you there (if not I will report back again)!

The Queen of Whale Cay – Kate Summerscale

I would like to pretend that after having read ‘The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher’ I had popped Kate Summerscale’s first non-fiction novel ‘The Queen of Whale Cay’ onto my to be read list. That wouldn’t be true. In fact for some reason I didn’t even go and look it up, and yet when I saw Sue Perkins raving about it on the BBC’s ‘My Life In Books’ (which I am hoping they bring back) I thought ‘ooh that sounds like the perfect book for me’ and indeed it was a real treat, and one that showed sometimes life really is stranger than fiction.

HarperPerrenial, paperback, 1997, non-fiction, 248 pages, from the library

I admit that before I opened ‘The Queen of Whale Cay’ I had never heard of Marian Barbara Carstairs, who was known as Joe Carstairs, who was proclaimed ‘the fastest woman on water’ as a world champion and record breaking speedboat racer in the 1920’s and 1930’s. I have to say, as some of you might be thinking, the idea of a book about boat racing could be quite dull but if anything could be said about Joe Carstairs the last thing they could think of would probably be dull. In fact as Kate Summerscale found out, when a relative of Joe’s wrote to her to write an extended obituary in the Telegraph (where Summerscale worked), Joe Carstairs was a rather extraordinary woman.  

Joe was not your stereotypical young girl who stood to inherit a great fortune being the granddaughter of Nellie Bostwick, one of the original trustees of Standard Oil, and a multimillionaire of the time. She didn’t want to run out and meet a husband for a start, instead having lots and lots of lesbian affairs, including one with Oscar Wilde’s niece Dolly (who I thought sounded fascinating and want to find a biography of, anyone know of any?) It appears Joe was never quite herself in childhood, brought up by her mother who never spoke of her father and who married men and had affairs like it was going out of fashion, and after falling off a camel at London Zoo at the age of five Marian B. Carstairs felt that she was reborn as the person she should be ‘Tuffy’. But ‘Tuffy’ grew up and soon became ‘Joe’, a woman who liked boat and car racing and preferred the company and clothes of men.

“Captain Francis disapproved of his wild stepdaughter. ‘He thought he’d cure me,’ recalled Joe, ‘but he didn’t.’ This wildness, the sickness which was not cured, was even then a euphemism for her masculine behaviour. When Francis caught the little girl, aged eight, stealing his cigars, he punished her by ordering her to sit down in his study and smoke one. If you’re sick, he said, go out, throw up and come back. Joe, who had been pilfering his cigars for some time, sat down and calmly smoked her way to the end.”

It is not only the life of Joe that is so fascinating, the fraught relationships with her parents, the sham marriage for inheritance, her role driving ambulances in the war (her I wondered if she was the inspiration for Sarah Waters ‘The Night Watch’), the endless affairs including with some very famous women, the obsession with a small doll called Lord Tod Wadley (who even had his named engraved on the front door so people would actually call for him), the buying of an island ‘Whale Cay’ and it ruling… I could go on and on.

It’s also fascinating because of the time period it covers, the developments in those years (both in technology and science, the latter makes a very interesting story as her mother was part of a movement to use ‘testicular pulp’ as a healing substance – which went wrong), and the eccentricity of Joe’s family and the people close to her. In fact I won’t list every single wonderful story or event; you should simply read ‘The Queen of Whale Cay’ and find out more.

I have to add her that whilst I think any biography could probably have been made interesting by such an eccentric and fascinating person as Joe Carstairs, I think Kate Summerscale makes her come truly alive. Summerscale must have also had quite a job on her hands in trying to separate the fact and the fiction from Carstairs life, as the tapes recorded of her telling her tales sometimes proved to be just that. Summerscale includes these ‘exaggerations’ and if anything it made Joe Carstairs more real to me, I liked her even more. So I am thankful to Kate Summerscale for telling her story in ‘The Queen of Whale Cay’, which I should add won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1998, and for Sue Perkins for enthusing about it. I hope I am now passing on that enthusiasm to all of you.

Reading With Authors #7: Even The Dogs – Jon McGregor; With Isabel Ashdown

  

Hello Isabel, welcome to the penultimate ‘Reading with Authors’ blog. After being in the snowy Arctic last week I thought we might settle in South Manchester again, though I apologise as you have driven quite a way and we seem to be having thunderstorms…

Please, don’t apologise – I’ve had quite a hectic week, and the change of scene will do me good.  It’s a bit wet and murky out there – shall I leave my wellies by the door?

