And now... Beryl Bainbridge!

A very quick post today - in case you missed it on my previous post, Annabel/Gaskella has taken up the challenge of nominating another author for a reading week, and designing a great badge, and so... Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week will be hitting the blogosphere June 18-24!  More info from Annabel here.  I've been intending to read Beryl Bainbridge for years - at the moment I only have Master Georgie, so it might well be that one I read, but I'll see what the library.  Go over and express your interest, if you are interested, and spread the word!

Being Unreasonable

by Priscille Sibley

My husband often tells me that writing is not a business for reasonable people. He tells me this when I'm discouraged. He says that in order to succeed, I must be a little unreasonable. Now, by saying that, he does not mean I should ever be rude. On the contrary, writers should weigh all sides of a situation -- all points of view as it were. We should always try to be kind and respectful and humble in our professional dealings. But he tells me I must be unreasonable because in order to succeed at a daunting task, it takes an unreasonable person. One who can weigh the odds, realize it may not be possible to succeed, and still persevere.

So, let me suggest a different connotation for unreasonable (after all, we're writers and we love words.) I suggest in some regards we must aspire to be unreasonable. Why? Because reasonable people don’t set out to write novels. They don’t offer their work up for critique. Here it is; now tell me what’s wrong with it.  They don’t query agents, receive rejections, and try over and over again. They don’t pray for reviews, knowing those reviews could be scathing. (Of course, we’re actually hoping someone will tell us we’re brilliant.)

Reasonable people find jobs with guaranteed incomes, health insurance, and retirement plans.

Here’s the thing: I never aspired to live a reasonable life. Although for the most part that’s exactly what do. I grew up in a two-parent home, went to college and got an ordinary job. I married and am still married. We have three terrific teenage children.  But as the cliché points out, the devil is in the details.

I met my husband while waiting to go up in a small Cessna. We weren’t in an airport. We were in a potato field. And the pilot had removed all the seats but his to make room for six fools. I was one of those fools. We packed ourselves inside only so we could jump out with parachutes attached to our backs once we’d reached an altitude of 3500 feet.  I jumped nine times over the course of the next few months. On my most memorable jump, I landed in a tree. I was hurt (my leg still bears the scar), and after I healed, I still jumped a few more times.

So I suppose it’s not surprising that I persevered through all the trials along the publishing road. I wrote my first novel when I knew absolutely nothing. (Let’s just say it was a learning experience.) My second attempt went better. For that one, I actually landed an agent, but that manuscript didn’t sell. When my first agent and I parted I still had the dream.

I kept writing. I came up a new story. I researched, I wrote, and then I revised – repeatedly. It was crazy. Why would any sane person continue to spend an endless amount of time doing something which might never pay off? Well, I did jump out of an airplane again after I’d landed in a tree. I’m not a reasonable person.

I found another agent. She pulled my query letter out of her slush pile. She liked the idea. She liked the partial. And then she called.  She told me she loved certain things about it but – she wanted revisions. What she said resonated with me. I loved her suggestions. I loved her approach, so I buckled down yet again. A couple of months later I signed with her.

Last October, my novel, THE PROMISE OF STARDUST, sold to William Morrow in a pre-empt. If I’d been reasonable person I would have given up long ago, and I would never have realized this dream.

I don’t think anyone is ordinary. That’s a misnomer. Our characters may live “ordinary” lives, but we want to see their pluck in a difficult situation. We want them to overcome obstacles and to learn and grow. We want to see them find the extraordinary in themselves and thereby giving us hope that we can too.

So here’s to being unreasonable. Here’s to creating characters who find the will to exceed expectations. 

In that way be unreasonable. Persevere. Aspire. Dream. But don't become a prima donna! Remember, we want our readers to love us. We want our colleagues, our agent, our editors, our writing community to love us. So be respectful and kind and humble. And save that unreasonable side for reaching for the stars (or your rip cord.)

Muriel Spark Reading Week: Review Round-up

Thanks so, so, SO much for all your contributions to Muriel Spark Reading Week - it's been such fun, and exceeded the highest hopes that Harriet and I held.   I'm especially thrilled for those people who discovered Dame Muriel for the first time, and loved her.  Harriet has already posted a round-up, but I thought I'd do one here too, for handy reference.  We were SO close to covering all her novels - just The Mandelbaum Gate left out.  [EDIT: Thanks Christine, we've now done them ALL!]  I've not included links to more general posts about Spark (although they were great!) so here are links to reviews of her novels and other books.  Enjoy!

(I don't have Google Reader or anything like that, so it's entirely possible that I've missed your review - do let me know, and I'll add it to the links below!)

The Novels

The Comforters (1957)
Travellin' Penguin

Robinson (1958)
Bibliolathas
A Penguin A Week
Vapour Trail

Memento Mori (1959)
Bibliolathas
CurrerBell
A Girl Walks into a Bookstore
Gudron's Tights
A Penguin A Week

The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960)
The Book Trunk
The Only Way Is Reading
Stuck-in-a-Book

The Bachelors (1960)
Behind The Willows
Page Plucker

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
An Adventure in Reading
Book Snob
Excelsior
Harriet Devine
Heaven-Ali

The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
Miss Bibliophile
The Book Trunk
Gaskella
Iris on Books
Park Benches & Bookends
A Work in Progress

The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)
The Book Trunk

The Public Image (1968)
Page Plucker

The Driver's Seat (1970)
An Adventure in Reading
Harriet Devine
The Literary Stew
Page Plucker
Somewhere Boy
A Tale of Three Cities

Not to Disturb (1971)
Literature Frenzy!

