Sarah Jasmon's Blog

From an original article A Constellation of Books, posted at Sarah Jasmon

It’s been a busy January so far, what with a traditional post-Christmas cold to go along with marking deadlines, PhD deadlines and the start of the Spring teaching term. I did, however, manage to fit in some much-needed reading time. And realised that a certain theme was emerging…

First up is this beauty, which will be published on March 5th. A YA novel set in Wythenshawe in Manchester, And The Stars Were Burning Brightly tells the story of Al and Nate and Megan, and what happens when Al kills himself after a campaign of vicious bullying at his school. That’s not a spoiler, by the way. This isn’t about the moment of Al’s death, but about his life, and his relationships. It’s about what happens when something makes a life go so badly wrong that there seems to be no way out. I went through a period of being bullied at school, and I can only imagine how much worse that would have been with social media. And The Stars paints a dark vision of life today as faced by a young person. At times there’s a touch of Lord of the Flies about it. But there’s hope as well, and love. A difficult read, but who said books should be easy?

http://bit.ly/andthestars

 

 

When Stars Will Shine is a short story anthology based around the theme of Christmas. With contributions from authors who write across a range of genres, you’ll find crime and romance and some very strange events along the way. And, as a book which has been created to raise money for the charity Help For Heroes, there are, of course, one or two war stories. Available in digital and paperback formats, and included in Kindle Unlimited, this is a book that’s definitely not just for Christmas. All money made from sales will go to the charity.

http://bit.ly/WhenStarsWillShine

 

 

Last but not least, Call Me Star Girl, Louise Beech’s dark psychological thriller. It’s Stella McKeevor’s last late night radio show, and she wants to sign off with a bang. So she asks her listeners to call in with secrets – if you tell her yours, she’ll share some of hers. The claustrophobic setting of a woman alone in a studio in the dead of night makes for a super-creepy atmosphere, and the secrets that pile up are all from Stella’s past. Just don’t read if you have any dark alleys to pass on your way home…

http://bit.ly/callmestargirl

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From an original article Rochdale Canal: Navigation Street to Hulme Hall Lane, posted at Sarah Jasmon

If I was planning my walks in a methodical fashion, I’d have started at the beginning. Canals, after all, have very clear starting points, and the Rochdale’s is Castlefield basin. I write that and then go and check something. Yep, wrong way round. Castlefield might be my beginning and the bit of the Rochdale I know but, in reality, it’s the end. The canal actually starts in Sowerby, climbing to its summit on the Pennines, 600 feet above sea level, before dropping back down, via 56 locks, to the junction in Manchester with the Bridgewater Canal. I keep getting stuff wrong at the moment, which is fine because it means I’m LEARNING!

I made another, fairly significant, error on the day of the walk. My plan is to walk along the Ashton Canal as my son is heading out towards Ancoats to (finally) make a start on his A level geography project, and I’m going to carry on from there. G’s questionnaire is to do with how Ancoats and New Islington have shifted from cradle of the industrial revolution to regenerated hipster paradise. The balance between these two states – converted mills and Urban Splash developments interlined with shabby backstreets and social housing – makes it a fascinating area to explore. I first came across the Ashton Canal when Gabe and I used to go to FabLab in the Chips building (I’m not sure if it makes the confusion less or more that FabLab has since merged with MadLab. Both are awesome concepts, anyway), so I have a rough sense of where I’m going. When I hit the towpath I just start walking along the canal without checking I’m on the ‘right’ one.

The Rochdale, having tunnelled underneath Oxford Road and Piccadilly, curves slightly outwards like the top tine of a tuning fork before skirting along the edges of Ancoats. The Ashton begins in parallel before curving the other way to enclose New Islington (a millennium village project which we’ll be coming back to, not just on this walk, but later in my research.)

