Cornflower Books

The Walter Scott Prize

    The shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been announced today:

Toby's Room by Pat Barker

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

The Streets by Anthony Quinn

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twang Eng

Merivel by Rose Tremain

    Hilary Mantel won the inaugural Walter Scott prize in 2010 with Wolf Hall; since then, the winners have been Andrea Levy's The Long Song and On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry. Of this year's shortlist, all I've read so far is the Anthony Quinn which is very good indeed but to my mind lacks something of the finesse of his earlier book Half of the Human Race (which I wrote about here). On a superficial level, is not the paperback cover for the Rose Tremain very lovely?

    The winner will be announced at the Borders Book Festival in mid-June. Who's your money on?

Monday miscellany: BOYBN, Rebus, Blackfriars and more

    It happens only once every ten years, but this evening the literary journal Granta announced its latest Best of Young British Novelists. For the purposes of perspective, have a look at the 1983 list and read the related article.

   

    It may be only mid-April, but Christmas shopping planning has started for me with the announcement of the release of Ian Rankin's next Rebus novel, Saints of the Shadow Bible, in November - Mr. C. is already rubbing his hands in anticipation, and I'm glad to have at least one present 'done'.

 

 

    Just arrived today and out early next month is Kate Clanchy's Meeting the English, "a bright story about dark subjects". 

   " 'Literary giant seeks young man to push bathchair. Own room in Hampstead, all found, exciting cultural milieu. Modest wage. Ideal 'gap year' opportunity....'

    So it is that Struan Robertson, orphan, genius and just seventeen, leaves his dour native town of Cuik, and arrives in London in the freakish fine summer of 1989. His job is to care for Phillip Prys, silenced and paralysed by a massive stroke, because, though two teenage children, two wives, and a literary agent all rattle round Phillip's large house, they are each too busy with their peculiar obsessions to do it themselves. As the city bakes, Struan finds himself tangled in a midsummer's dream of mistaken identity, giddying property prices, wild swimming and overwhelming passions. For everyone it is to be a life-changing summer."

 

    Blackfriars is a new digital-only literary imprint from Little Brown and Virago, "created with the aim of discovering and nurturing new talent (or talent that has been away for a while)". It will be launched in June with three titles including The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan, " a heartrending novel set in belle époque Paris, inspired by the real-life model for Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, Marie van Goethem, and a notorious criminal trial of the era".

 

 

    Lastly today, a tongue-in-cheek look at current cover trends, though what they don't say in that article is that on the back of the Life After Life jacket is a dog!

Choose the cover

    We often talk about book cover design, and the impact of a striking or beautiful jacket is not to be underestimated. Elizabeth Gilbert has a new novel coming out in October and as far as her US edition is concerned, she and her publishers are at an impasse as to the cover so they have put the three options on show and asked readers to vote for the one they prefer. You can see the designs and register your preference here (I think voting closes today); meanwhile, here's the UK cover, and this is what the book is about:

    "5th January 1800. At the beginning of a new century, Alma Whittaker is born into a perfect Philadelphia winter. Her father, Henry Whittaker, is a bold and charismatic botanical explorer whose vast fortune belies his lowly beginnings as a vagrant in Kew Gardens. Alma’s mother, a strict woman from an esteemed Dutch family, is conversant in five living languages (and two dead ones) and her knowledge of botany is equal to any man’s. An independent girl with a thirst for knowledge, it is not long before Alma comes into her own within the world of plants and science.

    As Alma’s careful studies of moss take her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, the man she comes to love draws her in the opposite direction – into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose is a Utopian artist. But what unites this couple is a shared passion for knowing – a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all of life.

    The Signature of All Things is a big novel, about a big century. It soars across the globe from London, to Peru, to Philadelphia, to Tahiti, to Amsterdam. Peopled with extraordinary characters – missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses and the quite mad – most of all it has an unforgettable heroine in Alma Whittaker, a woman of the Enlightened Age who stands defiantly on the cusp of the modern."

Bargain of the day - A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar

    Today's Kindle Deal is Suzanne Joinson's A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, yours for a mere £1.29. My post on the book is here, and there's also a link there to my interview with Suzy.

    Just out of interest, which design do your prefer? That's the hardback jacket above left and the paperback cover on the right.

