Favourite Reads of 2013 - Much Belated

As 2014 draws to a close and I guiltily take up the blogging mantle once more (I last posted in March, eek!), I give you my favourite books of 2013.  Wait, what?  Yes, I've been so negligent about blogging that I never shared my favourite books last year.  Alas.  But, the beauty of books is that a good book will continue to be a good book even as time passes, so all those below are still heartily recommended by me.

(PS.  I will try to blog more regularly in 2015!  I will post my list of favourite 2014 books very soon.)

Books Published in 2013

I didn't read as many new books in 2013 as I did in 2012, but here are two fantastic YA reads.


Rose Under Fire, Elizabeth Wein

You may recall that I loved Wein's 2012 novel Code Name Verity to bits (review).  I also loved Rose Under Fire, which I read most of over the course of one evening and the wee hours of the morning in a steadily cooling bath.  This novel is also set during World War II and features Rose Justice, a young American pilot who works for the British Air Transport Auxiliary.  On her return from a mission in France, she finds herself forced into German airspace by the Luftwaffe and is interned at Ravensbrück, the most famous women's concentration camp, home to political prisoners, Poles, and spies.  Ravensbrück, horrifyingly, was also the site of Nazi medical experimentation on Polish women, who identified as test "Rabbits".  Due to the clever structure of the novel, you learn quite quickly that Rose survives Ravensbrück.  Mostly, I found myself anxious about the plight of the other women in the camp, who become Rose's friends and family-of-choice.  Their fates are unknown, and they have already suffered so much.  Despite these experiences, these women support each other, teach each other, share art with each other.  I did not want any more horror to be visited upon them.  Code Name Verity made me sob buckets of tears; Rose Under Fire didn't, but at the very end, I cried just a little bit out of heartbreaking hope.

You find out about the fates of some of the characters from Code Name Verity in this stand-alone novel.  You don't need to read CNV first, but I would recommend it.

(On a personal note, last year I had the opportunity to meet Elizabeth Wein in person at the annual SCBWI British Isles conference in Winchester, which was a dream come true!)

Vango: Between Earth and Sky, Timothée de Fombelle

This novel was first published in English in 2013.  I was first drawn to the novel by its fantastic cover (carried over from the original French edition).  How could you not want to read a book with this cover?  A young man on the run, Paris, a zeppelin?  Here's what I said about the novel in my Goodreads review:

Amazing! Just about the best inter-war international caper you could imagine. Vango is on the run, accused of a crime he didn't commit, being chased down by French police and Soviet hitmen. Part of the book takes place on the Graf Zeppelin and there's a heroine who lives in a Scottish castle, drives a race car, and wear slacks Katherine Hepburn style. Plus, somehow Stalin is connected to all of this. 

I read much of this book curled up in front of the fire in a cottage in Penzance.  This past June, I had was able to hear the author and translator discuss the portrayal of war in young adult fiction at the offices of Walker Books in London, at an event put on by IBBY.

Books Published Pre-2013

Young Adult

Long Lankin, Lindsey Barraclough 

Long Lankin is a fantastic, post-war Britain ghost story, with undercurrents of M.R. James-style horror.  Cora and her younger sister Mimi are sent from their East London flat in 1958 to stay with their Aunt Ida in her crumbling ancestral home in the Essex marshes.  While there, they befriend Roger and his family and set out to solve the mystery of why strange ghostly children appear in the nearby churchyard and why all the windows and doors of Guerdon Hall must be kept shut and locked at all times.  It soon becomes clear that Mimi, Cora's little sister, is in grave danger.  This is a novel based on the ballad "Long Lankin", which is printed at the beginning of the book.  Knowing the ballad makes the novel more chilling but doesn't give the plot away.  (My full review here.)


The Fault in Our Stars, John Green

This enormously popularly novel (and now film adaptation) perhaps doesn't need any more recommending.  However, I still urge you to read it, if you haven't already, because it is a wonderful novel.  It is narrated by Hazel, a teenager with metastatic, terminal cancer, who falls in love with Augustus Waters, an amputee and cancer survivor.  You will need tissues.  But you will also laugh (a lot).  This is a smart novel about what matters in life, and what it is like to refuse to be defined by an illness.




 Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell

You will also need tissues for Eleanor and Park, which is also wonderfully funny and sad.  It takes place in 1986 (the year I was born), and tells the story the teenage outsiders who fall in love trading comics and mix tapes back and forth.  It is delightful.

The novel has an ambiguous ending, which I have decided is hopeful, based on the reference in the last chapter to Park and Eleanor both having finished the Watchmen series.



Middle Grade

A Face Like Glass, Frances Hardinge

In the cave city of Caverna, everyone lies because no one shows their real emotions upon their faces.  The richer you are, the more mask-like expressions you can be taught, and the better able you are to deceive.  Until Neverfell arrives, who wears her heart on her face, as it were.  A wonderful novel about cheese, family, and friendship, with wonderful twists.  I kept thinking to myself, "This is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant", through the last 60 or so pages of this book. It's as if Dickens had run wild with a fantasy world.




Best Victorian Novel

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

I finally got around to reading through Bleak House in 2013, having been a fan of the BBC adaptation for years.  Reading this novel is a time commitment, but a most fulfilling one.  I think Bleak House is my new favourite Dickens novel (though perhaps it's tied with Great Expectations...).








Non-Fiction

The Victorian House and The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London, Judith Flanders

Here is a pair of books about the Victorians - both at home and out and about in London - that is wonderfully informative and entertaining.  I learned the significance of so many throwaway comments and descriptions I had come across while reading Victorian novels.  I learned that the Victorians didn't have bedside tables (!), that in a middle-class household like Thomas and Jane Carlyle's, a woman had to pitch in with her maid of all work just to keep the house running.  I learned that one of the jobs of an omnibus driver in the age of crinolines was to make sure a woman's skirt didn't flip up as she entered the bus, that the street was an incredibly noisy place in Victorian London, and that fires were major public events.

The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee

This is a fascinating, horrifying, and ultimately hopeful "biography" of cancer.  It makes for absolutely riveting reading as Mukherjee tracks the history of cancer and the various ways humans have learned to treat it.  I know now that cancer is not one, monolithic disease, but rather a multitude of individual diseases, each with its own behaviour and treatment.  The most horrifying chapter is the one on the craze for radical mastectomy; the most hopeful one discusses the genetic treatments for cancers that should be developed in the coming years, as the genetic profiles of various cancers are mapped.



Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Mark Williams and Danny Penman

I don't want to fall into clichés, but this was perhaps the most life-changing book I read in 2013.  Because of this book, I have a much better sense of the relationship between the brain, thoughts, emotions, and the body and how stress impacts on the connections between them.  Because of this book, I try to (emphasis on try) meditate twice daily and can sometimes interrupt the cycle of negative, unhelpful thoughts we all deal with from time to time.  I'll talk more about mindfulness in another post, and why I love it, but this would be a helpful book for anyone in a graduate programme.  (There's a reason this book was one of the top ten bestsellers at Blackwell's flagship Oxford store
this past year).