I’m on the ‘wrong’ tine, something I won’t realise for a good mile. (It doesn’t actually matter. In fact, it works out really well. I don’t like walking back the same way I’ve come, and a quick check on my phone shows that I can leave the Rochdale where it goes past the Etihad Stadium, and pick up the Ashton for the return leg. I’ll even get to spot-check in on the River Medlock at the halfway point). This post will cover the outward journey, anyway. All clear? Let’s go.

Water is often used to mark boundaries. The River Irwell, for instance, shows where Manchester ends and Salford begins. Here, the canal seems to divide two communities. On the left bank are the brand new townhouses of Lower Vickers Street. A quick search shows that properties on the street sold for £244,000. On the right bank, there’s Holland Street, where a terraced house sold in 2003 for £17,000 and most are currently valued in the region of £95,000. I can’t help wondering which residents – right or left – frequent Olive’s Organics, an evolved mini market selling both organic and ‘conventional’ vegetables alongside cold-pressed juices and a holistic herbal counter.

The sense of a patchwork regeneration continues. Victoria Mill, built for cotton but derelict since it closed in the ’60s, is made up of two symmetrical blocks separated by what was once the engine house. One half was restored the ’90s and now houses apartments, offices and a health centre. The other half is still waiting, with blackened and gap-toothed patience.

The remainder of this stretch, the the next bridge where I’ll climb back up to the road, has scrubland on the far side and brownfield sites waiting for something to happen next to me on the towpath. A pair of runners go by, getting just out of eyesight before turning to sprint back. There are a couple lads on bikes, who go past with that hint of a defensive sneer, expectant of hassle. When I smile, they grin cheerfully back before skidding off. A freezer is wedged into the top of a lock and some graffiti, which I first read as ‘Jesus’, turns out to be a tag by Jeff. The letters are carefully formed, like a primary school handwriting exercise. Is that a ’21’ underneath? A significant birthday celebration? Probably not. Jeff sounds like an older person’s name.

A measure that’s often used to indicate the health of canals and waterways is the presence of fish, and in 2017 the MEN went as far as claiming that Manchester was turning into a paradise for perch and pike. What strikes me here, though, is the absence of anything much else. Fair enough, it’s midday on New Year’s Eve so maybe not the peak time for people to be out and about, but the weather’s not bad. It’s also really peaceful, the water calm and rubbish-free, the towpath smoothly surfaced and clean. But there’s no-one here. No boats, no fishermen, barely any foot traffic. The lack of boats, particularly, is something I notice in Manchester. Where I moor, in rural Lancashire, there are boats strung out wherever you walk along the canal. I’ll be returning later to New Islington, where a marina was developed at the same time as the Urban Splash development, and there are boats at Castlefield, also a regenerated area, and down towards Deansgate Locks. You don’t get many moving through the city, though, and a boating friend once told me of a police escort sticking around as she made her way up the Rochdale 9 (the locks leading away from Manchester) to make sure she got through with no trouble. With gentrification pushing house prices in the city ever higher, it’s perhaps odd that boats aren’t used more as alternative city centre accommodation, as in London or Birmingham. I’ve heard rumours about liveaboard boats (which tend to be shabby round the edges, roofs stacked with firewood and useful bits of junk) being pushed out of sight around newly-refurbished canal-side developments. Yes, the canal adds to the ambience of the area, but the promotional pictures tend to feature one or two beautifully shiny boats for background colour rather than a community of independent non-conformists. It’s a question I’m keen to follow up on.

Before I leave the Rochdale, for now at least, I turn for another look back. It’s an interesting picture. The canal and the towpath head back to the city, passing the industrial heritage of Victoria Mill before converging at a point far away, where Deansgate Square is marked by a new skyscraper, currently the tallest building in Manchester. Past, present and future, joined by water. It’s very Manchester.

 

 

 

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From an original article How to Map a Canal, posted at Sarah Jasmon

You might have seen one of the canals in Manchester from the train. Maybe you’ve had a drink at a Castlefield bar, or stood and watched as the geese on the Irwell drift their way past the Lowry Hotel. Canal Street? Yeah, sure, but which canal?

