Seven thoughts about Hamlet

National Theatre Live Hamlet 15 October 2015

Because Lord knows the world needs another Hamlet review.

Hamlet is my favourite play. In fact, my completely uncontroversial opinion is that Hamlet is the best play ever written. I love it so much that I tried to write my dissertation on it – only to discover after a couple of months that everything worth saying about it had already been said. So thanks to National Theatre and Benedict Cumberbatch for finally giving me something to say.

1. Alright this first one isn’t anything new – Cumberbatch is a wonderful Hamlet. His portrayal is youthful, nervous, funny, clever, silly and arrogant. The delivery is pitch perfect and from his lips the language is fresh, modern and natural. Cumberbatch captures the duality of Hamlet; a young man full of drive and passion; who is also paralysed by fear and indecision, and alienates the people who love him. He dominates the stage every second he’s on it, but without dominating his co-stars. The toy soldier scene is a total joy. If I had one teeny criticism it would be that some of Cumberbatch’s natural niceness comes through in the performance which doesn’t feel right for Hamlet. A man who dismisses the murders of his best friends as “not near my conscience” and then appropriates the grief after he pushes his girlfriend to suicide: Hamlet is many things, but he’s not nice.
2. The set is sensational. It’s been lauded by pretty much everyone who’s written about this production and for very good reason. It looks stunning and also works very hard as a method of delivery for the story. Although I pity the poor buggers in the crew who have to clean the set at the end every night.
3. There are some sensational cast members. Obviously Cumberbatch and then for me Karl Johnson, Ciaran Hinds, Anastasia Hille, Jim Norton and Matthew Steer are perfect. Expressions, tone, delivery, everything is spot on. Ciaran Hinds as Claudius is breathtakingly good and the Gravedigger is just ace.
4. Conversely there are some performances that just didn’t work for me. Laertes came across as, for want of a better word, shouty. My friend Ali described his performance as ‘bug-eyed’. Horatio seems to be wearing someone else’s teeth towards the end, some of his delivery seems at odds with the words and he mangles one of the most beautiful lines ever written. The part I really couldn’t get on with though is Ophelia; a manic-pixie-dream-girl performance which owes everything to Zooey Deschanel, characterised by bad posture, hand wringings, facial tics and sniffs. I actually liked her much more as she edged into madness.
   

   Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

5. Ophelia’s death was beautiful. A wonderfully symbolic and elegant scene where Ophelia quite literally goes into the light. The staging of this, and Getrude’s reaction to the contents of the suitcase, are so nicely done that the whole thing is deeply moving.
6. Watching Hamlet is always like listening to a greatest hits album. You spend the whole thing going; ‘Oh God, I love this scene’, ‘This is a great line’, ‘I’d forgotten how amazing this speech is’. It’s a strange watching experience when, as Melvyn Bragg puts it, the audience can chant along with the speeches. I’ve done a production of The Importance of Being Earnest with an audience of 100 people all knowing the words; God only knows what it’s like when half the country is mouthing ‘To be or not to be’ along with you. Yet in spite of all the weight of expectation this is a production that feels fresh and new.
7. In the last couple of days I’ve read two reviews of Hamlet which are negative about NT Live broadcasts. One argued that plays should only be seen live and that cinema broadcasts cheapen theatre. The other made some very valid points about cinema broadcasts affecting live touring companies. I feel quite happy to dismiss the first one as pure snobbery. Bully for you if you can afford tickets and get to London – of course it’s better to go to the theatre, but if you can’t then NT Live is a brilliant way of accessing it and being part of an international audience experience. And let’s face it, the revenues from NT Live events are probably ensuring these big ticket productions are able to take place at all. And while it would be nice to think that without NT Live Mr Cumberbatch would be hauling his lovely bones around the provinces, it just wouldn’t happen. For most of us it’s NT Live or nothing – it’s a brilliant opportunity for people across the world to enjoy great theatre and amazing performances. And that’s really the point isn’t it?
   The play’s the thing.

Note: According to NT Live the international cinema audience for Hamlet was 225,000 in 25 countries.

Bookworm Briefs – September

So it’s the next edition of Bookworm Briefs, due on 1 October and sidling in to the blog on 11 October instead.

This could be because I’m a free spirit who refuses to be imprisoned by the patriarchal shackles of a man-made date and time construct, or because I’m an elemental child whose muse waxes and wanes with the phases of the moon. Or, it could be that I went on holiday and am also a bit lazy.

You, dear reader, shall decide.

What I read

A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman 

I usually save the big hardback purchases for Christmas but, as part of my jolly literary weekend at Budlitfest, I treated myself to a couple of hardback beauties; including Winman’s second novel after 2011’s excellent When God was a Rabbit.

The story is about Marvellous Ways, an old woman living alone in an isolated Cornish creek waiting for one last event before she dies. The event is the arrival of Francis Drake, an incredibly damaged WWII soldier, on the run from the horrors in his own mind.

If you like a nice, linear narrative firmly rooted in reality, this is not the book for you. However, if you’re prepared to become completely submerged in ideas and emotions, myths and fairy tales; if you’re happy to hold the mermaid’s hand and let her lead you downstream and out to sea, then you will adore this book.

