Thrillers aren't always thrilling

Just finished reading Sarah Waters' latest, The Little Stranger.
It's an odd read.
I get what she's attempting, I really do. But does it work?

In one sense, yes. The setting is a dilapidated country house; the point of view a local lad made good, a doctor, as dull as dishwater, just a little obsessed with the house and its family. Strange things start happening there, sad and violent things, and you know there'll be tears before bedtime (actually, there won't be, because most of the characters are too stiff-upper-lip). All nicely realised.

Waters is doing what she does best, recreating a genre, or perhaps era, of fiction: absorbing it, reliving it, and somehow conveying its essence in both plot and language (if not character). It was pitch-perfect in The Night Watch and Fingersmith. It may be close in this - post-war ghost stories are not my thing.

But it's pretty boring.

The second strange event had me absolutely spooked, though that's not hard since I get too scared to watch the most run-of-the-mill police show on TV. Apart from that it was difficult to engage as a reader, and even more difficult to care about any of the characters.

The central issue is obvious, and one with which many authors have grappled: the unsympathetic narrator.

It's not that Doctor Faraday is completely unsympathetic. We appreciate the class anxieties, the son of the former maid now able to enter the big house as a friend. But, as one reviewer noted, "Waters gives herself a sort of handicap with the dull doctor's narration. This indirectness, which in cruder hands might have led to a yawning insurrection in the reader, becomes essential to the novel's unsettling power".

I missed the unsettling power and felt saddled with the dull doctor, and having figured out the supernatural element about halfway through, plodded on laboriously and loyally to the end.

It also seemed to me that Waters' usual control of her historical detail seems to have gotten away from her: the meticulous descriptions that worked so well in The Night Watch became even more words to wade through here, and seemed often at odds with the doctor's character.

Tricky stuff to pull off, and points for trying, but it doesn't really work. Millions disagree, I'm sure, and it was short-listed for the Booker alongside Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, the eventual winner; a triumph of the unsympathetic narrator who wins us over completely and utterly.

Note to self: The more historical fiction you read, the less interested you are in historical detail. And remember this warning, since you are currently entangled with a dangerously borderline unsympathetic narrator.

Sharp as

The view from my reading desk: Joan and Jackie helping through the window.




My next book may have to be The Joy of Pruning.
The love of pruning applies, of course, to both gardening and writing. Today I've been doing both.

I feel quite sorry for the cotoneaster, since objectively it's a pretty little thing - one has orange berries, one has red, both quite lovely at this time of year but, sadly, a pest plant in this area.

I feel less sorry for the spare adverbs and adjectives, not to mention gushes of passive voice - can one gush passively? I suppose not - now cluttering up my laptop memory but no longer, happily, my manuscript.
How they got in there in the first place is beyond me.

Purple hebe and purple prose, all gone in one day.
Perhaps the new title should be 101 Ways With Waste.

Tweaks

Gorgeous weekend at my own sacred place.



Final proof-read of the new manuscript. Think it's OK. Then was too stupid to read anything but old gardening maagazines, Vanity Fair, and a Robert Harris thriller.

One day my reading brain will return to normal. I hope.

Some days

"It is tiresome to write a novel, and more so to read it"

~ Théophile Gautier (on whose words I have been hanging all day)

Carol Ann Duffy on David Beckham's blessed ankle

O, how I love Carol Ann Duffy, and love even more that she's Poet Laureate (and even more that Anthony Brown, a Surrealist, is the Children's Laureate, which just cracks me up - two of my heroes in one Laureate era).

But this takes the cake. Actually, it's the cream on the cake: Duffy on Beckham's Achilles heel, and apart from anything else it's utterly gorgeous.

Myth’s river – where his mother
dipped him, fished him, a
slippery golden boy flowed on,
his name on its lips.

Read it all here: David Beckham Poem 'Achilles' by Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate | NowPublic News Coverage

Scrambling

Nearly there with the new book, Auto da Fe. Lots of editing to do but it's there, in one fairly reasonable piece, I think.
Whew.
Just in time to start the next one.

Ten rules for writing fiction

The Guardian has published a few thoughts from people who really ought to know about how to write.
I'm not sure they are rules, as such. More like guidelines:

'The two most depressing words in the English language are "literary fiction".'
- David Hare

'Only bad writers think that their work is really good.'
- Anne Enright

'Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.'
- Helen Dunmore

'You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.'
- Margaret Atwood

'Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.'
-Elmore Leonard

You can read it all here.
I'm going back to my desk to deal with a few sloppy verbs.

