Ellen Allen's Blog

My rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

[image error]The Sea, by John Banville has been on my reading list for years, ever since it won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. It tells the story of a man at the end of his life who heads to a small cottage on the coast to come to terms with the recent death of his wife, as well as the death of a childhood friend. It’s stunningly written, particularly about feelings of loss and childhood. Banville said that the book was “a direct return to my childhood, to when I was ten or so. The book is set in a fictionalized Rosslare, the seaside village where we went every summer as children. Looking back now it seems idyllic, though I’m sure ninety-five percent of the experience was absolute, grinding boredom.” Nothing like the book then… A real treat.

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My rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

[image error]The Power by Naomi Alderman is a dystopian novel about teenage girls around the world who suddenly find they have incredible physical power and can inflict pain at the flick of a finger. It has some big ideas about feminism and how the world could change when women find they are suddenly in control of everything, where men become fearful and how it could go too far the other way. I usually love these kinds of science fiction novels with far-fetched ideas, but this was just way too silly and actually, I wasn’t interested enough to care about many of the main characters.

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I recently went to an old fortress off the coast of Marseille called Chateau d’If. I’ve been wanting to go for eons because it features heavily in the book, Count of Monte Cristo (it’s where Edmond Danté was falsely imprisoned). I wanted to put myself in Dantès’ shoes, although I confess that I still haven’t read it; it’s 15 million pages long and in French, it’s proving a little difficult to get through (and I can’t give up and read the damn thing in English!). But then it occurred to me that the French Riviera, where I live, is full of literary settings and references.

 

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Published in the 1840s, The Count of Monte Cristo was a storming success when it was first published. Based on a real-life case, it tells the story of said Frenchman, Edmond Dantès who’s set to marry the love of this life and live happily ever after. But he’s betrayed by two other men and imprisoned on the grisly fortress. Incarcerated for 14 years, he eventually escapes, finds some treasure he’s heard about, and decides to wreak revenge on the men who set him up.

But really, it’s a story about how life can change for the worse at a moment’s notice:

‘On what slender threads do life and fortune hang’

People seem to love it still because it covers the age old themes of betrayal, love and revenge and shows how plans can also impact the innocent, not just the guilty. If I ever get to finish it, I might find out!

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The wonderful Chateau d’If, just off the coast of Marseille, which was the setting for the imprisonment in the Count of Monte Cristo | © Jan Drewes/WikiCommons

The other book that I thought about recently – because I was in Nice – was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, perhaps one of the best-known classics set on the French Riviera.

[image error]Fitzgerald was a huge francophile, living in Paris at the same time as Ernest Hemingway – they became firm friends – and he made regular visits to the region with his wife, Zelda.

Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby) is widely regarded as one of the best American writers of the 20th century, born in the 1890s and coming of age in the period during the First World War, speaking for the “so-called” lost generation of the time.

Tender is the Night, was his last completed book, and was seen as a follow-up to Gatsby. It is an almost auto-biographical account of his relationship with Zelda, telling a story of a couple beset with alcoholism and mental issues (much like their real life).

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F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda in 1921 | © Minnesota Historical Society/WikiCommons

A couple, Dick and Nicole Diver arrive on the French Riviera, surround themselves with a glittering lifestyle and a large array of friends and begin a relationship with an actress, Rosemarie.

The book uses the backdrop of the Riviera to chart Dick’s eventual demise, notably using Nice’s magnificent Hotel du Cap as the inspiration of the Hotel des Etrangers in the book.

Although it wasn’t highly regarded upon its release, it has since been regarded as the 28th best novel of the 20th century by the Modern Library. I absolutely loved it. As someone else in the Goodreads reviews put it, “I’ve never read so many wonderful ways that someone can just hang out and smoke cigarettes”.

It’s a dream of mine to go to the hotel and stay; it still exists. Above the lobby is an inscription from Fitzgerald, who claims it was the best place that he ever stayed. Here here!

 

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The rather grand Hotel du Cap in 1910, which F Scott Fitzgerald used as his inspiration for the Hotel des Etrangers in his classic, Tender is the Night | © unknown/WikiCommons

 

My rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

[image error]I first read The Hobbit at school and was so enamoured that I wrote 3 of my own books about a mythical world with dragons and small creatures on great quests (complete with maps). I’m not much into dragons these days and don’t have much time for myths and legends but having just re-read it with my nine-year-old daughter, it’s still wonderfully brilliant. The writing is exceptional, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread” and wouldn’t everyone love to be described “like summer”. And what an opening line: “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit”. It’s actually a supremely political book; along with the hard-hitting sequels of Lord of the Rings, it’s an allegory for World War One. And without any help from me, my daughter has become obsessed with her own maps, carefully carving out old-fashioned quests of her own, with mountains, dwarves, and small creatures. A must read.

Like this? I occasionally send out newsletters full of useful writing advice and reading titbits. If you want to receive them, click HERE to subscribe.

My rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

[image error]I first came across author Emma Cline in the Paris Review of Books in summer 2013 when I found her story Marion. The opening had me hooked;

“Cars the color of melons and tangerines sizzled in cul-de-sac driveways. Dogs lay belly-up and heaving in the shade. It was cooler in the hills, where Marion’s family lived. Everyone who stayed at their ranch was some relative, Marion said, blood or otherwise, and she called everyone brother or sister.”