One of the things about waterways in a city is that they keep disappearing: under roads, under whole buildings. The towpath is there for a bit, but then you have to climb up again, because of building works or because the path just disappears. It’s the other way round if you’re on the water. You make your way through, on your sunken, private route, with little thought of which road you’re near, or whether there’s a city landmark nearby. The way is measured by locks and bridges, by where you can pick up bread or how far you have to get before it’s safe to moor up for the night. (Hint: you probably want to make it past the Rochdale Nine Locks before dark.)

Disclosure: I’ve not boated the canals going through the city myself. For a start, my boat wouldn’t fit. The locks on the Rochdale Canal and the Ashton Canal are built for narrowboats, not big-bottomed wide-beams like mine. We skirted the edges on our maiden voyage, coming along the Bridgewater Canal from Runcorn and crossing the Ship Canal at Barton, but then veered off to follow the Leeds & Liverpool into Lancashire. I have been walking them though, piecing together the bits I know and tracing the routes I don’t on various kinds of maps before going out to find where they are. Though working out how to a. map them and b. record where I’ve been isn’t as easy as it sounds…

On the left is a standard waterways map, showing the various canals. (If you click on the image, it should open on another page, making it big enough to see). You might notice there isn’t much other detail shown. On the right is a standard, printable tourist map of the city. On this one, you can see some of the waterways. The Irwell is there, doing its job of marking the boundary between Manchester and Salford, and you can see the fingers of Salford Quays, though they’re not named. (The thick blue line leading off to the left is the Manchester Ship Canal, by the way.) I’ve not managed to find a map of the city which shows, in detail, the canals and rivers and how they interact with the roads and trainlines. So I’ve started making my own. Here’s how it looks so far:

 

Yes, you’re right, it does need some work. But already it’s helping me to visualise where the different waterways are, in relation to each other and to Manchester. The hub that is Castlefield. The way they all, canal and river, radiate out across the ring road like spokes in a wheel.

As I walk, I take photos. Back home, I orient each the image by cross-referencing what I remember with what I can see on Google Maps. I have each route colour-coded in my pocket-sized A-Z, and transfer the section I walk onto an Ordnance Survey map. I use the side-by-side option of this website (make sure you have plenty of time to spare before you click the link: it’s an addictive resource!) to identify the routes of lost canals and, sometimes, those of existing ones. The OS Six Inch Series from 1888-1913 gives the canals equal footing with the roads and railways. I can follow the route on that map and see it tracked on one from today. It’s like taking a virtual walk with one foot in the now and the other in the past.

What I’d like to do is end up creating a new map, a record of my research in beautiful watercolour, on a piece of paper that takes up an entire wall. I’m not sure my skills are up to it but hey, I can dream, right?

 

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From an original article Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegh, posted at Sarah Jasmon

Eileen is a damaged child, trapped in a bad place. Well, technically, she’s not a child: she’s twenty four. But she’s undernourished, and stunted physically and mentally, trapped in a loveless home with an alcoholic, needy father. Who is abusive, in an emotionally battering sense. Oh, and it’s Christmas.

The setting is a snowy New England town, only identified as X-ville. We are listening to the voice of Eileen as an old woman, looking back at the few weeks of her life in 1964 when she knew Rebecca Saint John. Rebecca turns up at the boys’ prison at which Eileen works as a secretary, brought in to plan an education programme for the inmates. A glamorous and beautiful oddity in the griminess of X-ville, she befriends Eileen, unleashing her hopes for life, happiness, independence. But it’s never going to be that easy, is it?

A telephone hung by the kitchen doorway, through which I could see one chair at a small enamel table, a sink full of dirty dishes, an opened packet of sliced bread fanned across the yellowed linoleum counter. A clock whirred high on the wall over a calendar opened to May 1962, a photo of a marine saluting, a chiseled chin.