There is so much to pick out of this novel, but in her Budlitfest talk Winman mentioned the importance of names. This is something I’ve noticed is often a feature of magical realism or fantasy novels – in LoTR for example Aragorn has three different names depending on his role and the stage he is on in his journey, Gandalf goes from the Grey to the White when he is reborn; in Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels knowing the real name of a magical being gives you immense power over them. For Marvellous Ways her name is her identity and her gift – her father wrote it down when she was born and and she carries it in a shell box around her neck. There is magic in her name.

Drake mostly sees his name as a tired joke and an encumberance, but comes to realise that it too has wonderful meaning. A character who brings love and serenity is called Peace, a woman who becomes bitter has her name corrupted from Mrs Heart to Mrs Hard, and the difference between great pain and great love can hinge on the few letters that change Jim to Jack.

They clung to each other and loved as if it was their last chance at love and where he entered he never left. And that was the night they began to share dreams because that’s what happens when you both know the weight of another’s soul.

I think to get the full benefit of this novel you have to read it twice. The first time you can sail through, carried along by the beautiful ebb and flow of the words. It reads almost like an epic poem; a story to be read aloud so the sounds, the rhythms and the music of the words can be savoured.

On a second reading you can really take the time to delve in to the huge themes of the book; memory, identity, pain, love, destiny, friendship, family, belief, loyalty and hope. So much is covered here and, like beachcombing, what at first seems to be a simple landscape offers so much more to explore and treasure.

This really is a stunning, breathtaking gift of a book and I urge you to read and enjoy it. Winman writes with such beauty and such poetry, I can’t think of anything better to read on a chilly autumn evening.

She gave thanks for her life, for every flower and tree and shrub that had held an imprint of her time, her youth, her middle age, her longing, her body, her sorrow, her laughter, her plans, her tiredness, her fate. This was the scene of her theatre.

Francis Plug: How to be a Public Author by Paul Ewen

My next holiday read was wildly different but completely appropriate; dealing as it does with author events.

Francis Plug is a part-time gardener and aspiring writer. His concern about the increasingly public nature of an author’s duties leads him to write a book to help fellow writers develop the skills needed to navigate the unsettling world of appearances and events. Determined to learn only from the very best, Plug attends events for Booker Prize-winning authors – watching what they do, meeting them and getting them to sign first editions of their work.

It’s a laudable aim and is only let down by the fact that Plug is a chronic and chaotic alcoholic whose grasp on reality is tenuous at best.

This is a deeply funny book. Francis Plug is witty, observant and smart and, in his drunken adventures, he’s inventive and shameless. The author event structure is saved from becoming repetitive by including Plug’s apposite reflections on money, the economy, the point of author events, social behaviours and social class.

What makes them seek out the quivering human flesh, blood and bone marrow of the author… They have to follow Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse back to the changing rooms and smell the sweat from the red-faced puppeteers.

There is also a fascinating relationship between Plug and his wealthy gardening client Mr Stapleton. The two men are linked by the Booker novels – Mr Stapleton the banker owns them all, but has never read them. Francis Plug, the gardener could never afford them but knows them inside out. It’s Mr Stapleton’s first editions that Plug gets signed, and dedicated, rendering them all worthless. Mr Stapleton doesn’t even notice.

My main reaction to Public Author though is that it’s incredibly sad. Plug is a clever man, but he’s lonely and awkward; descending page by page in to an alcohol-fuelled fantasy world. His Booker quest is the only framework that gives his life meaning and his main source of social interaction and friendship. Leading to a heartbreaking scene with DBC Pierre.

Although I wasn’t made of money, what better way to spend what little I had than on a fine wine for a Booker Prize-winning author.

This is a clever, nuanced book and:

• it’s from independent British publisher Galley Beggar Press so you can feel warm and fuzzy about supporting them. They’re doing some really interesting titles so worth a look at their site.
• my copy came pre-signed by Paul Ewen. Presumably a pre-emptive strike to avoid having to meet drunk-as-a-wheelbarrow readers who want to be friends, and may have horse poo concealed about their person.
• the cover quote from Hilary Mantel is pure genius.

My TBR

I’ve had a bit of a mad run on the book acquisition front this month. 

From Budlitfest I bought:

• Poldark by Winston Graham
• The Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman
• The Story of Alice by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

From Bookbridgr I got:

• F*ck This Journal by Dale Shaw
• Mosquitoland by David Arnold
• Waiting for Doggo by Mark B Mills

And from Orion I won:

• Luna by Ian McDonald
• The Promise of the Child by Tom Toner

This is all lovely, but I may need to give up work to get them all read.

Coming up

After September’s giddy joys of Budlitfest and a week in Cornwall reading on the beach and drinking cider, I continue my life of gay dissipation by going to see Benedict Cumberbatch in the NT Live screening of Hamlet on 15 October.

Having neither the time or the money to visit London, NT Live is a godsend and I hope whoever thought it up got a big promotion and a lovely certificate.

