Cornflower Books

Tracy Chevalier @Edbookfest

 

    Tracy Chevalier's work is "renowned for its rich evocation of times past", said journalist Jackie McGlone as she introduced Tracy to the packed main theatre at EIBF today, and in talking about her books in general but with particular emphasis on her latest novel The Last Runaway, that historical novelist's flair for capturing a period and for telling a compelling a story was very much in evidence.

    We spent a most entertaining hour hearing Tracy read - with accents! - from the book and then discuss her research and writing and even reveal a little of what her next novel is to be about (more on that later), and she was such a relaxed interviewee and a funny, engaging person that the hour sped by far too quickly.

   

     If you haven't already read The Last Runaway this post gives the gist, and you'll see that both Quaker culture and quilting are major elements of the story. Back in March, Tracy kindly wrote a guest post for me on how she learned to quilt as part of her research for the book, and she talked at some length about this today. She likes to give her characters something to do with their hands, "a daily activity which anchors them", and when she took up quilting herself (stitching entirely by hand, never with a machine) she found the work and its rhythm put her in "a non-verbal place, contemplative and quiet." In this respect it reminded her of the fossil-hunting she'd done as background to Remarkable Creatures when 'switching off ' and letting the mind wander while walking on the rocks helped the eye to focus and spot the fossils; and so in writing she feels the writer must not be self-conscious, but get out of their own way, taking a straightforward, uncomplicated approach without over-thinking the work.

    Related to this, Tracy spoke of the need for quiet in our increasingly noisy world where stillness is rare. Attending Quaker summer camps as a child, she learnt to sit in silence, and as she still attends Quaker Meeting, the quiet there allows "the words to drain away from [her] mind". She spoke of Sara Maitland's A Book of Silence, of her own efforts to say less in everyday life, and of the companionable silence in which close friends can sit happily together. She is a good advocate for a quieter life, and her work - as I alluded to here - is the best advertisement for an economical style.

    As an American in Britain (albeit one who las lived here all her adult life), Tracy's view of the cultural differences is a wry one. She talked amusingly of the British sense of humour and liking for irony, even our love of tea: "a cup of tea punctuates a moment; that's what it's there for."

    Asked whether, given her love of research, she had ever considered being a historian and writing non-fiction, she told how difficult she found it to write even a short factual piece; in contrast, writing fiction is like "doing a Jackson Pollock - there's room to play!" As to her next novel, it's about emigration and a family moving from the UK to the US and back over many, many years. Its focus is "what we take with us", in this case trees, specifically fruit trees, in order to "retain the taste of our homeland". "We think trees stay in one place, but they follow us around," Tracy says. I can't wait to read it and I hope that when it's out, Tracy will return to Edinburgh to talk about it - I know she'll be very welcome if she does.

Jane Gardam @Edbookfest

   

    As she introduced Jane Gardam at this morning's Edinburgh International Book Festival event, The Guardian's literary editor Claire Armitstead made reference to the sense of mischief in her books. The hour the audience spent in her company was certainly a hilarious one, that somewhat mischievous sense of humour very much to the fore as she read from her latest novel Last Friends - the third volume in the trilogy which began with Old Filth - and talked about her work and writing in general.

    We've noted before on these pages that writers are not always good at reading their own work, well here was someone whose gift for the comedic, and for comic timing, had the audience in stitches as she read an early passage from the novel featuring Dulcie, Fiscal-Smith, and a sepulchrally cold church.

    Beginning with the line "The Titans were gone", Last Friends takes up some of the minor characters of the series, 'the background people' as Jane Gardam called them, though no less interesting and important than those who have taken the foreground thus far; so here is retired barrister Fiscal-Smith, the "enigmatic scarecrow", a teacher, "Sir", based on Geoffrey Grigson's headmaster, and Terence Veneering, great rival to Sir Edward Feathers QC ('Old Filth'*) in both work and love.

