Newsletter for August 2014

 Good news! TWICE ROYAL LADY, my novel about the Empress Matilda, has been accepted by Robert Hale Ltd, the publishers of my last two books. It will be published under their new Broken River imprint as a paperback and should cost £8.99 – much more affordable than the previous hardbacks. Publication date is provisionally set for May 2015.

Meanwhile, Soundings have bought the rights to produce the audio version of APHRODITE’S ISLAND and, as with OPERATION KINGFISHER, I shall be the reader. I don’t know if any of you use audio books. They come in various formats, including MP3 and CD, and I know a lot of people find them very useful on long car journeys, for example.

Our trip to Canada was very enjoyable, but I must admit very far from being a rest cure! We only spent four days in each place, which meant living out of a suitcase, which I really dislike. The wedding went extremely well. It was held in a golf club looking out over the Bow River in Edmonton – a lovely location. It was very simple and informal but everyone present found it moving. We met a great many of my new daughter-in-law’s relatives, who made us feel very welcome. The nicest part was the fact that they all think Robin is a lovely guy and are glad he is marrying Erin! My elder son and his wife and two children were there as well, which I was very pleased about.

After that we all went up to Banff, which allowed us to have some quality time together as a family. The more intrepid went white water rafting and we all went horseback riding. After that the family went home and David and I went on to Jasper, where there is more spectacular scenery to be enjoyed. However, the pleasure was somewhat dampened for me by toothache. I developed an infection under a tooth soon after we arrived in Canada and by Jasper I was forced to seek the help of a dentist. He recommended root canal work, but we were not there long enough for him to carry it out and my own dentist back here cannot fit me in until Sept 10th! So I am currently existing on a diet of antibiotics and painkillers.

Back to work now! I am scheduled to give a talk to the Ellesmere Port Ladies Luncheon Club next Tuesday and there are some finishing touches to be made to Twice Royal Lady. Then I must start thinking about the next book.

Wishing you all the best

Hilary

Newsletter for July 2014

 

It has been a busy month! First there was our trip to London for the classes at City Lit. In the end ten people signed up for two days on ‘writing historical fiction’ and we had a most enjoyable time. It was a very varied group, some of whom were already in the throws of writing their first novel, while others had come more out of curiosity than any definite plan to write. The important thing was that they all seemed to enjoy the classes and find them useful, and we had some very interesting discussions on the different genres which come under the umbrella of historical fiction; creation of character; shaping of plot; and styles of writing. The final assessments which the class was asked to provide resulted in five ‘excellents’, four ‘goods’ and one ‘satisfactory’ -not a bad report! (The 10th person didn’t turn up for day 2 – it obviously wasn’t what she was looking for.)

There was a slight hiccup in the arrangements for the weekend, when we arrived at the b&b I had booked at the appointed time of 4.30 and found no one at home! It later transpired that the proprietress had sent me an e-mail saying there would be no one there until 6.30. Well, a) the email didn’t arrive till after I left home; and b) we had arranged to be in central London by 6p.m for dinner before the theatre. In the end we had to check into a hotel for the night.

That night we went to see ‘Bring Up the Bodies’, the adaptation by the RSC of Hilary Mantell’s novel. Sadly, we were both disappointed. It is such a cerebral novel, with such intricate depictions of motivation and thought, that it does not lend itself to the stage, in my opinion. Also, the Aldwych Theatre is a big, old-fashioned building and from our seats in the circle it was impossible to see the subtleties of expression or hear the variations of speech that the play demanded.

Next night we went to ‘Billy Eliot’. What a contrast! Loud, energetic, full of action and movement and the dancing is wonderful. How the boy playing the name part kept gong all through the performance I do not know! He was dancing his socks off almost all the time.

After a brief respite, spent with friends in Surrey, we were off to High Wycombe library where I was booked to give a talk. This was very well received and I sold quite a lot of books.

The following Saturday I was at the Penistone Literary festival in Derbyshire. This is a new venture and I must say the organisers are to be congratulated. Over two days they had brought in a wide variety of speakers and there was a real buzz about the place, with lots of people coming and going. Once again, my talk went down very well and there were good sales.

The one sad thing to report – and it is a major setback – is that my agent turned down the Matilda novel, on the grounds that it wouldn’t make the shelves of Tesco or Asda. Apparently, this is the only criteria upon which publishers make their decisions these days! What does that say about the future of fiction! However, all is not lost. I have other outlets and if all else fails I can do what so many writers are doing these days and publish it myself.