Re-Reads

Villette, Charlotte Brontë

I first read Charlotte Brontë's final novel back in 2008, when I realised I wanted to write a Brontë-related Master's thesis.  On first reading, I found narrator Lucy Snowe's narration rather opaque, and really depressing.  Since then, I've read a lot of criticism on the novel, pointing out its unreliable narration, its gaps and disruptions.  On rereading the novel in 2013, so that I could write on it for my DPhil thesis, I enjoyed the novel much more.  Below the surface of Lucy's hypochondriac, traumatised narrating voice are depths of humour and passion that hadn't been evident to me before.


Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor

Having very much enjoyed this novel on first reading in 2011, one day in 2013 I was seized with a craving to read it again.  I read a bit more slowly, soaking in the beautiful language, not quite as compelled to rush through the cleverly structured plot.  I basked in the history of the world Taylor created and marvelled at her star-crossed lovers' love and hope.  Well worth reading a second (or third, or fourth) time.   Here's a link to my VERY SPOILERY review of the first two volumes in the trilogy.
  



The Golden Compass/Northern Lights, Philip Pullman

I reread The Golden Compass for an undergraduate dissertation I supervised last year.  I had such an enjoyable time going back through the whole His Dark Materials trilogy.  When I first read it as a 14-year-old prairie girl, I could only imagine Oxford as a rather old city.  I had never read Blake or Milton.  Having now lived in Oxford, and read more, the trilogy felt richer to me as a literary text and what had been geographically marvellous on first reading, was now both familiar and defamiliarised by Pullman's clever tweaks to real-world Oxford.  I found one particular moment of high stakes danger more horrifying as an adult than I had as a teenager (you may be able to guess which bit I'm referring to if you've read the book - it involves a guillotine-like structure).

Past Favourite Reads lists: 2011; 2012.

Blog Apologies and General Life Update

Hello!  I realised with some shame that it has been two months (ish) since I've updated this blog!  Partly it's because I've been busy, and then because I wasn't sure I had anything to say.  So, I've decided to break the ice with a quick update on the Easter vacation and Trinity Term have been like for me.

In the last two months, I've...

• Gone to Paris, the Loire Valley, and Avignon on vacation (see obligatory Eiffel Tower photo above - with more pictures to come!)
• Finished another section of my thesis, this time discussing domestic violence and other forms of male dominance in the Bronte novels.  Next up is a short section on male relationships (primarily on how they can be damaging when they impinge on domestic/family life).
• Read many books for fun, including some that I plan to review on the blog in the near future.
• Given the Michael Mahoney Graduate Seminar at my college - a one-hour lecture on my research, which was actually really fun, especially as it was followed by a fancy dinner in the chapel (which is currently serving as our dining hall).
• Completely rewrote the end of my novel for the first time.  The ending is different from what I originally intended, but it fits better with my expectations for and conception of the book now.  I hope to start submitting it really, really soon - after one more proofread and a couple small changes.
• Helped to organise this year's Oxford English graduate conference, "Object", which went really, really well.  I chaired a fantastic panel on Victorian material culture; there was an fabulous panel discussion on the Book as Object, featuring Nick Cross, Digital Products Manager at the Oxford University Press and fellow SCWBI member, Paul Nash, the University's printing tutor, and Stephen Walter, text/map artist.  The day was capped off by a fantastic keynote address on the construction of the author as "object" by acclaimed children's author Frances Hardinge.  (Her most recent novel, A Face Like Glass is amazing and Frances is absolutely lovely in person to boot!)
• Went up to London to see The Book of Mormon (amazing, with brilliant music, and much blasphemy - not for the easily offended) and finally visit the Tate Modern (loved the first floor Surrealists, then became increasingly bored by the abstract art and installations - I am a bit of a traditionalist, I suppose)
• More recently, went up to London to see Neil Gaiman talk about his most recent novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  Amazing.  Also snagged a signed first edition, which is very good so far.
• Plus, I attended the seminars for the Developing Teaching and Learning course run by the Humanities Division and am working on a teaching portfolio to submit in hopes it will gain me Associate Fellow status with the Higher Education Academy.  As part of my teaching training, I ran revision classes and tutorials to prepare first-year Mansfielders for their exam on Victorian literature, which was a rewarding experience.  It was great to really dig into the Victorians with friendly, enthusiastic, and hard-working students.

Okay, I think that's it.  I will try to update more frequently, and will definitely post pictures from our France trip.  The next big thing is that we're going home for two weeks on Saturday, which is shockingly only two sleeps away!  Yikes.

Review: LONG LANKIN, by Lindsey Barraclough

Long Lankin is a fantastic, post-war Britain ghost story, with undercurrents of M.R. James-style horror.

Gosh, sounds a bit like description of wine.

In some ways, Long Lankin in an atypical YA novel.  First of all, two of the novel's narrators are twelve (maybe thirteen), which would suggest the novel is middle-grade (ie: for ages 9-12).  However, the third narrator is probably somewhere near sixty, which suggests this isn't a novel for young people at all.  Also, the narrative includes largeish sections of archaic documents, with suitably old-fashioned language and spelling and stories of adultery, etc.  The novel is, however, an atmospheric, suspenseful YA read, driven by a great story.  All these non-standard elements make it original and also, perhaps, appeal to readers of all ages.

On to the story!  Cora and her four-year-old sister Mimi are sent from their East London flat in 1958 to stay with their Aunt Ida in her crumbling ancestral home in the Essex marshes.  While there, they befriend Roger and his family and set out to solve the mystery of why strange ghostly children appear in the nearby churchyard and why all the windows and doors of Guerdon Hall must be kept shut and locked at all times.  It soon becomes clear that Mimi, Cora's little sister, is in grave danger.

All three points of view are well drawn and Aunt Ida's is just as interesting as the children's because she knows much more than she wants to say about the history of Guerdon Hall and the nearby church.

Interspersed with all this ghostliness are much less chilling elements of good old childhood fun - family life, making camps in the woods, riding bicycles, hanging out in an old pillar box left over from the war, running to the shop to get a sweet while one picks up Dettol or washing up powder for Mum.  I've seen some readers complain that the novel begins slowly but I savoured all these details of childhood and post-war Britain.  This is the era in which my parents were born and my grandparents lived, but I'm familiar with the narrative of boom and prosperity in North America.  For that reason, it was fascinating to see a world in which bomb damage in London still hadn't been cleared and one might have to run over to the pub to make a telephone call.  (It reminded me at times of BBC's Call the Midwife, which we are currently watching).  Also, as in Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger, the post-war period offers a good opportunity for both ghost stories and discussions of class and social change.

