Read like a Writer

Book 5: One Day by David Nicholls reviewed by guest author Jessica Ruston

2009-10-12T05:01:00.000-07:00

In this guest post, fabulous debut novelist Jessica Ruston reviews One Day, which is proving both a critical and commercial success. Jess lives in London with her husband and LUXURY is her first novel: I've been hearing great things about her book. To find out more about Jessica visit her website: http://www.jessicaruston.com. Over to you, Jess...

Why I bought/read it: I enjoyed David Nicholls’ first book, Starter for Ten, and I heard him read from One Dayat a book event shortly before it was published. The concept immediately grabbed me – as the shoutline on the front cover says: Twenty Years, Two People. The book follows Emma and Dexter, who meet on the night of their graduation from uni in 1988, through the next 20 years of their lives.

Cover Envy? Not direct cover envy as the style wouldn’t suit my book, but it is the most fabulous cover. I have the hardback, and the cover image is printed directly onto the cloth – there’s no dust jacket. It’s a simple, striking image of two face in profile, looking at one another, and it’s somewhat reminiscent of one of those Victorian pictures where you see a vase one moment and faces the next. The profiles are bright orange, with the title in black sitting in the space between them, and the image carries round to the back of the book where it is mirrored. It reminds me quite a lot of a 60’s film poster.

Blurbtastic?

'I can imagine you at forty,' she said, a hint of malice in her voice. 'I can picture it right now.'

He smiled without opening his eyes. 'Go on then.'

15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.

So where will they be on this one day next year?

And the year after that? And every year that follows?

I really like the fact that the blurb opens with dialogue – it grabs me. Having read the book, one of the strongest things about it is the voices of the two main characters, so I think using them in the blurb works well to reflect the tone. It’s reasonably brief, which I like – the book has a very strong, ‘high concept’ theme, so doesn’t need a lot of explanation. And I like the fact that it ends on questions – it makes me want to find out what the answers are.

Who will read it? Everyone who enjoys contemporary fiction. I think the publishers are deliberately trying to make the book appeal to men as well as women with the quote from Tony Parsons on the front, maybe in order to counteract the ‘love story’ element that might put some men off? It’s certainly a book that both men and women will enjoy.

David Nicholls’ first novel, Starter for Ten, was made into a successful film, so the book will also appeal to people who may have seen the movie but not read either of his other books.

Verdict: I adored pretty much everything about this book, from the concept to the execution. It’s the perfect blend of brilliant writing with a genuinely good story. It’s well paced; the characters are interesting as opposed to just ‘sympathetic’ – they’re flawed, they make mistakes and bad decisions, they frustrate, on occasion.

And he genuinely captures the feeling of the times that he writes in. Nightclubs, pubs, university halls of residence are all immediately brought to life in a way that so often feels tired and clichéd.
Lessons?

Flawed characters: You don’t have to have perfect characters. Both Dexter and Emma have their flaws – he is arrogant, obnoxious, overly ambitious yet often lazy, self-regarding; she is a bit pompous, humourless, stuffy, and gets stuck in a life she doesn’t really want, due to a lack of ambition. And yet, because of this, they are so much more interesting and real than the 2-d ‘sympathetic’ main characters that we are so often given. They screw things up, they have regrets – we can see them creating the things we know they will regret later, even – and so they are human in the truest sense of the word.

Quiet lines of dialogue can say so much: The dialogue in the book is subtle, restrained and frequently brilliant. My most memorable moment is when Dexter, after a massive alcoholic binge and in the middle of a breakdown, has been taken back to the family home by his father, who has had to pick up the pieces once more. In the middle of an overblown emotional collapse, Dexter’s father turns to him and say ‘Never mind. Silent Witness is on at nine.’ Just perfect.

You don’t have to tell the whole story: One Day misses out a huge amount – or so it seems – because of the nature of the structure. But actually, everything that matters is there. You don’t need to write every day of the characters’ lives to know what happened in them – often what isn’t said is as important as what is. Skipping over periods of time can work beautifully, and you can catch the reader up on the essentials in just a few words.

If I take one thing away from this book, it is...
Restraint. And how structure is dictated by story. Ok, that’s two things. But they’re linked. Honest!

Further reading: Starter for Ten, also by David Nicholls; The Rotters’ Club, by Jonathan Coe, Beatniks by Toby Litt

Kate says: Over to you! Have you read this one, or one of Nicholls' previous books? Do you agree with Jess about the unusual structure and how well it works? It's definitely on my To Be Read pile.