Edited to add: as Mary, in her comment, mentioned the US covers, here they are - hardback on the left, paperback on the right -

She Rises

 

    What an exuberant novel this is - full of energy, atmosphere, idiom, and colour. She Rises by Kate Worsley is a debut, and an impressive one, a piece of character and integrity (it has a very pleasing sense of identity and wholeness about it), and one that has been crafted and buffed smooth.

    Keep in mind the epigraph, which is from Swinburne's The Triumph of Time, and then we'll go on -

    "I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, / Change as the winds change, veer in the tide, / I will go back to the great sweet mother, / Mother and lover of men, the sea. / I will go down to her, I and no other, / Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me."

    I shan't say much about the plot other than that it's set in Essex in 1740 when dairymaid Louise Fletcher goes to work in the port of Harwich as maid to a sea captain's daughter. This new world in a prosperous and almost exclusively female household serving a selfish and thoughtless young mistress takes much adjustment on the part of Louise, but while her proximity to the sea is unnerving - for it claimed the life of her father, and possibly that of her brother, too - she is both fascinated and perturbed by the novelty, the flooding of the streets at spring tide, the network of smugglers' passages connecting houses in its narrow lanes, and the nearness of sailors, that rough crew from whom she may just be able to discover something about her brother's fate.

    Louise's story is interwoven with that of Luke, pressganged in a tavern and taken to serve on the warship Essex. Luke soon finds that life aboard is tough in every respect, and whether below decks or aloft in the rigging in a heavy sea, he must watch himself and choose his friends carefully on what becomes for him both "a floating prison" and "a vessel of hope". How his fate is linked to Louise's is for you to discover as you read the book.

    This is a love story, an adventure, it has action aplenty, intrigue and secrets. It is a sensuous book with its roots deep in a real place, and as its tale of "disguise, deceit and deception" unfolds, it does so with vigour. If at times the plot takes an implausible turn or two, then in keeping with its subject matter it's riding the waves of fiction and moving with the story's swell.

                                               ~~~~~

 

 

    Just by the way, we're used to matching our reading and our eating via Books & Cakes, but how about pairing literature and crockery in Books & Plates - this Stratus Swirl Platter from Anthropologie goes perfectly with the book's beautiful jacket by Holly Macdonald!

TBR 1: The Hired Man

   

    Today's clutch of books from the TBR piles begins with The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna, author of the Orange Prize shortlisted The Memory of Love.

    "Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived.

    A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long past still suppurate beneath the scars."

    "A beautiful, moving story about the aftermath of civil war in the Balkans, its descriptions of the Croatian landscape are breath-taking and the novel's gentle pace reflects the trepidation with which the characters face the horrors of the past."

    Before I leave this book for now I must comment on its jacket - another strikingly beautiful design by Holly Macdonald, whose cover for Kate Worsley's She Rises (among others) was remarked upon last week.           

TBR 3: She Rises

    "Immensely enjoyable ... full of energy, intelligence and delicious turns of phrase," says Sarah Waters of Kate Worsley's first novel She Rises.

    Set in the mid eighteenth century, this is a tale of drunken sailors, press gangs and smugglers, but at its heart a love story:

    "Louise Fletcher, a dairymaid on an Essex farm, has long been warned of the lure of the sea, for it stole away her father and brother, but when she is offered work in the naval port of Harwich, as maid to a wealthy captain's daughter, she leaps at the chance to see more of the world.

    Young Luke is drinking in a Harwich tavern when he is pressganged and sent to sea aboard a warship. He must learn fast if he is to survive the brutal hardships of a sailor's life, above and below decks.

    Louise navigates her new life amid the streets and alleys of the town where fine houses concealing smugglers' tunnels are flooded by spring tides, and love burns brightly in the shadows. And Luke, aching for the girl he left behind and determined to find his way back to her, embarks on a long and perilous journey across the ocean.

    When Luke's and Louise's worlds collide the consequences are astonishing and irrevocable."

A curse, a workshop, a novel

     Some bookish bits and pieces you may want to note for future reference.

    Firstly, since we have the Slightly Foxed tea towel over on the other site today, how about their A Curse Against Book Stealers Postcards here? I've lost several books through having lent them to people, but would I dare slip one of these (the text is here) into a volume I was going to let someone read? Maybe I would ...

  
   Next, meet the authors:

    If you've read posts from earlier in the week you'll know that two of my novels of the year were A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson and The Coward's Tale by Vanessa Gebbie. In London on 28th. February, Suzy and Vanessa will be leading a workshop on how to get started as a writer, and it looks as though it will be full of practical advice and very worthwhile for anyone with literary aspirations. Related to that, you may find much of what Suzy had to say about the craft of writing, when I interviewed her a few months ago, very interesting and helpful.