The slow build of atmosphere and the careful revelation of the story of Long Lankin are very effective in racheting up the suspense.  At one point I felt viscerally, physically tense, waiting to find out what would happen to the characters I had grown to care for.

This is a novel based on the ballad "Long Lankin", which is printed at the beginning of the book.  Knowing the ballad makes the novel more chilling but doesn't give the plot away.  Part of the fun of the novel is the way Barraclough works out elements of the ballad and places them in a sensible historical context.  This method reminded me of Janet McNaughton's An Earthly Knight, a YA retelling of the ballad of Tam Lin.

P.S.  I love the cover - the misty obscurity, the looming trees, and the girls who look like they're actually from the 1950s.  One of my pet peeves in the covers of historical novels are models who look much too modern!

Review: A WORLD BETWEEN US, by Lydia Syson

In the last year, I've learned more about the Spanish Civil War from reading young adult novels than I ever learned in school.  First, I read Michelle Cooper's fabulous The Journals of Montmaray trilogy, which worked in details about the civil war through the characters' links to Spain and friendship with a Basque captain (reviews here and here).  Then, at the beginning of January I read - almost in one sitting - Lydia Syson's first novel for young adults, A World Between Us, which centres around a love triangle between a nurse, an International Brigades soldier, and a journalist, all fighting fascism in war-torn Spain.

Felix (short for Felicity) is a London nurse who follows Nat, a Jewish communist and International Brigades soldier to Spain, out of a sudden, head-over-heels love for him and deep need to escape middle-class, patriarchal suburban life and expectations.  George, a family friend who hopes to marry her, follows her when she disappears from the Gare du Nord in Paris and works as a journalist while he tries to discover information about her whereabouts.

Introducing these three point-of-view characters, explaining their motivations, and getting them to Spain takes a very few chapters at the beginning of the book, a tricky manoeuvre that felt slightly unwieldy and rushed to me.

But once they get to Spain, let me tell you, the novel really gets going.  This is the second novel I've read from Hot Key Books's inaugural year.  The clever wheel on the back of the book promises 50% epic romance, 25% history, and 25% drama.  I was a bit worried that the focus of the novel would be on the love triangle, to the exclusion of the fascinating and frankly, really important historical details of the Spanish Civil War, which was in many ways a training ground for the strategies and techniques used in World War II.  For instance, the bombing of civilian and not just military targets for the purposes of creating terror.  It began with the destruction of Guernica, so terribly evoked in Picasso's famous painting, and repeated itself with terrible consequences in the East End of London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, and many other cities.

Picasso - Guernica

However, I need not have worried.  Syson does a wonderful job of melding historical detail with the lives and loves of her characters.  The brutality of the fighting, dealing with bombings, and tending the war-wounded are told compellingly, as is the psychological strain Felix, Nat, and George experience.  In a setting like this, the memory of love becomes precious, a place to escape to in a world on fire.  The lovers in this novel don't actually spend that much time together.  Each character develops over the course of the war and comes to his or her own understanding of the importance of the conflict they are engaged in.  These periods of separation also means that moments like the ones in which George sees Felix again or Felix is able to sit with Nat in war-weary Madrid carry heart-breaking significance.  Syson deals well with the physicality of romantic relationships in wartime - why wait if you might die tomorrow?  What do social expectations matter in world turned upside down?

As the novel progresses through the various stages of the civil war, helpful maps at the beginning of each section show the advance of Franco's troops and the major centres where the action takes place, so that you can see just how far away the characters are from each other at any given time and how close they are to the front line.

Felix's experiences as a nurse, sometimes in haphazard, ad hoc conditions, are especially well done.  As a Canadian, I was so pleased to see that one of our national heroes, Dr. Norman Bethune, has a walk-on role.  Shamefully, I had not realised that Bethune pioneered a system for blood transfusions at the front during the Spanish Civil War.  The details of blood types, the importance of refridgeration, and the sacrifice of the doctors and nurses who gave their own blood to save their patients are all skillfully rendered.

Syson also does an excellent job at hinting at the divisions and suspicions within the anti-fascist faction.  George Orwell went to Spain to serve, only to flee with his wife when the communists accused him of being a Trotskyite.  The author also illustrates the conflicts between the communists and the Catholic Church, showing the reader that the political, religious, and military situation in Spain was complex and multi-faceted.

As the novel drew to a close, I became so engaged with the characters that I found myself throwing out any aesthetic expectations of a balanced ending, only hoping for the characters' happiness in the face of tragedy and barriers at every turn.  I'm happy to say that the novel ends the right way (notice, I'm not saying how it ends, or what "right" means).  Any personal happiness the characters win at the end comes at the cost of their experiences in Spain and also the inescapable fact of failure and impotence.  If you know the history going in, you know that the Spanish communists and International Brigades were defeated and Franco governed Spain until his death in the 1970s.  What I hadn't realised until the Afterword is that the international volunteers were actually sent home in 1938, unable to fight until the bitter end.

And more problems waited for them at home.  International volunteers were seen as suspect because of their relationship with communism and some were not allowed to volunteer as soldiers in the Second World War because Western governments were concerned about their loyalty.  Some people had trouble gaining employment after returning from Spain.  Volunteers also weren't recognised as veterans until long after the conflict as well.

If you enjoyed Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity or Michelle Cooper's Montmaray books and are looking for another fabulous YA historical novel, I heartily recommend you pick up A World Between Us.

P.S.  Last year, a bunch of old interviews with Canadian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War were discovered in the basement of the CBC building in Toronto.  Material from these interviews featured on three episodes of the program Living Out Loud.  You can listen to them on CBC's player here.  Fascinating stuff.

Review: DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT, by Laini Taylor

This is a review of the second book in Laini Taylor's fabulous Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, with thoughts on the first book (HERE BE SPOILERS!) and the construction of the trilogy as a whole, because I think Taylor is doing some really interesting series-crafting.

I loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone when I read it last autumn and included it on my list of favourite books read in 2011 (here).  I didn't review it at the time, however, because I felt I needed to think about it a bit more.  The novel is a fantastic take on what I suppose would be considered the paranormal romance genre - as the main character, Karou, is apparently human, and enters into a passionate romance with an angel.  Except that the novel also explodes that genre, leavening everything with a good deal of quirky humour and, ultimately, a tragedy of apocalyptic proportions, stretching across two lifetimes and two worlds.

In the first installment, Karou discovers that she is, in fact, not human but a chimaera and that her life as a blue-haired art student in Prague, running errands for Brimstone - a collector of teeth, seller of wishes - is really a second chance.  This is what Karou discovers when she and Akiva, the angel mentioned above, break the wishbone Brimstone always wore and Karou was never allowed to touch.

And this is where my one quibble came in.