The Hothouse by the East River (1973)
The Books of Life
Seagreen Reader

The Abbess of Crewe (1974)
Behind the Willows
Our Vicar's Wife
Page Plucker
Stuck-in-a-Book

The Takeover (1976)
My Porch
Stuck-in-a-Book

Territorial Rights (1979)
Beauty is a Sleeping Cat
Desperate Reader
A Girl Walks into a Bookstore
Morgana's Cat 

Loitering with Intent (1981)
Behind the Willows
The Captive Reader
Ciao Domenica
Laura's Musings
Our Vicar's Wife
Page Plucker

The Only Problem (1984)
Stuck-in-a-Book
Tales From The Reading Room

A Far Cry From Kensington (1988)
Harriet Devine
His Futile Occupations
A Reader's Footprints
Roses Over A Cottage Door
Semi-Fictional
Silencing the Bell
La Vicomtesse
Winston's Dad

Symposium (1990)
An Adventure in Reading
Our Vicar's Wife

Reality and Dreams (1996)
Fleur Fisher
Our Vicar's Wife

Aiding and Abetting (2000)
A Girl Walks Into A Bookstore

The Finishing School (2004)
Harriet Devine
Iris on Books
Our Vicar's Wife
Silencing the Bell
Somewhere Boy
Tales From The Reading Room


Non-novels and Miscellaneous

Emily Brontё: Her Life and Work (1953)
I Prefer Reading

The Go-Away Bird (1958)
Vapour Trail

Curriculum Vitae (autobiography) (1992)
Somewhere Boy
Stuck-in-a-Book

Complete Short Stories
Desperate Reader

And if you can speak Dutch... several reviews etc. at Leen Huet's blog!

Discussion, discussion...

Harriet will be doing a proper round-up of reviews on her blog tomorrow, and I might well do something after that, so I have a record here too - but I wanted to throw today's post over for discussion in the comments.  This is especially for those of you participating who don't have blogs, but of course everyone is welcome.

1.) How have you found Muriel Spark Reading Week?  What did you read - and was it your first time reading Spark?

2.) Which novel/novels have you been inspired to read next in Spark's canon?

3.) What themes do you identify across Spark's novels?

4.) Which other authors would you recommend to the Spark fan?

I'll answer this one myself, first - I would first and foremost tell people to read Jane Bowles' only novel, Two Serious Ladies, which is very much in Spark territory.  I'd also recommend anything by Barbara Comyns, if you love Spark's detached, surreal-but-matter-of-fact style.  And, perhaps controversially, I'd recommend Ivy Compton-Burnett - because I think Spark learnt a lot about dialogue from reading her.  And Spark does write in her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, that she loved ICB before writing her own novels, saying ICB 'resembled the Greek dramatists in her stark themes, and [...] her art was surrealistic.'  Remind you of anyone?

EDIT: Annabel has now suggested a Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week - more here.  Exciting!

5.) Just, well, discuss!  Anything you want to bring up...

Thanks for making this week so fun - maybe we'll come back next year, or maybe the work has been done in getting everyone excited about one of Britain's foremost authors.  Is there an author you think would be great material for a Reading Week?  If there is, don't just tell me - feel free to organise one yourself!

Two More Sparks: The Abbess of Crewe and The Takeover

A couple more Spark novels this morning; later in the day I'll put up a more general post with some questions looking back over Muriel Spark Reading Week for y'all.

I decided to try and cover some of the Spark titles which others haven't read this week, and so in the past couple of days I read The Abbess of Crewe (1974) and The Takeover (1976) - consecutive novels from around the middle of Spark's writing career.  Turns out others have now posted about The Abbess of Crewe (including my own mother), but I'm still alone on The Takeover.  Or The Take-over, sometimes.  But Chris won a copy in my very brief competition on Facebook, so perhaps I won't be alone for so long.  Victoria/Litlove wrote in her excellent post that she's seen a lot of people this week say "this isn't one of Spark's best."  I'm delighted to say I've seen equal amounts of "this is my first Spark novel and I love her!" but, for these two novels, I'm going to have to say... they're not Spark's best.  But Spark's sub-par is still rather wonderful.  Onto the books.

The Abbess of Crewe is, the cover of my rather ugly edition informs me, a satire on the Watergate scandal.  (And, rather wonderfully, apparently a film starring Glenda Jackson called Nasty Habits.)  Now, I don't know a lot about the Watergate scandal, which happened over a decade before I was born, so Our Vicar gave me a quick rundown.  All I knew was that bugging was involved, and that seems to be the most salient detail for understanding the links with The Abbess of Crewe.  Who but Muriel Spark would transfer bugging and intrigue from politics to an abbey?  One which, indeed, uses both the Bible and Machiavelli's The Art of War.

Alexandra is the Abbess of Crewe at the start of the novella - after a chapter, Spark does her frequent trick of taking us back in time, to the period where Alexandra and Felicity both wish to win the 'election' for Abbess - supposedly without canvassing for votes, which is forbidden by abbey rules.  Alexandra is one of Spark's casually ruthless characters, without any strenuous sense of morality (which one might expect from a politician, but is amusingly strange from a nun).  She says wonderfully snarky/Sparky things like this:

"I don't deny," says the Abbess, "that by some chance your idea has been successful.  The throw of the dice is bound to turn sometimes in your favour.  But you are wrong to imagine that any idea of yours is good in itself."

Alexandra is not only determined to become Abbess, she is certain that it will happen.  Of course, the reader knows that it will - but it is curious that Alexandra is herself unswerving in this knowledge.  This sort of prelepsis is common in Spark, and always unsettling.  Another unsettling aspect is - and I can't think of other Muriel Spark novels where she does this - that The Abbess of Crewe is all in the present tense.  Usually that's a big no-no for me, but it works quite well here - because it gives the sense of constant surveillance.  And that's what's going on in the abbey: everyone's movements are recorded and observed, in the buildings and grounds.  And then there is the scandal caused by Felicity, and started by the theft of a thimble, alluded to in the first chapter, but rather a mystery to the reader...

My favourite character was one who was rather irrelevant to the plot - even in the slimmest of novellas (and this one comes in under 100 pages in my edition) Spark finds room for tangents, doesn't she?  Sister Gertrude is off in a far-flung corner of the globe, trying to convert cannibals, somewhere "unpronounceable, and they're changing the name of the town tomorrow to something equally unpronounceable."  She is called by telephone every now and then (somehow), is utterly unflappable, issuing the detached and bizarre aphorisms for which Spark is famous ("Justice may be done but on no account should it be seen to be done.")

