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Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy

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Margaret Kennedy DayI’m sneaking into the final moments of Margaret Kennedy Day – an annual event organised by Jane of Beyond Eden Rock – with a novel that I’d intended to read for the 1951 Club: Lucy Carmichael. The only thing that put me off then was its heft (it’s just under 400 pages) – but I managed to read it over a few days, and can throw my hat into the ring.

Lucy Carmichael is a slightly misleading title because, while she is certainly central to the novel, I’d argue that it’s almost as much Melissa’s book – and it is certainly she who opens up the first chapter, in this rather beguiling paragraph:

On a fine evening in September Melissa Hallam sat in Kensington Gardens with a young man to whom she had been engaged for three days. They had begun to think of the future and she was trying to explain her reasons for keeping the engagement a secret as long as possible.

She tells her fiance about her best friend Lucy, whose wedding is coming up soon – to an explorer who wants to be a botanist. Melissa describes her to a sceptical fiance – because the description doesn’t make her seem as pretty or wonderful as Melissa clearly thinks (and Melissa’s brother, Hump, has been similarly unimpressed in the letters she sends, thinking of her as Bossy Lucy). The reader sees this doubt, and finds themselves wanting to side with Lucy before she arrives on the scene.

One thing leads to another – I won’t say what – and the scene shifts: Lucy is now working at an institute that a kindly benefactor has built in a remote area for the benefit of the dramatic arts. The drama becomes about the Committee, and which play the young people should perform. This is perhaps the mainstay of the novel – this, and the will-they/won’t-they between Lucy and Charles, the son of Lady Frances – doyenne of arts and general social queen on this small stage. It means that we don’t see much more of Melissa, which is a shame, because she was that rare thing: a successfully-drawn witty character. Lucy herself is also winning – kind and wise and impulsive and thoughtful; an intriguing mix – but I still don’t think she deserved having the novel named after her.

I’m not sure this novel entirely knows what it wants to be. It feels rather as though Kennedy picked a setting and a plot – Lucy becoming part of a dramatic institute in a provincial community with much in-fighting – and decided to extend at both ends. We see how she ended up there; we see what happens afterwards. Lucy Carmichael, in short, is too long. It’s also too loose and baggy. There is the making of a truly exceptional 250 page novel within these covers, but I felt like the structure needed tightening. In fact, almost every scene needed tightening; it came across like a draft where Kennedy put down everything that came to her, and it should have had another winnowing.

river readingThe main case in point was, because the institute only turns up quite a significant way into the book, I couldn’t find myself much caring what happened there. The stakes weren’t high enough.

That sounds like I didn’t enjoy the novel, which isn’t true at all. In fact, I rather think that I might end up liking it more and more, the further away I get from it, when I forget the bits I found slow. And, indeed, when I forget everything except the impression it had on me – this is my third Kennedy novel, after Together and Apart and The Forgotten Smile, and I can’t remember even the tiniest detail about either of them.

This isn’t the glowing review that perhaps Margaret Kennedy Day should inspire. I don’t think I’m quite in the camp that adores her – but I also realise that it’s not the sort of novel that should be read so quickly. The writing is great, there is wit and thoughtfulness; Kennedy is clearly trying to inherit the mantle of Jane Austen (and there are many references to Austen throughout; Melissa and Lucy are both aficionados) and that’s an admirable intention, even if it highlights the disparity between their achievements are ‘structurers’. There is a lot to love here, and I did love the final chapter so much that I almost forgave everything else – but it’s always a shame when a novel doesn’t quite become (in my opinion, at least) quite the success it could have been.

Threads: the Delicate Life of John Craske by Julia Blackburn

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ThreadsI don’t remember putting Threads (2015) on a wishlist, but I think I must have done – otherwise the choice my friend Barbara made in buying it and sending it to me was more serendipitous than I can expect. I imagine I put it there while reading Claire Harman’s biography of Sylvia Townsend Warner – but I had the happy experience, with my terrible memory, of forgetting anything about the connection at all until Warner’s name cropped up near the beginning of this book.

In brief, Craske was a fisherman who had a serious breakdown that left him unable to continue that profession – and he turned, instead, to painting and (later) embroidery. He was discovered by Sylvia Townsend Warner and her partner Valentine Ackland, and briefly became something of a cause celebre in a select circle – though has since been rather neglected; the museums that hold his work are often ignorant or ashamed of the fact.