Taylor makes a very bold move when that wishbone is broken.  A large chunk of the novel's third act is an extended flashback, in which Karou re-experiences her former life as a chimaera in the world of Eretz, when she fell in love with Akiva for the first time, even though the seraphim and chimerae are sworn enemies and have been at war for centuries.  It follows Madrigal (Karou's previous identity) through her capture and execution by the Warlord's son and then her salvation by Brimstone, who trades in teeth because he uses them to resurrect the dead.

When I first read the novel, I raced through this section as quickly as possible, trying to put together the clues to Karou's old life and figure out her relationship with Akiva.  It's very risky to introduce a flashback of this magnitude with new characters and, in this case, a brand new world.  It can backfire, as most would argue backstory section in Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, does.  In that case, it bogs down the properly interesting detective story with much less interesting narrative of Mormons in Utah.  Here, I think it works.  I especially think it works because it allows the second novel in the series to get off to a proper start, since Taylor has already laid the groundwork for the characters and conflicts Karou must deal with in Eretz.

But I felt and still feel that in both the backstory in Book One and the narrative proper in Book Two, Eretz is not drawn in as detailed a fashion as I might like it to be.  I'm not the kind of fantasy reader who demands incredibly intricate world-building, but I do feel like I would like more.  Eretz doesn't feel as real to me as Karou's life in Prague did or as the kasbah in Days does.

31/10/2013 Note: I recently reread Daughter of Smoke and Bone and enjoyed it possibly even more the second time.  The writing is beautiful, the characters are magnificent, the fated nature of Karou and Akiva's love is hinted at in ways that I totally missed the first time.  Also, I think I may have done a disservice in my little criticism of the world-building of Eretz - there is a fair bit of detail there, which I think I missed on my first read because the plot compelled me to read so quickly.

Now that my quibble is out of the way, I want to lavish some praise on Taylor's structuring of the trilogy.  Once Karou's previous life has been revealed, Akiva then makes the astonishing revelation that, in revenge for the chimaerae's killing of Madrigal, he has just been responsible for their genocide and Brimstone, the only father Karou ever knew, is dead.  Karou leaves Akiva and passes through a portal in the sky to Eretz, creating as jaw-dropping a cliffhanger as Lord Asriel walking into the sky at the end of The Golden Compass.

The ending of Book One blows everything wide open.  The mystery of the disappearing portals to Elsewhere that was such a big part of Daughter is nothing in relation to the much higher stakes of Book Two.  Where Daughter was in large part a romance, Days sees Karou/Madrigal and Akiva perhaps forever sundered because of Akiva's destruction of Karou's people.  As she puts it, it's as if Juliet had woken to find Romeo still alive - but learns that he has destroyed her family and city.  How can they possibly be together after a breakage like that?

Days follows Karou and Akiva as they separately deal with the politics within their own peoples and try desperately to find a way to end the neverending war between the angels and chimaerae, a war in which both sides are culpable and both sides have suffered greatly.  Characters on both sides are revealed in all shades of grey; politics and stratagem are delineated with the subtlety of Megan Whalen Turner's Thief books; the prose is propulsive, while also being striking and often hilariously funny.

An important sub-plot is the romance between Karou's Prague friends Zuzana (who resembles a "rabid fairy") and Mik, which gives the otherwise quite dark book a necessary shot of humour and humanity.

The book has two separate and very big climaxes, one of which is especially brutal and visceral and had me tense with dread.  Book Three, due out in 2014, looks set to play out a war in heaven that could have grave impact on the human world.  I'm hoping that against all the odds, Karou and Akiva will somehow find their way back to each other.

Review: BLACK SPRING, by Alison Croggon

 Alison Croggon is an author whose books I must own right after release, even though that usually means expensive shipping from Australia.  But it's always worth it.

I fondly remember the day I discovered Alison Croggon's first fantasy novel The Naming in the young adult section at McNally Robinson's Saskatoon store, one day in May or June 2005.  I will always remember reading it while listening to the Within Temptation album Mother Earth.  Strange how those associations stick with you.  If you have a chance to read the Books of Pellinor (The Naming/The Gift, The Riddle, The Crow, and The Singing) and you are a high fantasy fan, do it!  They're wonderful and work in some ways as a feminist, post-colonial corrective to Tolkien.

So, when Croggon posted on her blog a few years back that her next novel was a gothic fantasy take on Wuthering Heights, I was sold.  Wuthering Heights is, quite possibly, my favourite novel of all time and I figured that if anyone could do it justice, Alison Croggon could, especially since she, like Emily Bronte, is both a poet and novelist.

However, because this book has a complex relationship with Bronte's, it's a bit difficult for me to write about - because I love the source text so much, because I also have literary critical opinions about the novel and how its works, and because Croggon's take probably fits into the Neo-Victorian genre (think A.S. Byatt's Possession), a genre which often creates complex intertextual links with Victorian novels and which I have researched and written on in the past year.

That said, there are two important things you can take away from this review.

1)  This is a fantastic book.
2)  In my opinion, it is also a respectful, critical, fascinating reworking of Wuthering Heights.  If you like Bronte's novel, I suspect you will enjoy Croggon's too.


(As a sidenote, I would be curious to see how people who are decidedly not lovers of Wuthering Heights feel about Black Spring, as it is quite faithful to the source text and reproduces the love story that isn't really a love story, as well as the unsympathetic characters and violence and capital "R" Romanticism of the original.)

Alison Croggon’s Black Spring follows the layered narrative structure and overall plot of the original novel very closely, so that any deviation is significant.   The novel begins with an urbane, self-absorbed Lockwood figure readying to leave the city for a spell in the wild, brutal plain society to the north.  There, he stays over in the house of his landlord, Damek (Heathcliff) and sees a vision of a beautiful, desperate woman in a mirror (Cathy Earnshaw).  From Anna (Nelly), he learns the mysterious history of Lina, born a witch in a society where women cannot practice magic, her foster brother Damek and their love, and the unforgiving laws of vendetta that structure their world.

I could go on and on about the really interesting changes and tweaks Croggon makes to Bronte's novel, the ways in which vendetta externalises the very personal revenge carried out by Bronte's Heathcliff, how making Lina a witch allows her very real power in a patriarchal society and allows her agency Cathy cannot have, the way Anna and Lina's relationship as women and "milk sisters" shifts the core of the story away from Heathcliff/Damek or the "romance" that readers sometimes mistakenly see as central to Wuthering Heights.  Also, because I knew the plot of Wuthering Heights, I was expecting certain events going in (especially a particular death) and was pleasantly surprised when they did not occur.  Neo-Victorian novels sometimes play on this familiarity with the source text and defamiliarize the story by twisting the "knowledgeable" reader's expectations, thus making the narrative new.  Croggon's novel does just that.  But I'll leave it there.  The book is a brilliant gothic fantasy all on its own but it gains in complexity and depth through its relationship to its source text.