Coming up next... hmmm, I did finish the first in the Twilight trilogy and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It'll either be that one next or, um, something else!

Book 4: The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

2009-09-26T02:08:00.000-07:00

Why I bought/read it: my boyfriend bought it, as we’ve spent the summer in Barcelona. I’d read and enjoyed The Shadow Of The Wind but he came to it fresh.

Cover Envy? The cover of The Angel's Game shows a photograph of a European city centre in winter, with bare trees, vintage cars and the silhouette of a man in a peaked cat, carrying a briefcase. It is mysterious, atmospheric (the photo has been treated to make it look misty, though I wonder if it might have been a sunny day) and the title is in metallic red, with the author’s name at the bottom in smaller letters than you might expect. I guess Zafón’s name isn’t as recognisable to a British audience as the title of his first book for adults, so the photo and its treatment is attempting to make the connection. It’s very similar in style to The Shadow of the Wind, but with blue tones rather than the sandy brown ones for his first novel. There’s a sticker to make the connection with Shadow, in case the reader has missed it. I like the cover but it’s been copied a lot, so it’s now fairly generic. But it’s not overblown, which is good.

Blurbtastic? I have the trade paperback (larger format, for export) and the blurb on the back begins with a quotation:

‘The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that, when I opened those windows each evening, its streets would whisper stories to me...’

In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man - David Martin - makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books, and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city's underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house are letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner.
Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as he struggles with an impossible love. Then David receives a letter from a reclusive French editor, Andreas Corelli, who makes him the offer of a lifetime. He is to write a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realises that there is a connection between this haunting book and the shadows that surround his home.
Set in the turbulent 1920s, The Angel's Game takes us back to the gothic universe of the Cemetery of the Forgotten Books, the Sempere and Son bookshop, and the winding streets of Barcelona's old quarter, in a masterful tale about the magic of books and the darkest corners of the human soul.

Then there are some quotes from Stephen King and the Daily Telegraph, plus a small biog of Zafón, with a classic author pose photo (writer looks serious but not unapproachable, holds hand to chin as if in comtemplation, but hand to chin also disguises any jowls caused by too many Jaffa Cakes to fuel writing – not, I hasten to add, that there’s any sign of jowls on Zafón’s photo).

The blurb suffers a little because on a trade paperback all the info has to be crammed onto the back cover (on the hardback, there’s the extra space from the flaps for the biog and the quotes and so on. But I like the quote, it captures the mood of the book, and the theme: this is about the stories we tell and the process of writing.

Who will read it? The fans from last time – and as the cover tells us, Shadow sold 15 million copies worldwide, so that’s a terrific start - and anyone attracted by Gothic, dark mysteries, or books about writers.

Verdict: Brilliantly entertaining and atmospheric, though sprawling and certainly not flawless.

At 440 pages, you get a lot of book for your money, and an awful lot of stories, characters and set pieces. As a result it did take me a while to get through – almost a month, in fact , as bedtime reading. It wasn’t until the last third that I wanted to read it in snatched moments during the day, because I wanted to know how it ended.

The plus points are definitely the fabulous depictions of Barcelona as a dark, misty, mysterious place where anything could happen, including the appearance of a strange, otherworldly man who wants David to write a book like no other... As we’ve been living in Barcelona over the summer, just a few hundred metres from where David lives in Calle Flassaders, the place-dropping was a huge pleasure for me. The other day they reopened the Shade House in the Ciutadella Park, and when I went there, I imagined it full of 1920s figures...

The other plus for me is the evocation of the pure weirdness of the life of a writer: the mixture of inspiration and frustration, the expectations (often dashed) when a novel is published, the critics, the procrastination... and above that, also a love of story. Zafón is a story-teller, and people often say his work is in the tradition of Wilkie Collins. I haven’t read Collins’ novels since school, but I recall that same dense, menacing atmosphere, alongside a sense that the author is enjoying every minute of it. Red herrings, literary allusions, the pathetic fallacy...it’s all here and Zafón is revelling in it.

On the downside, I do think it’s too long, and the conclusion leaves rather too many questions unanswered, as well as, for me at least, having a slightly icky Time Traveler’s Wife feel to it (shan’t say more – actually I liked TTTW although I thought that was too long, too – which almost certainly says far more about my attention span than it does about either of these hugely successful novels). The tone of the book changed a lot throughout, too, with a body count to match a Tarantino movie in the last third... maybe Zafón wasn’t in the best of moods towards the end.

Lessons?