This isn’t a cheerful read, although it’s beautifully written, the tension drawn out to an almost unbearable pitch. I’ve read an interview in which Eileen is described as “fast-paced and creepy.” Fast-paced it is not. Four-fifths is the lengthy set up, an introduction wallowing in the filth of Eileen’s life. She exerts a puny level of control over her life by not washing, not cleaning, not eating. She takes laxatives and gets drunk with her hideous ex-police officer father. (There’s a lot of vomit.)

I didn’t love it. I didn’t even like it that much, but I kept on reading, all the time feeling the need to go and wash. Moshfegh has an eerie talent for pinning down the feel of a moment. I’m still peeling my feet up from sticky floors, waiting for the monster to jump out of the closet. Like the best monsters, it’s not one you’ll have been expecting.

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From an original article Swimming Lessons, by Claire Fuller, posted at Sarah Jasmon

Two things will keep this a relatively short review. One: Christmas (because no, I still haven’t even made a list. Of anything). Two: because actually what I want to do is have a proper, in-depth, book-club-style conversation with other people who have read this. So think of the review as a taster. Put Swimming Lessons on your Christmas list (even though I’m sure you’ve had yours ready for months), anticipate its arrival in the dog-days of January, immerse yourself in every page and then get back to me. Tell me what you think, listen to what I think. We can have coffee. It’ll be great!

Twelve years ago, Ingrid Coleman disappeared. Now her younger daughter, Flora, hears from her sister that their father, Gil, is claiming to have seen her. Flora heads back to their eccentric family home, a swimming pavilion on the English coast. Gil is in hospital, having fallen from the sea wall at the time of the sighting. Her sister, practical Nan, wants to start clearing the contents of the house. But theirs is a house held up by the threads of the past; the question is, how much will be revealed before it disintegrates around them?

The narrative is given to us overlapping sections, through Flora’s eyes in 2004 and through a series of letters written by Ingrid to Gil in 1992 just before she vanished. I sometimes find double-handers hard work, especially when they go over the same ground. No such problem here. Instead, the viewpoints dovetail, adding resonance and colour to each other but never becoming repetitive. And the colour. Swimming Lessons has got that beautiful washed out Polaroid feel to it, at times doubled up with the memory of an actual photograph:

In the suitcase under my bed there’s a photograph Jonathon took of you and Flora sitting on the steps of your writing room: you’re fifty and Flora’s nearly five, in a month she’ll start school. It’s late afternoon, the shadows are long, the light is golden. For once she’s wearing clothes – a bikini with a frill around the bottom. Her feet are crusted with sand, as if she’s just come up from the beach. You sit beside her in jeans and a T-shirt, leaning forward, your arms folded on your knees, your head angled towards her. The sun highlights your cheekbones and the fair hair on your forearms. Flora is looking up at you, an intense concentrated stare, and it is clear you’re in deep conversation.

 

I could tell you how Swimming Lessons reminded me of Barbara Trapido, or early Margaret Drabble. Or about the delicate, double filter coming of age feel, the sand between the toes. Flora draws anatomically correct illustrations on her lover’s skin, a metaphor for the way that lives can appear to be visible when so much of the blood and pulse and bone is hidden. I could tell you about that. But what I want you to do is to read the book so that we can sit down and talk about it. Go on. Please.

 

Swimming Lessons will be published by Fig Tree/Penguin on January 26th. For more details, or to pre-order, click here

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From an original article The Penny Heart, by Martine Bailey, posted at Sarah Jasmon

I was going to start this by mentioning that this was the first Monday in August but, of course, it isn’t. It’s just that I’ve been picking blackberries (and yes, they get earlier every year) and also sloes (and it seems freakishly early for them…). Why is that relevant? Well, Martine Bailey writes culinary gothic, with eighteenth century mystery and dark practice mixed up with (and often directly affected by) what is going on in stately home kitchens. In her first novel, An Appetite for Violets, novice cook Biddy learns from a wise, if incoherent, woman about how food can influence the events of the world around her. The Penny Heart, out this month in paperback, takes this further, with the powerful side of baking unleashed at the hands of a housekeeper with vengeance in mind. And somehow, picking wild fruit and making various age-old recipes makes me feel in a direct line to these creative and resourceful women. If a little less lethal…