Blackburn’s book – beautifully produced by Jonathan Cape, with a lovely solidity and brilliantly chosen cover and illustrations – isn’t really a biography. It’s more an account of tracing his life story, which emerges in bits and pieces as the book continues – and of Blackburn’s life as it continues alongside.

I feel like I don’t know much more about Craske than I did when I read the blurb on the inside jacket. He proves quite an elusive figure – beyond the bare framework that Blackburn details of his ancestry, his occupation, and his war. Perhaps he let his work do the talking – and there is plenty of that in this book; we see his depictions of the sea and ships which he painted on any surface that was available, from trays to biscuit tins. Eventually there is the extraordinary, large embroidery of the D-Day landings – a tiny part of which is shown on the cover. Usually the art conceit of using ‘detail’ to mean anything that isn’t the whole image really annoys me – but in this case it is only a detail. Craske’s work, whether in paint or embroidery, is a striking mix of naivety and knowledge. As a fisherman, he knows precisely how the sea behaves; as an artist, he is teaching himself and has a unique perspective.

Craske

Two people truly emerge from this book. One is Laura Craske – John Craske’s wife, who valiantly and quietly cared for him through mental illnesses that she did not understand (and his brothers – defeating any sort of stereotype of unsophisticated rural fishermen – were equally sensitive to Craske’s ailments and requirements). She was also determined for his work to have exposure, when offered, though also rather alarmed at the money that Warner and Ackland offered her for the work. By incremental millimetres, we learn about Laura’s character and resilience, and I certainly warmed to her.

But far and away the most dominant character in this book is Julia Blackburn herself. Her style of writing is so unusual, as is her approach. I had to check to see if she’d written any books before – she has, quite a few – because this feels so like somebody writing for the first time, and striking it lucky. Like Craske’s work, and (who knows) maybe influenced by his work, Blackburn’s prose is almost primitive. Here, for instance, she is doing some research into the family:

Philip came back with the photograph album and there was Grandfather the good doctor, tall and pale-eyed with a big blond moustache and a look of benevolent abstraction on his face. And here was Granny Cats his wife, also abstracted, but less benevolently so, or was that my imagination? And here was their infant son who appeared so thin and wan and that you would never expect him to survive into adulthood, but he got through and became a solicitor and married and had a son called Philip so that was good.

So many of her accounts seem to be about artwork she forgot to see or questions she forgot to ask. The raw threads of her biographical technique are exposed here, like looking at the back of a piece of embroidery. Many of the people who might have known the family are now very old – and she comments on the erratic interviews she manages to get. And the tangents! A thought leads to a thought. There is a chapter on a man she knew who had a parrot, which has nothing to do with Craske; there is a chapter that is a story a man called Keith sent her; there is a surprising chapter on Einstein’s visit locally (and accounts of the firm rebuttals made to her by Einstein experts that he couldn’t possibly have been seen riding a bike at that point, as he had yet to learn). There are sections of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, which I, of course, loved. There are very moving chapters on Blackburn’s husband and his illness.

It is all a very unusual combination, and would put Hermione Lee into hysterics – but it works, and completely beguiles. Blackburn does nothing linearly. The quest for Craske is the book, and he is not the subject – instead he, and his art, are (yes) the golden threads shimmering through the centre of this strange and wonderful work.

Letters to Max Beerbohm by Siegfried Sassoon

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Max B Siegfriend SOne of the nicest bookish finds is when you discover that two authors you like kept a correspondence. Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett; William Maxwell and Eudora Welty; Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell. When people you like independently turn out to have connections, it’s like discovering two of your friends actually went to uni together. So imagine my happiness when I found a book of letters between Siegfried Sassoon and Max Beerbohm!

Granted, I haven’t actually read anything by Sassoon, but I grew very fond of him when I read another book of unexpected connections – Anna Thomasson’s A Curious Friendship, about Rex Whistler and Edith Olivier, but featuring a fair dose of Sassoon.