The setting can be the star... and for me, Barcelona is definitely one of the main attractions here. Don’t you just love reading about places you know, even if you've only visited them briefly? Well, Barcelona works so well here because it is one of those places few people dislike, and many have visited or want to visit. Zafón has chosen the Gothic and el Born areas of the city as his locale, and these are also the ones tourists visit and the areas which remain more or less intact ninety years on. Naming the streets and landmarks creates a sense of reality in an otherwise fantastic narrative, grounding the reader, and also creating a desire to visit these places, to see if there is anything like the tower house where David lives, or the bookshop that features in this bookshop and Shadow. So, choose a place that captivates you, and go to town... (the research is tax-deductible, too, of course!). Setting your story in the past also offers you leeway and an extra dimension for the reader – you can twist things a little to suit your story, and you’re also offering an insight into a famous place. I suspect this works better with iconic cities – London, New York, Berlin – than with new towns or the ‘burbs – sorry, but Bracknell or Milton Keynes don’t have quite the same cachet (though actually, I’d read a novel set in MK in the early 70s when the Open University was a-swinging into town...)
Books about writers can work...though it helps to be a best-selling author already when you write yours. You may not know this, but publishers have certain subjects they’d prefer writers to avoid, and that includes novels about musicians, actors and authors. One of the problems with books about writing is that it’s a very sedentary, internal process. There’s nothing to see except some slightly overweight person hunched over a notebook or laptop, mainlining nicotine, caffeine or unrefined sugar. Yet writers – both published and unpublished – are naturally fascinated by their own tortured processes, disappointments, rejections and triumphs. Sadly, most readers aren’t. And, the more successful an author becomes, the more likely s/he is to become a full-time writer, thereby reducing other potential sources of material. In many writing careers, there will be ‘the book about being a writer’ and often they are dull, dull, dull. I do love the dark and funny Kill Your Darlings by Terence Blacker and I also enjoyed Marian Keyes’ The Other Side of the Story for a witty view of the commercial fiction world. But The Angel’s Game is different – it explores the idea of story-telling, of truth and lies in fiction, as well as the nitty gritty of being published. If you are considering writing about an author, bear in mind it’ll be a hard sell – and also read as many books as you can that feature novelists/writers. If you can honestly say you still have something fresh to add, then go ahead. Otherwise try to give your hero something more proactive to do for a living!
Highbrow? Lowbrow? Just write what you love... I read this article (it's interesting, do read it!), based on an event Zafón did at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August 2009 and I loved him for it. He says that ‘the invention of the highbrow and the lowbrow is the greatest cultural fraud of the 20th century’. He goes on to add that ‘it’s a marketing device — it’s a way of telling people who consume specific cultural products that you are smarter because you are buying this’ and I feel he’s hit the nail on the head for me. What’s interesting about both his adult novels (he wrote for a younger audience before) is that the marketing and setting suggest highbrow, but when you read the books, you know that the author’s primary aim is to entertain and transport you. Yes, he writes well and he has taken care to describe his settings and characters elegantly (his translator, Lucia Graves, has done a tremendous job too), but he doesn’t lose focus on his main purpose – to tell a brilliant story.

If I take one thing away from this book, it is...that story-telling takes precedence over luxuriant language – but that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Further reading: well, The Shadow Of The Wind is an obvious pick, if you haven’t already read it. And I do quite fancy returning to The Woman in White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Any other suggestions?

Over to you! Have you read both books, or just one? How did they compare? Did you feel a difference in the last third – and were you satisfied with the ending? And if you haven’t read it, does the cover and blurb and my review tempt you?

Coming up next... I’m currently reading Twilight, prior to speaking at Vampires or Nice Guys - is Chick Lit dead?at Mostly Books in Abingdon on October 20th.

Book 3 - Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín Reviewed by Guest Author Adèle Geras

2009-08-28T01:11:00.000-07:00

In our first guest review, novelist Adèle Geras reviews Colm Tóibín's Booker short-listed novel, Brooklyn.

Why I bought/read it:
I was sent the proof of Brooklynby a friend of mine, and I was desperate to read it because I love Colm Tóibín's work. I'd previously read The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, both of which are very good indeed, so I was eager to get to this one.

Cover Envy?
The cover shows a couple, standing in the stern of a ship, looking out over the water, on which the moon has laid a silver ribbon. It's a photograph but we can tell that it's set some time in the recent past, from the shape of the woman's hat and the length of her skirt. The lettering of the word Brooklyn is in gold and it's the kind of cover I love. It would definitely make me pick up the book. I like anything set on a ship!

