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The importance of fictional pee and poo #WorldToiletDay

17/11/2017

There wasn’t much traffic at a book fair I attended recently, but at least it gave me the opportunity to chat with other writers on nearby stalls. The discussion drifted to writing sex, but they thought I was joking when I moved the conversation to writing toilets. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that safe and hygienic toilets are no laughing matter (and now those other writers know too) and the foundation of women’s emancipation and girls’ education worldwide. So I’m proud to have marked World Toilet Day on this blog every year since I started in 2013. There’s more to discover about this year’s theme Where does our poo go? if you follow the link. As I did last year, for 19th November 2017, I’m celebrating the novels I’ve read in the last twelve months that acknowledge our dependence on toilets.

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No feelings? #amwriting #mentalhealth #Flash4Storms

9/10/2017

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One day last summer, I had an errand to do ten minutes’ drive or half an hour’s walk away from home. Even though the route, along a fairly busy road, isn’t particularly pleasant, I prefer to walk, both for the exercise and to feed my writing. So I grabbed my raincoat (it was that kind of summer) and laced up my boots. On the way back, the sun came out at the moment I levelled with a track I’d never previously taken. It was time to investigate.

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In praise of proper poets

27/9/2017

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If it’s irritating for novelists to be told by friends and acquaintances that they too could write a novel if they weren’t so busy doing more important things, then think how it must be for poets. Anyone with even a passing interest in words, or emotions, is likely to have composed a poem at some point, whether inspired by a sense of occasion or adolescent angst. You don’t even need a pen or a keyboard when you can juggle those lines in your head.

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A writer’s audit of desk time

21/7/2017

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While our creativity might be without bounds, our time available to deploy it is limited. With so many potential distractions, it’s inevitable that we might wonder whether we’re using that time efficiently. Too many days leaving my desk feeling tired but unsatisfied, I decided to monitor how I was apportioning my time. Read on to see how I did it, what I learnt and how you can help me decide what to do next.

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Bunnies and chocolate eggs: does Easter work for marking time in fiction?

16/4/2017

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If the events of a story unfold over more than a season, how do you evoke the passage of time? We can allude to the weather, seasonal flowers and the nakedness or otherwise of trees, but not all readers, and especially those looking in from other climates, will be grounded by these changes in the natural world. We can also, as I sometimes do for blog posts, draw on key events in the annual calendar to show that time has moved on. Christmas is an obvious choice, but what about Easter, when the date changes from year to year?

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The Messiah Narrative

13/4/2017

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Even if you’re not a fan of Baroque music, you’d probably recognise at least one of the magnificent choruses from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. If not the jolly “For Unto Us a Child Is Born”, perhaps the main justification for its popularity at Christmas, then you must know the exuberant “Hallelujah”. But there are fifty-one other choruses and solos that make up the three-hour long oratorio. This beautiful book tells the story of its composition and musical afterlife.

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Debunking the gendered myths: Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine

8/3/2017

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Having written a novel about the enigma of gender, I remain fascinated and baffled that something so vague and ill-defined should impact so strongly on our social structures and beliefs about ourselves. Fortunately, Cordelia Fine, psychologist and Associate Professor at the Melbourne Business School, is somewhat sharper in demolishing the dodgy science surrounding sex and gender and International Women’s Day seems the perfect time to review her new (non-fiction) book.

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Bloody revolutions? The Last Summer & Birdcage Walk

5/3/2017

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In literature, as in life, revolution often entails blood loss and drama. In these reviews we eavesdrop first on an assassination plot at the beginning of the Russian Revolution, while the second features an unexplained domestic death against the backdrop of the French Revolution.

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The Book of Dhaka by Pushpita Alam and Arunava Sinha (eds)

21/2/2017

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I visited Dhaka by accident. Twice. Back in the days when there were no affordable direct flights from London to Kathmandu I travelled with Bangladesh Biman via Dhaka. On the way out the first time, I don’t even remember changing planes at the airport. On the way back, after a month in Nepal and three and a bit in India, it occurred to me I could visit some Bangladeshi friends I’d made on a work camp in Gujarat and fly home via Dhaka.

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Don’t be seduced by the allure of romance!

14/2/2017

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If love makes the world go round, it’s hardly surprising that romance crops up as a subplot across most genres of fiction. But, as writers, we need to beware of letting the love interest get out of hand and obscure the more complex themes of our novel. As readers, we need to be alert to publishers dressing up a gruelling narrative as a modern Pride and Prejudice because, let’s face it, sex sells.

For Valentine’s Day, I’m reviving a post that appeared in October 2015 on the Reading Writers website, which is now defunct.

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More of the same, please, but with nicer politics

31/12/2016

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We approach the New Year as if we’re trading in the old one for a better model, but it’s not like replacing a car. Or if it is, it’s with the old car rusting in the garage while we’re driving around in the new one, hoping the weather won’t tarnish its shine. Alas, a change of digit won’t cancel out our bad decisions – I’m looking at you Brexit and Trumpeteers – but it can provide the impetus to strive to fail better next time. While I think it’s weird that the traditional time for taking stock and recalibrating our intentions for the future should be now – rather than synchronised with the winter solstice the first day of spring (for those of us in the northern hemisphere) – I am sufficiently obsessional to join in.