I eagerly await Croggon's next novel, a prequel to the Pellinor series about Cadvan's earlier life.

Review: THE DIVINERS, by Libba Bray

North American edition

 I've been a fan of Libba Bray's since discovering and devouring her Victorian boarding school/secret society/alternate world Gemma Trilogy during my undergraduate degree.  Since then, she's written two standalones, Printz award-winning Going Bovine and Beauty Queens, neither of which I have read yet (though I may need to rectify this soon).

I was really pleased when I found out Libba Bray was returning to the realm of historical fantasy and doubly pleased that she was setting her new trilogy in the 1920s.  The Roaring Twenties seem to be making quite a comeback, what with Boardwalk Empire and the upcoming Baz Luhrman adaption of The Great Gatsby.  In an interview with the UK group Booktrust, Bray explains the sometimes disturbing parallels between the America of today and the 1920s:

"xenophobia, anti-immigration fervor coupled with a nasty nativist streak, fears of terrorism/anarchism, a backlash against labor, a rise in evangelicalism, the creation and worship of a youth culture, and the lionizing of American business and businessmen as sort of the standard bearers of ‘Americanism.’ And, of course, there’s the run up to financial collapse."

Also gorgeous Australian edition.

 So, there are many reasons to write about the 1920s today.  Plus, all the fun stuff: flappers, speakeasies, Art Deco stylings, etc.  (The era also makes for lovely book cover design, I must say).

The novel begins with flapper Evie, stuck in the back of beyond in Ohio, who is sent to stay with her uncle in New York City after she causes a scandal after doing an object-reading, a talent she must keep hidden.  Her uncle is the curator of the The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, which seems dull, until Evie, Uncle Will, and friends attempt to solve a series of occult-based killings by a mysterious figure named Naughty John.

British edition (which I own)

The novel sets up a great cast of characters: Evie (whom I didn't especially like for a chunk of the book, as she seeks the limelight and rushes from one excitement to the next, never thinking much about other people, but she developed wonderfully), her much more staid friend Mabel, daughter of Socialist campaigners, Jericho, who has a secret and is Uncle Will's ward, Theta and Henry, who live in the same building as Uncle Will and are part of the Ziegfield follies, Sam, a pickpocket searching for his mother, and finally, Memphis, a Harlem numbers runner and poet, who once had healing powers. 

Most of these teenaged characters have visions of a storm gathering over empty fields and a man in a stovepipe hat.  The are Diviners, people with special abilities who are making a comeback.  Not all of them are centrally concerned with the Naughty John killings, a plot which is wrapped up in this first installment, but I'm sure they will come into their own in future volumes.

The Diviners is intricately plotted and historically detailed, with some quite scary horror sequences, great characters, and a real sense of American history, especially in terms of religion and superstition.  I am very much looking forward to the next two books.

Review: MAGGOT MOON, by Sally Gardner

I've just finished reading Sally Gardner's new novel Maggot Moon (Sept. 2012 Hot Key Books (UK)/Feb. 2013 Candlewick Press (US)) and I need to tell you about it.  If you like young adult fiction, you should do yourself a favour and read this novel as soon as you can.  It's amazing.

I figured it would be very good, because I really loved Gardner's first novel, I, Coriander (2005), set after the English Civil War and complete with evil step-mothers, fairy worlds, and witch hunts.  (You can see how this became an influence on my own work-in-progress novel).  Plus, Gardner writes beautiful, rich, original prose.

She has also written three other YA novels, two of which I own but shamefully haven't read yet: The Red Necklace (2007) and The Silver Blade (2009) (both set around the French Revolution, with automata!) and The Double Shadow (2011), in which a teenage girl is placed in an alternate world created by her father for her safety in the lead up to World War Two.  She's also writing a mystery series for young children called Wings & Co.

So, there's a great backlist for you to dig into if you get hooked on Gardner's writing.

My second inkling that Maggot Moon was going to be amazing came when Meg Rosoff tweeted that she thought this book would win next year's Carnegie Medal.  High praise indeed.  (And the novel has indeed been long-listed for the prize; it has also been short-listed for the Costa Children's Book Award).

Onto the book itself.  I'll quote the flap copy because I don't want to give away too much of the plot, as this book is structured in large part on flashbacks and the carefully paced revelations Gardner allows the reader.

When his best friend Hector is suddenly taken away, Standish Treadwell realises that it is up to him, his grandfather and a small band of rebels to confront and defeat the ever present oppressive forces of The Motherland. 

Friendship and trust inspire Standish to rise up against an oppressive regime and expose the truth about a planned moon landing in this original and spellbinding book.

This novel reminded me, at different times, of Nineteen Eighty-Four (in terms of the people who are disappeared, the constant surveillance, the dictatorial government), The Hunger Games (Zone 7, where undesirables seem to live reminded me of Katniss's District 12), The Book Thief (as Standish's Motherland in 1956 looks a lot like a possible alternate history, if the Nazis had indeed taken over Britain - plus another important element that I won't mention for fear of spoilers), and Code Name Verity, which I blogged about earlier this year (because the book is focused on the joy that Hector brings to Standish's life, giving him self-esteem, helping him to dream of a better life, standing up to his bullies, and also because Standish will do anything to help his best friend).

Despite these comparisons, the book very much stands out as an original, especially if you compare it to other YA dystopian novels out there at the moment.  It takes place in 1956, as the authoritarian Motherland plans to make a moon landing in order to prove its superiority to the Enemy Nations.  It involves a secret, friendship, family, bravery, and sacrifice.  Our extremely likeable narrator Standish is dyslexic and has eyes of two different colours.  He is an outcast and under threat in this society which values "purity" but he will dare all for his best friend.  Standish and Hector together imagine a world like the one they see on their illegal television - something like a version of the 1950s American dream - Cadillacs, ice cream, croca cola, Technicolor.  All the things they are denied in Zone 7.  They also dream of space travel, of escape to the imaginary planet Juniper and the better world it represents.

One slightly spoilery thing that broke my heart: the Motherland has created a twisted version of Blake's hymn "Jerusalem" for propaganda purposes.  Watch for a Casablanca moment involving this song.  (Some of you will get the reference, I hope).

And keep tissues handy!

Some notes on the book as a physical object:

Hot Key Books has produced a lovely hardback, with illustrations in each chapter of a fly, a rat, and many maggots.  See if you can figure out the significance behind this (rather macabre) progression of illustrations.  I have my own theory.  But, hurrah for illustrations, above all else!  I'm so happy to see illustration becoming an element of more books, at all age levels.

Hot Key Books also characterises the content of each of its novels.  On a wheel on the back of the book jacket, the reader learns that this book contains 50% friendship, plus danger, rebellion, and a conspiracy theory (making up the other 50%).  What a clever way to communicate themes and content!