The Abbess of Crewe is one of Spark's weirder books, and also one of the more amusing - on Thomas's wonderful Quirktensity Graph he puts it somewhere near the middle, but I'd put it in a very-quirky-not-very-intense position.  For people who know lived through the Watergate shenanigans, I imagine the whole thing would be even more entertaining - for me, it tipped the scales at a little too strange, but it was certainly the sort of novella nobody but Spark could have written.

* * * * *

The Takeover is probably my least favourite of the ten Spark novels I've now read - but it's still rather interesting, and good; everything is relative.  I intended this post to be brief, so I'll whip through The Takeover pretty speedily.  It's set in Italy and apparently (the cover again) it's a 'parable of the Pagan seventies', whatever that means.  Hubert and wealthy Maggie Radcliffe have parted ways; Maggie returns to the area with her new husband but Hubert refuses to leave her house, which is still filled with her furniture.  He busies himself secretly selling off her antique furniture and valuable paintings, replacing them with impressive fakes.  Oh, and Hubert 'considers he is a direct descendant of the goddess Diana of Nemi.  He considers he's mystically and spiritually, if not actually, entitled to the place.'  Here he is, in full Pagan action:

Again, standing one winter day alone among the bare soughing branches of those thick woodlands, looking down at the furrowed rectangle where the goddess was worshipped long ago, he shouted aloud with great enthusiasm, "It's mine!  I am the King of Nemi!  It is my divine right!  I am Hubert Mallindaine the descendant of the Emperor of Rome and the Benevolent-Malign Diana of the Woods..."  And whether he was sincere or not; or whether, indeed, he was or was not connected so far back as the divinity-crazed Caligula - and if he was descended from any gods of mythology, purely on statistical grounds who is not? - at any rate, these words were what Hubert cried.

That's a great example of how Spark writes her narratives: she does not interpret or judge, she simply presents the characters, their words and actions, and sits back to watch them.  In The Takeover, though, the stuff about Diana doesn't really seem too important until the final section.  Before that, it's all about money and lies.

There are plenty of characters - other neighbours, including Maggie's son Michael and his wife Mary; various effeminate ex-secretaries to Hubert; Pauline Thin, his current besotted secretary, etc. etc.  More or less all of them are concerned with embezzling from one another, without any sense of conscience-twinging going on anywhere.  That's one of the reasons I couldn't entirely get on board with this novella.  I'm used to Spark's characters being rather unapologetically ruthless - but here they are in the Evelyn Waugh school of selfishness.

The dynamics between Maggie and Hubert are interesting, as she tries unsuccessfully to takeover her own house, and there are certainly many moments of Spark's inimitable style ("How do you know when you're in love?" she said. / "The traffic in the city improves and the cost of living seems to be very low.") but I'm afraid on the whole I found it rather lacking in momentum.  Perhaps if I hadn't recently read several other Muriel Spark novels, and dozens of reviews, I'd have found the joy of reading her style sufficient - but the comparison has made me feel The Takeover a bit lacklustre.

So, a very brief review, I'm afraid.  I daresay one could write a lot about The Takeover, and if any of you are well-acquainted with 1970s Paganism, it would mean more.  For today's post I seem to have picked the two Muriel Spark novels which require the reader to have lived through the 1970s, don't I?  And interestingly, although both are ostensibly about religious activity, neither really have much to do with religion.  That's one of the few links I can see between these consecutive novels - except for both giving away huge plot twists long before they happen, in typical Spark style.

Of the five Spark books I've reviewed this week, I think her autobiography is my favourite - and, from the novels, I would choose The Only Problem, which keeps growing in my estimation since I finished it.  Later today, as I mentioned, there'll be a general discussion post - especially for non-blogging folk, but of course everyone else is welcome to comment too.  Keep posting your reviews, and letting me or Harriet know!  What fun!

Curriculum Vitae - Muriel Spark's autobiography

Another Spark review from me - three books reviewed in one day, gosh!  Although this one I actually read during Muriel Spark Reading Week, and I'm writing about it down in Somerset - where the book group my Mum runs have all been reading Muriel Spark.  I joined in their lovely lunch, chatting about Spark - everyone enjoyed reading her, although one lady (who had read The Abbess of Crewe, apparently one of Spark's weirder novels) was rather bemused.  I'm hoping Mum will write some reviews of the Spark novels she's read this week... hint hint...!

Once I've read a lot of an author's novels, I like to look into their life a bit.  (You can do the same, very quickly, with Katherine's piece.)  I prefer doing it that way around - so that I have formed my own opinions from the books, and can use biographical information to augment my interest, rather than act as a starting point.  Martin Stannard's biography of Muriel Spark was looming in one corner of my room, but it's enormous, so I went to the horse's mouth - Spark's 'fragments of an autobiography', Curriculum Vitae (1992).

I had been curious to discover quite how Spark would write an autobiography, since her novels so often eschew normal narrative structures and the reliable narrator.  Not that her narrators are particularly unreliable - just the question of reliability seems to be rather sidelined.  Well, in Curriculum Vitae she is very concerned with reliability (I've typed that so often it doesn't feel like a real [reliable] word any more...) and refuses to trust her own memory: 'I determined to write nothing that cannot be supported by documentary evidence or by eyewitnesses'.  But there are definitely signs of Spark-the-novelist in the structuring of the autobiography.  Her usual trick of playing around with time makes an appearance, but it's the enticingly disjointed beginning which made me realise Spark-the-autobiographer was no real distance from Spark-the-novelist.  She starts by writing about bread, under its own little subheading.  And then butter.  And so on.  It's an interesting way to structure a childhood, but I don't think any other method would suit this most unconventional of novelists.