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Beyond the sum of their parts?

26/12/2016

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Every novel is comprised of different parts that writers, readers and reviewers hope will combine into a satisfying whole. My last two reviews of 2016 – before I reveal my favourites of the year – are of novels for which finding that coherence is a particular challenge, but extremely worthwhile if achieved. Both published this summer, neither seems to have attracted many reviews on Goodreads, but I’m impressed with both (albeit one more than the other) so I hope you’ll at least give my reviews a chance.

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It’s not humbug, I just don’t like Christmas

17/12/2016

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If you trade in trees and turkeys, I wish you a prosperous one. If you’re a Christian, I wish you a divine one. If you can’t get enough bling, I wish you a glittery one. If you like old movies, I wish you a nostalgic one. If you’re an extrovert, I wish you a carousing one. If you’re happy to devote hundreds of hours to food creation and consumption, I wish you a gastronomic one. If you’re skilled at shopping, at giving and/or receiving presents, I wish you a gratifying one. If you have children, or an uncomplicated relationship with your roots, I wish you a familial one (and if you don’t, you might appreciate this flash from Sarah Brentyn). If you appreciate being nudged to consider others less fortunate, I wish you a charitable one. If you’re getting to know a new partner, I wish you a romantic one. If you’re in need of a break from a hectic job, I wish you a tranquil one.

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Fictional toilets #WorldToiletDay #amreading

18/11/2016

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We all know that fictional characters, like royalty, don’t have to suffer the indignity of urinating or opening their bowels. But, having marked World Toilet Day on Annecdotal every year since launching in 2013, regular readers know that clean and hygienic toilet facilities are something to celebrate. In last year’s post, I wrote about the advantages of gender-neutral facilities. For this year, while the official theme is toilets and jobs, I’ve collected a few quotes from novelists who don’t ignore this most basic of human functions. And if these aren’t enough to satisfy, Twitter is usually quite entertaining on 19 November each year.

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Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain & Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux

10/10/2016

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I was pleased to mark World Mental Health Day last year with a post on dignity in fictional representations of mental health. This year’s theme is dignity in mental health first aid. Now, although I perceive therapy as a longer term project rather than first aid, its foundation in active listening is fundamental to our initial response to others in distress. And, as no-one can engage in therapy unless they actively want to, it’s an approach that bestows dignity, so what better day to celebrate my series on fictional therapists by introducing you to a couple of new ones? As a finale, I’ve got a piece of flash fiction on combining short-term and long-term solutions to mental ill-health.

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(The Taming of the) Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

21/8/2016

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I was once at a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company which was aborted after the interval because the safety curtain had got stuck. My disappointment at missing the final acts was mitigated by the fact that the play being performed was The Taming of the Shrew: one of his more challenging plays for anyone with even the most watered-down feminist inclinations. So I was intrigued to discover that, as part of Hogarth Press’s Initiative to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, prolific novelist Anne Tyler, author of A Spool of Blue Thread, had been commissioned to come up with a twenty-first century rewrite.

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In Brontë Country: Howarth vs Stanage-NorthLees

20/4/2016

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We British are proud of the Brontës, especially in cinematic form played out by attractive actors. But the Japanese are the real fans, apparently, making pilgrimages to the village on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales where the sisters penned their novels. One such tour is the launch point for Mick Jackson’s fourth novel for adults in which the eponymous “heroine”, after a few days drinking with her sister in London, travels north with a coachload of older women. But Yukiko is no Brontë aficionado. Instead, armed with a handful of photographs taken in the area, she considers herself a psychic detective, intent on discovering the secret of her mother’s visit ten years before, which she believes precipitated her suicide back home in the snow.

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The Voyage of the Dolphin by Kevin Smith & other St Patrick’s Day reads

17/3/2016

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It’s almost Spring, 1916, and the aristocratic semi-illiterate Hugh Fitzmaurice risks being sent down from Trinity College, Dublin, for his failure to appreciate that university students are required to study in addition to swanning around the town. The Senior Dean has a proposition that might just save him from joining his compatriots in the trenches: his kinship with the celebrated Antarctic explorer, Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, makes him the ideal leader of a pseudoscientific expedition to the Arctic to bring back the bones of an Irish giant. Not the type to let his lack of seafaring experience stand in the way of an adventure, Fitzmaurice recruits his two friends, and his pet iguana, to join him.

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Libraries, Fictional Heroines and International Women

7/3/2016

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Who doesn’t love a blog poll? This time last year, I asked you to choose between five fictional heroines to mark International Women’s Day, and I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d have another bash, especially when I realised that World Book Day falls only a few days before International Women’s. I’ll admit that I haven’t ploughed systematically through a whole twelve months of reviews to select my shortlist, but I think this year’s five are a good representation of the range of heroic female characters we might encounter on the page. I’m presenting them in alphabetical order and, remember, it you don’t have to have read the books, or even the reviews, to vote.