Oh yes please do if you don’t mind. The fires on so do pop through to the lounge, oh let me take your brolly, what can I get you to drink? What nibbles would you like?

I do love a real fire.  I hope you don’t mind, I’ve brought Charlie-dog with me.  He won’t be any bother; he’ll just curl up by the hearth and sigh every now and then.  For me?  I think a nice little tawny port would be rather good – perhaps a few pistachios to nibble on as we chat . . . And if it’s not too cheeky, I don’t suppose you could rustle up a sausage for Charlie?

Oh Charlie has made himself at home straight away, what a cutie, and rather appropriate given the title of the book… not the theme I hasten to add. We’ve had sausage, mash and beans for lunch, I happen two have to sausages spare. Are we settled? Right… lets get cracking onto the book, you chose our choice of ‘Even The Dogs’ by Jon McGregor, what made you want to read this, and put it forward for our little book group today?

Well, I was browsing in Waterstone’s one weekend,  going wild and splurging my annual royalty cheque on a small handful of other people’s books . . . when I picked up ‘Even the Dogs’.  The blurb on the back cover sounded compelling: a man’s body found in his ruined flat at Christmas.  It didn’t give away much more than that – and the reviews were good, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I was really glad you chose on of Jon McGregor’s books actually Isabel. I read ‘If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things’ and was left rather non plussed by it, this was pre-blogging, and yet I remember at the time I knew there was some beauty in its silence and its prose, I just didn’t think it was the right book for my reading life right then. Had you read McGregor before and did ‘Even The Dogs’ live up to what you were hoping? Did you like it?

I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t read Jon McGregor’s books before.  Many of my friends had read ‘If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things’ and of course he is highly acclaimed, having been twice long-listed for the Man Booker.  So this was my first experience of reading his work, and I’m glad I did.

I don’t think I can say that I enjoyed ‘Even The Dogs’, but I definitely got a lot from it. I thought it was quite unlike any book on addiction that I have read before. There was no glamorization and the horror of it all wasn’t done for effect, in fact it seemed that Jon McGregor wanted to simply tell the stories of that kind of life, and not just through Robert who I suppose is the main protagonist of the book, as they are. Would you agree?

Like you, I read a fair old bit.  And afterwards I’m usually left with a particular sense of my experience: it was beautiful/ it was funny/ it was sad/ it touched me/ it was uplifting/ it stays in the memory/ (and very occasionally) it was awful . . .  ‘Even the Dogs’ straddled the ‘it touched me’/’it stays in the memory’ categories.  As much as I’m pleased to have read it, I would caution other readers – it’s not an easy book, and I mean that at an emotional level, because the prose really is beautifully spare and effortless.

It’s a rather melancholy book isn’t it?

It is.  But sometimes don’t we need that, to stay connected to those aspects of life that are more difficult to look at, to allow us the joy of the lighter moments?  Light and shade, if you like.

I did worry at the start, I have to admit. The fact we are given the opening line of ‘They break down the door at the end of December and carry the body away’ before a gap so it reads as a statement made me wonder if this was going to be a book that was slightly sensationalized, and would be of an experimental vein. Yet it’s a very simplistic book isn’t it?

In one sense it is.  It tells – in a kind of backwards and forwards narrative – the story of a man who has died alone in his flat.  However, with the over-layered voices of the people who knew him it becomes a complex, multi-stranded, and not always entirely reliable narrative.  In a way, it’s this unreliability of narration that grants it such honesty and draws the reader on through the often disturbing images McGregor paints.

The whole ‘we see’ everything initially rather annoyed me, I was thinking ‘why is it we?’ Yet it worked. In fact the ‘we’ thing does start to make you feel like you have lived through everything that Jon McGregor writes about in ‘Even The Dogs’ doesn’t it? I was wondering who ‘we’ were, I thought we were ghosts of the people of Roberts past? I began to feel as if I was one of the people that had been with Robert and all those around him, a very clever device, and almost made me empathize, though I don’t think that would be the case for everyone would it?

It jarred with me too, at first.  But once I’d read beyond the first fifteen pages, I had shifted into the rhythm of the book and I was with it.  The multiple voices felt to me like the presence of those people (both dead and alive) who’d known him, and at the same time I felt they were almost an echo of the cacophony of Robert’s life – the ceaseless chaotic voices/choices/errors/trauma of the world he inhabited.  I found the experience of reading the book quite stressful, because the tension and pain of that existence is so raw on the page.