Spark grew up in beautiful Edinburgh, amongst family and neighbours who were fairly poorly-off, but with many strict manners and customs - although her own parents seem to have been pretty fun.  I can't summarise Spark's many details about this upbringing, but it demonstrates how incredibly observant she was from an early age - and who knows what she left out, because she couldn't find corroborating evidence?  There are definite signs of the latent novelist in Spark:

I was fascinated from the earliest age I can remember by how people arranged themselves.  I can't remember a time when I was not a people-watcher, a behaviourist.

A while later, whilst completing her education at Heriot Watt College, she notes:

I was particularly interested in precis-writing, and took a course in that.  I loved economical prose, and would always try to find the briefest way to express a meaning.

There, I think, you have the two keystones of Spark's novelistic power.  She is endlessly perceptive, and always concise.

In the early section of the autobiography, the part which was of most interest to me (and might well be to others) was on Miss Christina Kay ('that character in search of an author') whose teaching inspired Spark, and helped inspire her most famous creation, Miss Jean Brodie.  Of course they are not the same - Spark is too good a writer to lift people straight from life, even if that were possible - but they shared a love of educating girls, of Mussolini, and art.  Spark shows how she used Christina Kay, and where she invented.  Indeed, Spark often finishes an anecdote by mentioning which short story or novel the event helped influence.  The following excerpt is an example of this, but also of the way Spark writes her autobiography with the same unusual, out-of-kilter twists she presents so often in her novels:

Just round the corner in Viewforth lived Nita McEwen, who resembled me very much.  She was already in her first year at James Gillespie's School when I saw her with her parents, walking between them, holding their hands.  I was doing the same thing.  I was not yet at school.  It must have been a Saturday or Sunday, when children used to walk with their parents.  My mother remarked how like me the little girl was; one of her parents must have said the same to her.  I looked round at the child and saw she was looking round at me.  Either her likeness to me or something else made me feel strange.  I didn't yet know she was called Nita.  Later, at school, although Nita was in a higher class and we never played together, our physical resemblance was often remarked upon.  Her hair was slightly redder than mine.  Years later, when I was twenty-one, I was to meet Nita McEwen in a boarding house in the then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.  There, our likeness to each other was greatly remarked on.  One night, Nita was shot dead by her husband, who then shot himself.  I heard two girl's screams followed by a shot, then another shot.  That was the factual origin of my short story 'Bang-Bang You're Dead'.

Perhaps I should elaborate on the self-confessed disastrous marriage which led to her life in (then) Rhodesia; her cunning escape back to Britain during World War Two; her hilarious account of working for the Poetry Society (which helped inspire Loitering With Intent); the various dramatic and often calamitous personal and professional relationships Spark had... but I want you to read Curriculum Vitae yourself, so I shan't.

Spark finishes this autobiography at about the time her first novel, The Comforters, was published.  She talks of a second volume, and it is such a shame that this volume never appeared - I would love to see her take on literary circles and the trappings of fame - but what Spark has written is wonderful enough.  Curriculum Vitae has all the energy and unusual qualities of a Spark novel, with the added joy of acting as a centre from which all her other works are spokes.  Once you've read three or four (or so) Spark novels, I recommend you hunt this down and see her bizarre take on real life - it's further evidence of her claim (I believe) to being one of the 20th century's greatest writers, and certainly one of its most original.

What Cancer Has Taught Me About Writing And Living

by Anne Clinard Barnhill

Two weeks after my debut novel "dropped" into the world, I was diagnosed with stage 3 endometrial cancer.  Since then, I've done a six-week book tour across North Carolina, had a radical hysterectomy, gone on a blog tour and started chemo.  Not exactly what I'd expected in what was supposed to be 'my' year.

At first, I didn't want to tell anyone about the disease, but that quickly became unfeasible; people were contacting me to do readings and I had to explain why I couldn't; my editor had been patiently awaiting my revisions to the second novel and I didn't want him to think I was dawdling; and, I figured it was something my agent should know.  So, I went public.

As I deal with the gritty life of coping with cancer, I've noticed some similarities between the writing life and living with cancer.  An odd coupling, to be sure, but one that has landed on my head.  For what it's worth:

1) Part of the joy of writing is the surprise stories and poems often bring.  Just when the writer isn't sure of what to do or where to go, inspiration hits and you're off, the adrenaline pumping and the muse calling back over her shoulder, "Hurry up!"  Cancer is a surprise, too, though not in quite the same way. Three little words--you have cancer--can turn your life upside down in just those seconds it takes to utter them.  That is the power of words.  And that is the substance with which writers work. To render words into poems and stories carries its own power and that power can change the world, too.  Just remember, that one word--Yes!--is all you need to keep going with writing, even if the yeses are few and far between.  Yes, I like this story! Yes, I want to publish this poem! Yes, this novel is for me!  One word, in the blink of a frog's eye, the world is changed again.  Yes, we can cure you!  Yes, you'll have treatment! Yes! And, while I love the sudden insights writing can bring, surprises like being diagnosed with cancer are the kind I could do without.  But there are good surprises even in that--suddenly, I'm very clear about how I want to live the rest of my life.  Being a more dedicated writer is one of those aspects cancer has brought into focus.  Plus, I've been writing such a long time, I know everything that happens is grist for the writing mill.  Cancer is just one more thing I will know about and understand in a very personal way.  More grist, better writing.

2) I've been writing professionally for over twenty years.  I started late in life, raising and supporting my family first, like many writers, I suspect.  Two qualities helped me make it those full twenty years before my first book (AT HOME IN THE LAND OF OZ: Autism, My Sister and Me) was published---patience and perseverance.  I can't tell you how many times I've rewritten that memoir, carefully excavating more details, searching through my father's records, reorganizing and touching up the story until it finally found a home.  For a woman who wants to hit the ground running, quickly doing chores on the way out the door, such patience does not come easily.  It's a skill at which I've had to work hard. 

Perseverance, on the other hand, is more in my nature; some might call it stubbornness.  I can dig in my heels and not move an inch.  This has proven to be helpful as a writer.  I really do believe you can move a mountain, one little pebble at a time. So, while I'm not always naturally patient, I have a bulldog's tenacity.  Over time, I have learned to have patience with the process, to understand that sometimes, writing moves of its own accord to its own rhythm.  And to keep at it, no matter what.