One other indicator of content had me slightly more concerned, however.  There is also a warning: "Contains some strong language".  This is true.  I suppose I can also see why this warning might be useful to parents in selecting books for their children to read.  But to me it also smacks of the controversy surrounding the option of age-banding books for children, which has been recurring issue in the news in the UK.  Authors have consistently come out against this, because it seems to dogmatise what is appropriate for readers based solely on their age, a dodgy business at best.

Standish swear a lot.  Sometimes rather imaginatively.  But I suspect if you were a teenager living under these circumstances, you'd probably find a lot to swear about as well.  And it's an integral part of his narrating voice.  Is it necessary to warn parents about this?  My theory has been a) that words are just words and b) that if teenagers swear/have sex/drink,etc., there isn't much point in protecting teens from things that already occur within their age group.  So that's my take on the language warning.  You may well disagree with me.

Review: The FitzOsbornes at War, by Michelle Cooper

Australian edition

Having thoroughly enjoyed the first two books in the Montmaray Journals trilogy, A Brief History of Montmaray and The FitzOsbornes in Exile (reviewed here), I was very keen to read the final book, The FitzOsbornes at War.

Because Michelle Cooper unfortunately does not have a British publisher, I ordered up the book from Gleebooks in Australia.  I was told the book would arrive in 10-15 working days.  It showed up much faster than that, arriving just under a week later!  And then I read it in about 24 hours.  Cooper uses a lovely, clear prose style for Princess Sophia's journal, so that the novels are all very fast reads.

At the end of Book Two, which leaves the royal FitzOsborne family (Sophia, her brother Toby and sister Henry, plus cousin Veronica and half-cousin Simon) just before the outbreak of the Second World War.  The three things most on my mind when I finished were: 1) What would happen to Toby and Simon, who had already signed up for the RAF, 2) What opportunities would become available for the girls, whose London lives in Book Two had consisted in large part of their aunt trying to make proper aristocratic marriage matches for them, and 3) Would any of the FitzOsbornes, all well-drawn, sympathetic characters, die in the war?

US edition - out October 2012

This third Montmaray book, like its forbears, combines fictional characters and their equally fictional island kingdom of Montmaray with actual historical events.  As in the previous novels, Michelle Cooper does an astoundingly good job of mixing the fictional and the factual in believable ways.  The novel provides the reader with a great deal of historical detail about life on the British home front during the war, from the cookery guidelines Sophia helps to write (attempting to convince people to cook with a lot of root vegetables in the face of rationing) to the realities of bombing raids and blackouts.  Cooper also highlights aspects of the war that most general readers wouldn't necessarily be aware of, such as the not exactly neutral state of Franco's Spain and the interrogation of German prisoners of war in Kensington Gardens.  (I wasn't aware of these things and I consider myself a bit of a WWII buff.)

And throughout the war are interwoven the fates of the FitzOsbornes from the outbreak of war to the summer of 1944.  I got answers to all my questions.  1) Simon and Toby definitely become involved in the war, with Toby flying fighter planes and facing a great deal of danger.  I worried along with Sophie what was to become of both young men.  2)  Sophie and Veronica and even socialite Julia from the first two books take on wartime service: Sophie in the Food Ministry, Veronica with the Foreign Office putting her knowledge of Spanish to good use, and Julia serving as an ambulance driver.  3)  And yes, a beloved character dies, which had me absolutely bawling.

I was very impressed by the FitzOsbornes final, brave, and actually rather believable plan to take back Montmaray from the Germans.  I was also pleased by the epilogue written by Sophia in the 1948, which explains the post-war fates of the characters, including children, professions, and the ultimate fate of Montmaray.

Now, I have a very few quibbles regarding the series overall.  Throughout the first two books, I wondered how the author would come up with a satisfying ending for Toby, whose homosexuality is definitely part of the story.  He is accepted by his family, but homosexuality was still illegal in Britain at this time.  (See, for instance, the sad story of Alan Turing, codebreaker at Bletchley Park and father of computer science, who was prosecuted for his homosexuality in 1952.)  Another tricky aspect of the story I wondered over was the post-war fate of the main characters, who belong to a royal family, but who will enter into a Britain dominated by the Labour government, nationalization, and the decline of the aristocracy.  Cooper resolves these problems in ways that are eminently satisfying to the reader who is invested in these characters' welfare.  On the other hand, the ending, dare I say it, might be a bit too happy and easy?  It's hard to say.

My other quibble is perhaps a little harder to explain.  I sometimes felt that Sophia, whose siblings and friends are involved in major ways in the war and the politics surrounding it, especially as the royal family of a technically combatant nation, sometimes came off as slightly ignorant or indifferent to the historical events happening around her.  I know part of this is likely a narrative device, to provide the contemporary teen (or adult) reader with historical and political information as Sophie learns it.  I am also aware that Sophia is not nearly as politically minded as Veronica.  But it sometimes seemed that Sophie should have had more of an interest in, say, the Italian front, and this made her characterization seem slightly uneven at times.

These are small quibbles, and don't detract from the overall strength of the trilogy as a whole.

To finish, I will also say that I was impressed by the way that Cooper handles the sexuality of her characters, which by the third book have almost all entered adulthood.  They discuss and consider their own attitudes toward sexual experience prior to and after marriage and think critically about how their views mesh with those of 1930s and 40s "Society".  Veronica even comes out against matrimony, as a clearly thought through stance.  Because we have watched Veronica's intellectual development and her feminist politics, this rather unorthodox position on marriage isn't all that surprising and reflects her principles (especially since she would lose her job at the Foreign Office if she married).  Sophia depicts two sexual experiences, not in any explicit detail, but certainly in ways that illuminate her character and relationships with men.

Overall, this is a fabulous historical YA series and I feel rather sorry for readers (like my mom) in North America who have to wait for the October release date to find out what happens to the FitzOsbornes.

A Montmaravian Update

I discovered shortly after posting my review of the first two FitzOsborne books, that Michelle Cooper is unfortunately not published in Britain.  Thus, the third book in the trilogy, The FitzOsbornes at War isn't going to be available in Britain any time soon.  So, I've ordered it up from Australia from Gleebooks of Sydney.  (Michelle Cooper has put together a handy guide on how to order her books from North America and Europe here.)  Now I just need to be patient.

All this reminds me of a time, several years ago, when I ordered books and CDs from overseas with much more regularity.  I think the last book I ordered from Australia was Alison Croggon's The Singing, the fantastic last book in her Pellinor quartet.  I also used to order up CDs from the British and (at least once) German Amazon websites, back in the days when I couldn't get my favourite European metal albums in brick-and-mortar CD stores or from iTunes.  Thankfully, iTunes seems to cover all the music I enjoy now.

In retrospect, those were probably rather expensive undertakings.  But I was a book and music obsessed undergraduate with disposable income then.