BudLitFest – Day 3

I am up and out by 9.15am. On a Sunday. Last day of the festival and three events for me today. The weather is glorious again and I find a free parking space right by the Public Hall. Winning.

Keep reading to the end for a summary of the whole event.

If you missed them read:

• Day 1 – Kaffe Fassett, Paula Hawkins and Poldark here
• Day 2 – Sarah Winman and Hilary Mantel here.

Day 3 – Sunday 20 September

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst ‘Finding Alice’

We don’t bury ourselves in books, books bury themselves in us. And the books that we read as children really seem to stick.

I was intrigued the moment I saw this session in the programme. I love Alice and I’m fascinated by the iconography of these stories and the way they exist in the cutural consciousness. I also find them sinister and unsettling – as a child I never wanted to actually visit Wonderland in the way that I did Narnia. The talk is by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, a rather dashing Oxford professor who has written a book so big you could wedge a church door open with it.

What I learnt:

• Alice Liddell’s life was forever affected by Carroll’s book. The real Alice and the literary Alice became muddled and intertwined over the years; something that Liddell seems to have both enjoyed and resented.
• The major theme in the Alice books, and in Carroll’s life, is doubling or twins. Charles Dodgson was a religious mathematician who dealt in absolutes; but he was also Lewis Carroll who played with letters and numbers, magic and surrealism. By creating a fictional Alice, and by photographing Liddell, he created two versions of her. The real girl who would eventually become a woman; and the ‘character’ of a little girl he could control, who would never change and never grow old.
• The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party can be read as a Dantian representation of hell. The characters are locked in purgatory for some nameless transgression which requires them move in never-ending circles around the table; trapped at a tea party where only the dormouse ever gets any tea.
• No matter how you cut it, Carroll’s relationships with young girls are unsettling. It’s difficult to say for certain if he’s fetishising children or childhood, and we have to consider the cutural context for a man who lived in a society where young teens could marry. But still. He immersed himself in the world of fictional Alice for 30 years; long after real Alice became a woman.
• There is an utterly charming 1903 film of Alice in Wonderland which the BFI have restored. Watch it on YouTube.

I had a brief chat with Douglas-Fairhurst afterwards. I could have spoken to him about Alice for hours, and I definitely don’t have a crush on the handsome, charming professor.

Patrick Gale ‘A Place Called Winter’

My editor said; ‘I think that’s enough ploughing now.

Gale’s event has the comfiest looking chairs I’ve ever seen – he’s clearly a festival pro. It’s a packed house and he holds the audience in the palm of his hand throughout. I sensed that the session could have been three hours long and no-one would have minded.

What I learnt:

• Gale can only write at home on his farm where it’s quiet, and he writes all his novels longhand in a notebook.
• A Place Called Winter is based on the real-life story of Gale’s maternal great-grandfather. He found out that his relative, Harry Cane, left his wife and children and went to Canada as a ‘homesteader’ in the early 20th Century and didn’t return to England for 50 years. Only parts of Harry’s life story are know so Gale has filled in the blanks with fiction.
• Winter is a real place and, as part of his research, Gale travelled to Canada and visited the farm Harry worked. He used map co-ordinates to see the exact spot where the farmhouse stood.
• The government shopping list of things needed for a move to Canada in the novel is real. It includes equipment suitable for a trip to India and only one winter hat. It shows how so many homesteaders were woefully unprepared for the Canadian winters and may explain why so many of them died.
• Gale has done a phenomenal amount of research about the early pioneers in Canada. His findings on the Plains Cree Indians are both fascinating and appalling.
• Gale’s next novel will be about a cellist and will follow the whole course of a man’s life.

Afterwards I met Patrick Gale and introduced Booey to him – so I’ve totally nailed parenting – and then we had a brief chat on Twitter and I did a little happy dance.

Sarah Waters ‘The Paying Guests’

It’s a book about mess, in all sorts of ways.

It’s the final session of the festival so there’s a bit of a giddy, end-of-term feel. Sarah Waters is teeny tiny, very stylish and has fabulous hair. She is also intelligent, engaging and funny.

What I learnt:

• Waters read Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley and DH Lawrence when she was researching the 1920s, but none of them gave her what she was looking for. However, Vera Brittain’s memoirs were incredibly useful.
• In the 1920s The Manchester Guardian ran a series of articles about getting rid of household items which collected dust to help families who found themselves without domestic servants for the first time. Waters enjoyed writing the domestic side of the novel: “There was more homework in the earlier drafts; I got very fond of it!”
• The Paying Guests addresses some of the concerns of the era such as anxiety about the suburbs, the rise of the lower middle classes and women’s autonomy over their own bodies.
• You don’t have to go back very far in history to find a very different set of social norms. It’s helpful to remember that the ‘traditional’ ideals we become so fixated with aren’t so fixed. Fiction is a great way of exploring British social history.
• Tipping the Velvet is now a stage show…  You may not want to take your gran to see this.
• At the beginning of the session, chair Rachel Cooke explains that they will be very careful not to give away the plot twist. They then give away the plot twist. About three times.

To wrap-up

It’s been an amazing three days and I feel lucky to have such a brilliant festival on my doorstep. The line-up was so good it was really an embarrassment of riches; I just wish I’d had the time (and the money!) to see Ben Okri, Margaret Drabble and David Hare too.