Cancer seems to operate on similar principles.  It shows up unannounced and quickly gets to work.  To deal with it, I need to be patient with the process, even though the process is debilitating and sidelines me from most of my other work.  I need to keep on getting the treatments until my doctors tell me it is time to stop.  I can't quit.  Luckily, because of my writing life, I begin to understand these concepts and can use what little discipline I have developed as a writer to become a healthy cancer survivor.

 3) Faith, hope and love seem to be important in the writing life, as important as patience and perseverance; faith in your work and in the ability to bring the vision in your mind to incarnation; hope that the effort will be seen and valued by others; and love---love of the project, of every character and every nuance in the work, of your own small abilities, of the smorgasbord of joy, tragedy, foolishness, that make up this wild, crazy experience of being human.  These same qualities impact the cancer life, too--faith in your doctors to have the knowledge to cure your illness, hope that you'll be one of the good statistics, and love. Love received in the form of meals prepared by strangers who are trying to help, from friends who call and hold you when you cry, from family members who allow you to scream and moan and complain and refuse to turn away.  And the sudden love you feel toward this imperfect, yet fully-functioning body--the same body you have chastised for its wide hips and tendency to pad the middle, the same body bearing stretch marks from the birth of three fine sons, the same body that gives you the pleasure of birdsong, a sunset, the spinning earth, every single day.  It is for love we write; it is for love we live.

My life as a writer has served as good preparation for the unexpected.  I never dreamed I'd get cancer right after my book was born.  But there it is--we're never really ready for such events. I guess if you're going to be a writer, you have to say 'yes'---yes to it all--yes to the love and yes to the pain; yes to the deadly doldrums of recovery and yes to the debut novel being released.  Yes to the fear and yes to the courage! Yes to receiving as well as giving love! Yes to the skylark and the raven! Yes and yes and yes!

Two Sparks: The Ballad of Peckham Rye and The Only Problem

Although I'm actually writing this in advance of Muriel Spark Reading Week, I'm confidently going to predict that we're all having a great time, and that you're all putting up brilliant, thought-provoking pieces on this wonderful novelist... yes?  Yes.

Since it's my day to post, I'm going to write fairly speedily about two Spark novels that I've read recently - and hopefully by the end of the week I'll have finished at least one more.  (There will be no shortage of Spark reviews around the blogosphere this week, but if you fancy reading all my archive posts on Spark, including this one, click here.)  I chose The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) because my supervisor said it might be a useful comparison to Lolly Willowes, and The Only Problem (1984) because it looked really interesting, and also one that I hadn't seen mentioned anywhere else in the blogosphere.  Cutting a long story short, I thought they were both brilliant - neither take the crown away from Loitering With Intent as my favourite Spark novel yet, but both add to my cumulative for Spark.  You'll be avidly reading Spark posts here, there, and everywhere, so I'll try to keep my reviews brief... and hopefully enough to intrigue you to read them!

The Ballad of Peckham Rye is centred, indeed, in Peckham Rye - and concerns the arrival and influence of one Dougal Douglas (sometimes going by the name of Douglas Dougal.)  The novel opens with the aftermath of a bride being jilted at the altar - indeed, with the bride's mother insulting the jilting groom.  It's all a little confusing (deliberately, one imagines) and it's difficult to get the story straight - especially since everyone is superimposing their views and imaginings over the facts.  The brief chapter concludes:

But, in any case, within a few weeks, everyone forgot the details.  The affair is a legend referred to from time to time in the pubs when conversation takes a matrimonial turn.  Some say the bridegroom came back repentant and married the girl in the end.  Some say, no, he married another girl, while the bride married the best man.  It is wondered if the bride had been carrying on with the best man for some time past.  It is sometimes told that the bride died of grief and the groom shot himself on the Rye.  It is generally agreed that he answered 'No' at his wedding, that he went away alone on his wedding day and turned up again later.

This is a great example of how Spark plays irreverently with the normalities of narrative.  And if the reader expects everything to be neatly unfolded by the end of the novel, then he/she clearly hasn't read much Spark before.  She obeys few authorial 'rules', and weaves her narratives with little concern for the reader's expectation.  If she were writing a play (and she has; I should read them) she would unveil Chekhov's gun in the first act, and nobody would ever lay a finger on it again.

But as someone notes on the first page of The Ballad of Peckham Rye, "It wouldn't have happened if Dougal Douglas hadn't come here."  She is quite right... although it is difficult to trace exactly how Dougal Douglas influences the community, his influence is undeniable.

He turns up somewhat out of the blue, and starts working at 'Meadows, Meade & Grindley, manufacturers of nylon textiles, a small but growing concern.'  His role is fairly vague.  Mr. Druce, the head of the company, is keen to hire 'an Arts man', and Mr. Druce places Douglas Douglas in charge of 'human research.'

"I shall have to do research," Dougal mused, "into their inner lives.  Research into the real Peckham.  It will be necessary to discover the spiritual well-spring, the glorious history of the place, before I am able to offer some impetus."

This research, it appears, chiefly constitutes attracting the workforce from their duties, calmly meddling in their lives, and undermining their confidences.  Dougal is all things to all people, and yet (although it is never asserted directly) it appears he might be an incarnation of the Devil.  He certainly has growths in his temple which rather resemble sawn-off horns - and the events which ensue from his presence have rather the hallmark of evil.

It is a fascinating concept, and one which has Spark written all over it.  She never gives us the certainty (as Sylvia Townsend Warner does in Lolly Willowes) that we are dealing with the Devil.  There isn't really certainty about much, for either the reader of the residents of Peckham Rye - but events spiral and, although the jilted bride is not the worst of the calamaties, it is a structural close to Dougal's presence and the circular narrative itself.  All is done with Spark's brilliant detached authorial voice, with doses of the surreal and strange interwoven with the commonplace and starkly observational.  Brilliant.