Blurbtastic?

In a small town in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. So when a job is offered in America, it is clear that she must go. Leaving her family and home, Eilis sets off to forge a new life for herself in Brooklyn. Young, homesick and alone, she gradually buries the pain of parting beneath the rhythms of a new life - days at the till in a large department store, night classes in Brooklyn College and Friday evenings on the dance floor of the parish hall – until she realizes that she has found a sort of happiness. But when tragic news summons her back to Ireland, and the constrictions of her old life unexpectedly give way to new possibilities, she finds herself facing a terrible choice: between love and happiness in the land where she belongs and the promises she must keep on the far side of the ocean. Brooklyn is a tender story of great love and loss, and of the heartbreaking choice between personal freedom and duty. In the character of Eilis Lacey Colm Tóibín has created a remarkable heroine and in Brooklyn a novel of devastating emotional power.

This blurb is okay but it gives away far too much of the plot as far as I'm concerned. They could have left out the whole section about what goes on in Brooklyn and gone straight to the 'novel of devastating emotional power' etc.

Who will read it?
I think this novel would suit a great many readers. It's clearly one for anybody who likes the author's previous work but also, because it's a love story, it would attract women, I suppose, but readers might be surprised to find how very easy and welcoming a novel it is. It's not a bit daunting or off-putting and I have to report that many men I know, including my husband, just loved it, too. It's one that will be popular with most people, I'd say. If it wins the Booker, which it well might, I reckon sales will be massive. It will also one day make a fine movie.

Verdict
I adored it. As I read, I kept on asking myself: why are you enjoying this so much? On one level, it's very simple, straighforward tale, and just seems to be reporting the events of a really quite ordinary life, and nothing more. But Tóibín does this in such a wonderful way that it leaves you gobsmacked. The secret is in his plain, beautiful prose. You feel as though you're looking through a clear stream of water. Also, and I've heard the author himself say this, he was trying to emulate Jane Austen and her single narrative line, almost unbroken by subplots and twists etc. Simplicity is the key to this novel's beauty. The heroine's life is examined in detail and we see the world through her eyes. Her experience of a trans-Atlantic crossing will stay with me a long time. I don't have any problem about men writing from the point of view of women and vice versa but Toibin does do it exceptionally well. The book has terrific characters in both America and Ireland for us to enjoy and the sense of place...both places!....is very strong. We always know exactly what everything looks like, sounds like, feels like and this without any lengthy descriptions.

Lessons?

Less is more

Ordinary life is quite dramatic enough to be getting on with. No need of explosions, or extra life-shatteringly dramatic events.

Tell it straight. No narrative tricks is something that actually works.

Don't worry about fashion. This book could equally have been written twenty years ago or in twenty years' time.

If I take one thing away from this book, it is...
Not to be afraid of using the good old third person /past tense in a book. The fashion nowadays is so much geared to the historic present that a great many novels read like film scripts.

Further reading:
If you liked this, do try some of his other books. The ones I mentioned above are brillliant, but The Master is about Henry James, so probably more interesting if you like James to begin with. I'd also recommend, (and listen to the blaring sound of me, blowing my own trumpet!) Voyage by me, published by Barn Owl Books which is about a crossing from Europe to America in 1904. The whole of the action takes place on board ship.

Over to you!
Has anyone out there read this? I'd love to know what you think of Brooklyn.

Adèle Geras has written more than 90 books for children of all ages. Her teenage novel Didois published by David Fickling Books. She's written four adult novels, the latest of which is called A Hidden Life (Orion). She lives in Manchester.

Many thanks to Adèle for her review - she's such a terrific writer herself and now I have another book to be added to the wishlist! If you're a reader and a writer, and want to tell others about a book that has taught you about the craft, I'd love to have your contribution - leave a message in the comments!

Book 2: What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe

2009-08-19T02:53:00.000-07:00

Why I bought/read it: I borrowed What a Carve Up! from the library here in Barcelona, even though I have a copy at home that has been on my to-be-read pile forever.

Cover Envy? I wasn’t completely sure, but it’s grown on me. Looking at Amazon, I see the one I have (and shown above, sorry about the small size) is the 1995 cover: I think it’s cute and knowing and suggests irony and humour and I like the use of colours.

