Unsung Female Writers (Part One)

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Last week I wrote a post you might have seen about the shortage of female writers on this year’s Booker Prize longlist. One of the consequences of the post was that a discussion started on Twitter about female writers who deserve more recognition. There were so many wonderful writers mentioned (several I hadn’t heard of before) that I decided to share some of them on here. I’ve teamed up with three of my favourite bloggers – Ali from HeavenAli, Susan from A Life in Books and Antonia Honeywell and we’ve each chosen five brilliant female writers we love and think you might too. Ali and Susan’s choices are below, Antonia’s and mine will follow on Sunday.

Ali likes to read twentieth-century women writers, particularly those published by Virago and Persephone. Her blog is a treasure trove of female writers forgotten or never really acknowledged. I think I’ve discovered more writers via Ali’s blog than any other. Here are her choices:

Elizabeth Taylor 1912-1975

The author of twelve novels, five volumes of short stories, and one children’s book. She is often talked of as being one of the greatest underrated English novelists, although it could be argued that she has not been entirely disregarded as her work has never been out of print and she was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 1971 for her novel Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. She is frequently compared to Jane Austen – a subject which I think is continually debated by readers of Elizabeth Taylor – and the influences of Austen can certainly be seen in several of her novels. Elizabeth Taylor was briefly a member of the communist party, and later became a life-long Labour Party supporter. She juggled her writing with family life, a married woman with two children, who in her younger years had worked as a librarian. She was an intensely private woman, destroying before her death, the many letters she had from her correspondence with writer, critic and great friend Robert Liddell and others. She counted several literary people among her friends including the author Elizabeth Jane Howard and Ivy Compton Burnett, but generally shied away from the literary parties and publicity. Elizabeth Taylor’s work is mainly concerned with the everyday concerns and occupations of middle and upper-middle class life. Her canvases (like Austen) are small, and her portrayals are very shrewd and can be really quite sharp. She had a fine ear for the way people speak to one another, and her characterisation is first class; her peripheral characters are as deeply explored as her main characters. There is a lot of wry humour in her novels, but also a lot that is poignant and real, though firmly rooted in the upper-middle class world that she knew.

Marghanita Laski 1915 – 1988

Born into a family of Jewish intellectuals in Manchester, Marghanita Laski later worked as a journalist – but also prolifically as a writer. She wrote five novels (four currently reissued by Persephone books) a play, The Offshore Island, some stories and works of biography, as well as working as an editor on many more books. Her novel Little Boy Lost is one of the most blissfully poignant books I have ever read, and her novels The Village and To Bed with Grand Music – offer different perspectives of women during and in the immediate aftermath of WW2. She was also a compulsive contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Nina Bawden 1925 – 2012

Nina Bawden may not appear to be unsung as such – she won several awards, and seems to have had a very successful career. I just can’t help but think she is already a name that isn’t as well-known as maybe it should be. Well known for her children’s books Carrie’s War (my favourite children’s novel) and The Peppermint Pig, amongst others, Nina Bawden was a prolific writer of adult books too. Over the course of her life she published 55 books both for children and adults. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 for Circles of Deceit and also served as a Booker judge. However I don’t think she is well known as she deserves to be, (though I admit I haven’t as yet read many of her books) her often fairly slim novels offer little sharp little twists and contain powerful observations of people. In the last couple of years I have read and enjoyed: The Grain of Truth, Devil by the Sea and A Woman of my Age. In 2002 Nina Bawden’s second husband was killed in the Potters Bar train crash – while Nina herself was badly injured. Her testimony about the events became a major part of David Hare’s later play The Permanent Way.

Winifred Holtby 1898 – 1935

Born into a prosperous Yorkshire family, Winifred Holtby was a successful journalist and the author of six novels and two collections of short stories. She also wrote a critical memoir of Virginia Woolf. In 1919 she went to Oxford where she met her great friend Vera Brittain. Together with Vera Brittain she was a member of the feminist six point group and lectured (again like Vera Brittain) for the League of United Nations. Her early novels like Anderby Wold were published in the 1920s, but during these years Holtby was probably best known for her journalism. Her wonderful novels are rooted in the Yorkshire communities that she knew. Her novel Mandoa, Mandoa (not currently in print but available in ebook form) is an odd little political satire that Holtby wrote in the wake of the 1931 general election. In 1931 she was diagnosed with suffering from Bright’s disease and only given two years to live. Knowing she was running out of time she then concentrated on the writing of her best novel South Riding – a truly brilliant novel. South Riding is a novel of local politics and the community of the East Riding where she grew up. Holtby’s mother had been the first alderwoman on the East Riding county council – and she is remembered in the character of Mrs Beddows. South Riding was published posthumously in 1936.

Susan Glaspell 1876 – 1948

Again a writer who may not appear entirely unsung, although she may not have been heard of by many people. She was an American Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, but she was also a wonderful novelist. Glaspell also worked as an actress and a local journalist, and it appears as if, despite the success of her novels and stories at the time, she was later best known and remembered for her plays. A lot of her work is now out of print – two wonderful novels Fidelity and Brook Evans have been re-issued by Persephone books. During her life she wrote nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories and a biography. Her fiction is often thought to be at least semi-autobiographical, frequently set in her native Iowa and concerning contemporary issues (to her time of course), such as gender, ethics, and dissent. Some of her plays, stories and other novels can be found via second hand book sites and print on demand services – it is a shame that only two are currently in print. Persephone also include one of her short stories in their Persephone book of short stories.

Susan has spent most of her working life in the book world. Firstly as a book seller, then as a freelance writer and reviews editor for Waterstone’s Books Quarterly and We Love This Book. We share a passion for excellent female writers – our love of Helen Dunmore’s work is what really got us sharing thoughts and recommendations.

