Two more great historical reads - Sarah Bryant's latest historical novel, Serendipity about the power of the wind, and a love lost and found, and Marianne Wheelaghan's The Blue Suitcase - an editor's choice in the Historical Novel Review.
Deborah
Friday, 24 June 2011
Serendipity by Sarah Bryant
“Where do you get your ideas?” is probably the most common question people ask me when I tell them that I’m a writer, and it’s definitely the most difficult to answer. It’s not so much that I don’t know (although at some point, flash-in-the-pan inspiration is always a factor) but that the origins of my books are usually so distant, so mundane, or so apparently unrelated to the finished product, that people either don’t believe me, or are disillusioned by the utter banality of the truth.
“Serendipity” is no exception. Its point of origin is seventeen years ago, my second year of university, when I was a competitive dinghy sailor. I woke up one morning from a dream about an old white wooden sailboat named “Heaven”, wanting to write about it, and sailing’s addictive quality, and of course, being a rose-tinted twenty year old, about love. The result was an abysmal short story about a girl who loved sailboats, and a boy who loved her. It sank into my “stories” folder without ever seeing the light of day, and I forgot about it until the following year, when my first real relationship ended in a spectacular mess.
Among other fallout, I quit sailing. I had to, if I didn’t want to see the boy in question every day. I missed it at least as much as I missed him, but there was no question of going back to either one. So what to do with the sudden, gaping hole in my life? Write about it, of course! I dusted off the sailboat story, trashed most of it, but kept the two characters and a few sentences belonging to each of them. Then I started listening. The guy was silent. But the girl had a lot to say about love and loss and disillusionment. I started writing.
It wasn’t until the following summer that Meredith’s pages of broken-hearted rumination began to take shape as a novel. But oddly, it had nothing at all to do with Meredith, or even sailboats. I was working that summer on a small teaching farm – a little bit of the nineteenth century marooned in the Massachusetts suburbs. Before I knew it, a world was forming in my head: one which took shape around that farm, as it might have been in a different time or place. And out of it, unexpectedly, the silent man began to speak. He was intelligent and wry and as-yet-inexplicably damaged. I put Meredith aside, and started writing Silence. I knew that they were connected, but how? Writing a novel about a sailing prodigy and a farmer seemed like a fool’s errand.
The answer came out of nowhere. Well actually it came from Adam, a friend I’d made at that farm, who announced one day, “My new favourite word is ‘serendipity’.” I asked him why, and he said, “Because serendipity explains everything.” I said, “Right, whatever,” but I found the word knocking around my head the next few days as I demonstrated the joys of cow milking and composting to a lot of hot, bored suburban children.
And then Adam took me to see his family’s farm. It had a huge old red barn, intriguingly empty. It was like a cathedral. It was big enough to hold a boat. And that was it, the flash in the pan: Silence was building a boat in his barn! And sooner or later he was going to need help; enter Meredith. Serendipity, indeed.
I’d like to say it all went smoothly from there, but that quote about love’s course hold true for novels too. I took “Serendipity” with me onto a writing masters program, thinking it was great. The tutor hated it, and did her level best to fail me. A year later, I was lucky enough to find an agent who loved it, and I thought I was sorted. Wrong again: the agent couldn’t sell it, and ultimately gave up on it. So did I.
I wrote other books, found publishers for them. It wasn’t until I was writing my third historical novel that “Serendipity” got its Eureka moment. I was bogged down in that third book, with two small children and too little time to do the research it required. Then something strange happened: I was slogging away at 19th century Edinburgh, but it was Meredith and Silence who kept speaking to me. And they were saying, “When are you ever going to figure it out? Our story belongs here!”
I still can’t believe that when I emailed my editor and said, “Um, about that book you’re expecting…is it okay if I write a completely different one?” she said yes without hesitation.
I took “Serendipity” back out, rewrote the first section as set in the 1890s rather than 1990s, and everything just fell perfectly into place. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to see that this story had always belonged in an earlier era. At long last, despite myself (and with a little help from Bob Dylan – just read it, you’ll see!) I knew exactly how to make “Serendipity” into the book it was meant to be. And if it took me seventeen years? Well, better later than never!
