Wild Journey, by A. m. Dassu, illustrated by Joe Lillington, published by Zephyr

 

NB - Although I'm a children's writer, I don't usually write here about children's books. But this one is special - AND it would make a lovely Christmas present, particularly for a child who's interested in nature.

I live near the Somerset Levels, which are famous for the murmurations of thousands of starlings which take place during the winter months. These are extraordinary events: the sound as the vast flocks fly overhead is like a rushing wind, or like great waves crashing onto the shore.

So I was immediately captivated by the murmuration pictured on the cover of A. M. Dassu’s Wild Journey, and by the subtitle: A Flight of Stories Across Deserts and Forests, Cities and Seas. And the book most definitely did not disappoint.

It is a collection of stories about children in different parts of the world, each featuring a murmuration, and with the recurring motif of a black feather. The first story concerns Jamal, who comes from London but is spending a long sort-of holiday in Egypt. Normally he loves his holidays in Egypt, enjoying days out with his mother and grandparents – but this time they are here because his grandfather is ill and confined to bed, and Jamal is bored, and misses his friends and his father.

Then one afternoon, his grandmother takes him to see a murmuration. He is thrilled by the spectacle – but then a falcon goes on the attack, and Jamal rescues a wounded bird which falls to the ground. They take it home, and his mother, who is a vet, binds up the bird’s damaged wing. Jamal becomes attached to the bird – it’s his new friend. But he has to learn the harsh lesson that sometimes the price of loving something is that you have to set it free, to let it go: much as he wants to, he cannot keep the bird – just as, though this is not made at all explicit, he cannot keep his grandfather.

The other stories are very varied. There’s an adventure in the Sahara, an encounter with wolves in Spain, a refugee in an English school, a boy on a French farm struggling to come to terms with a new half-sister. The starlings wheel and dive through them all, linking them gracefully together.

I love this book. There are so many fantasy books for children, often very good – but it’s comparatively rare, and such a delight, to come across a book about real children, dealing with real difficulties in the real world. The stories are beautifully told, and incidentally take the reader on a virtual visit to a variety of different countries. It’s perfect for reading aloud, in class or at bedtime, but also for reading to oneself. The illustrations and the design are gorgeous, celebrating wildlife as well as adding to the stories. This is a book to cherish.

 

 

Madensky Square, by Eva Ibbotson

 

This book is quite luscious. I've just finished it, and I really wish I hadn't. As I mentioned in my last post, about The Seal on the Beach (and probably in lots of others too) the key for me  to a good book is that it creates a whole world: one I can enter and be absorbed by. The world of this book is a particularly lovely one: it's a square in pre-first-world-war Vienna. Now, it so happens that I've been to Vienna. I'm not a massive fan of cities, but there was something about Vienna that I loved. Actually, it probably derives from going to see The Sound of Music when I was fourteen. I loved the look of Austria: the mountains, the castles, the lakes - and the romance of patriots resisting the Nazis. And in real life there were the cakes. And the beautiful buildings and fountains. And the smell of lime blossom. And the glittering paintings of Klimt.

So the square in the book is the square of the title. And the characters of the book are (mostly) the people who live in the square. Which points to another successful element of many of the books I particularly like: the gang. You have it in Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway books, in Mick Herron's Slow Horses series, and in Colin Cotterill's Dr Siri books (for reviews of these, do make use of the search box). And in The Lord of the Rings, of course. In Madensky Square, the 'gang' is headed up by Susanna, a beautiful and very skilled dressmaker, who also narrates. She has a successful business, and she's also a lovely and charismatic person with a sharp sense of humour. And she's very kind. You're probably thinking she's too good to be true, but  somehow, she isn't - or at least I didn't find her so. Some of the other members of the gang are Nini, her irascible, stylish, tough-as-old-boots anarchist assistant; Edith, a bluestocking under the thumb of her ghastle mother; Alice, a milliner and Susanna's best friend, who is hopelessly in love with Edith's small, bandy-legged father; and Herr Huber, a large and very kind butcher who is hopelessly in love with the very beautiful other-worldly Magdalena. And of course there is Susanna's lover, the Field Marshal. There are quite a few more - it's a big cast of characters. 

The book is very definitely character-led, rather than plot-led: there are lots of stories, but there isn't really a single narrative that drives it, other than the story of Susanna's life. It's Vienna itself, and particularly the square, with its chestnut trees and fountain and statue, which underpins the whole thing. Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna in 1925, but she and her mother fled the city for England in 1934 - they were Jewish, and her mother was a writer whose work the Nazis had banned. So perhaps the beautiful city of the book is in a sense a dream city, the unattainable setting of a lost childhood. It's utterly delightful.

Four Seasons In Japan, by Nick Bradley

 

Full disclosure - I read this book in the spring, and this would be a better review if I'd done it then - but there we are, I didn't, so I'll just have to do the best I can. This is the first book I've reviewed here for quite some time, and I want to kick off with a book I really enjoyed - and I liked this one so much that I've already given/recommended it to several friends.

First off, let's look at the cover - because it very much reflects the feel of the book inside. Its lines are clear and elegant: it's beautifully balanced: it exudes calmness and a contemplative feel. The branch at the top bears autumn leaves: the one at the bottom, spring blossom. The title, in a simple, clean font, stands out against the large moon, which in turn is suspended against a blue sky. So we know that nature and the turn of the seasons are going to be important. And the cat? Well, there is a cat in the novel, but this is also a nod to the author, whose first book was called The Cat and the City, and who did a PhD on the cat in Japanese literature. (Though Nick Bradley is English, incidentally, he spent many years in Japan.)

The book has two interlinked stories going on. It starts with Flo, a translator who is going through a difficult time in her personal life - her relationship with Yuki, her Japanese girlfriend, is breaking down, and she isn't handling it very well. 

And then she finds a book which someone has left on her train. It's called The Sound of Water, by Hibiki. She's never heard of the author or rhe publisher - and it has been rather beautifully published. She begins to read.