* * * * *

The Ballad of Peckham Rye was Spark's fourth novel; The Only Problem comes somewhere towards the end of her almost half-century of novelising - but they are unmistakably by the same author.  The concept is quite different, but the manner of approaching it is still very Sparkian.  I say that the concept is different, but thinking about it, these two novels both concern the nature of evil, in some way - though both rather skirt round the issue.

'The Only Problem' of the title is, according to Harvey Gotham, the problem of suffering.  Accordingly, he has taken himself off to the French countryside to write a monograph on the Book of Job, and his mind rarely wanders from this topic.  His own suffering seems to take the form of interfering relatives and his ex-wife Effie, whom he abandoned in Italy over a stolen chocolate bar.  The sort of premise which makes me know I'm in the delightfully odd world of Muriel Spark.

Amongst the cast are Effie's sister Ruth, and Ruth's husband (Harvey's old student friend) Edward.

Edward used to confide in Harvey, and he in Edward, during their student life together.  Harvey had never, to Edward's knowledge, broken any of these confidences in the sense of revealing them to other people; but he had a way of playing them back to Edward at inopportune moments; it was disconcerting, it made Edward uncomfortable, especially as Harvey chose to remind him of things he had said which he would rather have forgotten.

That is a very Sparkian relationship.  I can't think of any uncomplicated friendships in the eight Spark novels I've read - there is always some element of uneasiness or sharpness, or simply the failure to communicate naturally which characterises so many exchanges throughout her work.  I love conversations and plot expositions which subvert the normal rules in some way, or ignore the anticipated responses - it's on the reasons I love Ivy Compton-Burnett - and here is an example from The Only Problem.  There are some spoilers in it, so skim past if you want to avoid them:

Anne-Marie had put some soup on the table.  Harvey and Ruth were silent before her, now that she wasn't a maid but a police auxiliary.  When she had left, Ruth said, "I don't know if I'll be able to keep this down.  I'm pregnant."

"How did that happen?" Harvey said.

"The same as it always happens."

"How long have you known?"

"Three weeks."

"Nobody tells me anything," Harvey said.

"You don't want to know anything."

We aren't long in the cerebal world of theological exegesis.  Effie - it is claimed - has become involved in a terrorist organisation, and the police think that Harvey is also somehow implicated.  In vain does he protest (although never especially animatedly - Spark's characters tend towards the calm and detached) that he hasn't spoken to Effie for years.  The rest of The Only Problem follows this mad chain of events - Harvey calmly continuing to offer his readings of Job, while the police interrogate him and his wife's motives and actions remain mysterious.

Spark doesn't, however, permit the obvious parallels.  A lesser novelist (had they been able to think of the juxtaposition) would have used the wider action of the novel as an example of the problem of suffering.  Instead, like in all the novels I've read by her, Spark just lets things happen.  There isn't really any rhyme or reason, or grand overarching narrative point; there are no neat conclusions, just the brilliance of Spark's eccentric but observant writing.

So, two more gems to the Spark canon!  I'm so pleased Muriel Spark Reading Week gave me the encouragement to read more Spark.  Do continue to put links in the comments box, if you've reviewed a Spark novel or written anything about our Muriel - and I hope you're having a fun week!

The Difficult Second Novel

by Lydia Netzer

First book. Done.

It's sitting there in a neat pile by my desk. My first novel, Shine Shine Shine, in glittering, glowing advance reader copies. The blurbs are in, the cover is designed, the thing has been revised fifty thousand times, and its pages contain everything I wanted to say about humanity, love, death, motherhood, and fear. Every word has been analyzed, moved, changed, tweaked, and every line is purposeful. And I like it.

It's sitting there in a file on my computer. My second novel, as yet untitled. It is a first draft, which means it hulks and skitters across the page. It is unfinished, which means I don't know all its secret agendas and devious little plans yet. It might change. It's full of stupidly repeated words. It's got place-holder dialogue and language, like "Describe the institute lobby here, fool, if you can." And I'm a little afraid of it.

In my imagination, the first book addresses the second:

Second book. Not done.

"What's up, noob? Hey, you got some pie filling on your collar. Or is that self-indulgent interior monologue? Dang, you're going to need to revise that, honey!"

Smartypants first book is not very tolerant of the second book's growing pains. Like an older sibling that pokes a baby and says, "Can it play yet?" Really, I want to love them both. But the first book is just so charming. Second book looks monstrous in comparison.

If I were a potter this would be easy.

I like a nice chili bowl. (Credit)

The first book is like a glazed, finished bowl. It's microwave-safe. Its motif is well defined. It's symmetrical. You can eat chili out of it and not die of lead poisoning. You can put it on your shelf and admire it. You can say to your neighbor: "I made that" and your neighbor will not back away in terror.

This is actual clay mined by me.

The second book is like a lump of clay you just dug up out of the yard. It has rocks in it, and streaks of dirt, and it's as symmetrical as a brain tumor, and if you tried to eat chili out of it... well, you would never try to do that. Because who eats chili out of a hideous lump of clay? Who would EVER want to do THAT?

"No one," whispers the first book. "Because it's just so hideous!"

The difficult second novel (or album). Is this really a thing? Oh yes, it's such a common problem that there are blogs and bands named after it. Stephen Fry explained it like this:

"The problem with a second novel is that it takes almost no time to write compared with a first novel. If I write my first novel in a month at the age of 23, and my second novel takes me two years, which have I written more quickly? The second of course. The first took 23 years, and contains all the experience, pain, stored-up artistry, anger, love, hope, comic invention and despair of that lifetime. The second is an act of professional writing. That is why it is so much more difficult."

Is that why it's so difficult? I'm not sure. Maybe there are other reasons. Here's my list:

1. It's always hard to draft. Writing through the drafting stage while the first novel is sitting there winking at you, fully edited and polished, takes a lot of fortitude. It's hard to remember your first book was once this difficult, that it once sat in tatters as you completely rearranged the timeline, that it used to be three main characters instead of one, that there was a really pretentious and unlikable stock trader in it, that it once had a line in it where one woman held the other woman's entire husband in her mouth, like a cat. It's hard to remember that the first novel used to be bad, used to be rough, used to be just like this.