Have any of you been listening to the controversy about the use of the historic present, between John Humphreys and Melvin Bragg? To clear up any confusion, this is when writers or speakers say things like ‘She walks into the room and sits down’ when they are talking about something that happened in the past. Mantell uses it in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies and I like it because it gives sense of immediacy, as if you are watching a film or a play. But I know some people dislike it intensely. Oddly enough, I wrote the first draft of Matilda that way, but I’ve changed it to the past tense because I know it is unpopular; but I did feel as I did it that it was making the events more distant – a story that was finished, rather than one which was still in progress. I’d be interested to know what any of you feel about the matter.

My main focus now is on getting ready for our trip to Canada for Robin’s wedding. I’ll be back at the end of the month and then it will be time to start thinking about the next book. It might turn out to be a sequel to ‘Operation Kingfisher’ but I haven’t made up my mind yet.

Book Promotion

DAUGHTERS OF WAR, PASSIONS OF WAR and HARVEST OF WAR will be promoted by Sainsburies as part of their World War l Centenary e-books collection from July 21st to August 31st. In addition, they will be featured on the aerbook site from August 8th to 14th. People who click on the links below will be able to see the front cover and read an extract and then purchase if they so wish.

Daughters of War: http://aerbook.com/books/Daughters_of_War-8845.html

Passions of War: http://aerbook.com/books/Passions_of_War-8846.html

Harvest of War: http://aerbook.com/books/Harvest_of_War-8847.html

I am happy to announce, also, that APHRODITE’S ISLAND has been chosen as one of Kindle’s Summer Reads and will be available at a special price from July 18th to Sept 1st.

THE LUMINARIES

Eleanor Catton is undoubtedly a very clever writer. She has taken what might have been a fairly ordinary mystery story set in the goldfields of New Zealand’s South Island and made it something worthy of the attention of the Booker Prize judges. How has she done this? In three ways. Firstly, because the story is set in the mid nineteenth century, she has chosen a style which is a pastiche of novelists of the period. This includes chapter headings giving a summary of what is going to happen; but more importantly it allows her to adopt the authorial overview permitting her to comment on the action and the characters as the story develops. Secondly, she has split the narrative between thirteen characters, all of whom know part of the story but none of whom know it all, so that the reader finds herself having to piece it together like a jigsaw puzzle. Thirdly, she has based the whole thing on the astrological situation prevailing at the time and place of the setting. Since I know nothing of astrology, I am afraid this was lost on me. The chapter headings ‘Jupiter in Sagittarius’ etc and the star charts at the beginning of each section meant nothing to me.
I read an interview with Catton in which she said that she found many minor characters in other books were insufficiently realized and became cardboard cutouts, so she wanted to make all of hers equally detailed. It is true that she gives a psychological profile to each of them; but it is words and action that bring a character to life, and I must admit that there were times when I found myself having to leaf back through the pages to remind myself of who a character was and what his part in the story was.
The Luminaries is an intriguing tale and I was gripped all through, but the ending left me feeling frustrated. I was waiting for a full explanation of all the strange events, but it never came. There is a trial, but since none of the witnesses tells the whole truth but adheres to a version they have decided on among themselves, this left me with many unanswered questions. After that, the book disintegrates into a series of fragments, snatches of dialogue that mean very little, and the only narrative thrust is contained in the increasingly lengthy chapter headings. From these it is possible to piece together some of the answers but there were still elements of the mystery that seemed to me to be unexplained; and I was left with the sneaking suspicion that the author did not know the answers either!
This caveat apart, I can recommend this book to those who are prepared to use their own deductive abilities and do not expect to be spoon fed the facts.

 

The Last Runaway by Tracey Chevalier

 Chevalier has a talent for absorbing the reader into the fictional world she has created. Her main tool for doing this is the attention to detail and careful research which she employs. Reading this novel I was convinced that she had been brought up as a Quaker and was an expert at making patchwork quilts. It was only when I read her account at the end of the book of the research she had undertaken that I realised that these matters were as new to her as they were to me.

This is a gentle book which confines itself to a small, local world, though important historical currents run though it. Honor Bright is a Quaker girl who emigrates from England to Ohio in the nineteenth century. Initially she is accompanied by her sister, who is going to marry a man from their community who has set up a business in the small town of Faithwell, but the sister dies before they reach their destination and Honor finds herself cast adrift among strangers. The book centres on her struggle to make a new life for herself and to conform to the conventions of this new society. In the process she becomes involved in the Underground Railroad, an informal organisation which helps runaway slaves to reach safety in Canada. Honor marries, but her husband’s family have good cause to want nothing to do with the Railroad and it is the conflict between her conscience and her wish to conform which propels the plot.