“Serendipity” is no exception. Its point of origin is seventeen years ago, my second year of university, when I was a competitive dinghy sailor. I woke up one morning from a dream about an old white wooden sailboat named “Heaven”, wanting to write about it, and sailing’s addictive quality, and of course, being a rose-tinted twenty year old, about love. The result was an abysmal short story about a girl who loved sailboats, and a boy who loved her. It sank into my “stories” folder without ever seeing the light of day, and I forgot about it until the following year, when my first real relationship ended in a spectacular mess.
Among other fallout, I quit sailing. I had to, if I didn’t want to see the boy in question every day. I missed it at least as much as I missed him, but there was no question of going back to either one. So what to do with the sudden, gaping hole in my life? Write about it, of course! I dusted off the sailboat story, trashed most of it, but kept the two characters and a few sentences belonging to each of them. Then I started listening. The guy was silent. But the girl had a lot to say about love and loss and disillusionment. I started writing.
It wasn’t until the following summer that Meredith’s pages of broken-hearted rumination began to take shape as a novel. But oddly, it had nothing at all to do with Meredith, or even sailboats. I was working that summer on a small teaching farm – a little bit of the nineteenth century marooned in the Massachusetts suburbs. Before I knew it, a world was forming in my head: one which took shape around that farm, as it might have been in a different time or place. And out of it, unexpectedly, the silent man began to speak. He was intelligent and wry and as-yet-inexplicably damaged. I put Meredith aside, and started writing Silence. I knew that they were connected, but how? Writing a novel about a sailing prodigy and a farmer seemed like a fool’s errand.
The answer came out of nowhere. Well actually it came from Adam, a friend I’d made at that farm, who announced one day, “My new favourite word is ‘serendipity’.” I asked him why, and he said, “Because serendipity explains everything.” I said, “Right, whatever,” but I found the word knocking around my head the next few days as I demonstrated the joys of cow milking and composting to a lot of hot, bored suburban children.
And then Adam took me to see his family’s farm. It had a huge old red barn, intriguingly empty. It was like a cathedral. It was big enough to hold a boat. And that was it, the flash in the pan: Silence was building a boat in his barn! And sooner or later he was going to need help; enter Meredith. Serendipity, indeed.
I’d like to say it all went smoothly from there, but that quote about love’s course hold true for novels too. I took “Serendipity” with me onto a writing masters program, thinking it was great. The tutor hated it, and did her level best to fail me. A year later, I was lucky enough to find an agent who loved it, and I thought I was sorted. Wrong again: the agent couldn’t sell it, and ultimately gave up on it. So did I.
I wrote other books, found publishers for them. It wasn’t until I was writing my third historical novel that “Serendipity” got its Eureka moment. I was bogged down in that third book, with two small children and too little time to do the research it required. Then something strange happened: I was slogging away at 19th century Edinburgh, but it was Meredith and Silence who kept speaking to me. And they were saying, “When are you ever going to figure it out? Our story belongs here!”
I still can’t believe that when I emailed my editor and said, “Um, about that book you’re expecting…is it okay if I write a completely different one?” she said yes without hesitation.
I took “Serendipity” back out, rewrote the first section as set in the 1890s rather than 1990s, and everything just fell perfectly into place. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to see that this story had always belonged in an earlier era. At long last, despite myself (and with a little help from Bob Dylan – just read it, you’ll see!) I knew exactly how to make “Serendipity” into the book it was meant to be. And if it took me seventeen years? Well, better later than never!
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
The Blue Suitcase by Marianne Wheelaghan
Why did I write The Blue Suitcase?
My mother very sadly died few years ago. Shortly after her death, I was helping my father sort out her personal things when we came across a collection of letters, diary extracts, old postcards and faded documents, all in German. They dated back to before Mum came to Scotland – Mum came to Scotland after the end of the WW2 and trained to be a nurse in Leith Hospital, Edinburgh, where she met my dad. Dad, who was Scottish from Leith, was very keen I translate these documents and letters (I'd studied German and had lived in Germany so not as mad as it sounds).
You see, Mum's early life was a bit of a mystery to the family: all we knew about her life before coming to Scotland was that she was from Silesia, which didn't exist, and that she never saw her parents again after she left Germany. To be honest, I was uncomfortable with the idea of reading my mum's things, she'd been a very private person (and it was going to be hard work, I'd not practised or read any German for years). However, Dad finally managed to persuade me.