You could quibble with classing Helen Dunmore as unsung – she won the inaugural Orange (now Baileys) Women’s Prize for fiction – but she’s never received the level of approbation that her contemporaries Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie attract despite her extraordinary talent and versatility. She’s an award-winning poet, a children’s author, and her fiction ranges from profoundly thoughtful novels to psychological thrillers. If I had to choose one Dunmore to press upon readers it would be Talking to the Dead. Packed with insight into the complications of family life and the power of secrets to shape and destroy lives, it has the pace of a thriller yet it reads like a long prose poem written in language which is as sensuous and languorous as the heat which seems to permeate every page.

If Helen Dunmore doesn’t qualify on the unsung front because she’s a prize winner, sadly Jill Dawson does. Accomplished and richly imaginative, the closest Dawson has got to a prize is a short listing for both the Costa and the Orange. There’s often an element of history in her fiction – she’s written about Rupert Brooke in The Great Lover, Wild Boy drew on a true story about a feral boy in post-Revolutionary France and Fred and Edie is based on the story of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, hung for the murder of Edie’s husband in the ‘20s. If I had to choose one, though, it would be Lucky Bunny, Queenie Dove’s story of thieving her way from Depression poverty to glamour while staving off heartbreak and guilt. Dawson weaves real-life characters and events into Queenie’s narrative, vividly summoning up London’s sleazy underworld.

Lots of time for my next writer to get the recognition she deserves: Helen Oyeyemi who at only thirty has already written five novels. In fairness, Oyeyemi has appeared on the Granta Best of Young Novelists list and won a Somerset Maugham Award but she doesn’t seem to have received anywhere near the attention her imaginative fiction deserves. She wrote her first novel, the extraordinarily accomplished and frankly terrifying The Icarus Girl, when she was studying for her A-Levels but her latest, Boy Snow Bird, is my current favourite. It’s a tale of race and identity with elements of fairy tale – a wicked stepmother, a Prince Charming or two, a girl called Snow and a richly symbolic mirror motif reflecting, or not reflecting, different images the characters have of themselves. It’s stuffed with stories, strikingly written, with a twist towards the end which will knock your socks off.

In contrast to Oyeyemi, Lesley Glaister has been writing for many years but rarely gets the kind of broadsheet coverage she deserves. Her themes are often dark – murder, madness and obsession are favourites – and she does a fine line in eccentric old women. A steely thread of tension runs through her fiction often accompanied by a healthy dollop of black humour. Sadly, many of Glaister’s books are now out of print but of the ones that are available I’d pick Now You See Me. Homeless, deeply disturbed and with a secret buried in denial and untruth, Lamb seeks safety in solitude until she meets Doggo, on the run from a crime that he also conceals. These two outcasts find a way to each other and the result is an unusual love story that steps outside the traditional bounds of romance.

My final choice is Deirdre Madden, a writer of long standing whose quietly elegant prose deserves to be ranked alongside the likes of Sebastian Barry, William Trevor and Colm Tóibin. She writes slim, understated novels in which the Troubles are often present in one form or another. In Molly Fox’s Birthday, the eponymous actor is spending her Midsummer’s Day birthday in New York while the playwright, to whom she has lent her gloriously cluttered house, struggles to start her new piece, preoccupied with questions about Molly, their friendship and their relationship with Andrew whose loyalist paramilitary brother was killed in the North. It’s a beautifully expressed novel about identity, art and friendship.

Huge thanks to Ali and Susan for their choices. How many have you added to your TBR? Is your favourite writer here? Which female writers do you think deserve more recognition? Check back on Sunday to see mine and Antonia’s choices.

A Place for Us: Part One, ‘The Invitation’ – Harriet Evans

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Tomorrow, Headline is publishing the first instalment of Harriet Evans’ new novel, A Place for Us. The 450-page book has been divided into four parts which will be available as ebooks at the end of July, August, September and October.

The day Martha Winter decided to tear her family apart began like any other day.

A Place for Us is the story of the Winter family. Martha, mother and grandmother, is about to turn 80 and she’s decided to have a party. On the Friday night, drinks and canapés will be served to friends and family; on Saturday, there will be a family-only lunch. The invitations are sent with the words, ‘There will be an important announcement. We ask that you please be there.’

Martha has spent her life looking after her family and her artist husband, David. David is the creator of a cartoon strip featuring ‘Wilbur the Dog and Daisy, the little girl who thought she understood him’. A gallery in London is planning an exhibition of pictures he drew during the war when he lived in the East End. Martha’s own career as an artist was abandoned when they bought Winterfold in Somerset:

At first Martha thought she’d never be able to take it on. It was a mess when they saw it; green paint covering the original Arts and Crafts wooden panelling, rotten floorboards, the garden one large compost heap of mouldy, brown mulch.

They moved there when there three children were young – Bill, Daisy and Florence.

Bill is now the village doctor. Married to his second wife, Karen, seventeen years his junior. Their marriage has become mostly silent, as David seems unwilling or perhaps unable to discuss the underlying issue. David’s daughter, Lucy, from his first marriage, works on the features desk at the Daily News although, after a year, her boss still hasn’t actually let her write a feature and it’s clear she doesn’t fit in with the polished high-fashion women she works with.

Daisy hasn’t been home since Bill and Karen’s wedding. Indeed, she rarely comes home at all. She works for a literacy and schools charity in Kerala, India, having left her daughter, Cat with Martha and David. Cat lives in Paris with the insufferable Madame Poulain and sells flowers at the market. Her life has fallen apart following an abusive relationship and now she’s keeping a huge secret from her family.

Florence lives in Florence (the city she was named after) and works as an academic in the field of art history:

…a professor employed at the British College of Art History in Florence, author of two books, contributor to several more, a visiting professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and an occasional voice on the radio…

She’s awkward in social situations, however, which leads to some excruciating scenes. She is also treated appallingly by some of her fellow academics which leaves her asking whether it’s time to return home.