 

    Lastly, something from the recent arrivals pile: Amy Sackville's first novel The Still Point was very much on my radar as one to look out for, well she has a new book out soon, and a brief description of Orkney was enough to grab me straightaway:

    "On a remote island in Orkney, a curiously matched couple arrive on their honeymoon. He is an eminent literature professor; she was his pale, enigmatic star pupil. Alone beneath the shifting skies of this untethered landscape, the professor realises how little he knows about his new bride and yet, as the days go by and his mind turns obsessively upon the creature who has so beguiled him, she seems to slip ever further from his yearning grasp. Where does she come from? Why did she ask him to bring her north? What is it that constantly draws her to the sea?"

    By the way, click on the picture to enlarge it and get a better view of the beautiful jacket, designed by Kanitta Meechubot.

A literary location and books to treasure

    A literary location: snapped at dusk, The Eagle and Child - also known as The Bird and Baby - a public house dating from 1650 in Oxford's St. Giles, extra-mural meeting place of The Inklings, and as such referred to by Edmund Crispin.

    I wish I'd had time to go inside when I was there last week; that will have to wait for the next visit.

 

    Books to treasure: I am fortunate in being invited to many literary events in London, but living up in Scotland means that I can rarely accept these lovely invitations. One such 'do' which I couldn't attend was a recent evening hosted by The Guardian to showcase the beautiful books of The Folio Society.

    All those of us who prize quality of production and design in our books - fine paper and bindings, exquisite illustrations to complement the text - will be familiar with Folio Society books. If you're looking for special Christmas gifts, their site is well worth a visit: take for example their 2013 diary shown above, the favourites in this list, or - to follow on from the Inklings - C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, and don't miss this wonderful short video which brings books alive!

Arrivals: Elijah's Mermaid

   

     "Deep waters. Dark secrets." That's the strapline on the cover of Essie Fox's new novel Elijah's Mermaid, "a tale of obsessive love and betrayal moving from the respectable worlds of Victorian art and literature, into the shadowy demi-monde of brothels, asylums and freak show tents - a world in which nothing and no one is quite what they seem to be."

   

    The web-toed baby Pearl was found floating in the Thames one foggy night, and was brought up in a brothel known as the House of Mermaids. Now near her fourteenth birthday she discovers she is to be sold to the highest bidder.

    Orphaned twins Lily and Elijah live in a secluded country house with their grandfather, but on a visit to London a chance meeting with Pearl will have repercussions for all of them, "binding their fates in a dark and dangerous way ..."

 

    Essie Fox - who blogs at The Virtual Victorian - is of course the author of the very popular The Somnambulist which was a Channel Four TV Book Club choice earlier this year (click on the link there to watch the programme). "A spellbinding tale of lost love, grief, murder and madness in Victorian England," it features young Phoebe Turner who one night spots an enigmatic stranger in the audience at Wilton's Music Hall. When this Mr. Samuels offers Phoebe the job of companion to his reclusive wife at their country home, Dinwood Court, little does she know that the grand house may be haunted and hold the darkest of secrets.

 

    A word about the very attractive covers Essie's novels have - they are designed by Bold & Noble whose work includes the inspired and memorable jacket for Patrick Hennessey's The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars (a book my son recommends).

To be read: Elza's Kitchen

 

    "For years, Elza has managed to get by. She has her own little restaurant in the Hungarian city of Delibab, cooking quality versions of her country's classics and serving them with a smile. But lately her smile has become tired, she is weary of cooking for the same customers and the loveless affair with her sous-chef is now an irritation.

    With her country in a state of transition from communism to capitalism, Elza embarks upon her own change. She decides to woo The Critic, one of the harshest, most powerful culinary columnists in Europe. But as relationships in the kitchen sour, the food threatens to turn with them, and not even Elza's strained composure can prevent the chaos that seems fated to engulf her.

    Serving up all the heat, sensual delights and rich atmosphere of the restaurant itself, Elza's Kitchen is a wonderful celebration of culture and cuisine. Resisting the comfortable pattern of her old life, Elza finds that true joy - and love - can be hidden in the most surprising of places."

    Marc Fitten's second novel - Valeria's Last Stand was his first - sounds just the thing for a lazy evening with something to nibble on, perhaps, or to have to hand in the kitchen while you stand and stir a risotto. It's not just the content which appeals, as I like that cover, too; and speaking of exteriors, here's an amusing post on what might result were designers to use stock photos for book jackets.