Researched out

Scrambling to finish writing one book at present, before I embark on another (for the PhD) in a couple of weeks.
My own fault. I could have finished this one a year or more ago. Lost my way. Got bored with it. Now I'm fired up and charging through it (pardon the mixed metaphor) but not taking enough time to look back over old notes and bookmarks.
Need a stern talking to.
Slow down. Breathe. Check your notes before you spend two hours finding out all over again the key dates in the history of the Book of Common Prayer...

Things that make me disproportionately pleased

(in no particular order, really)
1. Chooks
2. Wooden boats
3. My home-grown, home-pickled beetroot (arguably as good as Auntie Myrtle's)
4. Drew Barrymore smiling
5. Fish and chips on Blairgowrie beach at sunset
6. Writing so intently I don't realise it's lunchtime already
7. Pink (not the colour, mind you, which would be on the list of things I hate)
8. Lots and lots and lots of books
9. Turkish rugs in a deep crimson and midnight blue
10. Mist on the river in the early mornings.

Things I am utterly over

1. A sudden influx of blog spam
2. Australia Day posturing
3. Caterpillars
4. Celebrity updates masquerading as news (Brangelina? Sure. Corey Worthington? I don't think so.)
5. "Untold story" revelations about topics on which anybody with half a brain can find a dozen books
6. Hysteria over any mis-steps in reporting climate science: if only other science (say, testing of drugs or pesticides, or perhaps climate change denial claims) were subject to such media scrutiny
7. Unattractive tennis outfits
8. Tony Abbott. Although I can't think of a time since 1982 when I wasn't utterly over him
9. Apple product releases masquerading as news
10. The 2010 exercise regime I haven't even started yet.

The thrill of it all

Just finished my beach holiday.
These are the books I took with me to read:
- The Boat (Nam Le)
- D-Day (Antony Beevor)
- The Great War and Modern Memory (Paul Fussell)

This is what I actually read:
- Who Weekly
- Famous
- Old copies of the English Country Living (again)
- The Sensuous Gardener, by my new hero Monty Don (again)
- Elizabeth Jane Howard's memoir, Slipstream (vague and disappointingly light)
- Enigma (Robert Harris)
- When Eight Bells Toll (or something like that) and Where Eagles Dare (Alistair MacLean)
- An entire Desmond Bagley omnibus some of which wasn't very good
I nearly even read a Clive Cussler but my partner sent me off to the newsagents for alternatives just in time, including a rather annoying Alexander Fullerton WW2 resistance thriller the name of which escapes (pardon the pun) me already.

I never do that. I usually spend my holiday reading time catching up on the pile by my bedside that never seems to get any smaller. And I certainly don't spend the whole summer reading things especially designed to be read quickly and compulsively. God, it was fun.

Anyway, I was halfway through the first Alistair MacLean and realised: I should write thrillers. Never mind this literary fiction bollocks.

That lasted a day, with all sorts of life-changing decisions being made, until I finally remembered: I already do write thrillers; it's just that I write them for kids (it took a while to figure that out, I know, but I was very relaxed at the time).

But when I think about writing for adults, I get into this head space where I have to have Big Ideas. And convey Important Truths. Or some nonsense.

As if the ideas in my kids books (slavery, colonialism, violence, friendship, community, self-identify) aren't Big.

So after that false alarm, mixed in as it was with other major decisions about what to eat next and what time to go to the beach, I plotted out my next thriller. It's got boats, and spies, and danger, and late night death-defying escapes, and confrontations at gunpoint.
Just like Alistair MacLean.
And me.

The guru *

A clear-eyed essay by Jim Holt in the NY Times on the joys and torments of Fowler, "the King of English".

When it came to the notorious split infinitive (e.g., “to boldly go where no man . . .”), he observed that those English speakers who neither know nor care about them “are to be envied” by the unhappy few who do.

My favourite passages in The King's English, written by Fowler with his brother in 1906, are about slang:

Awfully nice is an expression than which few can be sillier; but to have succeeded in going through life without saying it a certain number of times is as bad as having no redeeming vice.

Indeed only the other day I was worrying about "rather ordinary".

* See section on "Words whose meaning is misapprehended without apparent cause", in The King's English; or perhaps under the wanton use of foreign words.