The novel’s narration moves between the characters in a third person subjective voice. In part one, we are privy to Martha, David, Karen, Lucy, Daisy, Cat and Florence’s thoughts as well as an outsider, Joe Thorne. Newly moved to Somerset and working as the chef in the Oak Tree pub, Joe’s doing the catering for Martha’s party. He allows us an outsider’s perspective on events.

Part One of A Place for Us is an engaging read. I was fascinated by each character, their struggles and their secrets; Evans has set the family up perfectly for some explosive revelations when the party gets underway.

I’m pleased to see a publisher trying a different approach too. Serialisation isn’t new but, unlike some of the ideas brought back from the Victorian era over the past few years, this is one that just might work. Unsurprisingly, there’s a jaw-dropping revelation at the end of ‘The Invitation’ and now I’m desperate to read part two.

A Place for Us will be available to buy in ebook instalments on the following dates:

Part One – 31st July
Part Two – 27th August
Part Three – 24th September
Part Four – 23rd October

The complete book will be available in paperback and ebook on the 15th January 2015.

 

Thanks to Headline for the review copy.

The Man Booker Prize Longlist 2014: Where Are the Women?

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In 1996, Kate Mosse established what is now the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction in response to the 1991 Booker Prize all-male shortlist (this was prior to the release of longlisted titles) in a year when 60% of novels published were written by females. Since then, the prize has been subjected to criticism over the decision to make it a women only award, criticism that has only increased in recent years as Hilary Mantel and Eleanor Catton have gone on to win the Booker from shortlists which had gender parity. Unfortunately today’s longlist has demonstrated exactly why the Women’s Fiction Prize is so important.

Let’s start with a positive and offer huge congratulations to Karen Joy Fowler for the wonderful We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (a novel overlooked – in my opinion – by the Bailey’s Prize earlier this year); Siri Hustvedt (one of the first Americans to be considered) for The Blazing World, which is high on my TBR, and to Ali Smith for her forthcoming how to be both. To make the Booker Prize longlist is a huge achievement, to do so in a year when you’re one of three women (on a longlist of thirteen) is nothing short of incredible.

The problem with drawing attention to the gender of the writers on any longlist is that it inevitably leads people to question whether you would prefer to have ‘the best’ books on the list, regardless of gender, or gender parity. There are two problems with this: firstly, as Linda Grant pointed out on Twitter earlier today, is that it suggests that men are writing better novels than women, which simply isn’t true and secondly, the underlying factor is that prizes, and indeed commentary on literature, have been skewed towards men for decades. Whether readers want to acknowledge this bias or not, it exists; writing created by women is still considered lesser to that of their male counterparts.

Let’s take one particular example on this year’s list, ‘Us’ by David Nicholls. I haven’t read the book as it’s one of several on the list not yet published. However, I have read Nicholl’s previous novels, ‘Starter for Ten’ and ‘One Day’. Perhaps Nicholls has changed style for his latest work (please comment and let me know if you’ve read it) but if it is similar to his previous work then my question is this: Where is Jojo Moyes? Why isn’t she included on the list? My guess would be that she wasn’t submitted by her publishers. Why? Because looking at past longlists she wouldn’t stand a chance of making the final thirteen as her work would be considered too commercial.

And then there’s the question of what is submitted. Imprints are allowed one submission unless they’ve had a longlisted title within the last five years, in which case the rules are as follows:

2 submissions – publishers with 1 or 2 longlisting(s)
3 submissions – publishers with 3 or 4 longlistings
4 submissions – publishers with 5 or more longlistings

Any authors previously shortlisted are also eligible to submit their latest book in addition to those submitted by their publisher.

Imagine you work for a publisher and are one of the people responsible for deciding what goes forward to represent the company you work for. You’re making this decision knowing the prestige that this prize holds; knowing that a shortlisting at the least would allow you to publish the books of a number of lesser known writers who deserve a wider audience. You’ve two books in your hand – one by a woman and one by a man – both of equal quality but well, one’s already garnered more reviews in the broadsheets and you’ve studied previous shortlists and the winner’s table. Who do you choose?

What are the solutions? No surprises here that I don’t have any straight forward answers. In an ideal world all judging would be done anonymously. It’s clear from those quizzes that do the rounds on social media every so often that people can’t actually tell the difference between paragraphs written by men and those composed by women. For this to be possible though, the judging panel would have to exist in a cultural void for months and that’s unrealistic. However, during a brief conversation with the publisher Scott Pack on Twitter this afternoon, he suggested two things that could be implemented, although both have their issues.

The first was that the judging panel should have gender parity. Sounds easy but prize panels are often made up of an odd number of people so the chair can have the casting vote on split decisions. In the case of the Booker, there are five judges and a chair. This year the gender split is 4/2 male/female. Making this an even split on its own is not going to solve the underlying issue but it would be one step towards addressing it.

The second was that submissions should also be equally divided between genders. Now, as you can see from the guidelines above, that isn’t possible in the case of many imprints who are allowed an odd number of submissions and as the judges also have a huge amount of books to read in a relatively short time period (160 in six months this year) doubling the subscriptions from those imprints who haven’t had a longlisted book in the past five years sounds like a ridiculous thing to do. However, as long as the genders are neither considered nor represented equally, perhaps allowing all imprints to submit two books as long as one is by a female writer and the other by a male is a way to try and address the imbalance. It would no doubt mean that imprints with a large number of previously longlisted titles would have to be restricted to submitting fewer titles but surely it’s good for the industry to have greater breadth and for the small presses to compete on a slightly more balanced field? You only need to look at the recent success of Galley Beggars and Salt to see that small independent publishers are putting out interesting, high quality work.

It’s a shame that I’ve felt compelled to write this post in 2014 in a year when #readwomen2014 has raised the profile of female writers; when book shops are working to ensure that there’s gender parity on their display tables; when so many good books by female writers are being published, but it shows us that the fight is far from won.

