Archive for the ‘Reading’ Category

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Discovering John Harvey


2010
06.22

Posted in Crime, Poetry, Reading | No Comments »

I have a confession to make – this year, on the recommendation of a friend, I discovered John Harvey – a little late I hear you say – or maybe not? Maybe like me you’ve come more recently to crime fiction and have yet to read him in which case you are in for a treat. While I was in France I read Lonely Hearts, the first in the Charlie Resnick series and I fell in love with the man, and of course with his three cats: Dizzy, Miles and Pepper. Dizzy, by the way, is a hooligan who if he were human Resnick suspects  would ‘spend days meandering drunkenly around shopping centres,’ splashing  ‘through municipal fountains with a red and white scarf dangling from his belt.’

So what’s so good about John Harvey? In the first place there’s the writing itself: elegant and witty, Harvey paints a rich canvas, making us see everything. It’s a visual treat. Then there are the characters: beautifully drawn especially Charlie Resnick, a man who cares about victims, about those on the bottom of the heap and a man who cares about women. Charlie Resnick likes women! Place is here too and the whole is deliciously downbeat – definitely my kind of music!

John Harvey loves Jazz that’s his kind of music and he’s a poet too. His 1998 collection Bluer Than This which I’ve just started reading shows the influence of jazz and painting on his writing – Roland Kirk, Chet Baker, Edward Hopper, Pierre Bonnard. The poems are tender, about love and loss, straight from the heart – my kind of poems too!

One last thing – John Harvey blogs. YES! This  seems to me to make him instantly inclusive – inviting as it does comment and dialogue. He’s not too grand despite being the Master of British Crime – just can’t believe it’s taken me so long to find him.

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Sunday at Wolf Hall


2010
05.23

Posted in Reading | 4 Comments »

Queen of the Night Tulips in my garden

Suddenly it’s summer – the buttercups have grown high in the field of cows, the tulips I planted last October are fading and the grass on our newly seeded lawn is just showing through.

With temperatures in the high 20s and the day being Sunday what better excuse for idling the day away with a glass of cold Sauvignon Blanc and a copy of Hilary Mantel’s dazzling epic – Wolf Hall.  Exquisitely and bravely written it compels us to feed on the dark meat of HenryTudor’s England; the blood and guts, the political intrigue, the King’s lust, the continent’s despair, and through it all the rise of Cromwell, the most powerful of Henry’s courtiers -  spin doctor to beat all spin doctors, (Peter Mandleson eat your heart out ) – the enforcer – as much  a man of our time as his own, a rich and complex character, both villain and hero.

‘Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,’ says Thomas More, ‘and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.’

The novelist, says Mantel, ‘lives inside the consciouness of her characters…’ and  ‘…agrees just to move forward with her characters walking into the dark.’

I recommend walking into the dark with Hilary Mantel – so much to enjoy- Wolf Hall is unputdownable and so much to learn about wriitng fiction.

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Writers, Readers – and Bluebells


2010
05.21

Posted in My Writing, People, Reading | 2 Comments »

Today I walked in the bluebell wood near the Botanic Gardens in Durham - heavenly! Took my new camera

Writers need readers, without them we are nothing. When we write or when we  come to consider what we’ve written, it is vitally important that we ask ourselves if it will work for our readers and what their experience of our novel will be.

I recently had some interesting feedback on my current novel after a close reading by a perceptive American reader. It was invaluable to know about his experience of the novel: what he felt about about my characters -  how they might be developed further, what else he needed me as the author to tell him, where there was ambiguity, where he needed clarification or to be  ‘pointed in the right direction.’ His feedback made me see the novel from the reader’s perspective. It made me realise ways in which I could improve it and it reminded me of the duty we have as novelists not only to create fully rounded and satisfying characters but  also to guide our readers effortlessly through our narrative.

Eileen Elgey – friend, writer and reader, recently had a piece on being a reader published in The Journal (click to read)-  the first thing she does, she says, when she wakes in the morning is reach for a book….

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – breaking the rules…


2010
04.22

Posted in Crime, Reading, Six Biggest Mistakes | 1 Comment »

I have just finished reading Steig Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. In Swedish its original title was Men Who Hate Women – not such a good title – but one that confirms he was a man after my own heart, very much concerned with the problems of violence against women.*  The book is a great read in parts, although interestingly, far from perfect.

The beginning is too slow and too complex, sometimes resulting in readers giving up (as I did on my first attempt) – the family connections and complexities are difficult to follow, too many names, at times too much information, the end like the beginning is too protracted, but for all that the heart of the novel fizzes like a stick of dynamite between the two.

As an aspiring crime writer I wonder what can I learn from this novel? It isn’t a page turner, pace is very slow at the outset and it takes half the novel before financial journalist and free lance private investigator Mikael Blomkvist discovers the first clue to the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, or before his story connects with the second party in this classic duo – Lisbeth Salander.