The one I own is the one below and I think it’s pretty horrible and unappealing, all that grey, with the ugly cartoon. Dark? Yes. Covetable? Not to me. I bought it DESPITE the cover and I might even go as far as to say that it may have contributed to the problem I had getting into the book the first two times - it's so much more depressing than the book inside. I'm sure it was what the designer was briefed to do but, no... (though I do quite like the shadow on the carpet)

I see that more recently all his books have been given a new look, involving a colourful treated photo (from the original movie, I assume): to me, the new cover look across his books works well, suggesting quirkiness and intelligence but not inaccessibility. Which is a look I would like, yes. Lucky JC.
Blurbtastic? No blurb at all, in the conventional UK sense (In US, they use blurb to mean puffs/quotes from published authors saying nice things about a book). Just lots of extracts from reviews. I think it’s a slightly dangerous idea, even when the quotations are as good as these. I don’t always want to know what other people think – I prefer to have an inkling about the story, some context beyond the cover image. Though I’ve read Coe before so it’s less of an issue for me.

Who will read it? An interesting question. As I say above, it’s hard to know how effective reviews alone would be in drawing readers. In a sense it’s academic as this is now a well-known novel so its reputation will probably attract people.

Verdict?
I loved it. Which makes it harder to unpick the lessons you might take from it, but never mind. Funnily enough, I tried to get into it a couple of times before and the very formal introduction put me off. What I didn’t understand those first times was that this strange style is part of the overall ‘joke’ – the book is a blend of multiple styles and forms: formal biography, newspaper columns, agricultural report, diary entries, personal letters and so on, which add up to a very satisfying whole.

It’s strongly satirical, taking aim at the Thatcher years and, in particular, the fate of the NHS during that time. The book revolves around the monstrous Winshaw family (in the US, the novel is published as The Winshaw Legacy), a posh dynasty with connections to pretty much every aspect of British life: politics, farming, entertainment and the arms trade. Through their eyes, and those of their biographer Peter Owen, we see the worst that human nature has to offer. As well as the individual tales of corruption, greed, rivalry and general malice, there’s an overall mystery around the wartime death of pilot Godfrey, apparently the only decent member of the clan, who was shot down over Germany in 1942.

Over the course of the book, the apparently disjointed lives and stories build to a traditional country house murder mystery set piece, and the questions posed during the novel are answered in an unexpected but very satisfying way.

I also think it’s interesting to consider how one could define this novel: comedy, satire, polemic, literary fiction, entertainment. It’s one of those books which shows how unsatisfactory genre definitions can be...

There are a couple of criticisms that I can imagine would be levelled at this book: that the characters are exaggerated gargoyles, and that the structure of the book – with many references to the film comedy What a Carve Up! which obsessed Peter Owen since childhood – is too tricksy. For me, it didn’t matter at all. I found it great fun.

Lessons?

Mashup your fiction: you’ve probably heard about mashup music, where the artist blends different songs or phrases from different tracks/musical influences/periods to create something new. Well, I think this is the closest definition I can come to what Coe does here, with his many different forms of writing. He has written most of the excerpts himself, but his use of motifs from the What a Carve Up movie, excerpts from songs, and memories of the death of Yuri Gargarin, add an amazing texture to this book. It can be disorientating for the reader, but it’s worth it. In less skilful hands – or more pretentious ones – this might have proved disastrous. I have read some self-consciously literary novels where this ‘mixed media’ has been so tiresome, but here I feel that Coe never forgets that he’s an entertainer as well as a satirist.
Be ambitious: Coe has so many story threads and so many points of view here – I cannot even begin to imagine how he planned this (off to Google it, to see whether he’s given any interviews about the process)! I also can’t imagine how he’d have pitched this to his agent or publisher, which is proof to me that you should keep the faith in an idea that seems sprawling – not every idea has to fit the perfect Hollywood/Robert McKee structure.
Resolutions rock: look, endings are seriously hard. I know why this is – there’s something marathon like about writing a novel, and towards the end, plenty of authors run out of steam – and often readers do, too, as a result. But one of the things I love so much about this novel is the way that the drama and tension and humour build to a satisfying and lavishly gory ending. It’s funny, and yet the last pages are moving, too. I can’t explain much more without giving lots away but it absolutely ties up the strands Coe has threaded through the book and I closed the novel with an ‘ah...’

If I take one thing away from this book, it is...that a book that is ambitious and maybe even a little strange can also be entertaining: as writers, we don’t have to limit ourselves to one mood or genre (though obviously it helps to have Coe’s talent!).

Further reading:
I’d recommend The Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle (I slightly preferred the former) and I like the sound of many of this others: he seems to be able to switch genres and styles, and has avoided being pigeon-holed (something which genre writers find harder than those deemed literary). In terms of ‘intertextuality’ (another word for the technique of referencing other films or texts), I am struggling a little to think of other examples. Anyone have more suggestions?