The story is about a tough old woman called Ayako, who lives in a small country town called Onomichi. We learn pretty soon that her husband and son are both dead, and that her son committed suicide. We learn that she owns a small coffee shop, and that she loves the familiar routine of her days, and her small circle of friends. But something has happened which she knows will disturb that routine: she has had a message from her daughter-in-law to say that her grandson is coming to stay. Throughout the day, the prospect niggles at her: it seems she does not know her grandson well, and is not looking forward to his visit.

He isn't either. He feels he's being sent into exile from the city because he's failed his exams, and the prospect horrifies him. 

At first things don't go at all well between them. But gradually, as one season changes to the next, their relationship develops. Kyo, the boy, learns a great deal - about his father, about the past, about life. And Ayako learns things from Kyo, too.

Flo is fascinated by the story and decides she wants to translate it. But she must first find the author to get his permission - and that turns out to be no easy task.

There's so much more to the book than this. In fact, glancing through the first few pages, I find myself being drawn again into this world, which is so different from my own - particularly that of Kyo and Ayako: I find them more likeable characters than Flo (who could perhaps do with a dose of Ayako's tough love) - and I decide I will read the novel again.

Oh, and the cat has one eye and is called Coltrane. And there are pictures. It's a really lovely book.

Winter Trees

 Since my writing group went online, I've mostly done the weekly tasks I've set them - and it's been fun and quite liberating trying out different things. Most recently, I set them to write a poem about winter. (You can see the task here.) My poem was very generously and kindly received - so here, very trepidatiously, because I know I'm not a poet, it is. 

Winter Trees

They look dead, don’t they?

Beautiful, but dead. That incredibly complex

Network of branches, held aloft against a thrush-egg sky:

An exquisite grey etching, done by the cleverest artist

With the finest pen. But of course,

They are not dead: only resting,

Preparing for spring. It’s all happening

Inside those enigmatic trunks and branches,

Powered by invisible roots and fungal filaments.

All they need from us

Is to be left alone.

 

Their backdrop is the sky.

Sometimes dull grey cloud, perhaps

With a tinge of sulphurous yellow,

A warning of storms ahead. But sometimes –

Ah, sometimes!

They trace their intricate patterns

Against a sky of perfect blue,

Which has a softness summer skies

Can’t match: the chalky blue of

Ancient frescoes. And then too –

That jewel-like blue, that you get

Just before sunset, when in a last splendid gesture,

The sun throws gold at the trees

And they flaunt their splendour

With all the brilliance

Of a mediaeval manuscript.

 

And then again – not often,

But all the more precious for that:

Silvered by frost, they glitter

With icy magic. Or snow falls,

To highlight each stark line,

While below, new shapes appear:

Softly sculpted drifts,

The delicate tracery of birds’ footprints.

And there is

A silence, as the world holds its breath,

Before we arrive, with our sledges and boots,

Our shouts and our litter.

🅲 Sue Purkiss

Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell

 It was announced that Hamnet had won the Women's Prize for Fiction just after I had finished reading it. I haven't read any of the other books on the shortlist, but nonetheless, I'm sure that it's an absolutely worthy winner - it's a marvellous book.

I actually bought the book a month or so ago, but it took a while before I could bring myself to read it. Why so? Well, Hamlet is my favourite Shakespeare play by quite a margin. I taught it for A-level many times, and I've seen several productions, so I know it well. (The best was with Kenneth Branagh as the prince many years ago at Stratford; he managed to speak the verse as if it was the natural language of speech, while at the same time losing none of the poetry - quite brilliant.) There are many lines in it that I love, but there's something about the overall tone of it that really moves me: elegiac, desperately sad.

When I was teaching Shakespeare, I had some notes that I'd written about Shakespeare's life and times which I used to give out as an introduction: it seemed to me that students needed to know where Shakespeare was coming from - literally and metaphorically - in order to be able to understand the verse. So I knew about his life: I knew about Hamnet, his son. 

Then, a few years ago, I was asked to write a book about his life and times for schoolchildren, so I read up on it again. I was amazed at how few actual facts are known about him - even the generally accepted dates given for his life and death are, to an extent, guesswork. But the death of his son at the age of eleven is known, though not the cause of his death. And I noticed, as who could not, that his death was followed not long afterwards by the play with the very similar name; spelling was notoriously a matter of choice, and the similarity was too close to be missed - though the play is based on an old story of a Danish prince with a similar name again, Amleth.

So - I knew that Hamnet was going to be about the death of Shakespeare's son. I knew it was going to hurt, and it does. But the way that Maggie O'Farrell tells the story is really so clever, and so beautifully done, that it's worth the pain of reading about the death of a child.

At the centre, it's about the strange marriage of Shakespeare and his wife, normally known to us as Anne Hathaway, though here called Agnes - perhaps to make us see her afresh. Again, little is known about Anne or about their marriage: mainly that she was several years older than him; that they spent much of their married life apart, he in London and she in Stratford; that they had three children, Susannah and the twins, Hamnet and Judith; and that in his will he left her his 'second-best bed', which has occasioned some discussion.

So Maggie O'Farrell has a lot of leeway. She uses it to create in Agnes a rich, complex character: an unusual woman with a knowledge of medicinal herbs and a mysterious ability to see the future. She and Will - who is never actually named in the book - are very much in love. But she knows, though it hurts her deeply, that his destiny is in London, not in Stratford.

We meet Hamnet straight away. Initially, it is his sister, Judith, who is ill. But with our foreknowledge, we can see that what ails her is the plague, and we know that Hamnet is the one who dies - so even as we warm to this kind and gentle boy, we know that he doesn't have long left. He searches for someone to help his sister, but can't find his mother - the only person around is his abusive grandfather.

The focus then switches to Agnes, who is out gathering herbs. We learn through flashbacks the story of her relationship with Will, touching down from time to time with Hamnet and Judith back in Stratford. It's heartbreaking and rivetting. When Hamnet dies, and Will returns, she cannot believe it when he tells her he will return almost straight away to London: she is understandably furious with him. The way that Maggie O'Farrell resolves this, through the medium of the play, Hamlet, is a quite extraordinary piece of writing.

I'll read this book again. It is quite beautiful.