Over the eight sessions I went to I felt that three themes seemed to appear.

• The roles of women – they way they live, the way they are represented and the choices they are able to make.
• Memory and it’s reliability.
• The joy and the challenges of blending fact and fiction.

I’m not sure whether the writers were all covering similar areas; or if I’m just attracted to those themes. Next year I’ll need to have a bigger sample size to come to a conclusion.

And I definitely will be going next year. This festival had such an incredible sense of community and celebration – it really is a wonderful, stimulating, fun event. Roll on 2016.

BudLitFest – Day 2

Only two events today. It’s a hot sunny day, so between them I eat a sandwich on a bench overlooking the beach and read a book. Children are swimming in the sea and a man is selling fresh fish on the pebble seafront. Today is a very good day.

 

Day 2 – Saturday 19 September

Sarah Winman ‘A Year of Marvellous Ways’

It’s about the story of your life that you tell yourself.

This is an extra session for me. The original writer Liza Klaussman was forced to cancel at quite late notice and Sarah Winman stepped in to fill the space. This is fantastic news for me as I’m a huge fan, but it does mean that the room is only just over half full. It’s a real shame as Winman is interesting, engaging and articulate. So much so that I become completely absorbed in the talk and make hardly any notes.

What I learnt:

• Winman is absolutely passionate about the importance of the arts and creativity in education as she believes being creative is what helps us to become well-rounded individuals.
• Landscapes are very important in The Year of Marvellous Ways. Winman wanted to set the book in Cornwall, but she felt the Cornish landscape was masculine because of the rocks punching through the land, and Marvellous needed to be in a feminine landscape. She resolved this by putting Marvellous on a lake which was based on a creek she saw in South Carolina – and then dropping that in to Cornwall.
• Winman was an actor and narrates her own audiobooks. Someone in the room specifically asks about this because her reading from The Year of Marvellous Ways in the session is so beautiful.
• When the audiobook of When God Was a Rabbit was made Winman had to audition for the job of narrator; and the producer told her that she was doing the voices for her own characters wrong.

This was a really lovely session and I could have listened for much longer. I’m about 100 pages in to The Year of Marvellous Ways and I highly recommend it. It’s sweet, dark and very magical.

 

Hilary Mantel ‘The Mirror and the Light’

It’s in time’s erasures, in the white spaces between the lines, that the novelist goes to work.

The session at St Peter’s starts at 4.30pm and by 4pm there’s already a queue of festival goers snaking down the church drive. Inside, the church fills quickly and there’s a lively and expectant atmosphere for Budleigh’s beloved ‘bard’.

The lady next to me says; “For the last couple of years she’s told us that she hasn’t finished The Mirror and the Light yet. I wonder if it’s finished now.”

“I haven’t yet finished The Mirror and the Light!” announces Hilary Mantel as she arrives onstage.

I forgot to take a photo, so here’s a gratuitous picture of Damian Lewis and a cross toddler

What I learnt:

• The Wolf Hall universe now includes books, tv programmes, a stage play, a CD of the stage cast singing and a cast football team called Wolf Hall Wanderers; who are yet to win a match.
• The Wolf Hall tv programme was filmed using natural light and candlelight. Female cast members told Mantel that they spent large parts of their time on set afraid they were going to catch on fire. “Welcome to the Tudor World!” says Hilary.
• Mantel was writing new material for The Mirror and the Light while she was working on the stage adaptation of Wolf Hall in New York. One night she wrote a new scene in flashback between Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Moore and gave it to the actors playing those roles. From that point on they played the roles slightly differently as they incorporated the new information in to their performances.
• After visiting the set of Wolf Hall Mantel found herself stuck on a country lane while a convoy of trucks moved props to the next filming location. It occurred to her that very few authors find themselves in a traffic jam with the products of their own imagination.
• Household accounts were an important primary source for Mantel’s research. She used them to understand how Cromwell managed his home and family. The accounts show what things are in the household, but not how they got there, so Mantel has to imagine what happened. In The Mirror and the Light she explains the appearance of a leopard.
• Mantel is very, very, very funny. Her eyelash anecdote is hilarious and she seems to genuinely enjoy making the crowd laugh.

Two incredible sessions and my head is buzzing with new information. We have a walk along the seafront in the evening sunshine and then back home for wine and spicy chicken. Two days down; one to go…

BudLitFest – Day 1

This last weekend all the stars aligned and there was a festival for my favourite things (books) in my favourite place (Budleigh Salterton).

I got so excited about this that I booked tickets for eight events over three days and decided to review the whole lot.

 

Day 1 – Friday 18 September

Kaffe Fassett ‘Dreaming in Colour’

Anything worth doing is worth over-doing.

This is a fascinating hour. It starts with a chap in a jazzy shirt standing in front of a sedate audience and talking about knitting; and ends with a cluster of women jostling each other and murmuring with delight as they stroke the luscious, fabulous textiles spread out in front of them.

