Cornflower Books

Reading rugby

   

    If you've been following the rugby world cup - and congratulations to New Zealand on an impressive win this afternoon - you might be interested in an excellent novel I wrote about a few years ago.

    The Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones tells the story of the All Blacks' tour of the UK in 1905, and "in this melding of true history and imagination, recreates an unforgettable journey from innocence to celebrity."

    Here's some of what I had to say about it at the time:

" ... Jones has taken real events and imagined the story around them, and the result, though short, has great 'presence' and power. In 1905 a group of young men from all walks of life set sail from New Zealand, bound for Britain. They were the All Blacks, then little known, but their expertise on the rugby pitch soon brought them the sort of celebrity we associate with the present day.

    On the voyage, where the backs honed their passing skills with hard young pumpkins bought in Montevideo, they had no idea that their tour would see them virtually undefeated (only the Welsh would beat them). As they played round the country, the New Zealanders' skill and excellence earned them enormous fame, with which, of course, they had to deal - hence the novel's title.

    The book reads sometimes like an extended diary entry, at others a newsreel; its reportage is mixed with list-style facts, impressions, and details which stand out. It is a very vivid book, and one written with immense sympathy and empathy for its subject. I recommend it thoroughly, as does Mr. C. who read it after me, and you don't need to have an interest in rugby to enjoy it."

    I've read a few of Lloyd Jones' novels but this one is by far my favourite.   

 

The jacket is by Petra Börner, by the way.

Good words: pluviophile

   

    The O.E.D. doesn't appear to include it, but Collins Dictionary defines pluviophile as "a lover of rain; someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days".

    As I've said often before, I am one, and I meet all the criteria here.

    The yarn bowl, left, is a recent acquisition (found here), and rightly belongs in this post

One to look out for

   

    Kate Mosse's novel The Taxidermist's Daughter came out in paperback last month, and I should have flagged it then, but better late than never.

    It's a gothic thriller set on the Sussex coast in 1912, and it begins in the graveyard of the church of St. Peter and St. Mary in Fishbourne, where at midnight on the Eve of St. Mark, it is believed that the ghosts of those destined to die in the coming year will be seen entering the church at the turning of the hour.

    As the bell tolls, and the eyes of all who have gathered are fixed on the church, a woman is murdered – garrotted by gloved hands – and as over the ensuing days the rising tide and fierce storms threaten the village, the mystery of the dead woman, and of a group of gentlemen - strangers to the village but seen in the graveyard - deepens.

    Kate Mosse describes herself as a storyteller, and this book certainly bears that out. I was impressed by the way the central conceit is developed, and I admire the lengths the author went to for her research (the clue is in the title!) for this "compelling story of justice, and of a punishment to fit a crime".

 

Edited to add: the hardback cover (shown here) is a much stronger design and more appropriate, I think.

Bargain of the day - The Nine Tailors

   

    If you haven't already read Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors, it can be got for Kindle for 99p today. There's a post on it here.

Ideas, and where to find them

   

    Writers are often asked where they get their ideas, and I've heard that question labelled 'silly'. I think the criticism is unwarranted, as what is being asked for, in effect, is an explanation of the creative process. While that may be impossible to do fully and satisfactorily, there are surely sufficient identifiable 'germs' of an idea (in whatever medium it might be) for an artist of any kind to outline a work's genesis.

    Neil Gaiman sums it all up nicely here, while Diana Wynne-Jones, in the piece 'Answers to Some Questions' in Reflections on the Magic of Writing says, "My very favourite form of [the question] was asked by a twelve-year-old: 'Where do you get your ideas, or do you think of them for yourself?' Very shrewdly put, because some part of an idea, if it is going to start a book developing, has to relate to something outside me, even if I don't exactly get it from this outside thing. It has to be a creative mix of interior and exterior notions ..."

    From inspiration to perspiration, here's Haruki Murakami on the novelist's need for focus and endurance, and if that seems too much like hard work, here's Stephen King on 'creative sleep'.