With Martine at Waterstones in Chester

I first read The Penny Heart a year or so ago, and it was on my wishlist when I was on the Bailey’s Prize Shadow Panel earlier this year. It’s a cracking read, as you can tell from my review below. Why not go out to pick some blackberries, google a new recipe to put them in, and then sit and read this with the aromas of the simmering fruit bubbling in the background?

 

It’s a cold winter’s evening in 1787, and Michael Croxon is racing to make it onto the Manchester Flyer. His younger brother, Peter, has neglected to make sure he has the right coins for his fare, and there is no guarantee that the coachman will change his pound note. Privileged and comely as the Croxon brothers are, they are no match for the sharp eyes and swift hands of Mary Jebb, ready to change their money with a confidence trick she has used many times before. But she’s not quite fast enough. Michael gives chase and tracks her back to an icy backyard. Though Michael, as a respectable and righteous business man, may have the upper hand, Mary can see through to the depths of his desires, desires he would rather no-one would ever uncover. He has the chance to let her go, but chooses instead to bear witness against her, sending her to a certain death on the gallows. But fate doesn’t always behave in the ways you might expect, and Mary’s sentence is deportation.

 

The story then leaps forwards another five years. Mary, sentenced to seven years in Botany Bay, has escaped and made her way back to England, where she takes a new name – Peg – and a new profession as a cook. We also meet Grace, the gauche and overlooked daughter of a ruined and alcoholic printer. She has unexpectedly become something of an heiress, with land that is coveted by a local businessman who, as their landlord, also holds the threat of eviction over her feckless father’s head. The landlord’s name is Croxon, and he has a plan to gain ownership of the land: marriage between Grace and his own son, Michael. When Grace’s money buys them the crumbling Delafosse Hall, the only cook and housekeeper to be found at the hiring fair is a very plausible Peg…

 

I was caught up in this book from the very first page. The descriptions of 18th century Manchester snake around eerily in areas that I know today. The settings – the Lancashire moorland, the social round of the York Assemblies, the privations of convict Australia – are utterly convincing and, as the narration switches between Grace and Peg, their lives past and present intertwine, and the tension between what we know, and what Grace understands is happening to her, grows to almost unbearable levels.

 

I read, and loved, An Appetite For Violets, last year, and The Penny Heart follows in many of its predecessor’s steps, but with even more bite. Peg’s ruthless manipulation of opportunity makes Lady Carinna’s plans from Violets seem almost childlike, and Grace is so alone and vulnerable, unlike the buoyant Biddy. There are the recipes as well, collected on the convict ship, and written down by Peg as Mother Eve’s Secrets, ‘the wise woman’s weapons against the injustices of life…shared in secret, of how to make a body hot with lust or shiver with fever, or to doze for a stretch or to sleep for eternity.’ Biddy cooked for joy, but for Peg food is a weapon, and a drug.

 

At one point, Peg is practising the three shell trick, and this sleight of hand is a metaphor in a way for the whole book. We see the narrative develop with painful innocence through Grace’s eyes and also from Peg’s devious point of view, but the truth is always shifting. Bailey handles a complex balance of plot threads with the dexterity of a seasoned card shark until they are woven together in the wholly satisfying conclusion. A pleasure to read: I recommend it without reservation.

Martine is going to be in conversation at Waterstones Deansgate in Manchester on the 25th August. I’m going to be there, come and say hello!

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From an original article Everything Love Is, by Claire King, posted at Sarah Jasmon

Everything Love Is begins on a train, a delayed train on its way from Spain to Toulouse. A young woman, almost beyond the reach of speech, gives birth in the overwhelming heat of a packed carriage. The baby is born and the mother dies, without name or history.