I should mention that if you are in the UK, you can download the Kindle edition of The FitzOsbornes at War for about £10.  (It's about twice that to order a hard copy from Oz).  However, I'm a huge codex fancier and I already have the first two books and why would I want to ruin a complete, matching set?  So, no ebooks for me.  Not any time soon at least.

Review: Books One and Two of The Montmaray Journals

Australian edition

I've just finished reading two fantastic books: Michelle Cooper's A Brief History of Montmaray and The FitzOsbornes in Exile.  Happily for me, The Montmaray Journals are a trilogy, so there's also The FitzOsbornes at War to read.  I'm dying to find out what happens to my new favourite fictional family.  Updated:  As I've discovered today that Michelle Cooper does not have a UK publisher, I'll be ordering the third book from Australia.  The third book comes out in the US/Canada in October.

A Brief History of Montmaray is the journal of the sixteen-year-old Princess Sophia FitzOsborne of Montmaray, a tiny island located in the Bay of Biscay, founded in the 16th century by an Cornish aristocrat who fled England after an affair with Katherine Howard (Henry VIII's fifth wife).  There is of course no such island but Cooper has created a fascinating history for this fictional island and interweaves it with real history (the island helped fight off the Spanish Armada and the castle's curtain wall boasts a hole from when Napoleon fired on the island).

US edition

From the beginning, this book bears a distinct but pleasant resemblance to Dodie Smith's classic I Capture the Castle.  Sophie lives in the crumbling castle of Montmaray (ahem, fortified house) with her young tomboy sister Henry, her intellectual cousin Veronica, and her mad uncle King John.  She also has an older brother Toby, away at school in England, bankrolled by stern Aunt Charlotte, the only family member with any money.  And she has a terrible crush on the housekeeper's son, Simon Chester.  Though everyone in the family is an HRM or HRH, these characters are not privileged at all - everyone helps clean and cook and take care of their animals.  They're also extremely cut off from the world, with only a dodgy wireless and newspapers from passing ships to keep them informed.

However, when two SS men turn up one day, the seemingly distant Spanish Civil War and the increasing power of the German Nazis begin to have ramifications for Montmaray.  One of the men is a real historical figure, Otta Rahn, who is convinced that the Holy Grail might be located on Montmaray.

Gorgeous US edition

The second book, The FitzOsbornes in Exile follows the family from 1937 to just before the outbreak of the World War Two.  Sophie and her family are now in England, having fled Montmaray (I won't say exactly why, but you can perhaps guess).  All of sudden, they are indeed moving in high society, among Mitfords and Kennedys.  However, the girls especially are no longer able to conduct themselves as they choose, now living under their Aunt Charlotte's authority.

And what Aunt Charlotte wants most of all is to see Sophie, Veronica, and Toby married well, which is problematic, as Veronica is (by society standards) overly intellectual and overly political, which is rather troublesome in the days of Appeasement.  And Toby, the new king of Montmaray, is gay.  Veronica and Sophie don't care, but they are also acutely aware that homosexuality is in fact illegal, so Toby had best not get caught.

This book follows Sophie and her family through three London Seasons, through helping Basque refugee children after the horrific bombing of Guernica, and on their quest to reclaim Montmaray from the Nazis.  The last entry of Sophie's diary in this book is 23 August 1839.  I read the last pages with a sense of dread.  The Germans marched into Poland on 1 September 1839.

US edition

So now I'm burning to find out what will happen to these characters in World War II.  The bombing of London is coming; new opportunities are going to open up for women; and the men will go off to fight.  Simon and Toby have both already signed up for the RAF.

These are fantastic books, especially for anyone interested in the Brideshead Revisited/interwar era and stories of crumbling aristocratic, eccentric families.  Cooper has obviously done her research, down to very small details (for instance, that von Rippentrop earned the nicknamed von Ribbensnob while ambassador in London).  There is a lot of history and politics and diplomacy, so that these books actually reminded me a bit of the political manoeuvring in Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief books.

Review: CODE NAME VERITY by Elizabeth Wein

UK Cover

Elizabeth Wein’s novel Code Name Verity is, in part, the confession of a female SOE agent captured by the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied France.  Verity, who keeps her real name hidden for much of the book and is alternately referred to as Queenie or Scottie (she is adamantly not English), has sold eleven sets of wireless code to the Gestapo in return for an end to torture and time enough to write down everything she knows about the British war effort.  Verity’s narrative, however, is also a way to abuse her Nazi captors and, most importantly, to explain how she came to be in France, which means telling the story of her friendship with Maddie Brodatt, the female pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary who flew her over the Channel.

Through Verity’s strong and distinctive voice, we learn about the ‘sensational team’ that Maddie and Verity make and how they fight to assist the British war effort as pilots, spies, and wireless operators, despite others’ doubts about their abilities and bureaucratic barriers at every turn.  There are moments of transcendent, lovingly described flight in this novel (Wein herself is a pilot), evoking the freedom and responsibility so grudgingly allowed these young women.  Their beautifully developed friendship is structured by Verity and Maddie’s telling each other their ten greatest fears, which change over the course of the novel, as they are faced with increasing danger to themselves and others and must make impossible decisions.  Verity and Maddie are both engaging characters, with individual voices.  The Gestapo characters are complex and human and each responds to his or her role in interrogating spies and resistance fighters in various and realistic shades of grey.

US Cover - Release May 15, 2012

This novel has two narratives, of which it is best not to say too much – ‘Careless talk costs lives’.  However, the second narrative throws Verity’s into sharp relief, providing a different perspective on the events of the novel, and delves into the question of what narrative truth – verity – means.  This is a captivating thriller, as well as a heart-breaking story of friendship in wartime, and it demands to be read over again to see just how wonderfully constructed Wein’s double narrative is.

P.S.  This novel reminded me in places of Mal Peet's fabulous novel Tamar, which also featured British SOE agents behind enemy lines.  If you like Code Name Verity, and I suspect you will, you may well enjoy Peet's novel as well.

The Oxford Literary Festival: Part Two – The Genre/Literary Divide

The Oxford Literary Festival comes to an end this weekend, but my attendance is now complete and I have four signed books to show for it, just as I had hoped.  If there was a pattern to the first part of my experience of the festival, it would have been children’s and YA books and writing.  If there is a pattern to the second part, it would be the literary fiction/genre fiction divide, something I have rather strong opinions about, as a writer of a YA fantasy novel and a doctoral student looking at those very canonical authors, the Brontes.  My reading and writing tends to be, as Lev Grossman might say, rather bifurcated (gosh, isn’t that a great word?).

Tuesday, I attended a panel discussion rather provokingly called But Is It Literature?, at which Christopher Priest, author of The Prestige, and Mark Billingham, a crime writer, spoke.  I had read neither of these authors, but I do like speculative and crime fiction (when done well) and the topic interested me.  I think there are some really fascinating issues to be dug into regarding genre fiction and literary fiction, itself, as Mr. Billingham said, a genre like any other with its own tropes and expectations. 