What I learnt:

• Colour can heal and can revive. At one point a lady in the audience testifies to the healing powers of Fassett’s work. Fassett describes his workshop sessions as being like ‘colour orgies’ and by the end of the session you can see what he means. There is a visceral reaction to the colours. It’s an almost spiritual experience.
• Fassett thinks we should all just do it. He decided he wanted to be a textile artist working with colour so that’s what he became. He claims that he’s achieved it all with only 40 minutes of knitting tuition, so if he can do it anyone can.
• There are no mistakes; “If you do something wrong, just repeat it on the other side.” Advice for knitting and for life.
• Fassett has the true artist’s gift of being able to put things together which really shouldn’t work, but always do.

At the end of the session my friend Wendy, an artist and designer, leans over and whispers “I need to get my sewing machine out!”

 

Paula Hawkins ‘New voices’

Really sad and damaged women; that you really wouldn’t want to spend any time with.

This event was originally meant to be a two-hander with Renee Knight, author of Disclaimer. To be honest, I think that would have been a much better session. The problem with a whole hour on The Girl on the Train is that if there are people present who haven’t read the novel (about half the room) then you can’t really discuss more than the first chapter without giving vital plot points away.

What I learnt:

• Hawkins was a financial journalist, she moved into fiction when she was commissioned to write romances under the pseudonym Amy Silver. She decided to write a thriller when she realised that her romances were becoming increasingly more dark.
• The character of Rachel is an alcoholic because Hawkins was interested in memory loss and the balance of guilt and responsibility. How can you feel the right amount of either if you can’t remember what you did? It also gave her a way of making Rachel vulnerable to manipulation.
• Although Hawkins has been accused of misogyny the women are all without a job during the events of the novel because it best serves the narrative, not because she believes women shouldn’t have jobs. This is simply one story and one snapshot in the lives of the characters, and not representative of her views.
• Characters don’t have to be nice for you to engage with the story and want to find out what happens to them.
• Hawkins is working on her next book which will be about sisters and memory, and will be set in the north of England.

 

Poldark

Love, rivalry, jealousy, ambition; those things never go out of fashion.

The final event of day one takes place at the suitably dramatic setting of St Peter’s Church at night – the only thing missing is candlelight. On stage were Andrew Graham, son of author Winston Graham and script adviser; Debbie Horsfield, script writer; Ruby Bentall who plays Verity and Heida Reed who plays Elizabeth. The event was chaired by Erica Wagner.

 

What I learnt:

• The first Poldark novel was probably conceived in June 1941 when Graham became a coastguard at Perranporth beach. This involved spending long hours watching the changing sea and listening to local stories told by the other coastguards.
• Debbie Horsfield had never done an adaptation before or worked with historical material, but when she read the first two novels she realised that the themes were universal.
• Ruby and Heida found the costumes incredibly restrictive. Ruby particularly was very vocal about the control of women through their clothes; “Those outfits were made purely to repress women. You can’t even climb the stairs without help!” Both actors found it difficult to understand living in a society where women had such little control over their own lives.
• Winston Graham HATED the 1970s BBC adaptation of Poldark so much that he asked for the contract to be terminated. He felt the script didn’t include any of his dialogue from the book and he loathed their version of Demelza. He was reconciled to it in series two when a new director and script writer were brought in.
• Elizabeth’s character was tricky and at first seemed too cold to a modern audience. The script had to be adjusted to make it clear that she lived a very restricted life and could not just pop to Poldark’s house to talk to him. Heida defends her passionately; “Even today, if you were engaged to someone else and an old flame came back after three years, you wouldn’t just leave them!”
• When asked about dealing with filming and the Cornish weather, Heida recounts an anecdote about getting soaked during a scene where she shared a horse with Aiden Turner. An excited murmur ripples through the crowd.

I’ve also learnt that Poldark fans are very, very active on Twitter!

 

 

 

The joy of digital

Sing it: “We are living in a digital world and I am a digital girl!”

Alright I know you didn’t sing it, but you get my point.

I love digital; my day job basically consists of me trying to create the best websites I can while sneakily checking Twitter and pretending it’s for work; and I go home in the evenings to watch time-shifted telly, spend more time on Twitter and buy books online.

And the books I buy are always honest-to-goodness paper ones.

I’ve had the ebook vs paper book conversation more times than I can count (alright then, about six times) and I am a staunch believer that paper books are far, far better than their pixel brethren – I’ll blog about why later.

However, I do think there is a wonderful marriage to be had between lovely papery books and magical interactive digital. And there’s a Twitter account at the moment which, to my mind, is absolutely nailing how this should be done.

Another beautiful cover

David Mitchell’s new novel Slade House is due out in October and as a precursor to the release of the book he’s tweeting an account for one of his characters.

@I_Bombadil is the Twitter account for a man obessessed with his co-worker, Lottie. They work at the same company in London and, as she doesn’t have a clue who he is, he’s taken a 21st Century approach to the love letter and is tweeting his love for her.