A very smart cover

    I flagged up Jess Richards' debut novel Snake Ropes a few days ago, but today I wanted to give you a closer look at the cover - which is by Dan Funderburgh - as it's very striking and rather beautiful, and a snippet of the text to get the feel of it.

    Here's the book's opening:

"The tall men in boats are coming. I see them through the window, close to the beach. My little brother is sat on my lap. Him puts hims hands on the table, leans round and looks up at me. Hims brown eyes have my reflection inside.

    I smile at him, stroke the curls on the back of hims head where they need a wash. I say, 'Sorry Barney. I've got to get you hid, them're coming.' Him grips on my neck hard, buries hims face in my hair and I carry him across the room. Him is so warm and I want to hang on to him, but I put him down by the cupboard door, and hims face trying to look all angered makes we want to laugh, but I dun."

    The book features crows who become statues and sisters who get tangled in each other's hair, keys that talk and ghosts who demand to be buried - intriguing stuff, well matched, by the look of it, by that great design.

A few things ...

    - To covet: for sale - houses with literary connections.

    - To be admired: the Penguin English Library (also to be found here).

    - To ban: words! Which would you outlaw?

    - To be judged: the shortlist for the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.

    - To watch: in case you missed it before, and specially for Freda, the short video Birth of a Book.

A 1950s jacket

    I've just received a finished copy of James Runcie's lovely novel Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, and having previously read it in proof I'm seeing the jacket proper for the first time. I'm very taken with its design - it's by Greg Heinimann - and thought it deserved a post of its own. As you can see (and click on the picture to enlarge it) it's 1950s in feel, and suits the story's setting, subject matter and gentle romanticism perfectly.

    The book will be published early next month, and there's a post on it here.

Edited to add: you can read an extract here.

More tea at Bloomsbury

 

    On Friday I said a little about our tea at Bloomsbury, and I put the spotlight on William Boyd, who kindly popped in to see us, and his new novel Waiting for Sunrise, but we also had the chance to meet Suzanne Joinson and Kate Summerscale who were there to tell us about their forthcoming books, and after hearing them speak we are all now eagerly anticipating reading both titles.

    Suzanne will be making her debut with A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, a two-stranded novel set in 1923, when two sisters head for Kashgar on the Silk Road to establish a mission, and in present-day London when a young Yemeni refugee befriends Frieda, a woman "adrift in her own life": "A secret notebook. An unlikely inheritance. A collision of worlds. Prepare to be swept off your feet." I can't wait to read this!

    If you visit her blog you can see some pictures of Suzanne herself and several Bloomsbury ladies all dressed up and heading off on their bicycles to deliver bound proofs of the novel across London - an inspired idea, I think - and speaking of the proof, that cover (which will be slightly different on the finished copies) is absolutely beautiful and so eye-catching.

 

    Having read and greatly enjoyed The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House (there's a post on it here), it was a particular pleasure to hear from its author Kate Summerscale about her new book Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady. Non-fiction again, this story begins on a winter's evening in 1850 at a house in Edinburgh (a mere stone's throw from my home) where Isabella Robinson is attending a party given by the vivacious hostess Lady Drysdale. At the elegant gathering Mrs. Robinson is introduced to Lady Drysdale's son-in-law Edward Lane, a medical student ten years her junior. He was "fascinating' - so she told her diary later - and thus began her downfall, for her ensuing infatuation with him was to have terrible consequences.

    A true story of romance, infidelity, insanity and Victorian mores (not to mention some 'local interest'), this sounds like another tour de force from the highly accomplished Kate Summerscale.

 

    One more thing to mention about our memorable day last week and that is the Bloomsbury Institute and Salon and its series of lectures, author events, interviews and discussions held at their beautiful London premises and open to the general public. Had I been able to stay on for the evening I'd have gone to hear Susannah Clapp in conversation with Sir Christopher Frayling about Angela Carter and her book A Card from Angela Carter which I'll talk about soon, but if you're in the area you may like to click here for details of the programme for the next few weeks.

    Once again, my thanks to our hosts for a simply wonderful afternoon - I was in my element!

TBR: Q

    Full marks for a very stylish cover! This is Q: A Love Story by Evan Mandery, the latest addition to the TBR pile, and an interesting-sounding novel which comes with a warning from The New York Times - "a word to the tear-prone: don't attempt to read the ending in public".