The full title of this collection, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis, is Letters to Max Beerbohm & A Few Answers (1986). There are few answers not because they’ve been lost, but because Beerbohm was famously bad at writing them. His friends seem to have been pretty tolerant about this, and his letters (when he does write them) are friendly, fluid, and charming – but Sassoon bears the lion’s share of this exchange. Even this doesn’t quite make up enough for a book, and Hart-Davis has rifled through Sassoon’s diaries for more information to set the scene. (Hart-Davis’ footnotes are also occasionally rather amusing – for instance, he describes Sibyl Colefax as ‘relentless society hostess’.)

Who comes off the page? I got the impression that Sassoon was much younger than Beerbohm – each letter is soaked with a sort of affectionate awe. It turns out that, for the bulk of their correspondence (in the 1930s), Beerbohm was in his 60s and Sassoon was in his late 40s and early 50s. A difference, yes, but not as much a one as comes across.

They both write letters that speak of deep friendship (and a curious resentment of Yeats). They are witty, thoughtful, and show a closeness and respect that you wouldn’t be able to get except through reading a book of this sort. They also have sketches and jottings by Siegfried, which are great fun, as well as verse that he throws into the letters – presumably fairly off the cuff.

The diary entries are well chosen, giving context to their friendship, and the mix of diary and letters works well. I enjoyed this description of their friendship, from Sassoon:

Conversing with Max, everything turns to entertainment and delectable humour and evocation of the past. […] Not a thousandth part can be recorded. But I feel that these talks with Max permanently enrich my mind, and no doubt much of it will recur spontaneously in future memories; he is like travelling abroad – one feels the benefit afterwards.

Well, we have certainly benefit afterwards. This is a slight book, and I certainly wish they had written to each other more prolifically. If they had, this might have been up there with the William Maxwell/Sylvia Townsend Warner collection of letters (The Element of Lavishness) as one of the great literary correspondences. As it is, it is a brief and brilliant gem that will enhance an appreciation of either Sassoon or Beerbohm.

Ian and Felicity by Denis Mackail

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Ian and FelicityFans of Greenery Street – one of the loveliest of Persephone Book’s novels, about a young married couple being happy – may not know that there were a couple of sequels. One is a collection of short stories that I haven’t read, and I have an inkling that not all of them feature Ian and Felicity Foster; one of them features them SO much that they’re right there in the title. Ian and Felicity was published in 1932, seven years after Greenery Street. That doesn’t sound that long, but prolific Mr Mackail had published eight books (!!) in between – and so it is with a sense of nostalgia that we head back to the young couple to find out how they’re getting on down the line.

I should add at this point that Ian and Felicity is extremely difficult to track down, and the copy I read belongs to my friend Kirsty (who somehow managed to find a copy on ebay). I borrowed it approximately a zillion years ago, but finally got around to reading it a little while ago.

In America, the novel was called Peninsula Place – and that gives you a clue that the setting has changed a little. Ian and Felicity have outgrown their Greenery Street flat, and now have two children and a bigger town house a little way away from their first marital home and another step up the property ladder. They look back fondly (as the reader must) on that happy place – but this replacement is no less happy. Mackail (thank goodness!) has not started writing a gritty novel or a miserable one. Things continue in much the same tone – though with added parental anxieties, and the occasional wondering (often quickly quashed in slightly over the top internal self-reflection) whether life wasn’t all a bit simpler back in the Greenery Street days.

I loved reading Ian and Felicity. It was light and fun and an antidote to the unhappy marriages that populate so many novels – even those that are otherwise not unhappy books. My main qualm with it was the complete and utter lack of plot. I don’t need a lot to happen, but I would have liked more structure to the novel – it’s so episodic that it feels more like a series of notes, or loosely linked vignettes, than a novel. It wasn’t a big obstacle, but I don’t think it would have taken much to give this more of an overarching structure, and it would have lifted the novel into a whole new territory. (My only other qualm was how much Ian seems to loathe spending even a moment with his children, and how normal and admirable we’re supposed to think this; different times, of course, but this is not a model of every 1930s fictional father.)

But, as I say, it was still a lot of fun. Here’s a bit of the opening, to give you a taste:

“Dinner!” said Felicity, as she passed the open drawing-room door. “Come along, darling!”

“What’s that?” said her husband’s voice.

“Dinner, darling.”