Over the course of the daily tweets he shares the ‘loving’ things he’s doing such as noticing her outfits, sending her roses on her birthday, hacking her emails and her phone, checking her sister’s smear test results…

Lottie also has a Twitter account, which is currently locked at @TuttiLottie

 

Slade House actually started life as a Twitter short story so it’s the obvious marketing approach. And the events of the novel culminate on 31 October 2015, so presumably the Twitter narrative and the novel will weave together at that point.

I love this approach. And I think that the possibilities for mixing paper and digital are absolutely dizzying.

I’ll never give up my paper books; I don’t think digital can replace them and I don’t think it should try. What it can do brilliantly well is augment and embellish a book in clever, fun and original ways – opening up texts to readers who may not otherwise find them – especially useful for those books with teeny tiny marketing budgets (i.e. most of them).

I know some of you are ebook enthusiasts and/or digital citizens – what do you think? Do you want Spotify playlists with your books? Online ‘DVD extras’ style content?

 

Meanwhile keep an eye on @I_Bombadil – because, let’s face it, that’s really not going to end well. And who wouldn’t want to read about that?

Review: The Woman Who Stole My Life

What to say? What to say?

Confession 1: Although I love Marian Keyes so much I’d drink her bath water, I don’t like The Woman Who Stole My Life.

I adore Keyes so much that it genuinely saddens me to write that; and it gets worse.

Confession 2: Apart from The Mystery of Mercy Close, I’ve struggled with her last three novels.

These are words that I never thought I’d say about the author of Watermelon; one of my favourite books of all time. I discovered Keyes about twenty years ago when my best friend’s mum gave me an advance copy of Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married and I have adored her ever since. Usually classed as a chicklit author, Keyes has always seemed a cut above the rest; with fuller characters, smarter dialogue and much funnier jokes. Usually when the blurb says a novel is ‘laugh-out-loud funny!’ you can expect a couple of smirks at best, but I remember laughing till I cried at Watermelon.

Funnily enough, I’d always heard that it was Los Angeles that was full of nutters, not New York.

The Woman who Stole my Life focuses on Stella Sweeney, an Irish mother of two, working with her sister in a beautician business and married to successful interior designer-cum-frustrated artist Ryan. Her hum-drum life is knocked wildly off-course when she succumbs to the rare Guillian-Barre Syndrome which renders her paralysed except for her eyes. Her illness, and eventual recovery, lasts eleven months and the novel examines the repercussions of this experience on Stella, her family and her friends.

The relatively straight-forward story is made more interesting by a twin track structure which shows us Stella now, living back in Ireland with her son after something has gone horribly wrong, and extracts from her own book which details her illness and hospital experience.

So, the story is good, the structure tantalises and yet… I just didn’t like it. The problem is there’s not a single likeable character in the book.

Lovely cover art though

She’s the centre of the novel, but Stella has no discernible personality. I desperately wanted to like her, but her most definitive character feature is her complete inability to stand up for herself, ever. Instead of identifying with the hero, or rooting for her, I found myself shouting; “Get a bloody spine woman!” many, many times.

Everyone else in the novel is selfish, self-centred and almost completely devoid of empathy. Excepting love-interest Mannix who is very caring and cordially disliked by everyone, and Stella’s sister Karen who distinguishes herself by being the most spectacular bitch. I suspect she’s meant to come across as the straight-talking, no-nonsense type that Keyes drew so beautifully in the Walsh family novels; but instead she just seems mean. The silver medal goes to Ryan who is completely vile. By the end of this book I actually started to wonder if Keyes was writing a particularly spiteful world, or if I just know an unusually high number of nice people.

The other thing that I struggled with is the idea that Stella becomes a writer. Her self-help book, One Blink at a Time starts off a self-published pamphlet of ‘sayings’ that Stella blinked out when she was sick. The novel hinges on the idea that Stella can, with no background in writing at all, get a publishing deal, write almost an entire book about her experience and write lots of supporting articles to publicise it while maintaining a range of social media channels to promote herself. I write for a living and I’m not sure where I’d start with all that.

 

It’s not all bad. The usual Keye’s hallmarks are there; beautiful insights, pop culture references and a wonderful ear for dialogue, but ultimately if you’re looking for a funny, clever, bittersweet novel read Watermelon instead. In fact just read Watermelon anyway, it’s ace.

 

Bookworm briefs: August

Ooh! Aah! It’s a new regular feature. Bookworm Briefs will be a monthly dash through my reading, anything that’s been recklessly added to my already impossible-to-ever-complete TBR and any bookish activities I’ve been involved in. I’ll publish Bookworm Briefs on the first of each month and, as it’s important to start as you mean to go on, this one is already a day late. Marvellous.

What I read

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
I was so wonderfully surprised by this. I borrowed it from the library on the back of a slew of Twitter recommendations, and because the artwork on the hardback version is completely arresting. There’s something very old-fashioned about the narrative; it’s slow and steady and it’s clever. It’s refreshing to read an author who expects you to pay attention and read between the lines. The writing is crisp and considered, her dialogue is both witty and natural and she draws her characters with real affection. This is Natasha Pulley’s debut novel and on the basis of this I’m very excited to see what comes next.

I love this book. It’s well-researched, well-written and has, at its centre, a genuinely moving love story. This is the book for you if you like a rewarding slow-burner, a vaguely steampunk historical mystery and a sweet love story with a dash of magic. Read it; love it; immediately attempt to acquire a clockwork octopus.