I started by translating a diary extract, which I first assumed had been written by my mother. However, it quickly became clear the diary extract(s) had been written by my aunt, Antonia, who had gone to live in Argentina after the end of the war. From her letters, it became clear Antonia had been very unhappy in Argentina. She wrote to Mum regularly and when she wrote she included an extract from her dairy, which dated to before the war and which she'd painstakingly retyped on sheets of airmail paper. This was what I was translating. The very first extract I looked at was dated 1947. It was one of the last she sent. I was shocked at the contents of Antonia's diary. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. Much of what I discovered was distressing. I needed to know to if it was true so I went to the library to find historically accurate, factual, unbiased books, which would help me make sense of my mother's life.
By the time I finished at the library, I knew I had to write about what I had discovered: if only so that my children would know what life had been like for their granny.
At first I thought I would write a biography, but I felt uncomfortable doing that: firstly because of the gaps in the diaries and letters, it was difficult for me to know for sure what had happened to my family throughout the whole of this period (1932-1947), secondly, I simply couldn't write about Mum. It was too personal. Eventually, I had an epiphany: I would create a fictional family, which would be like Mum's family, but not the same. And this is what I did. I also created a fictional main character in Antonia, who is a combination of my mum and my aunt. Much of what happened to my fictional family happened to my real family, but much didn't, although it could have done – certainly, everything that happened in the novel is based on true historic fact: if didn't happen to my family, it happened to someone else's family.
Next, I had to decide “how” I was going to tell Mum and Antonia's story. I eventually decided to develop the format of a diary and letters: I wanted to try and recreate in the reader that same sense of 'discovery' I had experienced when I first translated the documents. And that's how The Blue Suitcase came to be: it's the undertold story about life under Hitler for an ordinary German family, but it's also a story about a young girl growing up and surviving against terrible odds.
Why did I feel so compelled to write this story? I wanted to right a wrong: when I was young there was an unspoken belief that all Germans were “baddies” and Hitler's “willing executioners”. And I am ashamed to say, I remember feeling embarrassed at times because my mother was German. Now I know that not only were many ordinary Germans also victims of Hitler's terrible regime, but that my mother was a refugee, and like millions of other German refugees, forcibly expelled from her home at the end of WW2. It seemed to me wholly unjust that the suffering of my mother and my aunt, and so many other aunts and uncles and mothers and fathers like them (on all sides), should go unacknowledged.
http://www.mariannewheelaghan.co.uk
Sunday, 19 June 2011
A Georgian sleuth and a Napoleonic Cavalryman
Have a look at two more highly recommended historical reads with not a royal in sight. The witty sleuth, Dido Kent in her latest ladylike adventure, "A Woman of Consequence", and the story of two cavalrymen in 1805, "Walls of Jericho."
Deborah
Deborah
A Woman of Consequence by Anna Dean
When I am not writing my series of Georgian murder mysteries, I have a wonderful job as a guide at William Wordsworth' s home: Dove Cottage in Grasmere.
Many of the people who come to the cottage are – like me – as interested in the life of William's sister Dorothy as they are in the great poet himself, finding the domestic details and meticulous observations of her journals endlessly fascinating. But visitors often raise their eyebrows when I tell them that Dorothy, lived with her brother for most of her adult life. Sometimes there are expressions of sympathy for William's wife; sometimes there are questions about the exact nature of William and Dorothy's relationship: was it, people hint darkly, unnaturally close?
The twenty-first century notion of how an unmarried woman ought to behave is very different from that of the early nineteenth century. In 1802 (the year of William's marriage) more eyebrows would have been raised over a young, single woman living alone than one patiently settling down with her brother and his wife – helping with the running of the house and eventually assisting in the care of five children. Independence now is a necessary part of self-respect; then it was dangerous, shocking – and rather selfish. In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (published 1814) Sir Thomas Bertram laments over 'that independence of spirit… which in young women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offence.' It is an opinion with which many of Austen's original readers would have agreed.
With no expectation of independence and, frequently, insufficient income to maintain a home of their own, a place within the extended family was a spinster's 'pleasantest preservative from want,' (to adapt another famous Austen phrase). And I have always had a sympathy for this half-hidden army of spinsters who lived their lives subsumed within the needs of their brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces.
What was it like to live like that? Always poor and yet prevented by ideas of what was 'proper' from taking paid employment. Condemned to a lifetime of dependence.
