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Deirdre Chapman

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May 2014

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Stitching together an author profile on the terrace of my garden on the Greek island where the opening scene of The Noontide Sun is set I have to start at the end - the past few years during which my sons and I have planted a garden in our favourite place, the island of Paros, many of whose locations have been borrowed for my fictional island of Kryptos.

The intensity of the blue and white island-scape of the Cyclades has seduced many writers, most notably Lawrence Durrell, as it does those who fetch up here for a few weeks in the sun and find themselves experiencing so much more. So it was with my husband and me and our first two sons when we fetched up here in 1969. We returned as often as we could, adding a third son along the way, and no Stitching together an author profile on the terrace of my garden on the Greek island where the opening scene of The Noontide Sun is set I have to start at the end - the past few years during which my sons and I have planted a garden in our favourite place, the island of Paros, many of whose locations have been borrowed for my fictional island of Kryptos.

The intensity of the blue and white island-scape of the Cyclades has seduced many writers, most notably Lawrence Durrell, as it does those who fetch up here for a few weeks in the sun and find themselves experiencing so much more. So it was with my husband and me and our first two sons when we fetched up here in 1969. We returned as often as we could, adding a third son along the way, and now our grandchildren love the island as much as their fathers did.

I was born in the small seaside and links golf course town of Carnoustie in the east of Scotland and became a journalist in Glasgow where I met my husband, also a journalist, and we raised our sons. It is still my home for the greater part of the year.

My father-in-law was a poet who spearheaded the Scottish literary renaissance as well as the stirring of Scottish identity that has led to the current separation debate, and my husband was heavily involved in the politics of the movement.

My literary references were quite different. I loved the oblique style of earlier British women writers, in particular Muriel Spark, but before her Rose Macaulay, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Stella Gibbon and Elizabeth Taylor. Early John Updike, particularly the short stories, Philip Roth, Anne Tyler and Donna Tartt are all favourites. For atmosphere – the tug of place on a susceptible mind, in the case of his Border Trilogy, Mexico – I have a huge admiration for Cormac McCarthy. Perhaps my single favourite book is Ian McEwen’s Saturday which I find close to perfect.

In The Noontide Sun I have sought to capture the spell that the Greek island landscape casts on its visitors as the background to a literary thriller that I hope will make page-turning and evocative holiday reading.
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Deirdre Chapman's Blog

Under an Aegean sun.

Last night I ate seafood souvlaki amidst the hum of half a dozen languages at the tiny table-crammed Venetian harbour in the village of Naoussa on the Greek island of Paros. Moored out on the marina beyond the fishing caiques were a Turkish gulet and four hundred-foot motor yachts. The narrow bouanvillea-hung passages of the village were stalked by beautiful people and lined with boutiques.
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Published on July 03, 2014 03:13

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Deirdre Chapman’s books

Average rating: 3.5 · 14 ratings · 3 reviews · 9 distinct works

	The Panther Book of Scottish Short Stories by James Campbell (Editor), George Mackay Brown (Contributor), Deirdre Chapman (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 3.43 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1984	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Noontide Sun 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2014 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A History of Scottish Women's Writing by Douglas Gifford (Editor), Dorothy McMillan (Editor), Moira Burgess (Contributor) 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1997 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Scottish Short Stories 1986 by Neil Paterson (preface), William Andrew (Contributor), Deirdre Chapman (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 2.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1986 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Badlands really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2025	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Roomful of Birds: Scottish Short Stories 1990 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1990 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	MacDiarmid Centenary Issue by Joy Hendry (Editor), Michael Grieve (Contributor), Deirdre Chapman (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1992	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Scottish Short Stories 1979 by Valerie Gillies (Preface), Arthur Young (Contributor), Alasdair Gray (Contributor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1979 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Scottish Short Stories 1974 by George Mackay Brown (Contributor), Jeremy Bruce-Watt (Contributor), Tom Buchan (Contributor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1974	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Deirdre Chapman (?)

“When they watched The Third Man, which was often, too often in Charlotte's opinion, her mother would pause on the two graveyard scenes, the first when the man who was not Harry Lime was disinterred, the second where the real Harry Lime took his place. "That's our grave," she would say. "Or pretty damn close to it.”
― Deirdre Chapman, Badlands

tags: charlotte-kaufmann, grave, harry-lime, the-third-man, vienna, zentralfriedhof

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“Half an identity is better than none. It gets you a car and lets you drive it, but it has fuck all to say about where you should be going and why. So he is simply heading south.”
― Deirdre Chapman, Badlands

tags: driving, heading-south, loss-of-identity

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“He will sit here a little longer. His tracks now will be totally hidden. He will retrace his steps to the empty side of the mountain and climb down to the loch., drink from it, then find his way to a road where, easily acceptable as a snow-stranded and well turned out motorist who has walked some way from his car, he will accept a lift as far and as fast from the Achindarnoch Hotel as the sod's law of passing vehicles will allow.”
― Deirdre Chapman, Badlands