Writers' portraits - Nancy Mitford

    William Acton, brother of Harold, drew all the Mitford sisters; above is Nancy, and here - at The Swan Inn, Swinbrook (close to what was their childhood home) are reproductions of all six portraits.

    Nancy's novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate are two of my all-time favourites (though I don't care for the covers on those editions), and her letters are also wonderfully entertaining: try Love From Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford or The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters (there's a post on it here).

Seasonal reading - a few suggestions

   

    If you're looking for something suitable to read around Hallowe'en, here are a few suggestions.

    I'll begin with Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book which, as you'll see here, had me in raptures when I read it a few years ago. Ostensibly for children but just as entertaining for adults if I'm anything to go by, it's a terrific piece.

    We were talking about Michelle Paver the other day, and her Dark Matter is a must if you're in the market for a spooky read.

    Last month I mentioned Stacy Schiff's The Witches: Salem, 1692; it will be out in a few days' time, and looks to be a comprehensive and highly detailed account of the Salem witch trials, "examining the legal and social ramifications of the trials, the truth about witchcraft, the world of adolescent girls and how the events of 1692 shaped America's future and its relationship with the mother country."

    For a very fun read about witches and 'others', try Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches. I'm ashamed to say that although I have read it twice (which says a great deal for starters) I've yet to get to Shadow of Night and The Book of Life, the other two books which make up the All Souls Trilogy, though both are here on the shelf beside me, but that's nothing to do with lack of interest. If you haven't come across it, there's an introductory post on it here and a fuller one here.

    Lastly, Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield, a novel with a pleasing supernatural element to it, and a book I loved.

Hot off the press

    My Biannually has yet to arrive, but the postie has brought two of Persephone Books' new releases, Gardeners' Choice by Evelyn Dunbar and Charles Mahoney, a beautifully illustrated plantsman's handbook first published in 1937, and Greengates, a novel by R.C. Sherriff dating from 1936.

    I was quick to order as soon as I saw the books were available so I've been sent a selection of endpapers as well - not sure what I'll do with them, but they are very nice to have and they remind me of some great favourites such as Miss Buncle's Book and The Home-Maker.

Picture of the day: a literary celebrity

 

Just Margaret Atwood. You know. #literarygiant #theheartgoeslast #thehandmaidstale #margaretatwood #marytoddlincolnandfamouspeople #FLOTUS #marytoddlincoln #bookstoredog #shopdog #parnassusbooks #dachshundsofinstagram @randomhouse @penguinrandomhouse @parnassusbooks

A photo posted by Mary Todd Lincoln (@marytoddlincolncoffman) on Oct 19, 2015 at 2:36pm PDT

    Mary Todd Lincoln Coffman, and a person.

    See more of Mary Todd Lincoln here, and visit her at her place of work here.

Readings

    4th Estate have just launched RE4DINGS, videos of a selection of their authors reading short extracts of their new books. I rather enjoyed Jonathan Franzen's one, though I think his character Pip needs to be introduced to Nigel Slater and proper baking forthwith.

    Authors are not always the best people to read their own work, however. There are notable exceptions, of course - Alan Bennett and Alexander McCall Smith come to mind, and Hilary Mantel is another (see this post), but not everyone has the skills required to lift the text off the page. The right actor can make it sing: Martin Jarvis is utterly brilliant at reading P.G. Wodehouse, for instance, while Hugh Laurie makes a very fine job of the McCall Smith Portuguese Irregular Verb series, but to go back to the writers themselves and the scores of them I've heard at literary events, for me the readings are usually the least interesting part of the thing. I'd much rather listen to a writer discussing their work, and then go and read it for myself if I'm so minded.

Looking (far) ahead

    I'm looking a whole year ahead with today's post as it's to flag up a novel which won't be published until October 2016, but so greatly did I enjoy Michelle Paver's Dark Matter (as you can see from this post) that I can't wait to read her next ghost story, Thin Air, when it comes out then. 