When I created my Georgian spinster-sleuth, Miss Dido Kent, I decided that she – like Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen – should be entirely dependent upon her brothers for her livelihood. Like her real-life counterparts she hardly has a moment to call her own, for, in return for her allowance, her brothers feel that her time is entirely at their disposal when it comes to, 'illnesses, lyings in, funerals or house removals.' Being always at hand, dealing with an endless round of mundane family crises, is not an exciting life. It's far removed from the glamour of royal courts and political intrigue. But it is the kind of life which thousands of women actually lived; and one which I think is well worth exploring.
I considered the idea of making Dido an outright rebel. For there were some women who rejected the life of dependence and humility – striking out to make a career for themselves in a male dominated world. Mary Wolstonecraft, for example, earned her living by writing and had a delightfully scandalous love life.
But I decided that it would be more interesting if Dido was not one of these rare exceptions, but was rather one of the many thousands of women who accepted their fate – not exactly without question, because I doubt any intelligent woman could do that – but with dignity, humour and no loss of self-worth. One of the thousands of women who attempted to live a decent, fulfilled life within the restrictions forced upon her.
And being always upon the periphery of society – always a looker on, regarded as of no importance – may be humiliating; but it also has its advantages. It is an excellent vantage point from which to observe your fellow men and women. It was a situation which turned Jane Austen into a brilliant commentator upon human nature: and made Dorothy Wordsworth into an excellent diarist. I reasoned that it could turn Dido Kent into a very effective amateur sleuth.
By solving mysteries Dido finds an outlet for her abilities and, with her success, comes a growing self-confidence. As the stories progress she finds that, when she feels it is the right thing to do, she is able to rebel in small, crucial ways… But no, actually Dido would not put it quite like that. As she remarks to her would-be lover, William Lomax, when he is shocked by her behaviour: 'I seek only to act as my conscience dictates. It is a matter of integrity, not revolt.'
Many of the people who come to the cottage are – like me – as interested in the life of William's sister Dorothy as they are in the great poet himself, finding the domestic details and meticulous observations of her journals endlessly fascinating. But visitors often raise their eyebrows when I tell them that Dorothy, lived with her brother for most of her adult life. Sometimes there are expressions of sympathy for William's wife; sometimes there are questions about the exact nature of William and Dorothy's relationship: was it, people hint darkly, unnaturally close?
The twenty-first century notion of how an unmarried woman ought to behave is very different from that of the early nineteenth century. In 1802 (the year of William's marriage) more eyebrows would have been raised over a young, single woman living alone than one patiently settling down with her brother and his wife – helping with the running of the house and eventually assisting in the care of five children. Independence now is a necessary part of self-respect; then it was dangerous, shocking – and rather selfish. In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (published 1814) Sir Thomas Bertram laments over 'that independence of spirit… which in young women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offence.' It is an opinion with which many of Austen's original readers would have agreed.
With no expectation of independence and, frequently, insufficient income to maintain a home of their own, a place within the extended family was a spinster's 'pleasantest preservative from want,' (to adapt another famous Austen phrase). And I have always had a sympathy for this half-hidden army of spinsters who lived their lives subsumed within the needs of their brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces.
What was it like to live like that? Always poor and yet prevented by ideas of what was 'proper' from taking paid employment. Condemned to a lifetime of dependence.
When I created my Georgian spinster-sleuth, Miss Dido Kent, I decided that she – like Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen – should be entirely dependent upon her brothers for her livelihood. Like her real-life counterparts she hardly has a moment to call her own, for, in return for her allowance, her brothers feel that her time is entirely at their disposal when it comes to, 'illnesses, lyings in, funerals or house removals.' Being always at hand, dealing with an endless round of mundane family crises, is not an exciting life. It's far removed from the glamour of royal courts and political intrigue. But it is the kind of life which thousands of women actually lived; and one which I think is well worth exploring.
I considered the idea of making Dido an outright rebel. For there were some women who rejected the life of dependence and humility – striking out to make a career for themselves in a male dominated world. Mary Wolstonecraft, for example, earned her living by writing and had a delightfully scandalous love life.
But I decided that it would be more interesting if Dido was not one of these rare exceptions, but was rather one of the many thousands of women who accepted their fate – not exactly without question, because I doubt any intelligent woman could do that – but with dignity, humour and no loss of self-worth. One of the thousands of women who attempted to live a decent, fulfilled life within the restrictions forced upon her.