Reformed

It's an odd moment in time.
I recently read Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning Wolf Hall, a novel based on the life of Thomas Cromwell, and am now engrossed in Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City, by Tristram Hunt. And have being researching the English Civil War for a book.
It felt extraordinary to be reading and writing all this at the same time that the Pope suddenly announced completely out of the lapis blue that Anglicans who wish to become part of the Church of Rome will be very welcome.
The earth shuddered. I felt it.
Here am I reading about the Reformation one moment and then in another reading of its - arguable - end.
Was it inevitable?
Reading Building Jerusalem, funnily enough, makes one believe it was. The two topics may not seem to be linked, but of course one of the most visible and lasting legacies of the Victorian city is its Gothic architecture, designed by men (almost entirely) who pined for the lost glories of a past embodied by the medieval Church.
The German Romantic, and then Pugin and his colleagues profoundly regretted the cultural loss of Catholic ritual and the medieval religious aesthetic, just as conservative commentators like Carlyle (and possibly Tony Abbott!) longed for the return of the social structures that bound medieval communities together.
It was the great clash between the Industrial Revolution and rationalist/utilitarian thought, and romanticism. (One might also argue that it's easy to agitate for the return of the great barons when you're not a peasant farmer, although whether 15th century peasant farmers had a worse time of it than 19th century cotton mill workers it'd be hard to say.)
I'm endlessly fascinated by the play between these ideas: between Enlightenment and science; and Romanticism and the sublime. One won the day in practical terms, while the other won the battle for hearts and minds - or at least fond memory.
The process is embodied in some ways by Wolf Hall, wherein Thomas More - the revered friend of Erasmus, Renaissance man and martyr, who clearly won the sainted memory battle - comes across as a finicky, heartless and needlessly stubborn old git.
Cromwell, on the other hand - the rationalist lawyer usually painted as the evil power behind Henry's throne, destroyer of the Faith, and chopper-off of queenly heads - is the focus of the novel and in spite of being far from saintly wins the reader's empathy.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of the great battle was the French Revolution in which we can see the two ideas at war, along with a great many others, and it splattered both rationalism and Romanticism in their political senses against the walls of history and belief.
Perhaps Danton and Robespierre are the Cromwell and More of the 18th century...
and as I write that I realise that Mantell has described both fatal duets - better than anyone else.

Fair Trade

At the weekend I bought Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall at Dymock's (not even a true independent bookshop) for something around $32. I walked around the corner and there it was on a table out the front of Big W for $20.

Now, I'm happy to buy my potting mix and Dynamic Lifter at Big W, but I know from the other side where those discounts on books come from - the author.

It may not matter much to Dan Brown or Jackie Collins, but if you respect an author, especially a local or someone who is not regularly on best-seller lists, do them a favour and don't buy their books from KMart or Big W or anywhere else that offers a huge discount on new releases.

Consider the difference as an investment in our creative future.

Grisham hits out at 'shortsighted' discounts

Author John Grisham has called the book price war in the US between Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Target a "disaster" for the book business, warning that the "shortsighted and short-term" discounts would hit publishers, book stores and aspiring authors.

Giant US retailer Wal-Mart—also Asda's parent—sparked the price war when it began offering 10 upcoming titles, including Grisham's new book Ford County priced at $24, for $10.

Speaking on NBC's "Today Show", Grisham said the discounts, of more than 60% on some titles, "seriously devalued the book".

He said: "Its shortsighted, short term, they know what they are doing I think, but if a book is worth $10 then suddenly the whole industry is going to change, you are going to lose publishers and book stores, and though I'll probably be alright, asipring authors are going to find it difficult to get published."

Grisham added that $24 was "a fair price" that "enables me to make a royalty, the publisher to make a profit and the bookstore to make a profit".

Following Wal-Mart's price promotion, both Amazon.com and then Target offered the front-list hardback books at first $9 and £8.99 respectively, though they did limit the number that could be ordered.

Though none of the three US retailers have so far matched the 75% discounts seen in the UK on Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and Peter Kay's Saturday Night Peter, the developments led to the American Booksellers Association asking the Department of Justice to intervene over what it called "predatory pricing".

In a letter to the DoJ it said: "What's so troubling in the current situation is that none of the companies involved are engaged primarily in the sale of books. They're using our most important products -- mega bestsellers, which, ironically, are the most expensive books for publishers to bring to market -- as a loss leader to attract customers to buy other, more profitable merchandise. The entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war."

Lately I've been ...

Reading
I gave up on Soul Mountain. I don't give up on many books, and I know it's terrible, but I just didn't care about our narrator - in the first, second or third person.
So I came, finally, to Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller, which I have meant to read for years. The first half had me, I'm sure, reading with mouth agape, it's just so gob-smackingly fine. Now it's gone all silly and annoyingly postmodern. Surely it'll come right.
But in the meantime I've got my grubby little hands on Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning Wolf Hall. God, she's good. If A Place of Greater Safety is one of the best historical novels ever written, this may well come close. Philippa Gregory, read it and weep - even better, read it and vow never to write that crappy Tudor trash ever again.
Next up, Antony Beevor on The Battle for Spain.

Listening
To the new Madonna greatest hits album, over and over, and it's not even me playing it.

Eating
Broad beans, rocket and beetroot fresh from the garden.

Watching
Rain. At last.
Oh and Drew Barrymore movies.