For God’s sake, the closest I can get to medieval England is a Walter Scott novel. People shouldn’t be throwing away their history when it’s doing archery practice forty miles up the road.

 

Armada by Ernest Cline
The second book by Cline, which is spookily similar to, but not quite as good as, his first book; Ready Player One. Both of Cline’s books are love songs to 80s films and video games, and a sort of lit-by-the-evening-sun, coming of age American childhood which may only have existed in movies like The Goonies and Stand by Me. They’re marshmallow books – fun and easy to get through, but there’s limited nutritional value. Armada starts with a cracking concept, so good in fact that it’s already been covered in Ender’s Game, but it’s let down by the ending. However, Ready Player One is good fun, and definitely worth a read before the film version is released in 2017.

 

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
As always a brilliant premise from Stephenson, but for some reason I’m struggling to get through it. The moon has broken in to seven pieces and will shatter into many more before it destroys the earth. The survival of the human race becomes focused on the crew of a satellite orbiting earth, and a project to adapt the ship to house as many people as possible before time runs out. It’s intriguing, but I’m struggling to get more than a few chapters in.

 

My TBR

The First Bad Man by Miranda July 
Bought this for the cover alone, which seems to repel as much as it attracts. Forty pages in and the cover seems deeply appropriate for a narrative that is both fascinating and uncomfortable. I’m not exactly enjoying it, but I stood up reading it for 20 minutes because I was too engrossed to sit down.

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Romance, sci-fi and another amazing cover – an honest to goodness work of art. Since buying it I’ve read this frank and moving interview with Faber which has added a new level to the novel. My reading of the novel will now be influenced by the knowledge of Faber’s real-life situation and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about that. Hmm…

 

Something Coming Through by Paul McAuley
Dystopian fantasy which seems to be in a similar vein to The Long Earth – there are multiple earths and shady affairs are happening on all of them. So far, lots to like about this. I’ll be doing a full review for Gollanz Geeks shortly.

The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett
Another book which is impossible to separate from the real-life events that loom large over it’s release. I’m going to take a rare diversion into sentimentality and say that for me this book shows what the best literature can be; a pact, a friendship, an understanding between a writer and a reader. A gossamer bond that can lead you into strange new worlds, and help you find your way back out again. I’m five chapters in to the last journey I’ll ever take with Terry Pratchett and every page feels like a joyful goodbye to a dear, dear friend.

 

A LITTLE REWARD FOR A LIFE WELL LIVED. FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT . . .

Coming up

Budleigh Literary Festival
Budleigh Salterton (Bubbly Saltybum) is my favourite place in the world and for four days in September it will be full of sensational writers. I’m reading The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters in preparation and hoping to get in A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale before then too.

 

 

5 reasons I love Outlander… and 5 reasons I probably shouldn’t

Right, shuffle closer, I’m going to share something personal. Part of my brain is permanently frozen at age 17, and as a result I develop ridiculous, teenage passions for things. When I first discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer I binge-watched the whole first series in a day, I queued at midnight for Harry Potter (without the cover of a small child) and I actually have a Lord of the Rings tattoo. I’m essentially one bad decision and a bottle of tequila away from being this lady.

And so to Outlander.

I’ve had the book for a few months, but it was the TV adaptation that first got me. I now love Outlander deeply, have already started gifting copies of the book to friends and family members and am developing a mild obsession with Scotland; but the grown-up part of my brain is aware that it has some flaws. So both parts of my brain have got together to write this review. And while you’re reading this I’ll be trying to drink whiskey and Googling tartan shawls…

 

Five reasons I bloody love Outlander

1. Production
You know a programme takes its production seriously when it has a herbalist on the crew. Ronald D Moore (the Outlander showrunner) knows exactly how to spend a clearly enormous budget to create a luscious, immersive experience. The sets are detailed, the Highlands are celebrated with long, loving scenery shots and the Emmy-nominated music is haunting (and it’s composed by a man named Bear). But for me it’s all about the costumes. Every outfit is gorgeous, especially the kilts. Dougal may be a sociopath; fathering children with abandon and fighting with everybody and everything including, at one point, a dining room, but he looks incredibly dapper doing it. If you want to know why the costumes look so amazing free up a significant chunk of time to read Terry Dresbach’s blog.

2. Writing
I was gripped after the first two chapters of Outlander. The writing is detailed but pacey, and Gabaldon’s characters are well-rounded. She’s also a tireless researcher and I do always like the feeling of learning something accidentally while enjoying a good story. For me the filmed version improves on the novel. Episode 7 ‘The Wedding’ is almost perfect – the writing is flawless, with a clever narrative framing device which allows the events to unfold in a much more interesting sequence. There are also some lovely subtle touches in the series; it was the second viewing when I realised the relevance of Geillis complaining that she was going to “a fucking barbeque!”