And being always upon the periphery of society – always a looker on, regarded as of no importance – may be humiliating; but it also has its advantages. It is an excellent vantage point from which to observe your fellow men and women. It was a situation which turned Jane Austen into a brilliant commentator upon human nature: and made Dorothy Wordsworth into an excellent diarist. I reasoned that it could turn Dido Kent into a very effective amateur sleuth.
By solving mysteries Dido finds an outlet for her abilities and, with her success, comes a growing self-confidence. As the stories progress she finds that, when she feels it is the right thing to do, she is able to rebel in small, crucial ways… But no, actually Dido would not put it quite like that. As she remarks to her would-be lover, William Lomax, when he is shocked by her behaviour: 'I seek only to act as my conscience dictates. It is a matter of integrity, not revolt.'
Walls of Jericho by Jonathan Hopkins
Every felt so annoyed about something you just have to stick your oar in?
You tell your friends how cross you are. Facebook it. Blog about it, maybe. Phone a radio show. Send a comment to the newspapers.
That's how I felt.
Why? It's a slightly complicated story.
Some years ago, my wife nagged me about...the usual stuff, really. About not being romantic, never buying flowers...etc, etc. So I had a brainwave. For our anniversary I'd deliver her flowers as...a Napoleonic Hussar, on horseback. Can't get much more romantic than that, thought I.
The horse was no problem, but saddlery and equipment was. No patterns available, you see, so I would have to make everything from scratch. That meant reading proper history books (ugh!). Lots of them. Trying desperately to glean enough information from contemporary pictures and diagrams to make accurate copies of bridle and pistol holsters. And other bits 'n pieces.
The thing was, every historian I read, with a couple of honourable exceptions, had a single view of the British cavalry fighting Napoleon. They were rubbish.
And as I read more and more disparaging comments I got more and more frustrated. The cavalry couldn't have been all that bad, could they?
It was when I started to read the few published cavalrymen's diaries, both British and French, that a quite different picture began to emerge. A story of lives full of even more hardship and tragedy than the average redcoat could have imagined. After all, at the end of a march the infantryman had simply to find food, a place to sleep, and clean his musket. The cavalryman had another life to consider before his own. Even this one obvious fact had been simply glossed over by most academics.
Well, they're not horsemen, are they?
So I decided I'd put the record straight. And because I'm no historian, I wrote a novel; the story of two young cavalry recruits. A journey from boyhood to manhood, for privileged and pauper alike. In it I've tried to give readers a feel of what these men's lives were really like.
Because historians don't seem to care. And in my book, that's not playing fair with men who fought and died for their country.
The wedding anniversary went fine, by the way!
You tell your friends how cross you are. Facebook it. Blog about it, maybe. Phone a radio show. Send a comment to the newspapers.
That's how I felt.
Why? It's a slightly complicated story.
Some years ago, my wife nagged me about...the usual stuff, really. About not being romantic, never buying flowers...etc, etc. So I had a brainwave. For our anniversary I'd deliver her flowers as...a Napoleonic Hussar, on horseback. Can't get much more romantic than that, thought I.
The horse was no problem, but saddlery and equipment was. No patterns available, you see, so I would have to make everything from scratch. That meant reading proper history books (ugh!). Lots of them. Trying desperately to glean enough information from contemporary pictures and diagrams to make accurate copies of bridle and pistol holsters. And other bits 'n pieces.
The thing was, every historian I read, with a couple of honourable exceptions, had a single view of the British cavalry fighting Napoleon. They were rubbish.
And as I read more and more disparaging comments I got more and more frustrated. The cavalry couldn't have been all that bad, could they?
It was when I started to read the few published cavalrymen's diaries, both British and French, that a quite different picture began to emerge. A story of lives full of even more hardship and tragedy than the average redcoat could have imagined. After all, at the end of a march the infantryman had simply to find food, a place to sleep, and clean his musket. The cavalryman had another life to consider before his own. Even this one obvious fact had been simply glossed over by most academics.
Well, they're not horsemen, are they?
So I decided I'd put the record straight. And because I'm no historian, I wrote a novel; the story of two young cavalry recruits. A journey from boyhood to manhood, for privileged and pauper alike. In it I've tried to give readers a feel of what these men's lives were really like.
Because historians don't seem to care. And in my book, that's not playing fair with men who fought and died for their country.
The wedding anniversary went fine, by the way!
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
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