It isn’t as strong as it might be on atmosphere or place but it is strong on plot, giving a new twist to the old fashioned ‘locked room mystery in island format,’ (Blomkvist’s words)  and making a number of direct references to Larsson’s literary heroines, including; Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Val McDermid.

But what really makes the whole thing work are the protagonists, compelling and complex characters, in particular the eponymous heroine – Lisbeth Salander – a damaged and vulnerable individual. We care about her, we want to know what happens to this twenty four year old, anorexic, computer hacker, with a photographic memory, a goth like appearance, multiple piercings, tattoos and an unexplained past… need I say more?

Mikael Blomkvist is equally sympathetically drawn, if less obviously so. He has, one suspects, many of the characteristics of Larsson himself and he suffers the classic failed marriage and doubts about his parenting abilities. I found him very attractive.

And I find the success of this novel very heartening – it just goes to show you can break some of the rules and get away with it – and it doesn’t, or we as writers don’t, have to be perfect!

* I really can’t agree with those who charge Larsson with misogyny. Whist the violence against women depicted in the book is explicit, it is never graphic, although I understand the film is quite different .

‘Stieg Larsson (1954-2004) grew up in the Swedish coastal town of Umea and was a graphic designer before becoming a journalist and leading investigator of far-right political groups. He founded and edited the left-wing magazine Expo, and wrote crime novels in the evenings to relax. He presented his publisher with three novels in 2004 before he died. In 2008, he was the second best-selling author in the world, after Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner. In Britain, Larsson is published by the independent Quercus, whose dedicated staff could be found in the early days handing out copies to bookish strangers in parks’  Iain Hollingshead –The Telegraph.

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Tony, Alan and Julia…


2010
03.30

Posted in People, Prison, Reading | 1 Comment »

Today as the rain fell in bucket loads – like it would never stop – I sat in the warmth and comfort of the County Hotel in the very heart of Durham, sipping hot latte coffee from a long glass and talking with friends from my prison service days, Tony and Alan.

We talked about the times we remembered as being especially good – were they so good we wondered? Or does everyone look back on certain times and think they were happier, sweeter, more fun? Is it the – summer was always hotter when we were young brand of nostalgia? Maybe – who knows? I’m not sure it matters. What matters is having times like these to look back on and more importantly friends to talk it over with. Friends: Tony, who shared some of his early prison service stories with me for my P.I. Danny Beck novel (now out there somewhere – I hope giving  a good account of itself)-  and Alan, who promises to show me his Newcastle if I get the chance to write the next Danny Beck.

Talking of Newcastle led us to The Taxi Drivers Daughter by the late Julia Darling – Alan has been reading and enjoying  it – and I came away thinking of Julia and how she will never not be missed and how generous she was in her praise of my writing and in her encouragement – and not just to me but to everyone. And how she was full of inspiration and fun and ideas – and how she was a great friend to many and how I wished I’d known her better.

As I drove home on the high road, through the rain induced fog, hills running with water, I thought of Danny Beck (he makes similar journeys) and of his growing sense of belonging in the very centre of Newcastle which is expressed in the novel and how much that mirrors my own growing sense of belonging here in the North East.

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The Sea -John Banville


2010
01.20

Posted in Inspiration, Reading | 3 Comments »

Just now I’m reading The Sea by John Banville.  It won the Man Booker prize in 2005. Martin Amis calls Banville  ‘a master’ whose ‘prose gives continuous sensual delight.’

As I read (I’m about half the way through) I find I’m not overly sympathetic with the protagonist Max, I find him cold and distant, but he is a man in grief and I know there is a mystery from the past yet to be revealed – so this may change how I feel. I also find that for me as reader there is a lack of novel – I suppose by this I mean character, plot etc – as opposed to an abundance of prose.  I suspect that I will remember the book as much for its language as for its people and their story

The Sea is a novel which explores remembrance and loss – elegiac,  atmospheric and erotic, all ingredients that I love and the language is luscious, evocative, at times deceptively simple and always surprising – here is Max’s first glimpse of the Grace family – his meeting with them one summer when he is a boy will come to haunt him -

They were gone in a moment, the car’s sashaying  back-end scooting around a bend in the road with a spurt of exhaust smoke. Tall grasses in the ditch, blond like the woman’s hair, shivered briefly and returned to their former dreaming stillness.

The beach -

A steep-slanted flash of sunlight fell along the beach, turning the sand above the waterline bone-white, and a white seabird dazzling against the wall of cloud, flew up on sickle wings and turned with a soundless snap and plunged itself, a shutting chevron into the sea’s unruly back.

There are jewels like these to savour on every page , so that you just want to get your notebook out and write them down.

I find reading  a novel like The Sea, despite my misgivings, really inspires me to want to get started on something NEW…SOON!

RoomtoWrite’s March one day conference will offer a Masterclass in Reading For Writers – how to learn from and be inspired by great writers – those signing up will be informed of the texts to be discussed.