Honor is a sympathetically drawn character and I found myself drawn into her struggle and eager to find out how it would be resolved.

Review of Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

 This novel is set in the convent of Santa Caterina in Ferrara in the year 1570. Dunant is a mistress of beautiful prose and in the opening pages she creates for us an image of convent life, apparently serene and ordered; but we are immediately aware of the currents of passion and rivalry that swirl beneath the surface.

In an explanatory note at the beginning of the book Dunant explains that at that time the dowries demanded from noble families for the marriages of their daughters had become so expensive that most could only afford to marry off one. The only acceptable alternative for any others was to become a ‘bride of Christ’ and enter a convent.

There are two principal characters. One is Serafina, a young woman, intelligent, talented and in love, who has been confined to the convent because she failed to marry the man her father had chosen for her. It is her desperate distress and fury that wakes the convent on her first night in her cell. The second is Zuana, the dispensary mistress. Like Serafina, she is not there because she has a vocation but out of necessity. As the orphan daughter of a doctor she has nowhere else to go, but unlike Serafina she understands that for her this is the best solution. At least it gives her the freedom to practise the skills she learnt from her father and to develop some of his ideas, though even here she has to keep certain of his books concealed. It is her sympathy for Serafina and ultimately her efforts to set her free that are the main springs of the plot.

For those reconciled to their fate life in the convent is not unpleasant. The nuns can meet friends and family in the ‘parlatorio’ and play with the children of sisters and cousins – the children they will never have. Santa Caterina is famous for the quality of its music and there are services and concerts to which the public are admitted. It is Serafina’s beautiful singing voice which proves her salvation. But even these limited freedoms are under threat. The catholic church, reeling from the threat of Lutheranism and a series of scandals about the loose living of some of the monks and nuns, is determined to clamp down. The abbess, Sister Magdalena, is well aware that she is treading a tightrope and at the slightest excuse the convent may incur the wrath of the bishop and find their freedoms strictly curtailed. It is her struggle to maintain equilibrium between the various factions in the community that forms a second thread in the story.

I found my emotions deeply engaged in this novel but the most heartbreaking discovery comes in an author’s note at the end of the book. Shortly after the period in which it is set the Council of Trent decreed that all convents must be strictly enclosed. From then on the nuns were only allowed to speak to friends and relatives through a grill; all public performances were forbidden; any windows that might give a glimpse of the outside world were bricked up and walls were raised to prevent any contact. For the young women like Serafina who were sent there it must indeed have seemed like a life sentence without hope of remission.

Long overdue memorial

I read in the paper over the weekend that there is going to be a memorial to Archibald McIndoe, the plastic surgeon who rebuilt the faces of young airmen terribly burned when their aircraft caught fire in WWll. It is not before time! He was a great man, who not only repaired their faces but rebuilt their confidence, encouraging them to go out into the world instead of hiding away. He worked at the hospital in East Grinstead and persuaded the people of the town to accept these disfigured young men as the heroes they were. East Grinstead became known as ‘the town that didn’t stare’.
I feel strongly about this as I researched his work for my novels NOW IS THE HOUR and THEY ALSO SERVE. Anyone who is interested in this remarkable man and his achievements might find those two books illuminating.

On My Hobby Horse!

On Thursday last I went to see Under Milk Wood at the Liverpool Playhouse. It is a touring production directed by Terry Hands and has had rave revues; but to be honest I was disappointed. The words were gabbled, especially by the women, and so lost both the beauty of the poetry and the humour. I often make the same criticism of productions of Shakespeare. There seems to be a prevailing theory among directors that unless the words are spoken very fast and very loudly, with lots of movement at the same time, the audience will get bored. It doesn’t work like that! Harold Pinter knew the power of the silent pause. Television has learnt that silence and stillness can speak louder than words, as anyone who has been watching Hinterland can testify. Shakespeare himself was very much aware of the tendency of actors to gabble and flail about. He set out exactly how he wanted his poetry treated in his advice to the players in Hamlet. ‘Speak the speech, I pray you, as pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines….. suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature.’ Why have our theatre directors forgotten this?

Letter from Denise Doyle 

OPERATION KINGFISHER.
Just finished reading this on my Kindle, could hardly put it down. Will there be asequel to this, I think that perhaps there is a lot more to this story to be told.I am also a big fan of the Follies series and have read & reread them several times. Keep these stories coming please.