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Let’s celebrate LGBT history month

1/2/2016

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Although we can find difference disconcerting, there is evidence that diversity is good for the brain. It seems marvellous to me that, in the course of my admittedly long lifetime, sex between men has progressed from a shameful secret, sometimes leading to arrest, to something that can be celebrated through marriage. Not far behind, we’re learning to accept diversity in gender identity, with those estranged from their birth gender able to scratch it from their birth certificate and/or declare themselves #TransandProud. While we might be a long way from eradicating trans- and homophobia, LGBT history month is a cause for celebration for us all.

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Christmas chills: Time of the Beast by Geoff Smith and Sugar Hall by Tiffany Murray

24/12/2015

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As Christmas Eve is the traditional time for ghost stories and the Gothic, so today’s the day to share a couple of my recent reads to have you scared to go to bed.

It’s the year 666, and Britain is a battleground; not only warlords fighting for territory but shamans and priests at loggerheads over people’s minds. After daring to challenge the views of his abbot, Athwold, a young monk, opts to become a hermit in the misty swamps of the Fenlands, in an attempt to reconcile himself to his own truth. But this isn’t a story of spiritual seclusion (as in The Anchoress) as his exposure to a scene of horrific demonic carnage (possibly a hallucination brought on by eating mouldy bread) moves him to join the itinerant monk, Cadroc, on the quest to root out the evil once and for all. Here Athwold finds his faith continually tested, as his mind becomes a battleground between rationality and superstition. Are these killers mythical monsters or merely men gone mad? Whose talisman has the power to defeat them, the pagan or the Roman church?

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Is it time for gender-neutral toilets?

19/11/2015

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In my years of blogging by the calendar, I’ve been particularly faithful to World Toilet Day on 19 November with its emphasis on the importance of clean and safe sanitation for global health, equality and well-being. My interest in this topic came from travelling in countries where toilet facilities can’t be taken for granted, and discovered that a blog post on the subject could play a small part in raising awareness of the issue. But for this year, I’d already decided to shift my focus away from toilets, or their lack of, in the Global South onto a toiletry provision nearer home, when I discovered that this would enable me to mark another international commemorative day dear to my heart on the following day.

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World Mental Health Day: Dignity in Fiction?

10/10/2015

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Following on from last month’s post for World Suicide Prevention Day, I’m marking World Mental Health Day on Annecdotal this weekend. The 2015 theme is dignity, so I’m highlighting sympathetic portrayals of mental health issues in fiction. I’ve blogged elsewhere about the mental health themes in my own novel, Sugar and Snails, including the development of the false self to protect one’s vulnerabilities; insecure attachment; and invisible vulnerabilities and self-harm; as well as my personal connection to those issues in the struggle to find a mind of my own and my post on Stigma Fighters about being a wounded healer. So I won’t repeat that here (but do follow the links if you haven’t already); focusing instead on the ways in which my recent reading provide insight into the mental health challenges we face across the lifespan.

The fragility of early parenthood couldn’t be captured better than in the character of Ari in After Birth by Elisa Albert. Still traumatised by an overly medicalised birth, she’s lonely and she’s angry at the structures that estrange women from vital sources of genuine support. This should be considered a prerequisite of a healthy society, not only for the sake of the struggling parents, but for the future well-being of their offspring. Cuts in public spending in these areas hurt us all.

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Mapping the psyche of a culture

30/9/2015

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With three high-profile husbands and two serious relationships with female colleagues, the life of the anthropologist, Margaret Mead, seems to have been as original as her research endeavours. While criticised as both a woman in a man’s world and a populariser of social science, as well as her findings on the sexual freedoms of Samoan society being subject to challenge, she remains – according to my totally unscientific survey of one – the best-known anthropologist of all time. In Euphoria, Lily King brings her vividly to life in this fictionalised account of a woman with a very similar history to Mead’s during a period of fieldwork along New Guinea’s Sepik river in 1933.

Nell and her husband Fen – malarial, injured and dejected after five months with the dreadful Mumbanyo tribe, she in particular despairing at their neglect and mistreatment of babies – are about to return to Australia when Bankson, another anthropologist based on Mead’s third husband, Gregory Bateson, familiar to me through the double-blind theory, persuades them to reconsider.

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Making sense of suicide: can fiction help?

9/9/2015

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As I mentioned on my recent post on Random Musings, I sometimes coordinate my blog posts with one of the international commemorative days dotted through the calendar. But, with a blog about reading and writing, seasoned with psychology, I do wonder about the legitimacy of made-up stories in amongst the true accounts of heroic attempts to tackle the issue of the day. Yet I’m convinced fiction has its place. By providing a safe space in which we can explore attitudes and motivations from which we might shy away in real life, fiction can help make sense of potentially overwhelming aspects of the human condition. So, for my first post for World Suicide Prevention Day, I’m exploring the portrayal of suicide in fiction. But if you’re looking for the facts and figures on suicide, or more direct strategies of prevention, click on the image for more information. While you’ll find a long list of fictional suicides on Wikipedia, I’m limiting myself to novels I’ve reviewed.

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