    Asked how she came up with the character of Filth in the first place, Jane Gardam said she was wandering along London's Piccadilly one day when a man, "handsome beyond belief", emerged from the Ritz. He was beautifully dressed in Edwardian style, wore wonderful shoes, but - the telling detail - carried a very battered briefcase: he must be a lawyer. The young woman knew in that moment that she would one day write about the man, whom she had first taken to be a ghost, and in a similar example of a character stepping into a writer's life, she told the story of Baroness Orczy who was standing in a London Undergound station looking towards the empty tunnel when out of it walked a man, The Scarlet Pimpernel, a 'vision from the past' whom she made her own.

    Filth took shape on the page when with almost no notice she was asked to write a short story for The Oldie. "You can do it off the top of your head," said the editor Richard Ingrams, and she did, inventing her two lawyers, one the lover of the other's wife: Filth & co. were born. Now in Last Friends we learn more about Veneering's childhood in a rough town in the north east of England, his coal-delivering mother and cossack acrobat father, and here their creator said that Margaret Drabble provided the necessary corroboration for the presence of cossacks in the area at that time! This unusual family situation recognises class division but also individual strengths, and there are some powerful scenes in that part of the book.

     "Writing fiction is a peculiar profession," Jane Gardam said, "it's as if one is possessed", and quoting Iris Murdoch, "we don't know what we're doing - 'til it's finished". As to taking liberties with form as she does here, "the novel should be experimenting all the time; put in patches of drama, of 'screenplay', if you want, as long as it's not a ragbag," and preferring a spare style, she feels this "leaves room for the reader" and allows them to be intrigued.  Keeping track of her characters, particularly over three books, wasn't easy for her but the writing itself provided another world to occupy, something which was valuable in its own right, and comforting at difficult times. Will there be a fourth book? Jane Gardam fears she's "past it", but I very much hope not.

 

*The acronym for "Failed In London, Try Hong Kong".

Holiday reading - a few questions for you

    I think we talked about holiday reading way back, but why not revisit it now with a few questions to gauge your habits - unless of course 'everyone' is away and no-one's around to answer them! Here goes, anyway:

-   Have you been on holiday recently, and what did you read while you were away?

-   Did your reading have some connection with the place you were visiting?

-   Was your reading matter typical of what you read when you're at home, or does a trip away give you the chance to read something you don't usually pick up?

-   If the latter, would you describe your holiday reading as light, or does freedom from work and household responsibilities give you space and time to tackle something heavier than usual?

-   Have you ever found a great book (one you hadn't read before) in a holiday house, or have you found good local shops and done lots of book-buying on holiday?

(Re. Summer In February, it's been on my wish list for a while so when I saw it in Waterstones yesterday I bought it and might take it with me when I go away. Have you read it or seen the film?)

Sarah Dunant on Blood & Beauty @Edbookfest

    There was a packed house in Edinburgh's Charlotte Square Gardens last night for Sarah Dunant's Book Festival appearance. We'd come to hear her talk about the Borgias and her latest novel Blood & Beauty, and what a vibrant, animated discussion it was!

    To the book itself first:

    "It is 1492 and Rodrigo Borgia has clawed his way to the papacy - the most powerful seat on earth - to become Pope Alexander VI. But in a city run by Italians, Rodrigo is hated for his Spanish blood. His passion for power is matched only by his passion for his children and for his young mistress. Each Borgia child, however, will be tasked with advancing the family's ambitions and securing their dynasty's future...

    Larger than life characters are set against one of history's most important eras, that of the Renaissance. Could the Borgias - perhaps the most powerful patrons of the period's artists, thinkers and creators - have played a vital, and violent, part in the cultural movement that changed the world forever?"