The Lantern Men, by Elly Griffiths

I first discovered the Dr Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths almost three years ago while on holiday in Norfolk (https://suepurkiss.blogspot.com/2017/04/bookless-in-norfolk-2-dr-ruth-galloway.html). I was on the lookout for something to read, and found the first book, The Crossing Places, in the Norfolk Wildlife Trust visitor centre at Cley. (Which, if you've not been there, is a marvellous place, built on a slight rise and looking across the salt marshes to the sea.)

Ruth's beloved salt marshes

The book was about a forensic archaeologist (a specialist in bones, particularly ancient ones) called Ruth Galloway. Ruth is a woman after my own heart - she hates the gym, wouldn't thank you for a spa experience, enjoys her food and drink maybe a little too much, and is interested in the far-distant past. In this first book, she is asked to help in a police investigation; DCI Nelson is investigating some bones which have been found on the salt marsh, and hoping they are the solution to an unsolved case which has haunted him for some years.

Well, sparks fly. The investigation is a page turner, but the heart of the book, and of the intense loyalty which the series inspires in its readers, is the central group of characters and the relationships between them. As well as Ruth and Nelson, there's Nelson's beautiful wife Michelle, his sharp-tongued mother in Blackpool, his sidekicks Judy and Cloughie, my particular favourite Cathbad the Druid - and others besides. Elly Griffiths writes with a dry humour and a keen eye for the complexity of human relationships - and she continues to do so throughout the series of - so far - twelve books. I don't often re-read books, but I've re-read this whole series at last twice. It's just so nice to be in the company of the gang, and to follow all the unfolding drama of the relationships between them. One of the pleasures is that there is drama, but it's so true to life: people muddle through and make mistakes, and things go wrong and sometimes they go right - and that's just how it is.

The drawback is that once you've read the series and gasped at the final cliff-hanger, you then have a whole year to wait for the next installment. A period of mourning ensues, and that's where I am at the moment, because I've just finished the latest one, The Lantern Men. And what a cracker it is. The gang, though some of them have moved away, are all, by means of a cunning plot, drawn back to the Norfolk coast which is the true home of the series, and into a tale of murder, yes, but also of myth and local legend. I'm not going to say any more than that because I wouldn't dream of spoiling the story for you. (My only slight quibble is that I would have liked a little more Cathbad - but then again, what there is of him is pure vintage.) I tried to read it slowly, to make it last, but there it is. I read it in a day. I think it's one of the best of the whole series, and that's very high praise.

Of course, if you're new to the series, you should start at the beginning. You could read The Lantern Men on its own, but you'll want to know the back stories so you'll end up going back to the beginning anyway - so why not do the right thing and start at the beginning? I envy you, I really do. You have not one, but twelve treats in store.

The story of a book cover

In my last post, (sorry - I know it was some time ago!) I wrote about a book fair I attended in Corsham, Wiltshire, with Sharon Tregenza, Jasbinder Bilal, Chris Vick and others. It was good fun - and it gave me some food for thought.

I had a number of books on display. I'm not a particularly prolific author, and I'm a bit of a butterfly - my books are all quite different. I've always seen this as a disadvantage, but on this occasion, it turned out to be be a good thing, because there was something for (almost) everyone: Spook School and two similar funny fantasy stories for younger children; Emily's Surprising Voyage, which is a story set on Brunel's ship the SS Great Britain in the 19th century, beautifully illustrated by James De La Rue; Jack Fortune, which is a middle grade historical novel about a boy who goes plant-hunting in the Himalayas at the end of the 18th century, in search of the elusive blue rhododendron; and Warrior King, which is a novel about Alfred the Great.

They all attracted attention - except for Warrior King. The reason for this was pretty obvious.

The book was originally published by Walker. I loved researching and writing it, and I had high hopes that it would make out of Alfred a hero of the stature of King Arthur - with whom Alfred is often confused. Arthur is, or was then (this was before Bernard Cornwell's books and the subsequent TV series) much more famous than Alfred, and this struck me as particularly unfair as Arthur isn't even real - or at least, the Arthur of the stories isn't.

They designed a beautiful cover for it - this one. It was blue, and had a hunky, brooding warrior on it. The sales team, I was told, were keen to appeal to boys who were interested in Lord of the Rings, and it had that kind of feel to it. I loved it - though I was a little concerned when a bookseller who had hitherto been very supportive of my books expressed concern, asking how could he sell a book with a cover like that to girls? And there was every reason that girls would like it: two thirds of it is seen from the point of view of Aethelflaed, or Fleda as I called her in the book. She had been a great discovery: I needed a child for a point-of-view character when I came to write about grown-up Alfred (the first bit of the book is about his childhood) - and was delighted to find he had a daughter of just the right age - who as an adult became a ruler in her own right of a neighbouring kingdom, Mercia. So she was obviously a girl of character who learned a good deal from her father. And there's also a charismatic British woman called Cerys - and a brave Frankish princess called Judith Martel.

Anyway, for whatever reason, the book didn't sell in zillions and went out of print. I got the rights back, and decided to reissue it through Amazon Createspace. Lots of adults had read it and enjoyed it, so I thought I would try marketing it as a book for a wider audience, not only for children. And so the cover I made for it is sombre and moody: I used a photograph of floods on the Somerset Levels near Athelney, where much of the story takes place. There is a regular trickle of sales, small but satisfying.

But at the book fair, I watched as children's eyes slid over Warrior King and lighted on Jack Fortune - clearly because it was sending out signals that here was a book for grown-ups. Hm, I thought.

So I decided to bring out a new edition that would a) be clearly for children/young people, and b) would make it obvious that it wasn't just about the king, but also about his daughter. I toyed with various ideas as to how to do this; and then I remembered the work of a friend on Instagram called Norlemann, who posts wonderful pictures of Viking re-enactors in Norway. On impulse, I sent him a message to explain what I was after, and ask if he had anything I could use.

Now, I called him a friend just then, but he was only  a friend in the sense that I followed him and often 'liked' his pictures. It turns out he's an art director and professional photographer - and yet he agreed to do a special shoot, with his daughter as Aethelflaed - just because, he said he and his daughter, Minna, believe that historical fiction is valuable and there should be more of it. Such kindness from a stranger! And when the photographs arrived, I thought they were stunning.