Thirst – Kerry Hudson

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The year before this blog was created, Kerry Hudson’s debut novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma was one of my favourite novels of the year. Not only does it have one of the greatest (and very sweary) opening lines ever, it’s also a book about working class lives written by someone who really understands them, who can convey the brutality that some people face on a daily basis. So much so, that I recall having a conversation with David from Follow the Thread about how I found it ‘unrelentingly grim’. That wasn’t a criticism, it was recognition that Hudson had reflected back at me the lives of many students I’d taught without glossing over the relentless drudgery – and sometimes horror – of being poor and, particularly in this case, female. The only writers I’d seen do what Hudson can are Roddy Doyle and James Kelman (the latter being on my list of my favourite/best contemporary writers).

Although I included Thirst on my list of Ones to Read in 2014 without having had sight of the book at that stage, it would be fair to say I approached it with trepidation. What if it wasn’t as good as Tony Hogan?

Thirst is the story of Dave and Alena. They meet when she attempts to steal shoes from the Bond Street shop at which he is a security guard. As they sit in the stockroom and he tries to question her, as she devours the corned beef sandwich he’d been looking forward to, it’s clear that this isn’t going to be quite so straight forward:

The rise and fall of her accent put him in mind of seagulls swooping for scraps. His stomach knotted up. Just his luck to get indigestion from the sandwich she had eaten.        …
‘I am apologising to you. Please. I say I feel sorry. I make mistake. I am new and it is easy to be confusing.

A few days later, Alena appears on the street outside the shop and asks him to have a drink with her. After a visit to the National Gallery and tea and cake, she asks him if he knows a good hotel room. Through a combination of being attracted to her and wanting to protect her, Dave offers her the bed in his one-bed, Hackney based, flat while he takes the sofa. After telling her she can stay as long as she likes and her checking that there is ‘no trading’, it starts to become apparent that Alena has been having a bad time:

She changed into her nightie, and imagined his belt buckle falling to the floor, him turning his bulk on the old brown sofa, unable to sleep for thinking about her in the next room. After some time had passed and she knew he wouldn’t come, she stretched out, pushed her head into the soft lump of the pillow that smelt a little of him. The sheets were a little grainy, but not enough to spoil the fact that she was in an actual bed, a double too. She stretched her legs wide, arched her back, let the mattress mould to her body and slipped into a thick, black sleep that lay itself down upon her and pressed her flat.

The story of Dave and Alena’s relationship – for that is what it becomes – is interwoven with the stories of their respective pasts.

Dave grew up on a south London estate with his mum. We’re taken back to when he was twenty-two, working at the local Co-op, running because it made him feel good, and plotting and saving to get away – to see the world. In one of my favourite pieces in the book, Hudson describes Dave running around the Roehampton Estate. It’s her eye for detail and swift glances into others’ lives that make this such an effective set piece:

He ran down from his block towards the bus stop, past the Co-op where he’d do his shift later that night, the Greggs with the fatty smell of hot sausage rolls pulling at his belly, towards the burnt-out GTI and the group of kids with rocks in their hands, stomach flab hanging over the waists of their trackie bottoms. They were eleven maybe, should have been in that well-meaning, always empty ‘Connections’ centre playing on new computers and drinking free fizzy drinks, if it wasn’t so uncool to be seen there. He’s known them since they were toddlers, all filthy faces and bare arses. They could have been him and his mates ten years ago, a pack of estate kids who’d end up fighting each other if no one else came along.

Alena’s story is also one of poverty, of leaving Siberia for London on the promise of work from her mother’s friend, a woman with a Chanel handbag, bright lipstick, a diamond ring and a gold bracelet. A friend who disappeared the moment Alena was on the plane, ready to be collected by another sex-worker.

Both of their individual stories are brutal and yes, unrelentingly grim, but Hudson offers them – and the reader – hope through the relationship that they form. However, this isn’t an easy coupling and there were moments where they were physically near to each other but emotionally so far away that I felt as though I couldn’t breathe, so desperate was I for the two of them to find their way to each other and some form of safety.

Thirst is a triumph. Hudson writes about poverty, about sexual abuse, about death, about alcoholism, about toxic relationships in prose that both reflects reality and – when appropriate – soars. It is a novel that will leave you broken and bruised but with a little kernel of hope.

Thirst will make my Books of 2014 list and Kerry Hudson’s earned herself a place alongside James Kelman as one of my favourite writers and one of our most important voices.

 

Thanks to Chatto & Windus for the review copy.

Jessie Burton (author of The Miniaturist) at Urmston Book Shop

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Urmston Book Shop is a fantastic independent shop in a suburb of Manchester run by Frances and Peter. I discovered it because friends of ours live in Urmston and were adamant that I had to visit. I’ve been spending a fortune in there ever since and was delighted when I found out that they host author events. So far, I’ve seen brilliant events by Rachel Joyce, Anna Hope and, on Wednesday night, Jessie Burton.

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On arrival at the shop, we were treated to drinks and nibbles – miniature macaroons, buns and cakes – made by the talented Cath (@craftystarcakes) who had also made a miniature version of the book shop including figures of Frances and Peter, Jessie signing copies of The Miniaturist and a shopper you might recognise.

photo-22Jessie began by telling us about how The Miniaturist came about. She said she was becoming frustrated as an actress and spending more time working as a PA in the city than acting, so she wrote her first novel and sent it out to agents. She realises now that it wasn’t fully finished but she received some positive feedback and that was enough for her to keep going.

In 2009, she went on a trip to Amsterdam that would become the catalyst for The Miniaturist. During the visit, she went to the Rijksmuseum and saw the dolls’ house that belonged to Petronella Oortman. Jessie described the house as beautiful and intricate – there are rooms that you can’t see in it – but it was when she looked in the guide book and discovered that the house cost the same as a real house to build (£5–6 million) that it became really interesting to her. Why would anyone spend that much money on a dolls’ house? Jessie saw it as a symbol of power but one that comes with a lack of control over real life.