    In conversation with Jamie Jauncey, Sarah described how her extensive research led her to form an opinion of her subjects at odds with the received view. She came to appreciate Rodrigo Borgia's huge energy and his "genuine charisma and charm", his appetite for politics, even his vulnerability in terms of his love for his children. He was a man who liked women, as well as loving them, someone who towered over his family, and by force of will constructed a dynastic powerhouse.

    In a book that is richly descriptive and highly detailed, she puts (much) flesh on the bones of the man, revealing many more aspects to him and to her other characters than the stereotypical 'heroes and villains' view admits. That energy and vitality which marks Rodrigo floods the novel as a whole, but Sarah stressed the importance of her preparatory reading: "If I've done the work then I have the confidence to make the jump into the past", she said, and she commented that recent research gives her much more information to draw upon than a novelist writing 20 years ago would have had.

    Within her vivid and concise description of fifteenth century Italy, Sarah touched on its significance to the country today - the roots of the modern state are unearthed in her book. She mentioned the historic relationship between brutality and corruption and creativity, the Renaissance growing from what was most certainly that fertile loam, and talked passionately about the period and its people, her enormous enthusiasm clearly informing every page of her book.

    If you'd like know more about the Borgias and Blood & Beauty, there's a video introduction on Sarah's website.

Peggy Riley & Jenn Ashworth @Edbookfest

    My Edinburgh International Book Festival event this afternoon was Jenn Ashworth and Peggy Riley talking about "faith and family". Jenn is the author of The Friday Gospels, "a tragic and hilarious" portrait of life in a Lancastrian Mormon family, while Peggy's Amity & Sorrow features a woman and her daughters fleeing from a fundamentalist cult. While I've yet to read Jenn's book, Peggy's has been one of the highlights of the year so far - as you'll see from this post - and it is a nominee in the Festival's First Book Award (for which you can vote via that link).

    Jenn's book uses a variety of narrators from the family of whom it is a portrait on a single day, and asked about the technical difficulty of rendering such a range of voices distinguishable and plausible she admitted it had been "nightmarish", but was keen to see how far a first person narrative can be stretched. She approached the task by deciding initially what her characters wouldn't say, and then she "chipped away" at their vocabulary and verbal style to create each voice. She drew on her own background growing up within the Mormon faith (which she has since left) to inform the book, and in writing it she was keen to give space to those for whom the religion is sustaining as well as those who don't sit easily within it.

    Peggy's book stems not from personal experience but from an interest in cults and the charismatic men who found them. Her research led her to examine what it means to be part of a cult-family, as "sister-wives", the base of a pyramid with a single man at the top, but she pointed out that however they ended up all these movements were, or were intended to be, "utopian societies created in tremendous hope" which provided a supportive community of sorts to people to whom that meant everything.

    Both writers were asked about the challenge of writing flawed and vulnerable characters, and Jenn said that while all hers fell into that category, she didn't think that that per se meant she'd have to work harder to get readers to care about them. Peggy's character Sorrow, the elder of the two sisters and the first-born in the cult-family, is difficult to like, but Peggy herself is interested in ambitious women in societies such as that of her book, and Sorrow - whose story forms a particularly dark thread in the book - is a powerful and dramatic figure and a very good foil for her mother Amaranth and sister Amity.

    On the subject of writing in the wider sense, Peggy's background as a playwright meant that she had to learn the craft of fiction for this novel - I'd call her a master of it now - but she said that the hardest part of the process is "sitting down"! Jenn agreed with that and told us that when she wrote her first novel, aged 21 or 22, the sheer scale of the work involved came as a huge shock. For her, and after the sitting down, the structuring was the biggest challenge as she was good at polishing sentences, but found it much harder to see the book's architecture; for The Friday Gospels she used a sheet of wallpaper and mapped out the story's timeline in advance.

    Asked about how they hoped their books would be perceived in terms of faith and the literary landscape, Jenn said she would be happy if readers saw faith as "more complicated, dangerous and beautiful" as a result of reading her novel, while for Peggy it was the aspect of faith reflected in ecstatic worship and a longing for the connection with the divine which she hoped to bring into focus in Amity & Sorrow.

