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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Workington and Barrow: Small towns, great fiction?

15/5/2016

4 Comments

 
What does the working-class child aspire to? In my case, I couldn’t dream of joining a middle-class profession I’d never heard of. Nor, even though I was addicted to writing from the start, did I believe that someone like me could become an author. Books never seemed to be based in the places with which I was familiar: they were set in boarding schools rather than comprehensives; in country houses rather than a small semi-detached; in cities rather than small industrial towns. So how could I resist a novel set in my birthplace, the small northern town from which my odd accent derives? As if that weren’t enough, I’m offered a novel set where my parents grew up, a similar down-at-heel out-of-the-way place where I had my first restaurant meal. Sixty miles separates these two towns, as well as some breath-taking countryside, as depicted in The Wolf Border, one of my favourite reads from last year. But Workington and Barrow don’t have the beauty of the Lake District. Thanks to Vintage Books and Legend Press, I had the chance to discover whether they could nevertheless shine on the page. I’d be interested in your thoughts on using real places as fictional settings.
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Tara Fraser needs to reinvent herself. So she sticks a pin in a map and, with the help of a vaguely official Man and Woman, she rents a modernised terraced house and takes a factory job in a dull Cumbrian town. She’s determined that Sarah Scott will be the antithesis of the colourful and volatile woman she used to be. Across the street, Nancy Armstrong is curious about her new neighbour and eager for the kind of friendship that won’t entail either of them giving much away. Meanwhile, the three women who have considered themselves Tara’s friends since adolescence are planning a reunion to mark the twenty-five year anniversary of their collective rescue a drowning boy. Will Tara attend and, if she does, will she berate them for their failure to support her when she needed them most?

She’d felt no happier, no more settled, nowhere near to finding her ‘true self’. In fact, she didn’t think she had a ‘true self’. She made herself up all the time, as she always had done. It was exhausting. (p236)

With themes of identity, fractured friendship and, latterly, the legacy of a disturbed early childhood, as well as offering that gem of esoteric information about measuring cows, this ought to be my kind of novel. But with dreary dialogue, prose so plain it might have come from the quill of the Amish, an easily-guessed secret long withheld, and forensic attention to the wrong kind of detail, it reads like a good first draft, an impression reinforced by the knowledge that it was published after the author’s death. Yet Margaret Forster is a well-regarded English novelist and, having been fairly underwhelmed by another novel I read of hers some time ago, I suspect this is as good as it gets. Clearly, not her ideal reader, I wondered if one was supposed to take it all with a pinch of salt and I was missing the humour.

Let’s turn instead to her depiction of my home town, a place with which the author will be well acquainted, given that she was born in the area and had a home in the Lake District as well as in London. But it’s clear where her affections lay, as Tara’s brief visit to Belsize Park (where I too have eaten at the Pizza Express next to the tube station) is more strongly realised than her several months in Workington (p122):

She enjoyed looking across to the cinema, where they used to go so often, and the bookshop. The pavements here were wide, with benches now and again. She tried to analyse the difference between this scene and any street scene in Workington, but she couldn’t. Was it the buildings? Was it the people? Was it the general air of prosperity compared to one of austerity?

It’s a pity that the author didn’t see fit to answer her own questions, but used my hometown to represent some vision of a dreary place where Southerners wouldn’t like to live. I really wouldn’t have minded had she done so with style.

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Miles Platting, “an unpopular man whose contribution to humanity has been to diminish its worth” (p80), is rescued from the sea and taken to hospital. There, communication is through written notes and speech is strongly discouraged. As he convalesces, he relives the events that led to him crossing the channel between Birdseye-in-Furness (formerly Barrow) and Walney Island in a storm-tossed rowing boat, along with his minder, Darren.

Lingua Franca, the naming rights agency of which Miles is the chief executive, is on a mission to rename every UK town after a corporate sponsor. Despite the fact that this cynical objective has earned him the scorn of his estranged wife, English teacher Kendal, Miles is committed to bringing a perverted kind of prosperity to depressed communities. But he hasn’t reckoned on the capacity of the residents of Birdseye-in-Furness (formerly Barrow) to resist.

My delight in this zany novel was not diminished by the fact that I’ve come across a similar concept before in the futuristic thriller, Jennifer Government, nor that I disagree that Miles is on a quest for linguistic supremacy when he’s primarily concerned with nouns and the power that comes from naming. It’s both an entertaining romp and a serious indictment of the way we live today, with rampant capitalism sucking the soul out of once-proud working class towns.
It’s about the culture clash between North and South, youth and tradition, rich and poor, a topic also explored, in very different circumstances, in my recently republished short story A House for the Wazungu. Anyone who’s ever worked in a struggling organisation will recognise that desperate drive to rebrand rather than confront the underlying problems. (While having endured several NHS pointless reorganisations, I now watch from the sidelines; even at my lowly level as a national park volunteer, I was amused and bemused when filming for the North Lees open day recently I was obliged to wear a borrowed fleece jacket with updated logo rather than my own with a slightly different shaped millstone, which you can see me wearing here, even though I’d washed mine specially for the occasion!)

