Blog Archives

Do you have a preferred reading pace? #amreading

30/5/2019

Because I get through so many books – 147 last year – people often assume I’m a fast reader. But I don’t think that’s the case – although admittedly I’ve never measured it – more a matter of devoting a lot of time to reading (and for some of that time I’m asleep). On the odd occasion I’ve read the same book as Mr A, he seems to finish sooner. But neither of us read as some people do, scanning the page as a whole rather than consuming it bit by bit, sentence by sentence.

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Scaling gritstone and concrete: Black Car Burning & The Wall

28/5/2019

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Two novels set in Britain that feature climbing. In the first, it’s the hobby verging on obsession of three of the four main characters, in a homage to Sheffield and the nearby Peak District National Park; in the second, a cli-fi thriller, surmounting the wall is what the narrator and his peers are conscripted to prevent. Thanks to publishers Chatto and Windus and to Faber for my review copies.

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Mothers watching over their offspring from a distance: Zeina & She Would Be King

21/5/2019

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Two novels, set primarily in the continent of Africa, in which women are separated from a child and must resort to looking on from a distance. In the first, set in Egypt, Bodour can’t admit that a famous singer is her illegitimate child. But at least they’re in the same city. And both alive. Which is not the case in the second novel, set in Jamaica, the USA and Liberia, where the deceased mother’s voice is carried on the wind. So she does get to guide her son and his two companions, all of whom have supernatural gifts. Intrigued? Read on!

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The trouble with writing book blurbs: can’t see the wood for the trees?

20/5/2019

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Many authors struggle with the task of summarising a book-length project, whether it’s the one-page synopsis we need for submissions, the 10-second elevator pitch ready for the dreaded what’s-it-about question or the blurb to entice browsers at bookstores or online. How do you condense the twists and turns of a 300-page novel into such a small space? How do you tease out the key elements when you’ve lived with those characters for years? Sometimes, it’s impossible to see the wood for the trees.

Another pair of eyes can provide the necessary distance; likewise the passage of time. Almost four years on from the publication of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, I’ve agreed with my publisher the blurb we worked so hard to perfect could be sharper. To get it right, we need your help.

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Fascism in the ascendant: The Fourth Shore & In the Full Light of the Sun

16/5/2019

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I have no hesitation in recommending both of these literary novels, intriguing stories set against the rise of fascism leading up to the Second World War. The first is a coming-of-age story set in Italy and Libya; the second about vested interests in the art world set in Berlin.

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Writing isms: would you risk causing offence in your fiction? #amwriting

13/5/2019

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Much as I despair of living in a country where the birth of a baby is headline news – ditto his naming the following day – I do try to bear in mind that the extended family I involuntarily support via my taxes is made up of human beings, and therefore worthy of my respect. I sincerely hope I’m incapable of channeling my rage at inequality and unearned privilege into a bizarre racist tweet, as a BBC DJ did recently. How could he not know, as he has claimed, that an image of the latest royal baby as an ape would cause offence? But, in reflecting the world as I see it in my fiction, with darkness as well as light, I do risk inadvertently offending my readership, especially in portraying the isms from which, in my other identities, I’m at pains to distance myself.

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Domestic triangles: Disturbance & Stanley and Elsie

10/5/2019

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Two novels in which a third adult joins the household of a married couple and forms a strong relationship with one or both partners. Both are set in English villages, but map very different terrain. In the first, a wife befriends a young student, but the relationship turns out not to be as innocent as it first appears. In the second, set between the two world wars, a live-in maid skilfully manages to negotiate between an artist couple’s bickering, but she can’t stop the breakup of the marriage when the husband laps up another woman’s flattery.

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Desperately seeking elixir? #amwriting

7/5/2019

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I wrote recently how, after a few uninspiring months, I’d been infected with a new novel idea. A few weeks on, I love the characters, the situation and the potential quirkiness of one of the voices, but I’ve tried to rein in my enthusiasm to nail the plot. As one of my writing goals of 2019 is to reflect on where I’m placed in the marketplace and in my writing journey, I’m exploring how to make my fiction more commercial (as well as more literary), which means not embarking on projects that might lack wide appeal.

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Novelistic explorations of identity through road trips with magic realism: Lost Property & Bird Summons

3/5/2019

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While very different in style and focus, both these recently-published novels send women on road trips to learn about their individual identities within the context of contemporary Britain. In the first, three Scottish Muslim women with origins in the Arab world leave the city for a lochside holiday where they meet a talking hoopoe. In the second, a Londoner travels with her partner across Europe in a campervan encountering figures from the political and artistic past.

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Childhood obsession rekindled: If I Had Two Lives & Poet and Dancer

1/5/2019

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I’m here to introduce two novels about girls who become fixated on another girl in childhood and pick up the relationship again as young adults. In the first, set in Vietnam and the USA, the main focus is on the friendship in childhood; in the second, set in New York, the adult obsession is in the foreground. In both books, the main character has a problematic relationship with her mother: in the first, the mother is painfully distant; in the second, mother and daughter are initially enmeshed.