    Both novelists were charming, funny, entertaining and thought-provoking, and the audience seemed delighted to have spent an illuminating hour in their company.

Kate Atkinson @Edbookfest

 

    The event which this morning opened the adults' programme at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival was Kate Atkinson in conversation with Jenny Brown. To begin with a word on the chair, and in Jenny Brown - herself the first director of the Book Festival, and now a respected literary agent - we had the perfect 'intelligent reader' and gracious inquisitor.

    Kate Atkinson really needs no introduction on these pages, but she was appearing today to talk about her most recent novel, the stunning Life After Life, described by Jenny Brown as her most ambitious book and a "dizzying, dazzling one" at that. It's a novel which follows its central character from birth to death, but far from being a straightforward linear narrative it looks at a series of alternative fates and a range of permutations of choices, decisions, events and moments which dictate and define the course of  a life or lives. From her birth one snowy night in February 1910, Ursula Todd lives through the major events of the 20th. century but does so again and again on parallel paths, a range of 'what ifs' and accretions deepening her story, each one hardening and strengthening her in some way, each one showing the fine line between living and dying, each success predicated on an earlier failure of some sort.

    Kate read a passage from near the beginning of the book, one which introduces the reader to the Todd family home, Fox Corner, a place seen as idyllic and ideal. This is Edwardian England in its 'golden afternoon', the halcyon days before the Great War changed so much, though as the story moves on, it's the Second World War and in particular the Blitz which provides "the dark, beating heart" of the book. Asked about her fascination with this later period, Kate explained that during her childhood (she was born in 1951) the war was in the very recent past, and was a subject of fascination and excitement to her, if of rather different significance to those who had lived through it. Her immersive reading on the subject informs and soundly underpins much of the novel.

    A considerable part of the discussion was given over to Ursula's repeated lives, especially with reference to the book's structure and to Kate's own predilections in writing. She likes endings, she says - and she gives herself many to play with here - and in particular she likes a "symphonic crescendo of endings", a form which allows for the neatly finished as well as the open situation or unanswered question. She wrote the book sequentially, and having established her premise early on she felt secure in the structure and worked (with a storyboard) as the shape of the book dictated. Incidentally, she says she is "not a natural plotter", and finds plotting inhibits flow in writing.

    Asking about her readership, a gentleman pointed out that the majority of the audience were female, but Kate said that while more women than men are readers and more women than men typically attend literary events, she had no specific group in  mind when writing: "I write for myself," she said, "and when the book is done, it's everybody's".

    As to whether she missed her characters once she'd killed them off, Kate admitted that of course she became fonder of some than of others but she most upset herself - in the writing of this book - by the deaths of the dogs who are the Todd family pets. "It's very important to have dogs in novels."

    If you haven't yet read Life After Life I'd urge you to do so - it's marvellously original (even if, when asked about 'echoes' of the various alternative endings in The French Lieutenant's Woman Kate modestly said that there was nothing new in writing), and beautifully, pleasingly complex; it is, just as Jenny Brown said, "dizzying and dazzling", and it was a great pleasure to hear Kate talk about it.

News and views

-    Looking ahead to January 2016 (!), Sally Gardner will be publishing her first novel for adults. "The Pearl Hand is set in the brothels and theatres of Georgian London, focusing on a spirited young girl in a less-than-respectable world." Editor Gail Paten says, "Sally Gardner is a literary tour de force. Her writing is unlike anyone else’s: earthy, clever, tricksy and magical." I'm looking forward to it.

-    The Yorkshire town of Harrogate hosts the very popular Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival every year, and it's now extending its reach by putting on a History Festival in October. Click there for details, where you'll see that Rose Tremain is among the authors appearing.