The next hurdle was fitting the photograph I eventually chose - with help from friends - into an Amazon template. That wasn't as easy as it could have been. In the end, I used Canva to add title and text to the front cover - and here it is.

It would be lovely to hear your thoughts - but do forgive me if I'm not able to implement them. There are some changes which would be easy to make, but others would be very fiddly and might possibly result in my brain imploding. (Basically, changes to the front cover would be tricky: changes to the rest of it, less so.)

All I need to do now is add the content of the book. But first I will tweak it; and in a prominent place there will be an acknowledgement of the generosity - and skill - of Lasse and Minna. Oh, yes, and then it would be really very nice if it would sell lots of copies to the children for whom I originally wrote it...

Showing off!

When I was at school in Derbyshire, 'showing off' was probably the very worst thing you could do - possibly apart from being 'mardy'. (Which means being a wimp, a crybaby.)

I still feel hesitant about showing off, but I'm going to do it anyway. After all, if I can't show off on my own blog, where on earth can I?

So here are two bits of news about my new children's book, Jack Fortune and the Search for the Hidden Valley. The first is that it's been chosen to be part of The Summer Reading Challenge 2018. Organised by The Reading Agency and administered in libraries, this seeks to keep children reading over the summer holidays. Each year they have a different theme, and this year's is Mischiefmakers - and Jack is certainly a maker of mischief! Here he is, together with all the other books chosen this year - he's on the second row from the bottom, fifth from the left.

And the second is that Jack has been included in a round-up of the best books of 2017 by Books for Topics, an organisation that recommends books for use in primary schools. I'm thrilled to see him in both of these!

The Tobacconist, by Robert Seethaler

Robert Seethaler is an Austrian living in Berlin. His previous, very successful book, A Whole Life, is the story of a simple man who lived in the mountains, only leaving them to go to war. You might expect the main part of the book to be about his experience of war, because surely that's the obvious, the most dramatic bit to choose to write about; but no. As the title suggests, it's about the whole of his life - which isn't packed with incident (though there is one tragic occurrence): it's essentially a quiet life.

This strikes a chord with me. I've often been told that my own books are too quiet - and I can see that there's some justice in this. Bernard Cornwell and I have both written books about Alfred the Great and his daughter Aethelflaed. He's written a whole series, which have sold in squillions and been made into a successful TV series. I've written one book, originally intended for teenagers (Warrior King, since you ask) and a short story in an anthology, which didn't sell in squillions. The Last Kingdom, Cornwell's book, has bucketsful of gore, lots of drama, and a gorgeous hero. Mine has some jolly nice people, one cracking villain, a silver-eyed magic lady, a sensitive hero troubled by doubt, and rather less gore. It's pretty easy to draw a lesson from this - yet I'm still drawn to subtle stories about quiet people. I suppose the trick is to write them so well that the drama is just as powerful, despite the lack of Sturm und Drang - sorry, just showing off that I did German at school - it means 'storm and stress'. And it does link back to Seethaler - rather neatly, though I says it as shouldn't - because Seethaler writes compellingly about ordinary people - quiet people - and the moments which affect and change them.

In An Ordinary Life, he writes beautifully about how his protagonist falls in love - but this is only a part of his life, though it is a very significant one. The things that happen in the wider world have an effect on his life, of course - but they are merely a backdrop to it. In The Tobacconist, what is happening in the wider world is much more intense - because the book begins in 1937 and most of the action takes place in Vienna. The hero, 17 year-old Franz, at the beginning is living a comfortable, rather spoilt life in a village by a lake with his mother. But then his mother's 'protector' dies in an accident and money is suddenly short. So Franz is sent off to be an apprentice to an old friend of his mother's, a tobacconist in Vienna. Franz, a simple and open character, copes surprisingly well with life in the city. He enjoys his work, gets on well with his rather crusty employer, makes friends with one of the customers, a certain Professor Freud, and falls in love with an unsuitable girl.

But Jews are welcome customers at the shop, and the Gestapo come calling. When the tobacconist is arrested, Franz feels he must protest.

Like An Ordinary Life, The Tobacconist is a short book. It doesn't have a complicated structure, it doesn't have a huge cast of characters, there is no big secret to be revealed, not much by way of twists or turns, no horrifying accounts of torture or interrogation. Yet it works - the story grips. Ordinary lives have their own drama; we all have a story to tell. Only we aren't all good at telling it. Seethaler is.

Bookless in Norfolk - well, almost. City of Shadows, by Michael Russell

I’m on holiday at the moment, in North Norfolk. I’ve never been here before; it’s a green, rolling landscape, with unspoilt villages whose houses are faced with flint pebbles or made of russet brick; clear streams, daffodils and hellebores, ponderous pheasants, swooping owls at dusk  – and a clean, breezy coastline edged with marshes teeming with lapwings, terns and little white egrets.

A watery bit of Norfolk.

What it doesn’t have – well, our particular little bit of it anyway – is internet or phone service. This is because, a few days ago, a farmer drove his tractor into a telegraph pole and took out all the cables – and this apparently will take at least a week to fix.  It’s quite interesting really; it’s as if we’ve gone back in time, or as if we're cut off from the outside world. The village shop can’t take cards or ring in orders. A van driver wanders in looking bemused; his sat nav has suddenly stopped working, and he can’t find the house he’s looking for.

And I’ve run out of reading matter. I hunt through the books in the cottage we’re staying in, certain I’ll find something there. I try three. The first is painfully badly written. The second – I can’t even remember the second. The third is a Ruth Rendell, and I have high hopes, but in this particular novel, she seems to be grappling very uneasily with notions of political correctness and with characters with whose background and way of life she is palpably ill at ease. The result is uncomfortable and rather dull.

So I hunt through my Kindle. I can’t download anything new, because there is no wifi. I go back, in search of something I haven’t yet read. And I find this: The City of Shadows, by Michael Russell. I don't remember it. I probably downloaded it before I was going away somewhere, in a sudden panic that I might run out of things to read – an Amazon recommendation, perhaps. It’s a detective story, and it’s set partly in Ireland and partly in Poland. Three reasons for me to be interested, so I start to read.