2. The second novel sends you in a definite direction. The first novel is a point on a graph. The second novel is another point on the graph. But in between these points, something very significant is formed -- a vector. And the vector points to your future as a writer, and where your career will go. With one novel under your belt, and a second in the works, it feels like you could put the second point anywhere.

Darker, or lighter. More romantic, less. More literary, more commercial. More about cats, more about dogs. More hope, more despair. But ALL of those choices seem dangerous. If I write another book about artichokes, does that mean that all my future books must be about artichokes? Conversely if I write my second book about pears, will all the artichoke fanatics who bought my first book be disappointed and upset? Or is elliptical produce too limiting entirely -- maybe my second book should be about wristwatches.

3. There's not a lot of time to focus on it. This is why kid #1 gets a baby book elaborately filled in and packed with keepsakes. Kid #2 gets a "firsts" journal maybe, and by the time you get to kid #4, he's lucky to show up as a blur in the background of an aunt's snapshot.

4. You feel like you've already said everything. We writers are not in the business of holding back. We put it all out there, as much as we can, in every single chapter, and we don't save back reserves to get us through next year, when there is a long, wide feasting table to be piled with everything in the pantry, right now. At least I don't. So when I had finally finished the eleventeenth revision of Shine Shine Shine, I felt that not only was I done with it, but that I was done with saying things in general, because everything I wanted to say was in that book. Everything important to me was represented. It felt complete.

Of course, that was dumb. Of course I have more to say. There are huge stones yet to turn over and an entire weird universe of questions to pry open. Now that I'm locked into wrestling with my new book, I'm urgent about its new ideas. As for not having a lot of time, hey, kid #2 might not get the elaborate baby book that #1 is so proud of, but kid #2 is going to get all the benefit of my "first time" experience. I'm a better writer now than I was when I started. That helps! And yes, my second novel will send me in a direction. But the reality is that I was already going in a direction. The second book is as inevitable as one breath follows the next, and the idea that I could set that second point down anywhere on the graph -- that is actually the illusion. I'm going to write the book I have to write, and do the best job I can, and what comes out will set a vector, yes. But that vector was pre-determined by the mess in my brain, not by some decision I think I've made to send myself down this or that career path.

Which brings us back to the act of drafting. The act of sticking one's hands into the lump of clay, while the glazed and finished bowl sits gleaming on the shelf (full of chili, I hope). And that, my friends, is just going to be hard. But fortunately, I'm in it up to my elbows, and my characters have grabbed me by the throat, and I'm not washing my hands until this thing looks like a plate. See you in the kiln!

Muriel Spark: the covers

We'll all be doing lots of reading this week, both on blogs and in books, so I thought I'd offer up a different view of Spark - with a selection of covers.  These are all her novels, in order of publication, although the covers are not all first editions.  I just picked a selection to demonstrate the wide variety of styles which she has been given.  Your thoughts, please!

I love the quirky old Penguin covers - exemplified by the first one below, The Comforters - which seem to get across something of Spark's style.  But I think my favourite might be Memento Mori, which was a Time book club edition... how about you?  Favourite cover from those below?  Which do you think accurately convey the sort of novels Spark writes?  Any favourites which I haven't featured?

Head over to Harriet's tomorrow, for more Muriel Spark Reading Week fun.

Oh, and because I wanted to get it in somewhere this week, Pam sent me the link to this excellent interview with Muriel Spark.  I couldn't get the audio to work, but the transcript is great.

Author Interviews: Staple of the Blog Tour and Terror of the New-book Mother

by Sophie Perinot

Book blogs are the new “village square” as far as word-of-mouth for books goes. With Amazon and Goodreads reviews anonymous (in many cases) and (sadly) for sale, and with newspaper reviews often non-existent for books debuting in paperback, readers looking for quality fiction are relying more and more on the on-line book community. That makes book bloggers valuable “taste makers.”

As a result, the blog tour is fast becoming a staple of the book launch. What does this mean to the “new mother” of a book—a lot of running and a lot of writing that is not adding word count to your WIP.

There are three basic types of blog-appearances: guest posts, reviews, and interviews. Reviews are low workload but high stress. I suspect that needs no explanation. Guest posts aren’t much different than posting at your personal blog (although a tour host may suggest a topic or at least be looking for a post that fits with the themes and aims of their blog). So today I want to talk about the “Author Interview,” because chances are—unless you were a spokesperson or celebrity at your day-job—you haven’t been interviewed frequently or at length before.
In conjunction with the release of my book-baby, The Sister Queens, I have (to date) been interviewed nearly twenty times. That’s a lot of Q & A mes amis. Here are some lessons and reflections from my blogosphere journey that may help those still awaiting their due-date.

1. Start answering questions early. As a new book parent you are going to be sleep/sanity deprived and pinched for time. You are also likely—at least in the first week or two—to have the attention span of a gnat (“look! Amazon rankings!). So, whether you are lining up your own blog tour or working with a professional tour organizer try to get as many sets of interview questions before the tour even begins. Every interview you complete pre-delivery is a gift to your future new-parent self. True, some interviewers won’t write their questions until they’ve read you’re your book, and yes book bloggers have their own lives, but at the very least arrange to have each set of interview questions one full week in advance of the date they are scheduled to post. You’ll be glad you planned and worked ahead. Trust me.

2. Take a cue from your interviewer and her/his blog. You are an author, you know ALL about voice. Well, blogs and bloggers have voice too. If you are being interviewed for a blog with the voice of Stephen Colbert a certain touch of humor (wry, irreverent humor) might be appropriate in your answers. If you are being interviewed by a blogger with the voice of the Pope . . . not so much. There are lots of ways to convey the same information, so calibrate your tone to your platform—at least a little. OBVIOUSLY you want to be yourself when talking about yourself. Just be yourself tailored to your audience.