A lifetime later, and Baptiste is living on a boat, Candice, on the outskirts of Toulouse. He is a counsellor of sorts, helping clients to find happiness. There is a network of fellow boat-dwellers nearby, and a bar where he spends his evenings, chatting to Sophie behind the bar. He is tranquil, content. In the nearby countryside, his parents live their equally tranquil life. Baptiste’s beginnings, that anonymous birth on the train between Barcelona and Toulouse, are significant but not overwhelmingly so. His adoptive mother is all that she needs to be. His one connection to the mother he never knew is a violin which sits in his boat, silent and unplayed. He has never been in love.

Then one day, a new client arrives. Amandine is mysterious and out of reach. She wears green shoes, the same green as the coat his mother, and Baptiste cannot be sure what she is coming for, or how she came to be there. In addition, the end of the summer sees rioting in the streets of Toulouse, the square filled with angry students. Baptiste is dragged unwillingly along, and the threads of his life begin to unravel.

 

Everything Love Is is a beautifully balanced book, building a complete world around you as you read.  Baptiste is a quiet man, one who appears to exist without the need of strong emotion. But, just as the time comes when staying moored on the banks of the canal isn’t enough, so also comes a time when risks must be taken with the heart. It’s also a book to repay re-reading, the knowledge you have at the end adding even more depth to the beginning.

Also, as a boat dweller, I can tell you that King gets it absolutely right, inside, outside and along the bank. Fabulous stuff!

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From an original article The Farm at the Edge of the World, by Sarah Vaughan, posted at Sarah Jasmon

I’m really enjoying second books at the moment. It’s usually the debuts that get all the fuss: debut novel awards, the puff on Twitter and Facebook, the feeling that this is the moment that counts. And us writers often talk about second novels as a challenge. Can we do it again? What if the first one was a fluke? What if we can’t even finish writing the second one?! But it turns out that everything is ok. I’ve read a number of seconds lately that have taken the position set by the debut and built on it quite beautifully. And The Farm at the Edge of the World is definitely one of them.

Will Cooke has been evacuated from war-torn London to a remote Cornish farmhouse, nicknamed Skylark Farm, along with his younger sister Alice. He knows that he wants to stay there forever. As he follows a hands-on apprenticeship as a farm boy, daughter of the house Maggie – his friend from the moment he arrived – is away at school in Bodmin. Over the long summer of 1943, as the harvest is brought in, their friendship begins to develop into something more.

In the present day, Skylark Farm has fallen on tough times. Maggie is now an old woman, and her widowed daughter, Judith, and grandson, Tom, are fighting to keep the farm going in a harsh climate. Granddaughter Lucy finds herself pulled back to Cornwall from her busy but fracturing life in London, and is drawn into plans to diversify in an attempt to save the farm from plans for redevelopment. As Lucy tries to decide where her future should be, old secrets are about to be uncovered.

The Farm at the Edge of the World is a love story, but on many many different layers, each one delicately balanced in an ecosystem firmly rooted in a beautifully evoked setting. There’s young love, the memory of love past, the love of place and family, of the pressures that challenge relationships and the patterns that play out, some to happy endings, some not.  It’s also a love story to a place – Cornwall – yet it doesn’t shy away from the muck and graft of life on the farm.  and the book is the better for it, but she never lets it overwhelm the story. . , finishing the book in one greedy gulp. Highly recommended (and I’m very much looking forward to number three, Sarah!).

 

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From an original article The Museum of You, by Carys Bray, posted at Sarah Jasmon

I’m absolutely delighted to be welcoming Carys Bray today, on the publication day of her new novel, The Museum of You.

Carys’ first novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, was one of the books of 2014, winning, or being shortlisted for, a string of prizes over 2015. Hard act to follow, right? She’s done it, though: The Museum of You is captivating.