Set in the early 1930s, it begins with an evocative description of night-time Dublin, with the moon shining on the River Liffey. ‘Yet sometimes, when the moon was low and heavy over the city, the Liffey seemed to remember the light of the moon and the stars in the mountains, and the nights when its cascading streams were the only sound.’ Peaceful yet brooding, this sentence alone is enough reason to read on. But the peace doesn’t last; a few pages in, a young gay man is brutally murdered. It’s clear that the Church, and a high-ranking priest, are involved.

Cut to two years later, and Detective Sergeant Stefan Gillespie is trying to catch an illegal abortionist. A young woman goes into his house, and Stefan – who is himself half German - and his constable, Dessie, assume that she is seeking an abortion at the hands of the German doctor. But things are not as they seem. The woman, Hannah Rosen, who is Jewish, is not there on her own account: she’s searching for a missing friend. And Dr Keller turns out to have powerful protectors who warn Stefan off.

Stefan, a widower with a young son who lives with Stefan’s parents on a farm outside the city, agrees to help Hannah. But things become increasingly murky; and Stefan has his own problems with a fanatical priest who wants to take his son away from him, because he believes Stefan is not giving him a properly Catholic upbringing.

Stefan’s desire to help Hannah, and to uncover the truth behind Keller’s involvement and subsequent smoothly effected escape, takes him to Gdansk. The plot deepens in complexity, and Russell helped me to understand a great deal more than I did before about both the position of the Church in Ireland, and about the history of Gdansk – which was a few years later, of course, the place where Hitler’s troops invaded, lighting the touch paper for war.

But it’s also beautifully written, and the characters are subtle, complex and very believable. (I hate to think there could really be fanatics such as the village priest, but I fear the evidence is all too strong that there were - and are - people who are so blinded by a perverted vision of faith that they are capable of appalling cruelty.) It’s a very good book.

Next time – another fruit of being bookless in Norfolk!

Coleridge's Cottage at Nether Stowey

A couple of weeks ago, while the weather was still sharp and bright and frosty (as opposed to dim and damp and dismal, as it is now), we went down to Nether Stowey, which nestles at the foot of the Quantocks, not far from the coast of West Somerset. It's a beautiful spot. Close by is Alfoxden, the house where William Wordsworth came to stay in 1797. He came there in part to recuperate after a turbulent few years in which he became inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution (and fell in love with a French girl, Annette Vallon, who had his child), only later to be horrified by its excesses.

A particular reason for choosing this area was that his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was living in a cottage in Nether Stowey with his wife Sara and their baby, Hartley. They were very close at this time, and were collaborating on a book of poems which they were to call Lyrical Ballads - a book which was to create a colossal shift in the language of poetry, and in the kinds of subjects which inspired it. The two poets wanted to move away from the elegant, mannered artificiality of the Georgian Age, in favour of something they saw as much closer to life and to nature and to a deeper reality, something fresh and new and exciting.

Alfoxden is the white house near the centre of the picture.

Alfoxden is a large white house which looks out towards the sea; Wordsworth was able to afford it because he'd recently been left a generous legacy by a friend. Coleridge's cottage, which has just been restored by the National Trust, is small and must have been very cramped for a family. After its recent refurbishment, it looks charming. But when the Coleridges first rented it, the house was suffering from damp and neglect. Samuel and Sara worked hard to make it more habitable; Sara sewed curtains and I expect they white-washed the walls; regular fires dried it out - and friends, particularly Wordsworth, dropped in regularly. The conversation must have effervesced - it was such an exciting time, with new developments in astronomy, ballooning, exploring and science: a time when there wasn't the division between art and science that there is now, a time when anything seemed possible. These men were close to the centre of it all. So was Dorothy, Wordsworth's sister. But Sara? Well, probably not so much. Sara did not,have an easy time of it. There was a story we were told at the cottage: that one morning, Sara was warming milk for the baby on the fire. She accidentally spilled some of it on Samuel's foot, scalding it so that he was unable to go on the walk he was planning with a couple of friends.

He was disappointed, cross with Sara and very sorry for himself, and he limped off outside to sit under a lime tree and gaze out in the direction his friends had gone. And according to the story, this was the starting place for his poem, The Lime-Tree Bower. It's an eloquent, passionate poem, full of awareness of loss, the passing of time and separation from friends.

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
To that still roaring dell, of which I told...

But I have to say - I feel sorry for Sara. I mean - he missed a walk with his pals - it wasn't the end of the world! She didn't mean to spill the milk. And if he'd been helping her, instead of sitting around planning his day out with his friends, perhaps she wouldn't have been in such a fluster and it would never have happened. But that was the way it was with them. The marriage wasn't to last.

The Trust has done a brilliant job with the cottage. At the moment, it is decorated as it might have been in Georgian times; there is a Christmas tree, but it's hung with dried slices of orange and (perhaps?) little bunches of cinnamon sticks - not with glass baubles and tinsel. (I had always thought Christmas trees were a Victorian invention, but apparently this is not so: Queen Charlotte is thought to have introduced them, in the 1780s.) There's a scent of cloves and other spices, and wood smoke from the fire. The volunteers are dressed in clothes of the time, and they're knowledgeable and very welcoming; you're encouraged to touch things and try clothes on, to sit down at a desk and write a message with a quill pen dipped in ink - not easy! - to read from the extensive collection of books that line the walls of the reading room.

And that morning, someone sat by the fire in the tiny parlour and read some of the poems that were well-known at the time - including The Night Before Christmas, which was popular then in America. But most memorably, he read an excerpt from Coleridge's own Frost at Midnight. At his feet was a wooden cradle, and he rocked it gently with his foot. The firelight flickered on the walls, and when he began - very beautifully - to read, it was as if we were actually there, with Coleridge himself, in the middle of the night, with nothing stirring except a candle flame and the occasional mouse.

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

The parlour. It's much smaller than it looks in this picture.