“Supper, you mean,” said Ian’s voice; but he was coming. “Don’t exaggerate,” he said, actually appearing. “I’ve been in to look once, and I know just what we’ve got. Blancmange, again.”

“Well, darling, you know it’s Sunday.”

“As if I could forget it,” said Mr. Foster. But he smiled as he pulled down the front of his waistcoat, and he would certainly have pinched his wife’s arm with his other hand, if she hadn’t dodged him and gone through into the dining-room.

Harmless fun, isn’t it? Impossible to find a copy, but if you badger your local library, they might find one in the stacks. Or you might strike it lucky like Kirsty – keep an eye out on ebay!

 

The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson

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One of the more surprising choices for Persephone Books over the past few years has been The Sack of Bath (1973) by Adam Fergusson. While they have a range of titles and topics, usually they tick at least one of the boxes from ‘written by a woman’, ‘published in the first half of the 20th century’, and ‘fiction’. The Sack of Bath is none of these things – but what it is is fascinating. And – for those who care about this sort of thing – it has one of my very favourite Persephone endpapers:

Sack-of-Bath

The book was written in the 1970s as a rallying cry – it must almost immediately have become a historical piece instead – about the destruction of Bath’s beautiful Georgian architecture. The book is short in length and in its message: stop demolishing original architecture and replacing it with hideous buildings. The council of the time apparently were all about knocking stuff down if it was – or might be – in places where they wanted to put roads or businesses or anything whatsoever. Fergusson writes about it rather eloquently:

The set pieces – Royal Crescent, the Circus, Milsom Street, the Pump Room, and so on – stand glorious and glistening (some have been restored and cleaned) for tourists to come and see in their thousands every year. But now, more and more because the devastation goes on, they have become like mountains without foothills, like Old Masters without frames. The Bath of the working classes, the Bath which made Beau Nash’s fashionable resort possible, has been bodily swept away. Irreplaceable, unreproducible, serendipitous Bath, the city of period architectural vignettes with a myriad tiny alleys and corners and doorways, is either being wrenched out pocket by pocket or bulldozed in its entirety.

Isn’t ‘like Old Masters without frames’ brilliant? The initial purpose of Fergusson’s book may be over (and was, I believe, more successful than he could have hoped), but it is still extremely interesting to read. It’s hard not to get worked up and cross when one reads the nonsense that the vandal council and architects said – and see the before-and-after pictures of streets which were knocked down and replaced with architectural horrors. Indeed, much of this short book is photos – and while 21st-century books would be better produced, there is a certain poignancy to seeing 1970s photography at work.

Fergusson is not afraid to get his gloves off. This is not an academic’s careful analysis – this is impassioned. One photo caption reads ‘The redevelopment below Sion Place lurches inelegantly down the slope, like a juggernaut with a flat tyre’. All in all, it fills one with a slightly fruitless rage – because the fight has completely changed since the 70s, but also because so much of the damage had already been done. Thank goodness Fergusson wrote this book, helping stem the tide of wanton destruction – and, now, it’s a really engaging cultural document.

 

Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy

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Hackenfeller's ApeAs you may have heard mentioned in the latest episode of ‘Tea or Books?’, should you listen to that, I’ve recently read Hackenfeller’s Ape (1953) by Brigid Brophy – inspired by listening to a ‘Backlisted’ episode on one of her novels, and hearing her daughter speak at a conference. I think I’d bought the novel (novella?) some time before that, based entirely on the fact that short Virago Modern Classics are often interesting – and it proved to be really rather good.

I’ve read a couple of books about monkeys and humans relating one way or another – though they were both written a little earlier; Appius and Virginia by G.E. Trevelyan is about a woman trying to teach a monkey as though he were a child, while His Monkey Wife by John Collier is… well, what it sounds like. Hackenfeller’s Ape is less adventurous in its premise: the ape remains firmly an ape, and nobody is trying to get him to be anything else.

Professor Darrelhyde is (as the Virago blurb informs me) ‘a diffident bachelor’, and he’s been stationed at London Zoo to observe the mating practices of Hackenfeller’s ape – more particularly, that of Percy and Edwina. In the world of the novel (look, I don’t know if this ape even exists), the mating has never been observed, and it will be a service to science for the Professor to make notes. Only it seems the Percy isn’t keen. Edwina keeps making approaches that he refuses – and Brophy judges brilliantly the amount that we should be let into his perspective, with a certain haziness where Percy can’t quite understand his own ape-motivations.