Over to you!
Have you read What a Carve Up! or other novels by Coe? What do you think of satire as a genre – and what would be on your reading list?

Quick review: How NOT To Write A Novel

2009-08-17T05:29:00.000-07:00

Remember the teachers who scared you most at school?

There was probably a mildly sadistic P.E. instructor. Possibly a Maths teacher who enjoyed waving a protractor in a threatening manner. But the scariest of all used the sharpest weapon in the educational arsenal: sarcasm….

As a teaching tool, sarcasm has gone out of fashion. I lead creative writing workshops myself, and favour encouragement and positive critiques. The ‘feedback sandwich’, where we wrap any unpalatable criticism in two wholesome slices of kindness, is dish of the day in most lecture rooms.

So reading the first pages of How NOT to Write a Novel by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman is quite a culture shock. The authors have chosen to use a combination of sarcasm and literary slapstick to illustrate the very worst mistakes a novelist can make. No aspect of the writerly ego is left unsavaged, no delusional narrative device is spared.

And guess what? It works brilliantly.

The premise of the book is expressed in the title – this book addresses the would-be author as though he or she is determined never to write a publishable book, and takes them through the kind of errors they might like to perfect to achieve this end result.

There are seven sections, beginning with advice on Plot (subtitled, helpfully, Not just a bunch of stuff that happens) , and ending with wisdom on How Not to Sell a Novel. The topics covered are similar to those in more conventional creative writing texts – Beginnings, Getting to Know Your Hero, Narrative Stance – but the tone is unique. So in the Beginnings section, the reader is introduced to different errors, like The Long Runway (in which a character’s childhood is recounted to no purpose) or The Gum on the Mantelpiece (in which the reader is unintentionally misled). Each of these mistakes – and there are two hundred of them – is illustrated by over-the-top examples written by the authors to make the effects crystal clear.

I read this book over the course of a week, and it made me laugh and wince in equal measure. I must admit it did become a little samey after a while, but perhaps it works best when you dip into chapters over a longer period. Certainly a look at the Complications and Pacing chapter while plotting, or the Sidekicks and Significant Others section while working on your characters, will remind most authors of the potential pitfalls. I’ve already identified my own weak spots…though I’m not about to share them here! I wouldn’t recommend this as a first book on writing, but as an alternative to the encouragement of Julia Cameron et al, it could be as invigorating as an icy shower on a hot morning.

I’m always intrigued about the response to a book on amazon, where HNTWAN has received mixed reviews. One angry reader described it as ‘an intensely irritating smug book.’ I don’t agree, but certainly the tone will not be to everyone’s tastes. So I’d advise you take a look at the excerpt on the Penguin website before buying, to check the sarcasm won’t put you off.

But if you secretly appreciated the biting wit of your meanest teacher, and harbour a sneaking suspicion that you learned as much from cutting comments as you did from faint praise, then How NOT to Write a Novel could provide the tough love you’re looking for.

Book 1: The Return by Victoria Hislop

2009-08-16T05:09:00.000-07:00

Why I bought/read The Return:I borrowed it from a friend.

Cover Envy? Not especially. It’s pretty, but rather generic: (this is the trade paperback, i.e. those larger format books often sold at airports, at £9.99, before the smaller mass market paperback appears up to a year later) it reminds me of a girlier, pinker version of the old photo covers used for The Shadow of the Wind and Winter in Madrid, two novels also dealing with the Civil War period in Spain.

The designer has used a montage of images to suggest history, Spain, dance and romance. Victoria Hislop’s name is not huge, but is embossed in gold. The Return is in slightly raised letters, in an uneven red that might suggest ink or blood.

Other text on the cover: The new bestseller from the author of The Island (as this is the first publication of the novel, this might seem a bit presumptuous, but it also turned out to be true) and under the title, the shoutline: Pain and passion at the heart of war-torn Spain.

Blurbtastic? The blurb emphasises the landscape and setting, and implies that you, the reader, will learn from the book as well as be moved by it:

Beneath the majestic towers of the Alhambra, Granada’s cobbled streets resonate with music and secrets. Sonia Cameron knows nothing of the city’s shocking past; she is here to dance. But in a quiet café, a chance conversation and an intriguing collection of old photographs draw her into the extraordinary tale of Spain’s devastating civil war. Seventy years earlier, the café is home to the close-knit Ramírez family. In 1936, an army coup led by Franco shatters the country’s fragile peace, and in the heart of Granada the family witnesses the worst atrocities of conflict. Divided by politics and tragedy, everyone must take a side, fighting a personal battle as Spain rips itself apart.