I did English at Durham, and I remember a good many lectures on the Romantic poets and the significance of Lyrical Ballads. But I think I learned more about Coleridge and Wordsworth and what they were trying to do in one hour in Nether Stowey than I did in many hours in lecture rooms and libraries. A sense of place - such a powerful force, and here so skilfully mediated.

Afterwards, we went down to the coast at East Quantoxhead. The rock formations there are quite extraordinary: I wonder what those late 18th century visitors to Coleridge, intensely curious and observant, made of them?

 A version of this post was first published yesterday, on The History Girls.

Looking at the Stars, by Jo Cotterill

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a gathering of children's writers in Oxfordshire. It's an annual event, held in a mellow golden stone manor house owned by the Society of Friends - the Quakers. It's a lovely setting, and the conference is always a great opportunity to relax and re-charge the writing batteries in the company of other writers.

This year it was all that, but it was also enormous FUN. There were drama workshops (hand on heart, I have to say my Somerset pie-seller had to be heard to be believed, though even that palled into insignificance beside the panel discussion examining the TV potential of poodles juggling avocados), hilarious (no, really) insights into the financial constraints of publishing, and a wonderful variety of readings from works-in-progress, ranging from the chilling-and-absolutely-spell-binding (Katherine Langrish) to the oh-please-stop-our-sides-are-achingly funny from John Dougherty. And outside the set events, there were of course hundreds of conversations about the ups and downs and twists and turns of the writing world.

Charney Manor

Everyone takes a few of their books and leaves them lying around on windowsills and shelves, and on the last morning, bartering takes place, of the you-can-have-my-book-if-I-can-have-one-of-yours variety. (I always find this a bit tricky, because I want everyone else's books, but never think anyone could really, seriously want one of mine.) Anyway, I came home with a lovely little selection, and the first one I read was Jo Cotterill's Looking at the Stars.

Now, I had heard of this book, and I knew that it was up for a number of awards - it was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the UKLA Award, the Oxfordhire Book Award and the Nottinghamshire Book Award - and probably for others too. But I didn't know what it was about. I did know that in the past Jo has written contemporary, hard-edged fiction for teenagers, and that more recently she'd written a series called Sweethearts for 'tweenagers'; and looking at the cover, which shows the silhouettes of two children holding hands against a background of stars and a sort of mosaic pattern, I imagined that this was going to be a sort of romance with perhaps a touch of magic or fantasy.

But it's not. The story is set in an imaginary country, but it's not a fantasy country. It's a paradigm of all the countries which are governed by a repressive regime, where girls and women are not allowed to speak unless they are spoken to, where certain groups are purposely turned into scapegoats, where death is dealt out at a whim, and where the uncertain and desperately hard life of a refugee seems to offer the only chance of safety.

The main character is Amina. At the beginning of the story, where she is living with her family, in poverty but just about in safety, her inability to conform and her lively imagination are seen as dangerous disadvantages. But when their live are turned upside down, these very qualities are the ones which will save her and those around her. There is a magical moment when she tells her first story in the refugee camp, to try and reach out to a little boy who has been traumatised by things he has seen. One by one, people from neighbouring lean-tos and tents creep closer, drawn by the power of Amina's story-telling. Like Scheherezade, she tells a story each night: news spreads, and while they listen to the stories, the refugees are reminded that other lives are possible, that there may be something beyond the horror.

As Jo says in the notes at the end of the novel, it's 'about hope and human resilience'. But it's also about the power of stories. In a sense I was right, because there is magic in it - just not of the wand-and-wizard variety.

Have you read any good teenage novels lately? It would be great to have some recommendations!

Me and A Game of Thrones...

... or, clutching at the coat-tails of fame!

A few days ago, I was rootling about on Google, checking whether their new algorithm has made my website impossibly difficult to find (it hasn't - phew.) By accident, I got onto Images, rather than Web, and I was intrigued to see that alongside a few pictures of me and of people I know, there were lots of people I didn't recognise at all. I scrolled down, and then I noticed this picture of me with two school children. It looks as if we're all having fun, doesn't it? I'd never seen it before, so I visited the page it came from.

It was featured in a newspaper article. And the reason for that is the girl on the left. The lovely smile may put you off track, but are the large dark eyes familiar? Well, if you're a Game of Thrones fan they should be - because this is Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark!

Apparently, this is one of a number of photos of a younger Maisie which were released to celebrate her 18th birthday. I get a name-check in the article:

One picture also reveals that Game of Thrones is not the first time she has been involved with fantasy novels.

In 2009, Maisie and fellow student Joe Knight met the author of Warrior King and Daughters of Time, Sue Purkiss, at Norton Hill School.

Warrior King is not exactly a fantasy novel - it's about Alfred the Great, and his daughter, Aethelflaed - but it does have an element of fantasy (probably my favourite character in the book, Cerys) - and the Dark Age world would be easily recognisable to GOT fans. And actually, Aethelflaed, who is also the subject of the story I wrote for Daughters of Time, has a fair bit in common with Arya - both the daughters of kings, both tomboys and good fighters, both loyal and brave. (Though Daughters of Time wasn't out when I visited Maisie's school.)

Such fun! It's sent me back to the books - I'd read the first two some time ago, but given up when all my favourite characters kept getting killed off in ever more gruesome ways. Am reading Book 3 at the moment - and guess who's my favourite character now? Fingers crossed she survives...

Reading the detectives 1: Inspector Montalbano

I’ve enjoyed reading detective series for a very long time. I was trying to think for how long: I certainly remember ‘discovering’ Agatha Christie, probably in my late twenties after a colleague proudly showed me his collection of ancient Penguin editions. I borrowed one and that was it, I was hooked. Then I went on to Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham etc, and later, I crossed the Atlantic (in spirit) to enter the super-cool world of Raymond Chandler.

But actually I think it started way before then. A lot of the series I borrowed from the children’s library were, in a way, detective stories – the Famous Five and the Malcolm Saville books, for example, both centred round a mystery – and usually a dastardly criminal – who had to be investigated by sleuthing children.