As Jessie began to research, she saw how this fit with life in Amsterdam at the time the house was being constructed. The 1680s was a corrupt period. The Dutch had the first global empire and the first multinational company with the VOC (the Dutch East India Company). This led to a disparity between surface life and private life and piety and hypocrisy. These tensions led Jessie to an idea: Petronella arrives in Amsterdam with a birdcage. She pushes open the door to the house; the interior is dark and grand. Standing in the shadows is another woman. There will be a power struggle between the two.

Jessie said she looked at a lot of paintings from the time – she described Amsterdam society as early Facebookers, documenting their lives in paintings and – for the very rich – replicas of their houses. The paintings showed characters who are unable to operate in wider society. Marin – the other woman in the scenario above – understands the compromise people make to survive – and even though Amsterdam was a more liberal city than most at that time (women could walk the streets unaccompanied and widows could run their dead husband’s businesses), there were still elements that had to remain hidden. Jessie posed the core of the book as a question: Can you control your life and if you can’t, how do you handle that?

IMG_0193We were then treated to a reading of the chapter, ‘Barge’. I use the word treated because Jessie’s a joy to listen to. Afterwards, questions from the audience were taken. Jessie was happy to talk about elements of the novel as well as the writing process.

How much time did you spend in Amsterdam?

Two trips that added up to just over a week. The second, she returned with a list of things she needed to find out. She did say ‘the internet’s a wonderful thing’!

Is it strange to think that the first trip’s had such a big impact on your life?

Jessie said that she was delighted and thrilled and glad that it was worthwhile, although she would’ve written the story anyway because she had to. She told us that the Dutch can be suspicious when foreigners set books in their country – what do you know about it? – but they love it and at the launch there, they had a lute player who played songs that had been composed based on events in the book. ‘Thanks, house!’

Was it a light bulb moment (seeing the house)?

It was when she bought the guidebook and saw how much it cost but that led to a struggle over four years to write The Miniaturist.

How soon after seeing the dolls’ house did you get the image of the two women?

Soon afterwards. Jessie then described how she felt she was writing her two selves – she’s now 32. She had a long journey finding out how to write it and initially she had the same scenes from both Nella and Marin’s viewpoints which she thought was really clever until she realised how long it was!

She also told is that Marin began as a 2D Mrs Danvers type character but that she became ‘enamoured’ of her. ‘I love her!’ [I do too!] And that Cornella was originally two maids but she ‘did a Vidal Sassoon and took her into the shower’ (Why take two bottles into the shower…).

Originally there were over thirty characters and Jessie stripped that back to seven.

Are you characters like those you found in your research?

No. Jessie said there’s very little documentation of the African Caribbean experience. They appear fetishised in paintings, so she used that to consider what if they were taken seriously?

There were little things she discovered and used, like some of Cornella’s recipes come from The Sensible Cookbook. However, the story was key and the research had to be a trigger rather than the dominating factor.

Why did you not choose a first person or dual narration?

First person would’ve been too strong a stylistic decision. Other characters needed to be opened up to the reader but two voices would dilute it. Jessie said that finding the narrator had been trial and error and she’d written from Johannes’ and Cornella’s viewpoints too before deciding what the book needed.

What made you conclude the book the way you concluded it? (No spoilers.)

Jessie said she wanted Nella to be a miniaturist too, to take control of her own fate. The miniaturist is a godlike element and a catalyst for change. Agnes’ experience with her is terrifying and painful, while Nella finds it empowering.

Originally the miniaturist was more elusive and the reader discovered little about her, but her editors challenged her on this. She also had a friend who read an early draft tell her to ‘Be a bit braver. End on a minor note.’

Jessie also revealed that in earlier drafts the miniaturist was a man and a love interest for Marin.

Who are your literary influences?

I don’t think I write like anyone, she said, but she loves the writing of Penelope Lively, Penelope Fitzgerald, Margaret Atwood, Siri Hustvedt (for her exploration) and Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books.

Her favourite book as a child was A Traveller in Time by Alison Utterly.

What does Johannes think of Nella?

It’s not a conventional marriage and initially, Jessie had made him a bit colder. But he loves and respects her; she lightens up his life. He’s quite trapped and has had this compromised marriage, arranged by his sister, to protect him, but they do have genuine conversations.

Jessie said that if Johannes and Marin were in the modern world, she would be the CEO of a company, and he the PR taking customers out on the yacht!

Did you find it very emotional writing the book?

‘No. The act of it is hell sometimes.’

If it was made into a drama would you like lots of input?

Yes, but she thinks if you sign it over you have to let go of it. She’s toyed with writing the screenplay but it’s a completely different skill. She cautious of letting go of the rights and has been told it needs ‘TV time with a film budget’, which is hard to get these days. Jessie did reveal that she’d like Cate Blanchett to play Marin.

Are you doing a US tour?

Yes. Boston, Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Kansas (Not sure if she was joking about the last one, check her website!)

Jessie then talked about being the only Brit at the Book Expo America, book fair where she felt like Hugh Grant!

Have you found the reception different in different countries?

Jessie said that it was the editing process that she really found different. Both lovely but in different ways: her UK editor would use the conditional, ‘Do you possibly think…?’ while her US editor was more direct, ‘WE NEED THIS’, ‘WHY HASN’T THIS HAPPENED YET?’

She also revealed that she never thought she’d get to the point where she couldn’t write it anymore but she did during the editing process. She knew it was right.

There’s an analogy between the writer and the miniaturist, do you think like that?

Jessie thought that was something that comes to the reader on reading and that she knows how many struggles and doubts she had along the way.

Will you do an audiobook because you have a fantastic voice?

‘I have!’

Do you have an idea for the next book? Is it historical?

Jessie revealed that she’s written 30,000 words of it. It’s a dual narrative about an artist who disappears in disgrace from Andalucía in 1937 and how that affects two women’s lives, the other in London in 1967. It’s called Belonging.