Clover Quinn has just turned twelve, a significant birthday because, ‘in turning twelve she has crossed an unaccountable boundary.’ She has her own key, and is allowed to stay at home by herself in the summer holidays instead of going next door to be looked after by Mrs Mackerel. She has certain tasks to do, such as cycling to the allotment to pick the day’s harvest, but there’s still a lot of time to spare. Time that she’s planning to fill with a project. Her dad, Darren, keeps a lot of stuff, but what interests Clover is the spare bedroom, jammed full of her dead mother’s possessions. Clover never knew her mother but she’s hoping that, if she curates what her mother has left behind, creating her very own museum, she’ll find answers to questions she never quite likes to ask.

In a world so real that it feels you can reach out and pick a runner bean along with Clover, Carys Bray creates a memorable community. Darren is a stand up guy, juggling his job as a bus driver with being the best dad he can, whilst also keeping an eye on his troubled brother-in-law, encouraging his own dad to get out more, and trying to have a tiny bit of a social life as well. This is an absorbing, tender read, and an affirmation of the power of the extended family in all of its trials and misunderstandings. I loved it.

Author Carys Bray, photographed near her home in Southport, Lancashire.

 

Carys, there’s a real sense of immediacy in your description of place. I know Southport well, but I’m pretty sure readers who have never heard of the place will share my experience of walking down the streets, of inhabiting a really 3-dimensional world. When you’re starting out with a novel, where does location feature in the planning process? And would you ever set a novel in a place you didn’t know?

Before I’d ever written a novel I had this odd idea that they had to be set in exciting places like cities or in exotic, foreign landscapes. But when I was writing A Song for Issy Bradley I decided to set the novel in Southport – it made sense as I wanted to write about a beach in the opening chapter. As I started to write The Museum of You I realised that there was no reason why I shouldn’t set it in Southport, too.

I’m working on a new novel that is also set in Southport, this time out on the Moss, an area of farming land that is the drained bed of an ancient lake. Location is much more important in this new novel; I’m looking for somewhere potentially creepy and isolating, but within easy reach of a town.

I’d definitely consider setting a novel in an unfamiliar place if I thought the novel required it.

 

How did the experience of writing this differ from A Song for Issy Bradley, if it did? (I could have just set up the shortest question in interview history there! I guess what I’m asking is was it different writing the second novel, and if so, in what way?)

The Museum of You had a deadline which meant that I couldn’t just work on it when I felt like it. I had to set myself daily targets and I think I worried a lot more because I knew that my editor would definitely read it, whereas A Song for Issy Bradley was written in the hope that someone might read it. That made things feel quite different. It was exciting to know that people were waiting to read the novel. It was also terrifying – what if they didn’t like it, what if pulling thousands of words together was a fluke last time, and I couldn’t do it again? And so on.

 

In A Song for Issy Bradley, you evoked a way of life within a particular boundary, that of the LDS church. The Museum of You has a similar sense of giving a snapshot of a way of life, this time of contemporary Britain: mental health, community support, concerns about the environment, immigration, cultural obsessions, the changing boundaries of what a ‘family’ looks like. Is there a part of you that writes in a state-of- the-nation kind of way? And do you have a favourite state-of- the-nation novel or author?

Hmm. I think I may be writing state-of-the-family novels, and perhaps a little bit of state-of-the-nation stuff ends up there, too. I’m really interested in families and the way they work. I was raised with the notion that a 1950s style, nuclear family, with its patriarchal structure and clearly defined gender roles, was the ‘best’ kind of family (god’s favourite kind, in fact). I wrote about that kind of family in Issy Bradley, but this time I wanted to write about a very different family, one that is somewhat muddled, but very loving. I love the way Anne Tyler and Maggie O’Farrell write about families – as a reader, I often find I have made up my mind about a character, only to have my conclusions questioned; I enjoy that.