Halfway through, things change a bit – as the Professor (and a would-be pickpocket who reluctantly joins forces with him) tries to rescue Percy from being sent into space. Bear with me – it sounds absurd, but it works.

What makes Hackenfeller’s Ape so good is Brophy’s writing. She balances light, insouciant dialogue with pretty elaborate and philosophical prose. It shouldn’t work properly together, but it really does – it makes for an intoxicatingly good mix. Here’s an example of her writing from near the beginning – where she describes the humans who have set up the zoo:

These were the young of a species which had laid out the Park with an ingenuity that outstripped the beaver’s; which, already the most dextrous of the land animals, had acquired greater endurance under the sea than the whale and in the air had a lower casualty rate for its journeys than migrating birds. This was, moreover, the only species which imprisoned other species not for any motive of economic parasitism but for the dispassionate parasitism of indulging its curiosity.

She also has a knack for wry observation that was a pleasure to read – not that dissimilar to Elizabeth Taylor, thinking about it. I can imagine either of them penning this line (which is Brophy’s): ‘He smiled in a way which, in the middle-aged man, was boyish. In a boy it would have been sinister.’

It continues, with drama and pathos, poignant and action-packed in turn. And all – may I remind you – in hardly more than a hundred pages.

My conclusions, after finishing this novella, are that I’d read Brophy writing anything. She handles this frankly bizarre premise, and mix of styles, with excellent adeptness – and it gives me great hope for diving into more of her novels in future. It will be intriguing to see how her writing works over a broader canvas.

A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor

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Roses

I recently went to a brilliant conference in Chichester called ‘Undervalued British Women Writers 1930-1960’. I mean, the only way this could have been more perfect for me is if they’d shifted those dates back to 1920-1950 – but I overlooked that, because there were papers on beloved authors including E.M. Delafield, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Barbara Comyns, Muriel Spark, Elizabeth Taylor, Marghanita Laski, and more. My paper was on Rachel Ferguson’s The Brontes Went to Woolworths, which was great fun to talk about.

Once the conference programme came out, I did a bit of homework – reading Laski’s To Bed With Grand Music (review forthcoming) and Taylor’s A Wreath of Roses. I didn’t quite finish A Wreath of Roses (1949) in time to hear the excellent paper about it on my panel, but I’ve finished it now and it’s excellent. It’s vying with At Mrs Lippincote’s for my all-time fave Taylor novel.

It certainly starts more dramatically than most Taylor novels. I’m not going to spoil what happens in the opening pages, because it came as a very effective shock to me, but it’s something that Camilla witnesses as she is about to go and visit her friend Liz and Liz’s old governess. The moment is dramatic, but Taylor cleverly leaves the details undeveloped and the effect unspoken – it just quietly haunts both Camilla and the reader for the rest of the novel.

Like many Taylor heroines, Camilla is intelligent, literary, sensitive, and slightly wary of her way in the world. On the train, on the way to her friend, she meets Richard Elton – it is, she muses, the sort of name that an author would make up for a hero – and the meeting is not an immediate success. He is handsome and mysterious, but he also rebuffs her reference to Emily Bronte, and she ‘felt she had sacrificed Emily Bronte, throwing her in as a spur to conversation, uselessly’. There’s a great bit (not least for my conference paper) on how she and her childhood friend Liz had imaginary childhood tea parties for various literary luminaries – identified only as Emily, Charlotte, Jane, Ivy, and… Katie? Not sure who the last is.

When she arrives with Liz (and the slightly cranky ex-governess), she falls into trying to resurrect a friendship that has the significant obstacle of Liz having married a man (a vicar, no less) who Camilla intensely dislikes. He isn’t there, for the most part, but it colours their friendship – as does Liz’s baby boy, though that is a more nuanced obstacle, being chiefly a path down which Camilla cannot follow her friend. Oh, and the governess – Frances – is no stock character. I don’t think Taylor would know how to wrote one of those. She is a painter who, in her final years, is branching out into a whole new style of painting. In the midst of all this, two men arrive – one, a correspondent Frances has had for many years and never met; the other, Richard Elton back on the scene, darkly mysterious and intriguing.