    "In 1935, young medic Stephen Pearce travels to India to join an expedition with his brother, Kits. The elite team of five will climb Kangchenjunga, the world's third highest mountain and one of mountaineering's biggest killers. No one has scaled it before, and they are, quite literally, following in the footsteps of one of the most famous mountain disasters of all time - the 1907 Lyell Expedition.

    Five men lost their lives back then, overcome by the atrocious weather, misfortune and 'mountain sickness' at such high altitudes. Lyell became a classic British hero when he published his memoir, Bloody, but Unbowed, which regaled his heroism in the face of extreme odds. It is this book that will guide this new group to get to the very top.

    As the team prepare for the epic climb, Pearce's unease about the expedition deepens. The only other survivor of the 1907 expedition, Charles Tennant, warns him off. He hints of dark things ahead and tells Pearce that, while five men lost their lives on the mountain, only four were laid to rest.  But Pearce is determined to go ahead and complete something that he has dreamed off his entire life. As they get higher and higher, and the oxygen levels drop, he starts to see dark things out of the corners of his eyes. As macabre mementoes of the earlier climbers turn up on the trail, Stephen starts to suspect that Charles Lyell's account of the tragedy was perhaps not the full story ..."

    For more on Michelle and the writing of ghost stories, see this post.

There are three rules for writing a novel

    " Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

    W. Somerset Maugham

    There's a little more substance to the 'Rules for Writers' found here.  Hilary Mantel's look sound; Sarah Waters lists hers and then says, "Talent trumps all. If you're a ­really great writer, none of these rules need apply," while Elmore Leonard presents his in book form, and sums them up thus: "if it sounds like writing, rewrite it."

    In the chapter 'A Talk about Rules' in Reflections On The Magic of Writing, Diana Wynne Jones discusses the way rules for writers constantly change, and so instead of rules she adopts her own principles, the first of which is "you have to be responsible. By that [I mean] that somewhere, somewhen, someone is going to read your book at a time when such things stick for life. And you have to make it the kind of book that is worth remembering that vividly for that long. You have to make it an experience in its own right."

Bargain of the day

 

    The first of James Runcie's Grantchester Mysteries, Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death, is one of today's Kindle bargains. I wrote about it here and summed up,

    "As with Alexander McCall Smith's Mma Ramotswe novels, the solving of crimes is neither the hero's raison d'être nor really the main point of the book, it's the prism through which we view the character and his struggle to do the right thing, see him develop and watch him progress - for the series will follow Sidney's career (and I hope his personal life) through to 1981. If you're looking for complex plots and intricate situations you won't find them here, but if you want a gentle, romantic book with a lovely period feel, and at its heart a charming character and a purity of thought that is very appealing, then look out for [it]."

    I haven't seen the television adaptation of the book(s), so can't comment on how faithful or otherwise it is, but in print, certainly, the story has much to commend it.

    For more on James Runcie and the clerical detective, this post gives an account of his and William Brodrick's 2012 Edinburgh Book Festival event.

The Select Book Club

    "The Select Book Club had its offices in a courtyard near St. Paul's Cathedral. [...] On the sunlit side of the court a small bay window was dressed with the Select Book Club choices arranged with carefully contrived casualness against a draped backcloth of purple velvet. The Club had been carefully named. Select Books catered for that class of reader which likes a good story without caring much who writes it, prefers to be spared the tedium of personal choice, and believes that a bookcase of volumes equal in size and bound in exactly the same colour gives tone to any room. Select Books preferred virtue to be rewarded and vice suitably punished. They eschewed salacity, avoided controversy and took no risks with unestablished writers. Not surprisingly they often had to look far back in the publishers' lists to produce a current choice."

    From Cover Her Face by P.D. James.