3. Be a good guest (or best efforts and professional demeanor). Bloggers don’t have to host you, so make it a good experience for them. Remember, your interviewer took the time to think up questions and is opening a public forum for your use. Courtesy and gratitude demand that you do a thorough job of answering your host’s interview questions. Expound, expand, and entertain. “Yes” or “No” may start your answer but they shouldn’t be your answer. Yes, after a dozen interviews the sight of the question, “what was your inspiration for the novel,” may cause you to break out in hives and bang your head against the nearest wall. But just because you’ve answered a question before DOESN’T mean the blogger addressing it to you has read or heard your answer. Ditto her readers. EVERY interview is a chance to reach new readers and inspire them to pick up your book. Don’t toss an opportunity away by giving an answer that telegraphs “I am bored.”

4. It is okay to make suggestions. If you have something you are dying to share with readers there is NOTHING wrong with suggesting a question on that topic to your interviewer. For example, I really (really) wanted to address some common misconceptions about 13th century women, and one of my blog-hosts was delighted to include a question and answer on that topic at my suggestion. Similarly, you may read a question and think a follow up to one is needed. Or you may feel that two questions are overly similar. As long as you are diplomatic you can certainly suggests cutting, adding or rephrasing material.

5. There is more than one way to skin a cat (answer a question). I owe my husband (BIG) for this little insight. I was wrestling with a question that—by my reading--required a huge information dump. My husband said, “what if you give the question a more surface reading and response?” Bingo. The more interviews I did the more I realized that I could craft answers to highlight information, ideas and themes I wanted to convey to readers—information and themes that portrayed my book as I want it positioned in the market. Answer the interview questions you are given in the manner most likely to attract readers to your book. This does not mean lying or telling readers that your book is something it is not (e.g. The Sister Queens is not literary fiction) it simply means clear, clean branding.

6. You do not have to answer every question. You did not surrender all your personal privacy in the delivery room when your book-baby was born. In “real life” people sometimes ask us questions we decline to answer (is that your real hair color? how much money do you make?). If a blogger asks you a question you are uncomfortable answering, don’t answer. Again, just be polite.

7. Hesitant to talk about yourself? Conquer your scruples. There will come a moment during “blog tour mania” when you may have the following thought: “Oh my god, I am a narcissistic b*tch.” This is a good sign—it likely means you are not (or so I tell myself). Try to remain calm, and remember you are NOT that person at a cocktail party who suddenly starts telling someone about their latest achievement in great detail, without provocation. The information you are providing was solicited. Someone (the interviewer) believes there are readers interested in knowing what you drink while writing or whether or not you wear socks (actually the latter was one of my all-time favorite questions—but then again, I like funny).

Just don’t get addicted to all the attention because, like all exhausting but exhilarating things, your blog tour will come to an end. Pretty soon there will be another author in your place at “book-blogs-are-us blog” answering questions about the view from her writing lair and the inspiration for her novel. Hey, doesn’t anybody want to ask ME something?

Muriel Spark Reading Week... is here!

Was it really only the beginning of February when I first suggested a reading week for Muriel Spark, and a week later when Harriet had agreed to be co-host, and Thomas had designed us this wonderful badge?

It feels much longer ago.  Well, I was thrilled and delighted when (not including my own comments) those posts got over sixty replies between them.  That's a lot of potential posts this week!  My hope is that we'll manage to read all Muriel Spark's twenty-two novels between us - not to mention her short stories, autobiography, plays, poetry, and biographies.  I've included a list of all her novels at the end of this post.

The Giveaway!

Open Road have kindly offered a free Muriel Spark ebook (review copy via NetGalley) to one lucky person - provided that person has an e-reader, and is in the US or EU (excluding UK).  If that's you, then pop a comment in the comment box, saying you'd like it, and I'll randomly select a winner at the end of the week.  The options are The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or The Hothouse by the East River - I'd argue they're her most and least well-known novels.

The Schedule

Since Harriet and I are co-hosting, we'll be alternating posts this week.  So I'll be posting on Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday, and Harriet will be posting on Wednesday and Friday and Sunday.  As luck would have it, I'll actually be away for a bit this week, and thus some of my posts are pre-scheduled to appear.  So I might be playing catch-up - but will do my best to read every Muriel Spark post that appears!

How did you meet Muriel Spark?

Let's throw this open to discussion in the comments here.  How did you first encounter Muriel Spark?  Perhaps this is your first time reading her, but if not, I'd love to know how you first came to try out one of her novels, and how things progressed from there?

Oddly I'd always believed that I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie first, but consulting my reading diary it turns out that I first read The Girls of Slender Means.  I did, however, read both in 2005.  Neither made much of an impression on me - I probably read them too fast, for a start - and I didn't return to Spark again until five years later.  A few bloggers had raved about The Driver's Seat - and I thought it brilliant.  Suddenly, I was hooked.  I haven't looked back since.

Over to YOU!

Have fun this week!  Do, please, let me or Harriet know when you've written about Muriel Spark this week.  I don't have Google Reader or anything, so although I'll be keeping an eye out, I won't have any way of having a complete list otherwise.

We'll put together links to everything you've been saying, at the end of the week - and fingers crossed we'll be able to put a link to every single one of the books below.  Whether this is your first experience with Spark, or whether you're rather more qualified than me to express your love of Dame Muriel, I hope you have a great time - and can't wait to hear more from you!

The Comforters (1957)
Robinson (1958)
Memento Mori (1959)
The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960)
The Bachelors (1960)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)
The Public Image (1968)
The Driver's Seat (1970)
Not to Disturb (1971)
The Hothouse by the East River (1973)
The Abbess of Crewe (1974)
The Takeover (1976)
Territorial Rights (1979)
Loitering with Intent (1981)
The Only Problem (1984)
A Far Cry From Kensington (1988)
Symposium (1990)
Reality and Dreams (1996)
Aiding and Abetting (2000)
The Finishing School (2004)