There’s no author quite like Taylor for depending on my mood. Sometimes I love reading her beautiful writing; sometimes I find her writing impenetrable – and I think it must depend on how I’m feeling, rather than her writing. I’ll have to go back to A Wreath of Roses another time to see if I find it more of an obstacle then (though why would I put that to the test?) – this time, I was just able to soak in how good the prose was. Here’s the opening paragraph, to give you a flavour:

Afternoons seem unending on branch-line stations in England in summer time. The spiked shelter prints an unmoving shadow on the platform, geraniums blaze, whitewashed stones assault the eye. Such trains as come only add to the air of fantasy, to the idea of the scene being symbolic, or encountered at one level while suggesting another even more alienating. 

She is even better when she is writing about people. Time and again, Taylor shows everyday thoughts and moments in a nuanced, clear light. While A Wreath of Roses includes events that are much less ‘everyday’ than those in most of her other novels, and is certainly darker and more gothic, she still excels are crystallising the slippery truths behind friendships, enmities, uncertainties and identities.

I read bits of this in a graveyard next to a half-ruined priory, which was a pretty ideal place to read it – though the weather was warm and lovely, rather than hauntingly gothic. Context – my mood, the weather, font size, whatever – may have a lot to do with it – but I’m still going to say that this is one of the best Taylor novels I’ve read so far, and one I would certainly re-read.

 

Others who got Stuck into it:

“The characters are brilliantly observed, and this novel is a wonderful exploration of friendships.” – Heavenali

“It’s not all cozy rooms with lace curtains, plants in pots, ticking clocks, ornaments and coronation mugs, the wireless playing, and tabby cats waiting.” – Buried in Print

“One of the most moving and valuable studies of human isolation ever committed to print.” – Bentley Rumble

 

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

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Hiya everyone – hope you’re having a good weekend. It’s finally summer, so obviously I’ve got a cold. I’m surrounded by tissues and lemsip and cups of tea and whatnot – and a pile of books, which I am alternating with Netflix.  I’ll kick off your weekend with a book, link, and blog post…

My Life With Bob1.) The book – I really want to read My Life With Bob by Pamela Paul. ‘Bob’ is a journal of the books that Paul reads. Yes, it’s a book about books. A book about reading. I want it so much. I have so many books about reading that I haven’t read. (I want it so muuuuuch.)

2.) The link – is one of my favourite Instagram accounts. If you’re on Instagram, you probably already follow most of the book accounts I follow – but I wanted to highlight Maren’s. Her wildlife and nature photography is just so stunning. And, yes, I first met Maren through Virago Books – so books lead to all sorts of delights!

3.) The blog post – is a giveaway of Elizabeth Taylor novels over at Ali’s. I haven’t seen this lovely new Virago editions before – a definite improvement on the previous incarnation (though not, of course, as perfect as the bottle green Viragos that surely will come back around one day). And one of those Taylor novels will be getting a StuckinaBook review next week…

Guest post: Linda Gillard picks her 10 books

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In the comments for my last post, author (and friend) Linda Gillard mentioned that she’d like to take part but doesn’t have a blog – so, of course, I said I’d be more than happy to host her selection here. Over to you, Linda…

I’ve moved house a lot, often to a smaller property, so I’ve had to downsize my book collection. I performed another cull when I was recovering from cancer and decided to get rid of all the books I knew I’d never read. So what I have now is a modest but meaningful collection of books, all of which I’ve read and wish to keep or I intend to read.

So here’s my 10 book “biography”…

Linda1

The oldest book I own is The Christmas Carol illustrated by Ronald Searle. I bought this on holiday in Margate in the 1960s at The Albion Bookshop. I think I was about 12. It cost 21/- (£1.05) which must have cleared me out of pocket money. This is also my most read book because for many years I read it every Christmas. If there’s a better opening paragraph in the whole of English fiction, I don’t know what it is.