3. Casting
The casting is so nearly perfect. Jamie and Claire are crucial obviously, and for me are spot on to the book; but what really makes Outlander work is the excellent supporting cast. It’s an embarrassment of riches when you can draft in the likes of Tim McInnerny, James Fleet, Douglas Henshall (Nick Cutter!) and Simon Callow for short, slightly mad, guest appearances. A strong supporting cast makes a fictional world work and everyone in Outlander draws you in. My personal favourites are Laura Donnelly as Jenny and Graham McTavish as Dougal, but the honours must go to brave (and utterly terrifying) Tobias Menzies. I’m only sad we’ll never know how the conversation went as his agent tried to explain exactly what was required in this role…

4. Claire
I LOVE Claire – proper big capital letters love. The novel has a great premise, but it was Claire’s strength and humour that kept me reading. She’s a tough, clever, skilled, sweary, funny woman who, in a hyper-masculine world, earns the respect of almost everyone she meets. For me, the really great thing about Claire is that she is an unashamedly, unapologetically sexual being. It is, (although it shouldn’t be in 2015) refreshing and exciting to see a female protagonist who gets what she wants and enjoys herself. Outlander also proves that it is possible to have elegant and dignified sex scenes that are still very erotic.

5. Romance
I like romance. Real life is full of work and bills and toddlers weeing on the carpet (that’s not just my house, right?), so I want to be swept off my feet and I want to feel tingles. And Outlander delivers by the bucket-load. It’s an epic, magical romance which builds slowly and then absolutely sizzles. I also love the casting of Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe; I came to the programme without the expectations of the book so they are Jamie and Claire for me. I love Outlander because it sweeps me off my feet and gives me a world I want to spend time in.

Five reasons I probably shouldn’t

1. Plot holes
Seriously, holes so big you could drive a horse and cart through them. The biggest and most glaringly obvious; when Jamie rescues Claire from Fort William why doesn’t he just kill Randall? This is the man who has horrifically scarred him, raped (as far as he knows) his sister, attempted to rape his wife and put a price on his head – and the only reason given is that Jamie can’t kill an unarmed man? And why doesn’t Dougal just kill Claire and Jamie when they’re on the road? Obviously it’s because Outlander would be a pamphlet rather than an eight book epic, but that shouldn’t be the only reason.

2. Angry Claire
I love Claire, but she is very, very angry. I can understand that if you go for a nice walk and suddenly find yourself 200 years in the past looking down the business end of a musket you’re going to be a bit short-tempered, but it’s hard as a reader to engage with someone who’s annoyed for 700 pages. And I can’t help but think that if she wasn’t so aggressive and unsympathetic to Laoghaire and Father Bain they may not have been quite so keen to set her on fire.

3. The book is too long
There’s a scene in the book where Claire fights wolves with her bare hands. Sometimes the editorial decisions are right there in front of you.

4. The dodgy lines
Outlander contains two of the worst lines I have ever read. Claire gets one and Jamie gets one so at least they’re evenly distributed, but they are teeth-itchingly bad. What’s really upsetting is that they both make it in to the programme.

5. Episode 16
There’s really no way to talk about Outlander without mentioning how much sexual violence there is. Even in a post-Game of Thrones world, episode 16 ‘To Ransom a Man’s Soul’ is brutal and, for me at least, impossible to watch fully. There’s a couple of things here; the first is that there seems to be a weirdly relaxed attitude to rape in areas of the book – the story of Jamie being almost assaulted at age 16 is played for laughs by everybody including Jamie himself. Secondly the programme seems to deal much better with this until the very end when it opts for a staggeringly graphic approach. I know the programme makers have justified this decision, but I’m still not convinced it really adds anything to the narrative. We know Jamie is broken, I’m not sure what we gain by seeing it happen. If you want to read more there’s a really thoughtful article on Entertainment Weekly.

 

So I know it’s wobbly in places, but I love it. I actually love Ronald D Moore’s version a bit more than I love Gabaldon’s, but it’s basically all brilliant.

 

The birthday haul

Happy birthday to me

Ok, so strictly speaking not a haul and one of them is for Booey, but I’m still very happy with this.

The Moth is a book of 50 short stories – they’re all true and were all first told at live storytelling events across America. I rarely do non-fiction and even more rarely do short stories so this will be way out of my comfort zone; always a good thing. It’s also got a beautiful gold and silver embossed cover so I’ll be leaving it artfully lying around the place.

I really don’t need to say anything about A God in Ruins. I love Kate Atkinson and am pretty sure that even her shopping lists are works of literary greatness. This will be brilliant.

Booey’s bonus book is a children’s story written, illustrated and hand lettered by Margaret Atwood. The illustrations and lettering are gorgeous – who knew Margaret Atwood had amazing art skills? The story owes more than a little to Dr Seuss, there’s lots of toddler-friendly repetition and Booey already seems quite taken with it. It also includes a cd of Atwood reading the story, which means that at some point in the future we may enjoy a car journey listening to something other than The Gruffalo repeated 15 times. So that’s good.

And finally, a shiny new bag. As a proud supporter of independent bookshops, my sister bought all three from Mr B’s in Bath. I’ve never been, partly because I haven’t been to Bath in years and partly because I’m afraid that once I go in to that shop I will never, ever leave.