I presume this is the short story that got her the writing contract for The Girls, because it’s based on the same premise – at the end of the 60s, teenager Evie Boyd becomes drawn into a gang of girls and towards their cult leader in LA. It obviously has the backdrop of the Manson murders in mind, highly fashionable at the moment (anyone seen The Invitation? It was a quiet, unsettling movie from 2015 that also has sinister LA cult behaviour as a backdrop).

The Girls is really wonderfully written. It didn’t feel like it had quite the same artistic punch as the short story, but it was pretty spectacularly done all the same. Highly recommended, if you want to be taken back to how agonisingly awful if was to be a teenager (Cline really nails it) amidst some very chilling characters indeed.

Like this? I occasionally send out newsletters full of useful writing advice and reading titbits. If you want to receive them, click HERE to subscribe.

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Having set myself a target last year on Goodreads to read 27 million books – and clearly failing when real life kicked in – I’m setting a much lower target this year, namely 0. That way, I won’t be disappointed when I can’t keep on top of everything and will be pleasantly surprised when I overachieve. If you too want to set yourself a similarly spectacular aim, click here.

Like this? I occasionally send out newsletters full of useful writing advice and reading titbits. If you want to receive them, click HERE to subscribe.

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My rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

[image error]I had been wanting to read Paul Kalanithi’s memoir for a while, having read a rave review in the New York Times; he was an esteemed neurosurgeon, diagnosed with terminal cancer in his 30s, who wrote this memoir before his death. The reviews said it provided interesting answers to the question, “what makes a life worth living”. It’s well-written and clearly, Kalanithi was very talented as both a surgeon and a writer, but I found the book way too worthy and over the top (possibly because it’s geared towards US audiences when us Brits tend to be a little less sentimental in our tastes, even about death…) and it just left me with more questions than answers.

Like this? I occasionally send out newsletters full of useful writing advice and reading titbits. If you want to receive them, click HERE to subscribe.

[image error]If you fancy reading more across different time periods, this might be the challenge for you. When Are You Reading? is hosted by Sam at Taking On A World of Words where the year-long goal is to read 12 books set or written in previous eras (e.g. pre 1500, 1500-1599 and so on) to the present day. It’s a great way to discover new writing/authors and also maybe just the impetus we need to get to those books that we’ve been meaning to read for ages. Er, the classics, anyone?

Like this? I occasionally send out newsletters full of useful writing advice and reading titbits. If you want to receive them, click HERE to subscribe.

[image error]Happy New Year! It’s that time again when we make all our bookish resolutions, to read more, to read well, and to read those books we’ve always meant to read but never had the time. If you fancy a reading challenge, this is the third year of the annual Book Riot challenge; the aim is to read 24 books in a year, i.e. 2 per month, categorised under different themes. There’s a GoodReads reading group to find friends to keep you on track and you can download a pdf of the goals on their site. 

I’ve taken the list from their site to help you. This year, the aims are to:

Read a book about sports.
Read a debut novel.
Read a book about books.
Read a book set in Central or South America, written by a Central or South American author.
Read a book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative.
Read an all-ages comic.
Read a book published between 1900 and 1950.
Read a travel memoir.
Read a book you’ve read before.
Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location.
Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location.
Read a fantasy novel.
Read a nonfiction book about technology.
Read a book about war.
Read a YA or middle-grade novel by an author who identifies as LGBTQ+.
Read a book that has been banned or frequently challenged in your country.
Read a classic by an author of color.
Read a superhero comic with a female lead.
Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey (From Daniel José Older, author of Salsa Nocturna, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, and YA novel Shadowshaper)
Read an LGBTQ+ romance novel (From Sarah MacLean, author of ten bestselling historical romance novels)
Read a book published by a micropress. (From Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Ayiti, An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, Marvel’s World of Wakanda, and the forthcoming Hunger and Difficult Women)
Read a collection of stories by a woman. (From Celeste Ng, author Everything I Never Told You and the forthcoming Little Fires Everywhere)
Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love. (From Ausma Zehanat Khan, author of the Esa Khattak/Rachel Getty mystery series, including The Unquiet Dead, The Language of Secrets, and the forthcoming Among the Ruins)
Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color. (From Jacqueline Koyanagi, author of sci-fi novel Ascension

You can read more about it here. Good luck!

Like this? I occasionally send out newsletters full of useful writing advice and reading titbits. If you want to receive them, click HERE to subscribe.

NaNoWriMo is here again! You might find this handy if you’re thinking of going for it and writing a book in a month…

ellen allen

National November Writing Month is on us again. It’s that time of year when you shake your head and wonder what the hell you’ve done with your writing year when you haven’t got even one of the ideas in your head vaguely finished, before you remember that real life has a habit of sneaking in…

One solution might be to join NaNoWriMo. It’s an event that helps to encourage you to write a book – from scratch – with hundreds of thousands of other people around the world. This way, you might just finish. Your aim is to write 50,000 words. That’s only 1,667 words per day…

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