Who will read it? As Hislop’s first novel, The Island, sold over a million copies after featuring on the Richard and Judy Book Club, this second book would do very nicely if those readers bought this one too. The cover and the subject matter are also spot on for book club readers who enjoy substance and history/new knowledge in their fiction: the cover and the shoutline (which I find slightly icky) suggest women will buy this, but I don’t think men would be too embarrassed to be seen with it on the Tube.

Verdict?
First of all, a confession. Unlike lots of people, I didn’t love The Island, Hislop’s debut. I understand why people loved it, but I couldn’t get over the style: lots of plain story-telling and not as much dialogue as I tend to like. One of the first ‘rules’ of writing explained to new writers is ‘show don’t tell’ and it was too ‘telly’ for my tastes. The best thing about the book for me was the historical story around the leper colony on the Greek island of Spinalonga. It had passion, tragedy, and it made readers think about how it would feel to be banished to the island, or left on the mainland after your lover or family member became ill. I was impressed by her research, but I wouldn’t have bought The Return, because of the writing style. Having said that, I’m currently living in Spain, I am fascinated by the history, so I began reading this book with high expectations.

Literary recipe

The Return follows the same literary recipe as The Island: it uses a contemporary character’s relationship problem to begin and end or 'bookend' the historical narrative, i.e. Sonia in this book visits Spain, partly to escape her troubled marriage, and in the process she discovers not only a new way of life, and a tragic period of history, but also a deep personal connection to the events in Granada.

I had some of the same issues with this book that I did with the first. I don't find 'vanilla' style story-telling as involving as a stronger voice, although Hislop does write with more flourish and drama about flamenco, to convey the passion of the dance. The story also relied very heavily on coincidences. One coincidence in a book is fine. Two are borderline. I lost count here. A lot of readers would see the ending coming from about a third of the way in, yet I didn’t find it completely convincing. Perhaps that is also to do with the characters – we often switch between them, to show how devastating the conflict was for people on all sides, but that makes it harder to feel emotionally engaged.

And yet... I couldn’t stop reading and I did cry buckets through the last four or five chapters. In many ways, this is the perfect book for my first posting because while my Inner Writer was critical of aspects of the book, my Inner Reader was hooked and moved.

Literary Lessons:

(hi)Story, (hi)story, (hi)story: what kept me reading was the story, and what Hislop has excelled at in both her books is choosing compelling historical stories that a British (and worldwide) readership may not know much about. I believed she knew her stuff and if you write about real events, so must you – but beware the danger of becoming bogged down in detail. In this novel, there were many battle scenes involving Antonio, the Republican brother. He never came to life for me, though maybe this is a personal bias of mine against war stories. But if you're embarking on a broad narrative following more than one character, as this book does, it’s important to consider where the reader is investing most of their emotional energy. For me, the dancer Mercedes was by far the most interesting character, and her experiences taught me more about this very specific time and place and conflict, whereas the war scenes felt more generic.
Being human: this book moved me. The writing style was unfussy, so it has to be the simple telling of an awful, awful period in history that made me cry - an effect many writers want to achieve. If you can find a story you care about – and I was utterly convinced that Hislop was herself moved by these events – then you don’t need to use narrative tricks to make your reader care too...
And yet... Hislop did use some narrative tricks. The ‘Bookending’ I mentioned above has pros and cons, and you might like to reading this if you’re considering something similar in your own fiction. Its purpose is to draw the reader into the story by providing a familiar context, and yet I am not sure she needed it here – her million readers loved The Island, and I believe it’s because they had an appetite for reading about something that isn’t here and now. They were craving difference. So to me, seeing these events through the eyes of a slightly self-centred character whose life with her alcoholic husband looked marvellous in comparison to the sufferings of the historical figures, was unnecessary. It also seems to have made Hislop determined to round things off with those darned coincidences. I didn’t buy them. If you read the Amazon reviews, many of the readers condemn this as ‘chick lit’ yet , as a writer and reader of ‘chick lit ‘ (I hate the term but that’s another story...), I’d argue that the characters of Sonia and her feckless best mate are less rounded than the historical characters or, in fact, many chick lit heroines. They also lack insight or humour, something I missed in this book. I do like bittersweet fiction, the tragic and the comic together, and I know it’s not fair to expect all novels to deliver that, especially with such a terrible story to tell. But there were chances: at one point Hislop says a mother whose son has been fighting receives ‘two funny and eloquent letters...describing in detail what they had done. Salvador had a gift for writing and description. She shared these letters with Concha and Maria Perez and the three women spent hours together poring over them.’ I longed to be shown those letters and get more of an insight into the dark humour of battle. It felt like a missed opportunity. Read the book and see if you agree. I appreciate I am probably in the minority here – this book’s success speaks for itself. But I'm focusing on what we might learn as writers from the choices made in this spectacularly successful novel.
Techniques: I’ve mentioned the book-ending, and this links into the question of viewpoint. Another ‘unbreakable’ rule often given to new writers is to choose a point-of-view and stick to it. Hislop begins with Sonia’s POV, and then the historical story is told by a waiter, who has the most incredible understanding and knowledge of all that happened to multiple characters, and also how they were feeling at the time. My Inner Reader wanted to know, of course, what happened and how it felt. But my Inner Writer was asking questions about how the waiter could possibly have known all this. Whether that matters is an interesting question – and it certainly suggests that breaking this ‘basic’ creative writing rule will not stop you becoming a bestselling author, or moving your readers to tears.