IMG_0195Jessie then spent time signing books and chatting to everyone before being presented with this beautiful cake made by Cath. (Take note writers, this is what you get if you do an event at Urmston Book Shop and I can vouch for Cath’s cakes, they are delicious.)

It was a great event. Jessie was full of passion for her book and, as you can see, very open about the process of writing a best seller (it was #3 in the hardback charts on the day of the event). I don’t know about you but I’m looking forward to getting my hands on Belonging which I’m sure will be every bit as fantastic as The Miniaturist.

House of Ashes – Monique Roffey

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Ashes, nicknamed ‘Books’, is a quiet, studious man with a wife and two children. The novel begins with him at prayer in the commune which he visits for this purpose. The commune is led by ‘the Leader…a huge man, six foot six, with a broad and powerful back and a muscular neck’. He has ‘…three wives, nine children and a hundred fostered sons…’, boys he has rescued from the streets and a life of poverty and crime. He’s also brought together a whole range of people who wouldn’t usually associate with each other, ‘…people from all walks of life’. He tells them that during times of slavery, their spirituality was stolen from them, so rather than converting people, they are being reverted back to the path they should have followed.

This reversion is about to branch off in the form of a revolution, a coup d’etat, performed by the men of the commune.

‘The time has come, my brothers, to rise up and change our fate and the fate of this small country. We will be fighting for the oppressed and for a New Society, a fairer, more civil world. We will be liberating the poor man in the street, poor men like us. Common sufferers. And they will rise up and join our struggle. And this is the will of God.’

The Leader has telephoned Ashes, personally, the previous week, counting on his support by referencing Ashes’ brother, River. River had been part of a group called the Brotherhood of Freedom Fighters, a group who had continued to rebel against the government following a failed coup in 1970. He was shot dead in broad daylight. The doctor who examined him removed 28 bullets from his body.

Ashes and the other men are armed and taken quickly in trucks to the House of Power where they storm the building and take a number of ministers, including the Prime Minister, hostage. It is violent and bloody and Ashes finds himself wondering what he’s got himself involved in.

It soon becomes clear that the Leader and his group aren’t as well organised or supported, as they believed. An hour later, when the army arrive on the scene in support of the government, it seems as though it’s all over:

The air around him became smoky and peppery with gunfire and a brother next to Ashes, one of his fellow revolutionaries, was shot straight through the head. His skull split open and his face splattered into pieces and his tongue was shot out of his mouth. The tongue landed on the red velvet carpet.

It’s not the end though, it’s the beginning of a standoff that will last six days, during which the lives of those inside the building will be irrevocably changed.

The House of Ashes is based on real events in Trinidad and Tobago, though Roffey has chosen to place them on the fictional Sans Amen which she says is ‘located in the northernmost part of the Caribbean archipelago and was once a British colony’.

Roffey’s version of events is told through a dual narrative – a third person subjective from Ashes’ point of view and a first person narration from Aspasia Garland, Minister for the Environment, who is one of the hostages. This allows Roffey to explore the issues that have brought about the coup and their consequences from both sides. She also uses a third character, a fourteen-year-old boy nicknamed Breeze, who’s one of the Leader’s rescued street children. In one of the best pieces in the novel, Breeze challenges Aspasia over the ideas that he’s been fed, her responses leading him to think for himself for perhaps the first time in his life.

Houses of Ashes is a powerful book. Roffey’s writing is unflinching both in its description of events and its reasons for them. She explores themes of violence, politics and the role of parenting in light of both of them. It is a book I want to give to every person who tells me that women write differently to men – both in terms of style and of subject. It’s the best 2014 published novel I’ve read so far this year.

 

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

The Visitors – Rebecca Mascull

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As I’m not a big historical fiction fan and I have serious issues with child narrators, The Visitors, which is the first-person narrated story of Adeliza Golding, born in 1884, should’ve been exactly the sort of book that bores me. It comes as some surprise then for me to be writing about how much I loved it.

Adeliza Golding is ‘the miracle who survived’ – her mother has had five pregnancies prior to Adeliza, none of which made it to term. Adeliza can barely see and when she’s two, contracts scarlet fever which destroys her hearing as well.

By three I am totally deaf and blind. The words I had learned wither like muscles unused.

Soon, Adeliza is ‘a blind deaf-mute’ and she begins to use her fingers to explore the house she and her parents live in. This gets her into trouble often, particularly in the kitchen, and she is put in her bedroom. However, she is not alone:

[The Visitors] are with me often. They come and go. I can sense them when my eyes are open. But the moment I drop my eyelids, their presence dissolves. I have no visual memories to understand the sight of them. But the Visitors are there….I know if a Visitor feels melancholy, nervous, calm or cordial by an inner sense, a vibration that creeps into my brain as warmth or cold spreads through the skin…I cannot converse with the Visitors because I have no words. Yet I know they want to tell me things. They are waiting for me to act, to do something for them, though I have no idea what purpose this may be.

Adeliza’s father is rich. A landowner who farms hops, he has ‘his land, his precious crop, his staff, his work’ to consider. Each summer, seasonal workers arrive to pick and dry the hops. One day, Adeliza escapes from her room and into the hop garden where she careens from worker to worker until ‘I feel a hand touch mine…It begins to move, making shapes’.

The hand belongs to Lottie Crowe, a young woman whose family are oyster farmers but take work each summer on the Golding property. She has been taught to finger sign and begins to teach Adeliza who calms down now she has a means with which to communicate. Adeliza’s father employs Lottie as a governess. Lottie’s teaching has a far-reaching consequence though:

The Visitors speak with me now…The moment my mind opened to language, they came streaming in, desperate to communicate with me…Yet they do not make the shapes in my hand, as they do not share the same territory as my family and the servants. But I can hear them inside my head.

And then two other things happen that will have a profound impact on Adeliza’s life. Firstly, she goes to meet a doctor in London who says that he can operate on her eyes and she may be able to see again and secondly, she goes to visit Lottie’s family and meets her brother, Caleb, with whom she begins a life-long friendship.