Recently, though, having a Kindle has moved my enjoyment of the genre up to a whole new level. It began when a friend recommended the Montalbano series, by Andrea Camilleri. (Incidentally, Camilleri wrote the first of this massively successful and much-loved series when he was 69. I find that curiously comforting.) I downloaded the first and loved it. For anyone who hasn’t seen or heard of Montalbano, he is an eccentric, short-tempered but very lovable Sicilian detective inspector. He lives in a house right on the edge of a beach, and often goes for an early morning swim to clear his mind. Probably the most important thing in his life is food – and woe betide anyone who interrupts his enjoyment of a good meal, or who serves him up a bad one. Other objects of his affection are his team – lascivious Mimi, loyal Fazio and the utterly bonkers Caterella; his long-distance girlfriend Livia, and his best friend Ingrid, the utterly beautiful six foot Swedish blonde, who helps him out in so many ways.

Catarella, Montalbano (aka Luca Zingaretti), Fazio and Mimi - from the Italian TV series

Like all the best detectives, Salvo Montalbano is very much his own man. He’s left-wing, cynical, and a natural rebel who loves to wind up his superiors and lives in terror of being promoted. He doesn’t toe the party line, and he certainly doesn’t follow procedures. He’s a maverick who inspires loyalty and admiration – even from the criminal fraternity.

So – I read the first one. Then his publishers did a very clever thing. They put the first chapter of the second book at the end of the first one. So, just at the point where you are reluctantly dragging yourself away from the sun-drenched shores of Sicily, you’re offered another chance. What harm can it do? You read the first chapter. You realise that not only are you being offered a brand new adventure – you are also being given the chance to pick up the threads left dangling in the first. And that’s it – you’re hooked. You don’t even have to get out of bed. With a few taps on the screen, it’s done: the second book is there. And so it goes on.

Young Montalbano, played by Michele Riordano

This cunning ploy certainly helps the publishers – but it helps you, the reader, too. You don’t have to waste time till you can get to a bookshop or till you can order the next book from the library – you can read the whole series end-to-end. So there’ll be none of that forgetting what happened earlier on in the series (well, you’d better hope there isn’t, because one thing it isn’t easy to do with a Kindle is to flick back through the pages to check on something). You get a clear sense of the series arc; of how the characters are developing, how they are affected by their experiences. In the case of Montalbano, you also begin to get a sense of the social and political context of the books, and of Camilleri’s own concerns about Italy and how it is governed.

But every good series comes to an end, so what did I read next? Well, for that you’ll have to wait till next time.

But meanwhile, PLEASE tell me about your own favourite detective novels in the comments. I'm on the lookout for my next series.

The Snarling of Wolves, by Vivian French

Vivian French deftly uses elements of fairy-tale and myth to create the setting of The Snarling of Wolves; so, for instance, we find a (Less) Enchanted Forest, three Ancient Crones (who, like the Greek Fates, weave a magical web), more princes and princesses than you can shake a broomstick at, werewolves, zombies, a faithful troll - and an intelligence network of bats, whose leader, Marlon, wisecracks away like a character from Raymond Chandler.

The heroine, Gracie Gillypot, is a Trueheart, someone who brings out the good in people. The hero is Prince Marcus, who, unlike most of the other Royals in the Five Kingdoms, is brave, bright and adventurous. Gracie lives outside the Five Kingdoms (which are quite small, as Marcus realises when he looks down on them from the top of a tower), in the Less Enchanted Forest with the afore-mentioned Ancient Crones. The Crones are also responsible for keeping Foyce Undershaft safely away from the public. Foyce is half girl, half werewolf - and all bad. She hates Gracie, whom she blames for her captivity, and concocts a cunning plan to get her own back on the other girl and her beloved Marcus. Her hatred is the engine that sets the plot in motion.

The story moves at a swift pace and is liberally sprinkled with funny dialogue and great characters, as well as a generous scattering of fairy dust. I particularly liked the Ancient Crones (like calling to like, no doubt...) and the less ancient but still pretty elderly Queen Bluebell - but was also strangely drawn to the splendidly wicked Foyce and the conflicted but ultimately principled werewolves. All these are brought visually to life by Ross Collins' splendid illustrations. I wish I could show you some; you can get the idea from the cover with its magnificent werewolf, but you really need to see the full-page line drawings too. The artist clearly had a lot of fun, and he adds greatly to the reader's enjoyment of the book and understanding of the characters and their environment.

All these elements are very fine, but the absolute tour-de-force is the ending. All the characters, and all the different strands of the story, are brought together (by means of exceptionally skillful plotting) in a stunning set piece, where the good triumph, the wicked are overthrown, the fairly average change for the better, the misunderstood receive a sympathetic hearing, and the onlookers - and - readers can only cheer in admiration and delight. I can't tell you any more about it because it would spoil it - but no word of a lie, I haven't admired an ending as much since I read John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany.

This is the sixth in the Tales from the Five Kingdoms series, which began with The Robe of Skulls. You could read it as a standalone, but why would you? Better by far to read the whole series. And if anyone from Dreamworks or Disney is reading this (and why wouldn't they be?) - please note that this series would make an amazing animation. Oh, what you couldn't do with the path-with-a-mind-of-its-own, the troll who regularly loses his head, the silly princesses and the sinister Foyce!

I'd say the core audience would be 9-12 year olds. But as with so many children's books, you really don't have to be a child to enjoy it.

Cover Your Eyes, by Adele Geras

I had scheduled this to come out on Tuesday, my regular day - but the book came out yesterday, and it's all very exciting, so I thought, why wait? And so here it is.

Cover Your Eyes, published by Quercus, is a welcome return to writing for adults from Adele Geras, who is also a much-loved writer of books for children and young adults (notably Troy and the Egerton Hall trilogy). It tells the story of two women, the charming and rather mysterious eighty-year-old Eva Conway, once a famous fashion designer, and Megan Pritchard, a young journalist who is sent to interview her.