If I take one thing away from this book, it is...that terrible history makes for compelling, moving fiction. But basing a novel on fact doesn't mean the author has to work any less hard to make the characters and the story convincing.

Further reading: it may be worth comparing this to The Island to see the similarities in the techniques Hislop uses. I have also read, and preferred, Guernicaby Dave Boling, which takes a narrower focus but felt somehow more absorbing to me. The narrative style of Boling’s book was also fairly plain, though the story has a romantic element, but a whole I found the book more successful. If you’re interested in the period, you could read them together.

Over to you! Have you read The Return, or The Island? Did you cry as much as I did (at least one pocket pack of Kleenex-worth)? What did you think of the 'book ending' and of Hislop's decision to follow multiple stories? I'd love to know.

Coming up next: What a Carve-up! by Jonathan Coe

Read like a Writer: Why?

2009-08-16T05:02:00.000-07:00

I believe every writer begins as a reader. I certainly did. As a child I ‘hoovered up’ novels and as an adult, I always prioritise books over beachwear in my holiday suitcase.

The passion for a good story and for the escape that a book offers, is what drove me to become a writer myself. But the process of writing, and more particularly the process of editing my own work, has changed the experience of reading for me and I don’t think it will ever be quite the same...

It’s not a poorer experience, but it is a very different one. The chances are that you’re reading this blog because you write yourself, and you may recognise the symptoms. Often I feel split in two at the beginning of a book: the ‘reader’ longs to be swept away by the narrative and the characters, but the ‘writer’ is watching from the margins, intrigued by how the author of the novel in question is setting up the story, establishing the mood, and handling dialogue and viewpoint and flashback and all the other tools in a novelist’s workbox.

The downsides include a level of impatience I never had when I first discovered books. I rarely abandon a book without finishing it, but I will admit to skim-reading paragraphs, pages, even whole chapters to reach the end. It’s also much harder to be caught up in a story when you’re noticing an overuse of the ellipsis (a crime I loathe all the more because I am guilty of it, too)...

But the biggest upside is that no reading experience is ever wasted. I am a huge fan of the book swaps boxes or shelves you get in hotels, where you trade the book you can’t be bothered to drag home, for someone else’s sun cream stained copy of a novel you'd never have chosen in a bookshop. Reading outside your normal genre or preferred subject area can teach you so much. And even reading a 1967 Western is better than the mind-freezing panic of being Bookless on the Beach.

I’ve always shied away from writing detailed reviews of other people’s books, because like most published authors, I know that a nasty write-up can ruin your day. OK, week. But I decided to set up this blog to focus specifically on what each book teaches me about writing. I will never feature a book I hate, or one I want to belittle. But I will share my honest thoughts about what works for me and what doesn't.

A word about my taste: it’s middlebrow, with a penchant for humour, contemporary stories/issues and an interesting voice/style. Generally and genre-ly, I like mainly contemporary fiction: women’s fiction, thrillers, satire/comic writing, narrative non-fiction and ‘popular’ non-fiction: I’m not so wild about most sci fi, war novels or misery memoirs. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t read them if there was nothing else, or that I can’t learn something from them.

Reviewing is never objective – I am as biased and contrary a reader as any, completely led by my own prejudices and intolerances. But I’m also an engaged reader – and I hope that analysing books for what they can tell you about writing, and speculating a little on why the author made the choices s/he did, will give these posts a slightly different flavour to the average review.