I thought the way that we join Robert at the end of his life, when he is just a nameless dead body, and then are rewound through some parts of his life, fast forwarded into others was very affective. And indeed the way we go to moments of his life and are then suddenly following his body to the morgue or his funeral. It gave the book more of an impact I would say, would you?

This was the part of the book I found most difficult, at a personal level.  As I said earlier, the book jacket reveals very little about the story and the circumstances of the dead man’s life and death.  As ‘Even the Dogs’ unfolds we gradually witness Robert’s descent into a world of alcohol and drug addiction, and we start to piece together the events leading up to his final days.  My own father died at the age of 50, from alcohol-related disease and so Robert’s story was poignant, and painful, in a way I couldn’t have anticipated.  I think the harsh reality of the post-discovery scenes were astoundingly candid – and very real.

Do you need anymore of anything by the way?

No, thank you.  These pistachios really are good aren’t they – though I’m having trouble getting into the last few closed ones?  I don’t suppose you’ve got a hammer . . . ?

No, but I do have a chisel. The setting of the book is also hugely important. This kind of derelict and almost uninhabitable world adds to the atmosphere and yet these are all places we have seen, even if just in passing or on the peripheral. I thought it made the book more real, maybe that’s just me?

Let’s face it; we see these people daily, don’t we – the dispossessed, the strangers living at the edges of society?  We recognise them by the stooped posture, the anaesthetised gaze, the two-week stubble.  We’re afraid of them; afraid to make eye contact, afraid of their unpredictability.  But if we could look deep beyond the inebriated mist of their eyes, we might see another life, perhaps several other lives, once lived.  The stripped-back setting of the book brought these figures to the foreground, and forced us to look them in the eye – and that is the genius of the book.

It’s also a book of silence in some ways, this reminded me of ‘If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things’ actually, we miss lots of bits of Roberts life and so are left to fill in those spaces aren’t we?

The writing is so spare; you can almost hear the book breathe.  McGregor gives only tiny glimpses into Robert’s life – in fact what he does give us feels almost like a series of Polaroid photographs – but those images are enough to allow us to join up the dots and feel as if we have some idea about his history.

How would you sum up this book? Is it one you will be recommending to other people, if you haven’t already of course? 

‘Even the Dogs’ is a raw, desolate, powerful story told with compassion and great honesty.  In a way, I think it’s a book everyone should read, at some point in their lives.  But let’s be clear: it’s not a light beach read and it certainly won’t cheer or uplift you as a reader.  However, it is a book that will provoke the human senses and remain with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

What will you be reading after this? I think I might have to turn to ‘Villette’ as so many people have recommended it for Brussels; I also need to catch up with the Tess Gerritsen series I can’t get enough of. You?

I’m just reading a non-fiction book for a change – Russell Brand’s ‘My Booky Wook’.  It’s a great read, lots of belly laughs and poignant insights into the life of that crazy fool Brand.  After that I’ve got two superb looking debuts at the top of my teetering pile: ‘The Somnambulist’ by Essie Fox and ‘Girl Reading’ by Katie Ward.  Well, it’s been an absolute delight to spend an afternoon of booky chat with you Simon.  So kind of you to welcome us into your lovely home – let’s do it again sometime soon.  Oh and Charlie says thanks for the sausage.  Look, he’s smiling.

Some lovely book chatter, nibbles and a smiling dog, what more could you want on a Sunday. I guess we should hand over to anyone else who is popping by, right lets make some more room on the sofa’s…

Books by Belgians or Based In Brussels… Can you Help?

If all goes to plan I will be off to Brussels at the end of next week on a mini break (for work, so not so much of a break actually). That sounds more leisurely than it actually is as the itinerary will be quite full, but there is some travelling around and ‘time of my own’ to go and explore, wander the streets and find little cafes to sit and read in. And that’s where I wanted your help. What books by Belgians or based in Brussels could you recommend?

I’ve got the obligatory travel/city guides from the library…

…But I do like to have some fiction from the country with me too. Some crime might be good, so could some quirky literature, or indeed a classic. In fact any suggestions are welcome. I will be taking Daphne Du Maurier with me but have room for one more book. Can you advise?