Megan has been having an affair with her married boss, Simon. At the beginning of the book, her hopes that he will leave his wife for her are dashed when he tells her that the affair must end because his wife is pregnant. Shattered and deeply wounded, she leaves her job. Her father is in New Zealand and her mother is dead; the only person she can confide in is her best friend Jay - and Jay is in America. The only positive thing in her world at the moment is an article she has written about Eva Conway. When it comes out, however, she finds it has been edited – badly, she thinks – by Simon. She becomes fixated on the idea that she must take a copy of the magazine to Eva and explain why the text is not the same as the one she had sent Eva for approval.

And so the action moves to Salix House, where Eva’s daughter, Rowena, has told her that her beloved house (in trust for Rowena to avoid death duties) must be sold, because they can’t afford to keep it up. It makes far more sense, she says, for them all to move to London, where Rowena works. Eva is distraught. Salix House means everything to her: it ‘had been at the same time a source of happiness and a repository of memories, many of which made her shiver even now.’ The difficult memories, we find, concern her marriage, but they go back even further, to when Eva first arrived in England from Germany many years ago.

Despite her own troubles, Eva is concerned by Megan's unhappiness. Although on the surface they would seem to have little in common, they are in tune in a way in which Eva and her daughter clearly are not. Rowena is urgently looking for a temporary nanny for her two daughters, and it quickly dawns on everyone that if Megan were to take on the job, it would solve a number of problems all at the same time.

The book’s prologue has already suggested that there is something mysterious and disturbing at Salix House. ‘She’s there. I’ve covered up her reflection in the mirror but I know she’s there. I’m under the blankets. I can’t breathe...’ There are things far back in Eva’s past which she has never been able to face, and, perhaps because of her own unhappiness, Megan too begins to see fleeting images in mirrors and to sense a restless presence. So both their stories unfold: we gradually find out about Eva’s past, whilst at the same time Megan’s present and future unfold.

Eva is a fascinating character – strong but also vulnerable, loving but apparently unable to love her own daughter, capable but oddly passive. I felt like cheering when she finally faced up to the past and took charge of her future, and I'd actually quite like a whole book just about her. (The descriptions of her dress designs, for instance, are delicious and intriguing.) With Megan, on the other hand, I felt quite cross, but that’s probably because I’m a fair bit closer to Eva’s age than I am to Megan’s, so that when Megan is agonising over Simon, I feel a little impatient with her – can’t she see how awful he is? When the truth, of course is, that she can’t, because she’s never been in love before.

This is the perfect book to curl up with on a dreary winter’s evening. You will not want to put it down till you have unravelled the mystery of Salix House, and – unless you are very cynical indeed! – you will be delighted at the way that everything is resolved. Adele Geras is expert at handling the intertwining narratives, at drip-feeding clues about Eva’s past, and at ratchetting up the tension. A haunting tale, in more ways than one!

Wanting: by Richard Flanagan

I was given this book for my birthday by my son. I didn’t realise till my husband helpfully pointed it out to me that Richard Flanagan is also the author of A Narrow Road To The Deep North, which has just won the Man Booker prize – and which I had given my son for his birthday back in August.

So, moving swiftly on past this lamentable evidence of my inability to remember titles and authors – let's talk about Wanting.

Set in the late 1830s, Wanting skilfully links two stories which on the face of it should have no meeting point. The first relates to an Aborigine girl called Mathinna (though, prophetically as it turns out, she has been christened ‘Leda’ by the Englishman in charge of the settlement where she lives, on a small island between what is now Tasmania, and Australia). The second concerns Charles Dickens, and the beginning of his affair with Ellen Ternan.

The link is a well-to-do English woman, Lady Jane Franklin. When we meet her, she is trying to

salvage the reputation of her husband, Sir John. He has disappeared while exploring the polar regions, and she is distressed by rumours that the expedition ended in cannibalism. Knowing that Charles Dickens has the ear of the nation, she appeals to him to help her end the rumours and restore her husband’s reputation.

Dickens is unhappy. His beloved daughter Dora has just died, and his marriage has become hollow. He throws himself into writing a play about the expedition, which at first is produced as one of his fêted home entertainments, but which is so successful that he decides to put on a professional version. One of the actresses is Ellen Ternan, and the rest – well, you know the saying.

Flanagan, through a narrative which switches from one story to another, and from one time to another, gradually reveals the story of Mathinna, and how she is the catalyst which eventually brings about the failed expedition. It is a terrible story. It’s not just Mathinna’s story: it’s the story of colonialism and specifically of the destruction of the aboriginal way of life, in which the profound victims are the aborigines, but their oppressors are also ultimately degraded and destroyed.

Wanting is a hard read, because it’s so relentlessly sad. Dickens is deeply unhappy, but so is his wife. Ellen is thrilled by Dickens’ attentions – but we know that the affair will not end happily for her. Mathinna is happy for a short while, but not for long. Lady Jane, unable to have children, takes up Mathinna as an experiment in education. But the child becomes – like Ellen – the object of an obsession. Ellen is many years younger than Dickens, and, dazzled by his celebrity, is arguably exploited by him. But there is no argument at all about Sir John’s abuse of, and subsequent unspeakably cruel destruction of Mathinna as a result of his obsession. Even so, he is not a pantomime villain. Flanagan shows us who and what Sir John is - and there are things to like about him; he shows us human nature in all its disturbing complexity.

From what I’ve heard about A Narrow Road to The North, based on Flanagan’s father’s experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war, that’s an even less comfortable, if at least equally remarkable read. Once, when I was a sixth-former, I went to a conference at Manchester University. One of the talks was about comedy and tragedy. The speaker suggested that  the two forms are just different ways of looking at the human condition. With tragedy, the writer considers the life of the individual – which is ultimately tragic because it ends in death. With comedy, the writer takes a broader view and considers humanity as a whole. It’s a distinction that’s always stayed with me, though I’m not sure how useful it really is: I mention it here because I want to find a way of suggesting that Flanagan’s bleak vision is not the only way of looking at life.

In other words – if you want a happy ending (and I really do like a happy ending!), Flanagan is not the writer for you. But if you are in the mood to think, and to face up to some of the darkest corners of the human soul, then he undoubtedly is.

Next week: a brand new new adult novel ( released later this week) from Adele Geras. Lovely!