-    In her comment here, Barbara raises the very interesting topic of the availability of books, both in bricks-and-mortar shops and in libraries. Has anyone else had difficulty getting hold of books - as Barbara has - and if so, would you kindly tell us what they were and where you were trying to get them?

-    Going off at a bit of a tangent, if you're following the news of the purchase of The Washington Post by Jeff Bezos and want to know more about the paper's background and 'recent' history, I can recommend Katharine Graham's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Personal History.

At The Crown Hotel

   

     "The Crown Hotel was lately built, and still retained the dusty, honeyed trace of fresh-planed timber; the walls still beading gems of sap along each groove, the hearths still clean of ash and staining. Moody's room was furnished very approximately, as in a pantomime where a large and lavish household is conjured by a single chair. The bolster was thin upon the mattress, and padded with what felt like twists of muslin; the blankets were slightly too large, so that their edges pooled on the floor; giving the bed a rather shrunken aspect, huddled as it was beneath the rough slope of the eave. The bareness lent the place a spectral, unfinished quality that might have been disquieting, had the prospect through the buckled glass been of a different street and a different age, but to Moody the emptiness was like a balm. He stowed his sodden case on the whatnot beside his bed, wrung and dried his clothes as best he could, drank off a pot of tea, ate four slices of dark-grained bread with ham, and, after peering through the window to the impenetrable wash of the street, resolved to defer his business in town until the morning."

From The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton; everything about that passage is 'right'.

Book of the day - Coming Home

   

    As a big fan of the work of Sue Gee I'm delighted to have a copy of her new novel Coming Home, which is "filled with pathos and humour, beautifully evokes an all-but vanished world."

    "Spring 1947. In a few months' time the British flag will be lowered all over India, and with Independence thousands of those who made their lives there - as planters, civil servants, or in the Indian Army - will be returning to England.

    Among those coming home, as everyone speaks of it, are Will and Flo Sutherland, who fell in love at the end of the war. India has been the defining experience of their lives: how will they make a new life now?

    They lease an isolated farm in the depths of Devon, but though Will makes a go of it, and their two small children thrive, the relentless work and hardship take their toll. Meanwhile, vulnerable Flo is struggling to write the story of their time in India.

    In the years that follow, Will begins a new career, going from strength to strength, while Flo's fragilities threaten to overwhelm her. As for the children, Bea and Fred, growing up in the fifties and sixties with stories of a sunlit country which seems happier and more exciting than their own can ever be - they have to find their own ways of coming home."

    If you're new to Sue Gee's books and would like to get a feel for them, here are a few posts to start you off:

Reading in Bed

Earth and Heaven

Last Fling

The Mysteries of Glass

At the writing desk with Claire King

    One characteristic which I look for in a novel is integrity, as in wholeness and consistency, and if it's lacking then for me that can undermine the whole book.

    The Night Rainbow by Claire King, which I read and raved about early in the year, certainly has integrity; it also has a very distinctive voice and a charm to it that truly makes it stand out. The book has just come out in paperback, and to mark that I'm delighted to welcome Claire here today to tell us a little about how and where she writes.

    Claire grew up in Yorkshire and now lives in France with her husband and daughters; The Night Rainbow is her first book.

 

    Claire, please tell us about your writing desk or table: is it a special piece of furniture or just a convenient surface? And the room in which you work - a dedicated study, or a corner you've carved out of another room in the house?

    I don’t have my own writing room. I’d love to, but we haven’t anywhere that I can steal for myself, so I’m a rather peripatetic writer. I have a little blue folding table that I move around the house depending on if the children are at home and where they are playing. It also depends which room is warmest (in winter) or coolest (in summer).  Today I am writing under a parasol on the terrace, which is nice. As well as writing at home, I travel a lot for ‘day job’ work, so I write often on trains or in hotel rooms or restaurants if I’m eating alone.

    Do you ever purposely go to other writing locations for inspiration or improved concentration?