The Visitors follows Adeliza through to her twenties. It is a period that will encompass the Boer War as well as love, death and the revelation of what Adeliza can do for the Visitors and, ultimately, what they can do for her.

I genuinely did love this book, partly because Adeliza doesn’t remain a young child – she’s into her teens fairly early on in the novel – but also because it was beautifully written and considered themes of class and the treatment of women, particularly during the war. In voice, themes and style, it reminded me of Helen Dunmore’s early novels. Rebecca Mascull is undoubtedly an author to watch, I’m already looking forward to reading her next book.

 

Thanks to Rebecca Mascull for the review copy.

Jennifer Close’s Favourite Books + The Smart One Review

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I have an absolute treat for you today. I’m thrilled to welcome to the blog Jennifer Close, author of Girls in White Dresses and The Smart One. Jennifer’s kindly written about her favourite books by female writers and they’re corkers.

TOP 5 BOOKS BY WOMEN

Trying to narrow down my five favorite books is nearly impossible! Whenever someone asks me for book recommendations, I always end up rattling off a long list and then following up days later as I remember more fantastic novels. Below are some of my very favorites!

The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank has been a favorite of mine for so many years. I first heard about it from a writing teacher in college and fell in love with the writing style and the characters. My copy is very well worn from reading it so many times. It’s just fantastic!

Maine by Courtney Sullivan combines family drama with a beach setting in Maine…what more could you ask for? It’s written from the perspective of four different women in the Kelleher family, and one of those books where the characters feel so real that you find yourself thinking about them well after you’ve finished the book.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld is a boarding school novel, which is a subject that I love. There’s something fascinating about the setting and the rules (spoken and unspoken) of boarding schools. The narrator’s voice is wonderful and simple and you won’t be able to put it down.

The Dive From Claussen’s Pier by Ann Packer is a book that I read for the first time in grad school. There’s so many things I love about it—the setting (Madison, WI) is described so well, and as a reader you’re able to picture all the little details of the town from the shops to the restaurants to the houses. It’s also a love story, but an unusual one, and it feels very real. The last thing that’s so impressive is that on the first page, Packer manages to immediately create tension in a relationship and you’re swept up in the story as soon as you start it.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is the only one on my list that isn’t a novel. This is a memoir/writing instruction book that I read in college. It changed the way that I viewed writing and my approach to it. I used to always get frustrated when I started to put a story down on paper, and feel like if I was struggling through a first draft that maybe I wasn’t meant to be a writer. I thought I was the only one who felt this way. But Lamott describes the life of a writer, the challenges and frustrations and the crazy thoughts that we all have. Reading this book made me feel like I wasn’t alone, like I could keep writing. I reread it all the time and teach it to my fiction class at George Washington University. If you love writing, it is a must read.

Thanks to Jennifer for such a great list. I don’t know about you, but I’ve just added several of those to my TBR. While you’re visiting a book shop, there’s another book you might want to add to the list, Jennifer’s latest The Smart One.

Smart One, The

Claire Coffey, 29, NYC office worker is in trouble. Having split up with fiancé, Doug, she’s remained in the apartment they shared although she can’t afford it on her own.

She probably shouldn’t be ordering out, considering her money situation, but what difference did twenty more dollars on her credit card really make at this point? The credit card balance was so high, so unbelievable, that she was able to ignore it most of the time, to pretend there was no way she’d spent that much in the past six months. It just wasn’t possible.

Eventually, Claire has to come to terms with the fact she’s going to lose the apartment and the only real solution she has is to move home.

Already living back at home is Claire’s sister, Martha, 30. Martha’s a manager at a branch of J.Crew. She works hard, considering her job to be as important as any other. It’s a point of pride for her, so much so that when one of her employees quits unexpectedly, she says, ‘I hate it here…You’re like a Nazi’. Martha’s a registered nurse but she quit, moved back home and started seeing a therapist when it began to cause her anxiety:

She would lie awake for hour, wondering if she’d done everything she was supposed to. Had she given all of her patients their medications? Had she measured right? Had she filled out their charts? She was sure she was killing her patients, and that kept her awake, always.

And then there’s their younger brother, Max, college student, apple of their mother’s eye. Although his stunning girlfriend, Cleo, is not so popular with the rest of the family.

Weezy was immediately worried that she was too much for Max. She wanted Max to date someone just a little less stunning, someone who didn’t seem like she would break his heart so easily. And so, although Cleo seemed perfectly polite and nice, Weezy prayed every day that they would break up.

Weezy aka Louise Keller, got her nickname when she met Will, her husband, when they were freshmen. Weezy was a teacher for a year but hated it and wasn’t sorry to give it up when she became pregnant with Claire. Although she’s had jobs on and off since, she prefers being at home, organising the kids and her husband. Will is a lecturer whose had some success with a book in the 1980s which he’s now attempting to recreate.

The family come with a brilliant supporting cast – Claire’s best friend, Lainie; Weezy’s sister, Maureen and her children Drew and Cathy (and Cathy’s girlfriend, Ruth); Cleo’s mother, Elizabeth, and my favourite, Weezy and Maureen’s mother, Bets, who’s the queen of inappropriate comments and gifts.

The Smart One is the late 19th/early 20th family saga transported to the 21st century. Close considers modern issues of single living, career burnout, women’s choices, and the quarter-life crisis. Every character has a distinct personality/voice and the tensions of having an entire family in the same house are portrayed with skill. This is a novel to immerse yourself in.

 

Huge thanks to Jennifer Close for the guest post and to Vintage books for the review copy.

Her – Harriet Lane

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A couple of years ago, I remember seeing Alys, Always by Harriet Lane in our local supermarket. I picked it up, looked at it and put it back down. It was in the chart, at the supermarket, it couldn’t possibly be that good. Oh, what a judgemental so-and-so I was. Soon though, people I trusted were talking about it on Twitter. Why hadn’t I bought it? I thought. Eventually I ordered a copy and it’s been on my TBR ever since. However, when I saw Lane had a second novel coming out, I decided it was my opportunity to see what she’d got.