Although it’s so long since I’ve visited I’m not qualified to judge its accuracy, I can vouch for a vivid and sympathetic portrayal of Barrow, even in this humorous first glimpse as Miles describes a promotional video (p20):

On the horizon are the rusting cranes … It’s hard to decide whether the sea looks green or grey. The clouds have no problem with raining on the town. There’s not much in the way of action, besides a slow-motion ship coming into the slipway. The next thing in sight is a fishing boat, from which it’s possible to make out the town as a silhouette. All you’re meant to know is that Barrow is a place, and it’s distant … We can see the town for what it is – a grid of terraced houses and a church in the middle … If the video is to be believed, what’s missing is the magic. Not money, of course.

Not often drawn to comedy, I might not have read this book if it hadn’t featured Barrow. I’m heartily glad that it does. I do hope the locals like it as much as I did.


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
4 Comments
Charli Mills link
16/5/2016 04:18:27 pm

Place matters to the West in the US so much that it's a hallmark of western literature. In the east, however, where most commercial books get published, place is not significant. Western stories are rooted in place. So your review and ideas here have my brain wheels spinning! I think I'm both drawn and reluctant to read books about a specific location. I like the idea, but worry that I'll be too critical of details. For example, I have Wolf Border unfinished on my Kindle. The story so far pulls me in but when I started cataloging errors about Idaho, I fell out of the mindset for fiction. Little things, like we have two time zones in one state and she got the wrong one for the place. Yet, I've read other books that are spot on in the setting and let me believe the rest of the story. I don't think setting matters that much to most readers, but it does to me but only places I know! This is why I took time and expense to travel to Rock Creek because Nebraska is not that familiar to me, and I chose to live for four months where Miracle of Ducks was set to finish that first draft. Sometime, I think place is represented through the filters of an author and even when the details are correct, the filters might be too dreary or too forgiving. Seems you found a hit in the humor of William Thacker's book. And what you say about rebranding is so true! I have a client that I write for and it's been a hellish year because of their re-brand and the chaos it creates on top of those unresolved issues that have nothing to do with a color pallet or logo. I had to go listen to your lovely accent again! My daughter spent last week with a BBC film crew (she's a science writer for Michigan Tech) and took me out to have a beer on Friday with the cameraman who is from London. We shared several stories about accents and expectations. When he met me, he said he could hear where my daughter got her "heavy" American accent. She groaned and I laughed! But we talked for several hours and left with the good impression that Brits really know how to converse. :-)

Reply
Annecdotist
17/5/2016 02:50:53 pm

That’s so interesting about the East-West divide in the US. I hadn’t thought about it, but it does make sense of some of my reading. A bit like the North South divide here.
Ah, but I’m so sorry Sarah Hall let you down with Wolf Border. I think when something jars like that it pulls us out of the suspension of disbelief mindset so necessary for enjoying fiction.
When I set Sugar and Snails in Newcastle I knew the city pretty well, but someone still questioned me about a passing reference to the smell of the stream running through the park, because it had been cleaned up since I’d lived there! But of course, as he say, even viewing the same place at the same time we perceive it differently so can’t get it perfect.
And I’m laughing at that Londoner referring to your “heavy” American accent – aren’t they all?! But glad you had a good time together – and you have to let us know when your daughter is showing on the BBC.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
24/5/2016 12:47:13 pm

Interesting reviews, Anne. I must say I was rather drawn to the theme of the first book and Tara's taking on a different, opposite persona, even believing herself to have no 'true self'. I'm disappointed that you didn't rate it highly. You say the writing was dreary and it's disappointing that you found another novel by the same author to be so. She obviously doesn't appeal to you as a reader. It would not have helped that she shows no sympathy or empathy with your local area. It seems to me she may have been better to create a fictional town rather than antagonise the locals. Interesting though that "Barrow" had the opposite effect.
I have read a few books set in Brisbane and love to identify the locations. I have also read some set in fictional, but based on real, locations. I have not been disappointed yet; but can understand your disappointment in Workington's portrayal, and Charli's in Idaho's in Wolf Border. I think if a real setting is used, it should be true to the locations. However the perspectives could differ as each of us have our own different views of the same places and events.

Reply
Annecdotist
29/5/2016 02:38:28 pm

Thanks, Norah, what disappointed me about the first novel was not so much that she portrayed the town negatively, but that she failed to bring it to life at all. But you might enjoy it. I was chatting to a friend at my choir who rates the author highly and seemed genuinely put out that I didn’t (I’ve also experienced being on the other side of that difference in being baffled at someone not liking a book I liked) so I’m going to lend her this one and see whether it works for her.

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