    It's a tale of "time travel and true love" about an unorthodox professor who is also a writer of little acclaim. When he meets his future self and is advised by him not to marry Q (Quentina Elizabeth Deveril), the love of his life, what should he do - "evade future misery or maintain present bliss?"

    Set in New York, this is "an epic love story fashioned on quantum foundations. The novel wears its philosophical and narrative sophistication lightly: in exuberant, direct and witty prose, Mandery brings an essayist’s poise to this fabulous romance. And, finally, Q has an ending that will melt even the darkest heart".

    You can read more about the book on Evan Mandery's website, but I've read the prologue and beyond to get a feel for it and I've found the first person narrative sunny in mood and self-deprecatory in tone and thus very appealing. As to the plot - how intriguing!

First impressions - Diving Belles by Lucy Wood

 

    Our second book in the 'First impressions' series of posts is a collection of short stories: Diving Belles by Lucy Wood, a "luminous, startling and utterly spellbinding debut".

    "Along Cornwall's ancient coast, the flotsam and jetsam of the past becomes caught in the cross-currents of the present and, from time to time, a certain kind of magic can float to the surface ...

    Straying husbands lured into the sea can be fetched back, for a fee. Magpies whisper to lonely drivers late at night. Trees can make wishes come true - provided you know how to wish properly first. Houses creak, fill with water and keep a fretful watch on their inhabitants, straightening shower curtains and worrying about frayed carpets. A teenager's growing pains are sometimes even bigger than him. And, on a windy beach, a small boy and his grandmother keep despair at bay with an old white door.

    In these stories, Cornish folklore slips into everyday life. Hopes, regrets and memories are entangled with catfish, wreckers' lamps, standing stones and baying hounds, and relationships wax and wane in the glow of a moonlit sea."

    I've read several stories to get a feel for the book, firstly Diving Belles itself, in which a woman goes to great lengths - or rather, depths - to be re-united with her husband; then Notes from the House Spirits, which shows that a home is far more than just four walls; and then Of Mothers and Little People which includes the great line "You have always believed in fate, picturing it as a fairy godmother labouring over a huge timetable".

    These and others transpose traditional myth and legend to a contemporary setting, giving an effect as of curiously beguiling dislocation, a type of cultural mis-step or syncopation, original and intriguing. Here is a voice which catches your attention; it's one of subtle detachment but distinctive emphasis, and though I'd intended to read only a story or two and leave the rest for later, I'm minded now to carry on and finish the book today - it's matter-of-fact other-worldliness has quite drawn me in.

       

 

One last thing, I must mention the lovely jacket, designed by Holly Macdonald. 

 

 

Edited to add: you can read one of the stories from the collection here.

One snowy night ...

 

    "I had concocted the gunpowder myself from nitre, sulphur, charcoal, and a happy heart. When working with explosives, I've found that attitude is everything."

    That's a typical Flavia line, and that vivacity is one of the things which make Alan Bradley's delightful mystery novels so appealing. Their heroine is an 11-year-old sleuth who also happens to be a master chemist and expert in poisons - not as far-fetched as it sounds when you consider that this very precocious child has grown up in an eccentric English household in the 1950s; motherless, and with an emotionally distant father and older sisters who practise their beastliness on her, Flavia has found an ally in the resourceful manservant, Dogger, and solace in the experiments she carries out in her great-uncle Tarquin's beautifully equipped laboratory - something she has fallen heir to in the otherwise cold and crumbling Buckshaw, the imposing family home.

    In I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, the latest book in the series which began with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the de Luce family finances are in their usual parlous state and so Buckshaw has been let to a film crew for location shooting; as the village gathers for a charity performance given by the film's leading lady, the famous actress Phyllis Wyvern, so a snowfall leaves everyone stranded at the big house, a murder occurs and Flavia has a particularly 'sticky' Christmas experiment to carry out.

    Lots of fun, lots of spirited dialogue and action, lots of brio; still the tantalising back story concerning Flavia's late mother Harriet, still the engaging situational plot, although the individual murder mystery is more a vehicle for the characters - Flavia especially - rather than a gripping strand in its own right. These books are lovely period pieces and they have a freshness and originality about them which has earned them a loyal following; readers respond to Flavia's idealism, her keen sense of justice, her vivid imagination and intelligence, and are intrigued by the family's own story and the greater history of the de Luce home. All these elements combine to make them a treat of a read.