 

One of the things I loved in the book was the exploration of father/child relationships. Darren is rocking it, despite his internal misgivings, and his own dad was a pretty good role model. Do you think dads get enough word time in novels? Which are your favourite fictional dads?

I’m not sure whether dads get enough word time in novels – I’d hate to answer that question in a definitive way; I read a lot, but perhaps not enough to give a good answer. I certainly enjoy books that take an unflinching look at motherhood (Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park, Jenny Offill’s The Department of Speculation immediately come to mind) and, as I sit here and wonder about fatherhood, I realise I don’t have the same mental list of books about fatherhood from which to pick a couple of examples.

I love the father, Tom, in The Mountain Can Wait by Sarah Leipciger. It is a beautiful novel with gorgeous landscapes and Tom is a reticent but extremely likeable character. Adam Marek’s short story collection The Stone Thrower is a mediation on fatherhood. I particularly like the stories ‘Fewer Things’ and ‘Tamagotchi.’

 

Allotment: what’s your favourite thing to grow, and why?

Beetroot! They grow really well in our plot and I like them in salads. I’d love to grow sweetcorn, but it never works.

Baking: what would you bake if you were a contestant on the Great British Bake Off?

Oh gosh. I think I’d make one of those really intricate biscuity sculptures out of shortbread, lemon butter biscuits and chocolate chip cookies.

Museum: your top three museums to visit in the north of England?

My favourite museums Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool World Museum and The National Football Museum. But there are loads of other brilliant museums in the north of England.

 

Carys has an awesome blog tour going on, featuring some award-winning bloggers as well! Here’s a list of what’s happening when:

 

 

And if you live in the North West, you’re in the perfect place. Oh yes, sorry, the perfect place to catch the launch party for The Museum of You in fabulous indy bookshop Broadhursts of Southport (who have their own moment in the book itself). Maybe see you there? Do come and say hello!

 

 

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From an original article The Secret Chord, by Geraldine Brooks, posted at Sarah Jasmon

I’m not usually drawn to books like this. Epic tale. Sweeping Biblical history. Prophets. Cataclysmically misjudged sexual encounters. Ok, that last crops up in my reading pile fairly regularly. One of the pleasures of reading through a longlist like the Baileys Prize is that you do try books you’d never have picked up in a million years. Some of them remain a trial, even with your best endeavours. This one, though…

King David. The one with the slingshot facing up to Goliath. With the pretty woman in the bath. And the Leonard Cohen song. (That was a real bonus, fortunately, because it started looping round my head every time I picked my Kindle up: I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord. And so on). Him.

Brooks takes the Old Testament story and retells it through the eyes of Natan the prophet. (Names throughout are not anglicised, so we have, for instance, Shlomo rather than Solomon, Yonatan not Jonathan). In the opening chapters, David’s mighty powers are waning and he risks losing the precarious balance of support that his charisma and leadership have brought him over his rise to power and years of successful kingship. Natan, who joined him after his village and family were ransacked and destroyed by David’s then outlaw band, is the voice through which God communicates with David. Now he’s been given a new task, to talk to the important figures in David’s life and write their memories down as a chronicle of his life.

Unlike most commissions by powerful men, this will be no hagiography. David actively pushes him towards the voices of his detractors as well as his supporters: Natan is sent to his embittered wife Mikhal, his resentful brothers, those who have worked with him out of necessity and self interest rather than conviction or love. What emerges is the picture of a deeply flawed man, a leader with, on one hand, incredible vision and charisma, on the other a blindness to faults which threaten to tear his court apart.

One of the most satisfying results is that the women have a voice, and often show a great deal of influence and wisdom. I found myself searching out references from the original telling, and you may find yourself moved to go and read the whole book of David for yourself. The Secret Chord isn’t an easy read. It doesn’t flinch from the darker corners of history, or sugarcoat death, rape or unconstrained power trips. It is compelling, though, and beautifully written. And it has a hell of a soundtrack.

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