Catching my eye

   

    A children's book, The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell, caught my eye recently. I haven't read any of Katherine's works but I know her by reputation - tightrope walker, night climber, fellow of All Souls, winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize for Rooftoppers - and her new novel sounds wonderful:

    "Feodora and her mother live in the snowbound woods of Russia, in a house full of food and fireplaces. Ten minutes away, in a ruined chapel, lives a pack of wolves. Feodora's mother is a wolf wilder, and Feo is a wolf wilder in training. A wolf wilder is the opposite of an animal tamer: it is a person who teaches tamed animals to fend for themselves, and to fight and to run, and to be wary of humans.

When the murderous hostility of the Russian Army threatens her very existence, Feo is left with no option but to go on the run. What follows is a story of revolution and adventure, about standing up for the things you love and fighting back. And, of course, wolves."

    In this short video, Katherine talks about the book,

and in this one, her writing process:

Bargain of the day

   

    One of today's bargains for Kindle is Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, the first part of her Arthurian series. Principally Merlin's story, I read it last year and loved it.

    If you're interested in the topic, this print interview is comprehensive, while this more general television one (to which I've linked several times before) is well worth watching; and this short post is just 'by the way'.

Book of the day - After Alice

    "What happened to those left behind when Alice went to Wonderland?

    When Alice fell down the rabbit-hole she found Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But how did Victorian Oxford react to Alice's disappearance?

    Gregory Maguire turns his imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Lewis Carroll's enduring tale, this year celebrating its 150th. birthday. Ada, a friend mentioned briefly in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, sets out to visit Alice, but arriving a moment too late, tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself.

    Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and bring her safely home from this surreal world below the world. The White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, and the bloodthirsty Queen of Hearts interrupt their mad tea party to suggest a conundrum: if Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or if Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life.

    Either way, everything that happens next is After Alice."

    After Alice by Gregory Maguire, out later this month; jacket illustration by Perrin.

On happy endings - 2

   

    "... aiming for the moon and getting halfway there gets you further than if you just aim for the roof and only get halfway upstairs. People's achievements in life depend quite startlingly much on what they expect to achieve ...

    [In myths and folk tales] you find all the troubles and problems of this modern age - any single one you care to name as long as it is archetypal - becoming timeless and distanced, so that you can walk round them and examine them without feeling helpless. This is where fantasy performs the same function as joking, but on a deeper level, and solves your problems while keeping you sane. It is no accident that the majority of folk tales at least have a happy ending. Most of them are very deep-level blueprints of how to aim for the moon. The happy ending does not only give you gratification as you read it, but it also gives you hope that, just maybe, a fortunate outcome could be possible. Your brain likes that. It is built to want a solution."

    From Reflections On The Magic of Writing by Diana Wynne Jones.

    See also this post.

What I was reading ...

    As we enter October I've looked back at my reading journal (kept since 2002) to see what I was reading on this day in previous years. Unsurprisingly, some books remain vivid in the memory while others have faded. I've marked with an asterisk the ones I'd particularly recommend.

2014: *The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse - a compelling gothic thriller.

2013: Harpoon at a Venture by Gavin Maxwell.

2012: *Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss - an Englishwoman abroad; there's a short extract here.

2011: *The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers - Madeline Miller recommended this, and here's a very good passage on editing.

2010: *The Wilding by Maria McCann - home truths and family secrets in 17th. century England; post here.

2009: The Good Parents by Joan London.

2008: *Songs of Blue and Gold by Deborah Lawrenson - ignore the cover and read this very good book; post here.

2007: *The People On Privilege Hill and *The Uncommon Reader - Jane Gardam and Alan Bennett; that says it all.

2006: Negotiating With The Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood

2005: *The New House by Lettice Cooper - an excellent Persephone; more here.

2004: *A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth - a love story and much more; vast.

2003: *Joyce Grenfell: A Biography by Janie Hampton - a lovely look at a lovely subject.

2002: *A Childhood in Scotland by Christian Miller - still one of my very favourite books; post here.