Linda2

I started collecting children’s books for my grandchildren before they were even conceived. I now have a grandson who will inherit some magnificent Folio editions of children’s classics. He’ll also get this 50th anniversary edition of Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. My first encounter with this book was at primary school. A beloved teacher called Mrs Sharp used to read it to us at the end of the day, perched on her desk. I remember the bell going for end of school and asking her if we could please stay and hear a bit more before going home. She didn’t oblige. I expect she wanted to get home.

Linda3

I’m on to my second copy of Mary Berry’s Fast Cakes. The first one fell to pieces. The second copy is going the same way and its pages are stained and a bit sticky. I was a fan of Mary’s long before she was a TV celebrity. My waistline will attest to the fact that these cakes are fast, easy and delicious.

Linda4

I have a complete set of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin historical novels that I’ve collected in second hand editions. I’ve read 15 of the 20-book series. I discovered him many years ago, travelling on the ferry from Skye to North Uist, one of the Western Isles. My fellow passengers included a family of two adults and two teenagers, all of whom were engrossed in a different O’Brian novel. This was an impressive advert for the books. I was also very taken with the atmospheric cover artwork by Geoff Hunt. This is a series I might have collected just for the covers, but the books are superbly written and the characters just jump off the page.

Linda5

I have an almost complete collection of Georgette Heyer’s historical fiction which I’ve read and re-read for over 50 years. I bought Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller by Jennifer Kloester, but haven’t read it yet. I was put off by some reviews which said Heyer came across as rather unpleasant – rude, snobbish and casually racist as people so often were in those days. I can’t decide whether to read the book or if I’d rather preserve my fantasy that if we’d ever met, she and I would have got on famously.

Linda6

I’ve acquired a lot of books for research purposes on subjects that have featured in my novels. Some topics I’ve re-visited so I tend to keep all research books in case I need them again. I have a motley selection of books on ghosts and the paranormal, including The Stately Ghosts of England by Diana Norman, an account of the tour she made with a psychic round the “haunted” stately homes of England.

I’ve never seen a ghost myself and remain a sceptic, but the real-life stories fascinate me. I’m not sure why I became interested in writing ghost stories, but it could be connected to my father’s death. He died in 2005 but I still struggle to accept his absence. I might have turned to writing ghost stories because I can’t accept that the dead are gone for good.

Someone said, “Grief is love that has nowhere to go”, an idea that has comforted me.

Linda7

I own all the romantic  suspense fiction of Mary Stewart which I’ve read and re-read since my teens. Two of her novels are set on Scottish islands but they aren’t among her best. Stormy Petrel earns its place on my shelves for its gorgeous wrap-around dust jacket. The story is predictable but Stewart’s writing about landscape and wildlife is unsurpassed. I suspect this is where her real interest lay in this book.

I’ve lived on the islands of Skye, Harris and Arran. If someone asked me what it’s like to live on a Hebridean island, I’d suggest they read Stormy Petrel, but with low expectations of the plot.

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Another island cover… Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book. I believe I bought this because Simon and some other bloggers raved about it. It’s about an elderly artist and her 6-year old grand-daughter spending a summer on a Finnish island. I haven’t read this one yet, but I really should as I’m now a grandmother myself and love anything set on islands.

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Will I ever read Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots? I’ve dipped in many times but I haven’t made much headway with its 700+ pages.  The seven basic plots are Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Re-birth. Booker believes the success of Lord of the Rings can be attributed to the fact that Tolkien’s tale included all seven plot elements.

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I have a small collection of art books. Victoria Crowe: Painted Insights is one I acquired as an impulse buy. In 2001 I was taken by a quilting friend to an exhibition in Inverness of Victoria Crowe’s paintings. She’s a well-known Scottish artist but I didn’t know her work. I was stunned by the beauty of her paintings and felt I had to own some, so I forked out £20 for a signed hardback book on the spot. I never regretted my extravagance.

Don’t you find, it’s never the books you buy that you regret, it’s the ones that got away.

Linda Gillard

Linda Gillard lives in Ayrshire, Scotland. She’s the author of eight novels, including Star Gazing, short-listed in 2009 for Romantic Novel of the Year and the Robin Jenkins Literary Award. Her Kindle bestseller House of Silence was selected for Amazon UK’s Top Ten “Best of 2011” in the Indie Author category.

Author website: www.lindagillard.co.uk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LindaGillardAuthor