Calling all short story writers

Stop Press

The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is worth £30,000 to the winner and is open to English language stories of up to 6,000 words. The closing date for entries is 10.00am on Friday September 21^st.

Enrty forms and full terms and conditions can be found at thesundaytimes.co.uk/shortstoryaward and at booktrust.org.uk/sundaytimesEFG

Good Luck!

Maeve Binchy 1940 - 2012

I first became aware of Maeve Binchy in the mid 1980s.  She had published her first novel Light a Penny Candle in 1983 and it was a huge best-seller.  In libraries too demand was high for this and for every one of her succeeding novels. Her books still remain immensely popular, greatly loved and heavily borrowed.  I remember in early 2000 it was rumoured that she wouldn’t be writing any more novels and I had many conversations with borrowers who were truly saddened to think that they might not be able to enjoy further stories by their favourite author.  (In fact she relented and from 2002 published several further novels). 

What readers like most about her books are her characters – they are people like themselves with similar hopes and ambitions; the same disappointments and failures.  They endure and enjoy life, and just get on with it.  Her novels have had a universal appeal and have been translated into 37 languages selling over 40 million books worldwide.

Her books are easy to read – almost like listening to neighbours gossiping – with absorbing story-lines and are always great page turners – often with an unexpected twist or two in the plot.  Her stories are about human nature and relationships; about families and communities; about love and support.  Maeve Binchy writes about what she knows and it shows in her stories – they are funny and warm and always compelling. 

I read her last novel – Minding Frankie – with a mixed reading group when it was first published in 2010.  The group consisted of 2 men and 4 women aged between 40 and 80 and I was surprised at the positive reaction from all of them.  Although both men stated that this was a “woman’s book” they had both enjoyed it and discussed in some detail the main character Noel who takes on the difficult job of bringing up his baby daughter.  They all enjoyed the story immensely even if it was “a little sweet” to quote one of them. 

What Maeve gives to her readers is an uplifting tale of ordinary folk living in ordinary towns and she writes with real sympathy and compassion for all of her characters, many of whom have reappeared in later books and have become almost like friends to her readers.  Her books are heart-warming and life-affirming and will continue to delight readers for many years to come.

D.M.

The best friend we have in the world ...

Susan Hill is a professional writer and the author of 38 books of both fiction and non-fiction. Early one summer afternoon, in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, she encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her own personal library – forsaking all new purchases – in order to get to know her collection again.

Wandering through her home that day, Susan Hill’s eyes were opened to the potential delights of retrospective reading. Considering everything from Macbeth to Virginia Woolf, Dickens to Roald Dahl, Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing charts the journey of one of Britain’s most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.

In similar vein, the Room To Write and Read Reading Group exists to introduce the delights of retrospective reading and to celebrate the work of writers who may not currently be held in the esteem they deserve.

Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us

Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random, miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

                                                                                                                   Virginia Woolf

Why not join us? I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.  

                                                                                                   Gillian

                                                                                                                 

The Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival

Takes place from July 19th - 22nd at The Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate.  
(The hotel where Agatha Christie was discovered, having run away from her husband).

Haran Coben, John Connolly, Peter James, Kate Mosse, Jo Nesbo and Ian Rankin are among those crime writers attending. 
For tickets call 01423 52116 and online harrogateinternationalfestivals.com

Elizabeth Taylor centenary year

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

The novelist Elizabeth Taylor has been described as the unsung heroine of British twentieth century fiction and the thinking person’s dangerous housewife. In her novels – 11 in all – and in her short stories, there is a tenderness and compassion as she dissects the minutiae of people’s lives, always with a psychological insight and more than a dash of comedy.

How deeply I envy any reader coming to her for the first time wrote novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Elizabeth Taylor was born in Reading in 1912 and worked both as a governess and a librarian before her marriage to a sweet manufacturer in 1936. Her first novel At Mrs. Lippincote’s was published in 1945 – the same year as actress Elizabeth Taylor appeared in the film ‘National Velvet’.

The writer, Elizabeth Taylor, has been likened to novelists of the calibre of Jane Austen and Barbara Pym and one can also detect similarities with the work of Anita Brookner whose novels are often also about anguish, loneliness and despair – yet in Elizabeth Taylor we also find elements of  farce and gentle comedy, both lacking in Brookner’s work.