Her is the story of two women, Nina and Emma, who alternate in telling their stories. Nina begins:

It’s her. I’m almost sure of it.

It’s clear from the offset that Nina knows Emma and seeing her affects her greatly:

The sensation of it, of finding her there in front of me after all this time, is almost overwhelmingly powerful: like panic, or passion. I feel my hands curl into fists. I’m very conscious now of my lungs filling with air, and then releasing it.

Nina lives a solidly middle-class life. Her teenage daughter, Sophie, attends the local private school; her second husband Charles is an architect who designed their second home in France; her father is a celebrated composer, and Nina herself is an artist.

However, it’s not long before she’s helped herself to Emma’s wallet and is nipping round to give it back to her.

Emma and Nina couldn’t be more different:

I stand there in the doorway, with a stained tea towel over my shoulder, ketchup on my jeans, and (though I don’t find this out till later) flour in my hair, and I look at her and just for a second, I recognise her, her life; and I want it so much, really, that it hurts.

Emma is pregnant with her second child. Her toddler, Christopher, is a handful and Emma’s felt herself – the woman who used to work in TV – disappear under laundry and shopping whilst her husband Ben’s star rises as he takes advantage of the positions vacated by Emma and women like her. Emma’s so harassed and vulnerable to the attentions of a glamorous, seemingly carefree woman like Nina, that it’s easy for the smart, manipulative Nina to ease her way into Emma’s life.

Some visitors spectate. They stand there at the edge of the room, smiling and chatting as I rush around with carrot sticks and J-cloths, and I know deep down they’re enjoying seeing me reduced to this…she notices what needs doing, and she does it: quietly, without ostentation or apology. While I’m flapping about…she fills up the kettle and drops the dirty plates in the dishwasher.

It’s not long before Sophie’s arranging to babysit for Emma and Emma’s inviting Nina and Charles over for dinner. All the while, Nina hints to the reader about something that’s happened in the past, while Emma fails to recognise this woman she knew years earlier. All we can do is watch as the secret is revealed and the consequences are played out.

What makes Her special is the way Lane uses the dual narrative. Rather than simply tell the story from two characters’ points of view, moving the action along as the perspective shifts, she tells the same story from two sides, interspersed with moments from each of them that move the plot on. If this sounds boring, reread the last quotation I selected, which is from Emma’s perspective, and then read this, from Nina’s:

When she’s wiping the table and the floor, I fill the kettle and switch it on, and then I collect plates and stack them in the dishwasher. Christopher watches me without curiosity. ‘And what’s your name?’ I ask him, and then I ruffle his hair, and I have the pleasure of feeling him twist away from my hand, objecting to my gesture. ‘Oh, isn’t he a poppet? They’re so delicious when they’re this age.’

Emma didn’t mention Nina speaking to Christopher and it’s these details that we see but the other character doesn’t that builds our anticipation and leaves us dreading Nina’s next move but unable to look away.

What’s Lane got then? She’s got style – in terms of plotting, sentence structure and language; she’s got the mettle to attempt and execute perfectly a parallel dual narrative, and she’s got a dedicated new reader in me.

 

Thanks to Weidenfeld & Nicholson for the review copy.

Upstairs at the Party – Linda Grant

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She really had been beaten down to her hands and knees, and it turned out to be me and my family that showed her how the whole hard-hearted trick of survival worked.

Adele Ginsburg is born in Liverpool to a working class, Jewish family who do what they have to in order to survive. Her dad’s a crook who hanged himself, leaving her mother and his best friend to bury the family’s valuables and mock-up a burglary to claim the insurance. Her mother and her friends insist that 16-year-old Adele should go out to work. Instead she stays on at school, gets CCD in her A Levels and blags her way into a new Yorkshire university via a postcard sent to her by her ‘cousin’ Allen Ginsburg.

We were encouraged to question, doubt, answer back, retort, rebel. If we wished to dress in outlandish clothes, that was our right. If we wanted to follow daft Eastern mystical practices like transcendental meditation, om-ing away at the crying sky, then we were free to do so. If we wished to blow our minds with hallucinogenic drugs on a path to enlightenment, then no one would interfere.

In those days the government paid us to spend three years being students, which meant, in those days, a way of life suited to Renaissance philosopher-kings, until we were turfed out blinking and unprotected like baby koalas ejected from the womb on to the alien, leafless world of an Antarctic ice flow.

At university, Adele makes a number of close friends – Dora and Gillian who share the room across the corridor in halls; Jahandar ‘Bobby’ who she meets in her first lecture (given by F.R. Leavis), and Evie/Stevie:

They had appeared as conjoined twins, out of nowhere…The boy had the white, possibly even powdered, face of a Pierrot from Commedia dell’Arte, and a dry red mouth. He wore spotless white dungarees and black baseball boots. Evie was dressed identically and, extremely unusually (I had never seen this before), they both had very short hair, sheared and standing upright like a hedge, hers almost white, snowy, his hair dyed black and red like a railing that had partly gone to rust.

It becomes apparent at various stages of the novel that these people are not everything they may seem. University is a excellent opportunity to reinvent yourself, to remove any versions of yourself you might dislike, or simply a to try out a new persona and all these people have something they want to bring to the forefront, or leave behind. However, some people seem to be built for survival – Adele, for instance – and can immerse themselves in their new surroundings and move forwards, while others are not and cannot. The consequences of the later are played out upstairs at the party and will reverberate for the rest of Adele’s life.

Upstairs at the Party considers a pivotal time in people’s lives and considers how much impact it actually has on who you become. It’s one of those rare books which considers an idea whilst telling an engaging story in precise, often stunning, prose. It’s one of my personal favourite books so far this year.

 

Thanks to Virago for the review copy.