    I walk every day, before I write. It clears my head of the conversations I’ve had with my family around the breakfast table and somehow it gets my mind in the right creative mood. I consider this to be part of writing, even if I’m not actually getting any words down as I go. I went on a writing retreat weekend once. It was an absolute treat and I got a huge amount of work done. I found it incredibly productive, being removed from the place where other life happens, and inspiring to have a fresh environment to notice. The company of other writers is also a wonderful boost.

    What typically sits on your desk? Piles of books for reference/a dictionary or thesaurus? Family photographs? Special objects? Can you work with 'clutter' around you or do you need clear space?

    Wherever I write I need it to be clean. My house is not clean, but I insist before I sit down to write that at least the little space around me is tidy. I do have an actual desk, but it’s covered with administration, paperwork, banking and tax and business stuff. I find having all that close by a huge distraction. On or by my writing table, as well as my laptop or the notebook/manuscript I’m working on, I have a reference thesaurus, a mug for tea or coffee, my headphones for music and the Owl of Writing, who gives me hard stares.

    Do you always to listen to music while you’re working or do you sometimes prefer silence? Do you need to be shut away with a virtual 'do not disturb' sign on the door, or can you get on happily with the usual interruptions of phone, doorbell, other people in the house, and so on?

    The only doors in our house are on bedrooms, the bathroom and the pantry, so I don’t actually have a door I can close. This is not a silent house, it’s a house full of activity, conversation and laughter and I wouldn’t change that for the world. So I listen to music to create my own story bubble. The headphones are my ‘do not disturb’ sign in effect, and I always announce to everyone who’s home that I’m about to go ‘into my garret’. Everyone is used to that now and respects it (usually), which is great because when I’m interrupted by any kind of conversation it takes me a while to get back into the writing ‘zone’ – pulling me out of my character’s world. It does happen though. As you say there are always phone calls, urgent questions or arguments to resolve. When that happens I make that time to put on the kettle or bung in a load of laundry (prosaic I know) and stretch my eyes. Better to use the interruption as a catalyst for a break rather than get grumpy at people.

    Do you write in longhand first, or make notes/plans that way, or do you work directly on the computer? If the former, do you have a favourite notebook and pen, or does any scrap of paper serve the purpose? Do you use a pinboard or whiteboard or similar, either for displaying notes and reminders, sketching out plot points and structure, showing location photographs or other visual cues to characters or interiors, etc.?

    I’m not a huge planner, so what tends to come to me first are characters, ideas, situations or even just snippets of voice, and I write them down or dictate them into my phone, wherever I am. I always carry something to catch these things because they often form the essence of the story, which comes later. I don’t have fetish pens or paper, there’s enough going on to get in the way of writing without me complicating things further! I sometimes use post-it notes, coloured pens and huge pieces of paper, when I’m wrangling something knotty, but the vast majority of my time is spent either writing on my laptop using Scrivener (where I keep visual clues electronically), or attacking a print-off with a red pen.

    What tends to distract you most when you're supposed to be writing?

    I distract myself. With mind-puppies. I wrote a blog post on it here.

    If you could tell us a little about what's currently 'on the desk', i.e. your work-in-progress, I'd love to know, as I for one am very much looking forward to your next book.

    It’s working title is Candice. It’s an existential love story, primarily narrated by a man who lives on a boat. I can’t really say much more because I’ve not handed it over to my agent yet. I’m still editing it myself (draft 8, 9, 10…not sure), but I do think it’s time to get some outside editorial advice now.

    Since The Night Rainbow was published, what would you say were the best, most rewarding aspects of the writer's life, and what are the downsides, if any?