My personal favourite, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, which was published in 1971, tells of the eponymous heroine who, recently widowed, decides to move into a London hotel and end her days there. As the book opens Mrs Palfrey is in a taxi, apprehensive about what the Claremont – reduced winter rates, excellent cuisine – will be like. Once inside, she realises that The Claremont is less a gentlewomen’s hotel and more like a residential home.

Mrs Palfrey is about to join the ranks of the rejected;  Mrs Arbuthnot, crippled with arthritis; Mr Osmond - forever dashing off outraged letters to The Daily Telegraph; Mrs Post - constantly knitting; the bloated Mrs Burton - reeking of whisky by lunchtime. All have just enough money and pride to live out their days in a residential hotel and all are drawn by Elizabeth Taylor with sympathy, ironically strengthened by the novelist’s objectivity.

Soon after her arrival, Laura Palfrey hears herself praising a considerate grandson who doesn’t actually exist. She does have a grandson but in her anxiety to appear part of a loving and caring family she transforms the dull, pedantic Desmond into the grandson of her imagining – charming, considerate and interesting.

Following on from embroidering the truth, she encounters Ludo, a penniless writer, who comes to her aid. In an inspired moment, she persuades him to pose as Desmond and invites him to dinner at the Claremont so that the others will believe she has family willing to visit her. Despite disposing of the ghastly three courses with rapidity, ‘Desmond’ meets with the approval of the other residents and Laura begins to enjoy her wickedness and to delight in the deception. To discover how events unfold I recommend you read the book for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.

If you’ve not read Elizabeth Taylor before, it is particularly apt that you do so this year for, in 2012, we celebrate the centenary of her birth.  Radio 4’s Bookclub  programme this coming Sunday, 1^st July at 4.00pm, pays tribute to her with novelist and comedian David Baddiel in conversation with broadcaster Jim Naughtie about this signature work, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.

I especially enjoyed this quote from the novel and wanted to share it with you - No one that he (Ludo) knew stood in awe of writers. The Major had told him one day that in 5 year’s time no one would read any more. Later, archaeologists would ponder on, argue about, what books had been for. ‘It’ll all be telly, visual aids,’ the Major insisted. I am certain that reading Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont will inspire you to go on reading and prove the Major wrong.

Gillian

Fiction and Truth Reading as a Reader, Reading as a Writer

 I would point out that in the Iconic reading group teased me that I read these books as a writer, not purely as a reader.  This is evident here in this post, I think... I did protest to them that this was true. I am indeed a writer! 

Suite Francaise  - really a suite of two novels which might have grown been three -  was famously written by Irene Nemirovsky was what I was: a writer!during the German occupation of France  before her removal in 1942 to Auschwitz and ultimate death. The rediscovery and  publication  of the work sixty five years later is a story in itself.

Irene - already a well known writer - embarked on the novel in the rural  village of Issy-l'Eveque where she and her husband and two small daughters lived, having fled occupied Paris.

I have just finished writing my latest novel - to be called The Art of Retreating - partly set in Occupied France and partly in the present day, so had read dozens of scholarly histories,  factual anecdotal memoirs and factual personal stories to get inside the particular experience of one of the six  main characters -  the aged writer Francine Costington.

I  kept Suite Francaise - at the far side of my table -  to read after I had finished writing my own novel.  This was because,  being fiction, this novel is essentially a secondary source; secondary sources are normally weak and can lead to thin storytelling and unconscious imitation..

It turns out though that t Suite Francaise relates intensely ... Read on. 

Summer Book Tove Johannson: Reading for Myself

Reading for  Myself

When I read a new novel I make a habit of not reading any commentaries, reviews or introductions as I don't like to be told what Ishould think or feel about  a new book. I like to come to it afresh.  I may read such commentaries afterwards but my own first close reading is my reference for what the book means to me.

But you can't close your ears and Tove Jannson 's Summer Book came to the Iconic reading group laden with insightful praise from my reading guru Gillian. She certainly made me want to read it.


As I read it  I admired its beautifully written spare, poetic tone. I found it  hard to sort out whether this was down to the elegant translation or the original writing by a writer, whose reputation is built on writing for children. Of course the best children's writers know in their hearts about diamond bright use of language  to convey precise, often deep meaning,. Tove Jannson certainly does this in this story about a small girl who spends the summer on an island on the gulf of Finland with her Grandmother, who is a marginally eccentric artist and has no problems rowing in the water around the island.   (MORE...)