                                                 ~~~~~

Edited to add: Do pop over and have a look at the illustrations of Jonathan Burton, the book's jacket designer.

First impressions - The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall

 

    Although I often write briefly here about books which have just arrived to join the Himalayan tbr piles, those are usually very short introductions to flag up what's new, and rarely will I have actually begun to read them. While that's fine as far as it goes, I'm conscious that it might be preferable to set down not only the bare bones of the story and a line or two from a review or a puff from the cover, but also some idea of what the book is like.

    I thought I'd start that today with the most recent arrival, giving you some impressions gleaned from the first chapter.

    The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall*:

    The gist - "He doesn't look like a tramp, yet he lives on a roundabout in a caravan and survives on the leftovers from a nearby motorway service station. He calls himself Quinn, the name of a boy in a world-famous series of children's books, but he's nearer retirement than childhood. What he hopes no one will discover is that he's the real Quinn, immortalised as a child by his mother in her entrancing tales about a little boy's adventures with his triplet sisters. It is this inheritance he has successfully run away from - until now. When Quinn's reclusive existence is invaded, he is forced to face his past, and the uncomfortable truths and secrets it contains about himself, his sisters and, most of all, his mother."

    That's a strong-sounding background; shades of House of Silence?

    The opening passage - "I exist in the eye of the storm, the calm in the centre of a perpetual hurricane of cars and lorries heading for the M6, the north and Scotland, or south to Penzance and Land's End. I sometimes wonder if they don't go on the motorway at all, that I hear the same vehicles circling endlessly, a kind of multiple Flying Dutchman, doomed to travel for ever. I don't regret for one minute that I am no longer one of them.

    "I call my caravan Dunromin, in the solid tradition of all those semi-detached streets that form the vertebrae of the country, because that's exatcly what I've done. Stopped roaming. I've anchored myself in the middle of one of the few patches of land where no one goes, among well-established birches, ashes, sycamores, surrounded myself with nettles and claimed sanctuary...."

    The first chapter is an intriguing beginning in which Quinn Smith is surprised early one morning by the arrival on his roundabout of Lorna Steadman, a junior reporter for a local newspaper. She's there to write an article for a series on unususal people and has heard about this man who apparently used to be a pilot and now lives an unconventional existence, without money, close to a motorway service station, but no one knows Quinn's true identity, and when Lorna finds in his caravan a very familiar picture, one which almost every child in the land would recognise from the bestselling children's book The Triplets and Quinn, her subject claims it's a print he found in a bin and took because he liked it - in fact it's the original ... "It's delicately drawn, washed with watercolour, a nostalgic image of childhood. There's a signature in the bottom right corner: Larissa Smith."

    With references and flashbacks to Quinn's former life with his mother and sisters in contrast to his solitary, scavenging present and now this intrusion from a well-meaning stranger, and all of it making for a promising beginning, am I inclined to read on? Yes, I am! 

 

*I haven't read any of Clare's books, though she is very well known for the Booker-shortlisted Astonishing Splashes Of Colour in particular.

By the way, cover illustration is by Tom Berry.

Tea at five in a sunlit reading room ...

 

    Bloomsbury have used Anna Wray's cover design for Magnus Mills's A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In for their lovely advent calendar - if you click there and open the doors you can find discounts and you might win things!

    I read the book recently and reviewed it elsewhere, but haven't talked about it here on the blog; seeing the calendar has prompted me to put that right, so here's a bit about it:

    It's set in the Empire of Greater Fallowfields where despite the appointment of a new head of state - who has yet to actually put in an appearance - things are falling apart. Members of the cabinet meet and try to get on with their jobs, but they are a sorry bunch, either having no knowledge of the departments they are required to oversee or being hamstrung by 'regulations' and endemic inefficiency. The Astronomer Royal needs a supply of sixpences to get the observatory telescope to work, the Principal Composer knows nothing about music, and the Comptroller for the Admiralty bemoans the lack of ships, but it's not just the Empire's shaky infrastructure which is putting it at risk, there's a neighbouring state intent on progress and expansion and it has designs on Greater Fallowfields ...

    This is the first of Magnus Mills's novels that I've read and I found it very engaging. It has a dry and deadpan humour and a plot which moves in ever decreasing circles, its tropes carrying both characters and reader further into its eccentric Ruritanian world of feudalism, ritual (hence the post title, though there's more to that than meets the eye) and complacency. It's both a fairytale of the absurd and an astute political satire, and as such is thought-provoking and fun; very original and nicely surreal.