    By far the most rewarding aspect has been the wonderful response of readers to The Night Rainbow. It’s enormously gratifying to know that I’ve managed to move so many people, engage them and delight them through a story. Every time I hear from someone who loved the book it makes my heart leap. I wanted this so much that I don’t really have any downsides to mention. It would feel picky. What I have noticed though is that once you’re being published there are a whole new raft of demands on your time – as well as making and approving edits, reviewing copy and artwork etc there are also PR articles to propose and write and sometimes events to prepare for and attend…and you are still expected to be cracking on with the next book. Meanwhile the day job and family life hasn’t gone away!

    Finally, by spending many hours 'at the writing desk' you have launched your career - what advice would you give to aspiring writers?

    I’d say don’t be an aspiring writer, be a writer. Write every day. Observe things you wouldn’t otherwise have noticed and write these things down, make stories. Don’t concentrate on publication, concentrate on practising and improving. Meet other writers, in real life or online. Enter competitions. And for goodness sake, read lots of books!

    It's been a great pleasure to have Claire as my special guest and to have a glimpse of her writing desk en plein air! I have no compunction about linking again to my post on The Night Rainbow, and to pointing out that the book is currently a snip in both paperback and Kindle editions - if you don't already know it do look out for it.

    Finally today, here are some other lovely authors 'at the writing desk', or in the case of the last on the list, 'at the sewing table':

Adèle Geras

Deborah Lawrenson

Jane Rusbridge

Tracy Chevalier

Odds and ends

    - Bookish ice-cream: a flavour to suit all (literary) tastes!

    - The Book Burrows (I linked to this from the other blog yesterday, but I didn't want those who don't venture there to miss it).

    - For all Miss Brodie's girls: this book's market may be on the niche side, but I'd love to see what it says about my old school (there's a companion volume for the boys, too).

    - A book to 'bring into the body of the kirk'?: Mary's post has had me find my as yet unread copy of Miss Mole (with this cover) and put it in plain sight. Perhaps, as she says, a good Autumn read.

Out in paperback - Rook

    Out in paperback today is Jane Rusbridge's novel Rook. In case you missed the book when it was published last year, my thoughts and impressions are reiterated below, and you can find my 'At the writing desk' interview with Jane here.

     " ... the past is multilayered and shifting ... the passage of time and the surfacing of untold stories will reveal new histories, changing what was previously thought to be 'true'."

    Those lines from Rook are spoken with reference to the received version of history, but are just as applicable to the book itself. Set on the Sussex coast in the ancient village of Bosham, it is an exquisitely sensitive story of love and loss and of how the past seeps into the present. 

    Nora is a cellist who has abandoned her international career to return to her family home by the sea. She occupies her days with a bit of desultory teaching and keeping an eye on her elderly mother Ada who seems to live increasingly in a world of her own where her memories keep her company. While Ada barely acknowledges her daughter's existence, it's a fledgling rook Nora finds half-dead in a ditch which becomes both her protector and her solace as she nurses him back to strength, their bond intensifying over the hot months of a troubled summer.

    As Nora takes to the creek path at dawn each day, running to keep her sadness at bay and reconcile herself with what she has lost - for it's clear that fate has both given and taken away - so village life goes on around her. Bosham church is the focus of attention of a television producer who wants to make a documentary about King Canute's drowned daughter, believed to be buried in the church itself. Nora's late father, an archaeologist, had worked on the grave of this Saxon princess, and Jonny consults Nora as a source of accurate local knowledge, but theories as to the true identity of the occupants of the tombs under the chancel arch divide the people of the parish, and any exhumation must be the subject of a vote. A personal story of buried truths is played out alongside a wider one reaching back into legend and forward to conviction and belief.

    Spanning six months from early summer to winter, the narrative circles and spirals, shifts and settles like a flock of birds in a wheeling swoop before coming to rest. Its shape and texture lets the many layers of the characters' histories rise gradually to the surface, and every scene uses clear-sighted observation to raise the grain of its fabric to almost tangibly detailed effect. It is an affecting work, closely woven, beautifully tempered, and it bears out the promise of Jane's first novel, The Devil's Music, in fine style; it's a superb piece of writing.