However, with all due respect to the panellists and the moderator, I didn’t feel this discussion really grappled with the issues surrounding “literariness” and where genre fiction fits into that.  Last year’s Booker shortlist, roundly criticized for including books partly on the basis of readability, was raised and the naysayers lambasted.  The topic of reading for enjoyment came up.  Mark Billingham seemed to suggest that if you don’t enjoy a book, there is no good reason to go on with it.  I read Victorian literature for enjoyment now; when I slogged through Jane Eyre at fifteen, it was much less enjoyable.  However, it was also valuable training for the more difficult books I was going to meet and fall in love with in future life.  Readability and enjoyment cannot be the be all and end all; on the other hand, there is no point to book that is trying only to be difficult (*cough*Finnegan’s Wake?*cough*).

I was also surprised that in a discussion of the literary merits of genre fiction, language and prose style weren’t raised until an audience member asked a question about it.  So, on the whole, I felt there was much more to be discussed on the topic.

Thursday, I attended a panel called The Power of the Critic, at which Andrew Holgate and Peter Kemp, editor and reviewer, respectively, for the Sunday Times’ book review pages spoke.  The discourse here was much different from at the genre talk.  The process of deciding which books to review and the dos and don’ts of reviewing were covered, as well as the various ways irate authors can get back at their reviewers following bad reviews (this usually involves killing off or torturing characters who happen to share the reviewer's name in one’s next book).  On this panel, the Booker shortlist of last year was roundly criticized (though I did agree that Alan Hollinghurst’s excellent The Stranger’s Child probably should have been included) and the criteria of “readability” dismissed.  Internally, I went “Ack!” at that point.  What’s wrong with a good story?

Also, if the audience was anything to go by, broadsheet reviewing may be in trouble in this country.  I’m sure I was the youngest person in the room.

Tonight, I attended my final event of the festival.  Lev Grossman, the literary critic from Time Magazine and the author of the wonderful literary fantasy novel The Magicians spoke on storytelling and the new avant-garde of American novels at an event hosted by the Rothermere American Institute.  It was a fantastic talk and it covered a lot of the areas I had hoped would be discussed at the But Is It Literature? panel. 

Grossman gave a brief history of the novel, from Robinson Crusoe (1719) through to Henry James and the High Modernists.  He argued that for the first 150 or so years of the novel’s life, it was a genre that could be both High and Low in terms of art.  Dickens was a popular novelist, after all.  However, he identified James as first putting his work forward as high art only (which is rather amusing, since James referred to The Turn of the Screw, one of his most influential books, as a pot-boiler).  The Modernists, seeking to subvert the realist, linear narratives of their Victorian youths in the aftermath of World War I, created a high art version of the novel with fragmented narrative, difficult language, stream of consciousness, etc., which we now call the literary novel.

And so, since then, the literary novel and the genre novel have been running on parallel tracks, never meeting.  Grossman suggested that with the growing number of literary novelists now using genre elements in their novels (Michael Chabon, Cormac McCarthy) and the equally large number of genre writers exploding their genres and writing literary novels (Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, China Mieville, etc.) that these two novelistic forms might be working their way back toward each other.

The big change here, Grossman submitted, is an renewed interest in old-fashioned storytelling.  As an exemplar of this new avant-garde in novel-writing, he put forward George R. R. Martin, who, Grossman believes, is plotting in sophisticated ways that no literary novelist could match.  The Modernist version of the literary novel is very old; new novelists are fusing genre and literary elements and re-embracing plot.  As a reader of the literary canon and some contemporary literature (mostly historical – more story-based) and a lot of young adult and fantasy literature, this is a trend I can wholeheartedly support.  Long may it continue!

Lev Grossman then very kindly signed my copy of The Magicians – my fourth signed book of the festival.

Oxford Literary Festival 2012: Days 1 and 2

To my delight, the Oxford Literary Festival has begun and will be running through to the end of next weekend.  So far, I have attended three events and had three books signed.  Not bad at all.

The bookish fun began Saturday morning, at a panel discussion about Dickens and children's literature featuring Philip Pullman, J. D. Sharpe, and Christopher Edge and chaired by Mario Dickens Lloyd, an editor and great-great granddaughter of the great man himself.

I was heartened to find out that all three authors had come to Dickens through various adaptations as children and teens and started reading the books themselves as adults, which is much the same way I came to Dickens.  I was afraid they would all be terribly precocious and have read David Copperfield as young children (I think I've heard Claire Tomalin say she did this). 

Perhaps the best part of this talk was having Philip Pullman sign our lovely Everyman's edition of His Dark Materials.  Also, he confirmed that Will's portal at the beginning of The Subtle Knife is very close to where we live.  I will do my best, however, not to slip into alternate universes.

Then, in the evening, there was a panel called Life, Death, and Other Grown-Up Subjects, with YA authors Patrick Ness, Moira Young, Tim Bowler, and Sally Nicholls.  There was much discussion of the necessity of a certain degree of darkness or extremity in constructing stories with high stakes and that won't come off as "humbug" to teens.  Tim Bowler pointed out that even tragedy with the everyone-dead-on-the-stage ending has its place in our literature; after all, if we didn't have Shakespeare's tragedies, we would be missing quite a lot.  There was also interesting discussion around the benefits of writerly doubt and terrible, lovely difficulty of writing novels.  Teri Terry over at Notes from the Slushpile has blogged about the panel in much more detail.

After this, it was off to the pub for an evening of chatting books, writing, and publishing with some lovely Oxford-area Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators members (I became a member about a month ago - a great decision!).

Then on Sunday morning, I attended a three-hour workshop called Bookcamp: How to get a Children's Book Published, with Julia Churchill from the Greenhouse Literary Agency and Leah Thaxton, publishing director at Egmont UK.  Julia and Leah gave similar talks at a recent SCWBI Professional Series meeting in London, which has been blogged about in much more detail by JE Towey and and Caroline Hooton.

However, some general observations.  First of all, it's really lovely to know that agents and publishers, apart from anything else, are really just looking for great books they can fall in love with.  Of course, then the challenge is to write a really great book.  Yikes.

Julia explained that for writers, there's really not much point in paying attention to publishing trends, because the timescales involved in selling and then publishing a book are so long.  By the time your book comes out, say, 2 years after signing with an agent, the field will have changed a great deal anyway.  Leah described the ideal editor for one's book, as well as a publisher's ideal author (in part, a writer who is willing to work hard to improve the manuscript!).  Also, apparently people within the industry are getting worn out by vampire novels, unless they have a humorous spin to them (perhaps like Eat, Slay, Love).

Because the Bologna Book Fair was just last week, I asked if there were any interesting trends that had come up there.  Leah said what she is looking for in particular is joyful, life affirming stories and humour, especially for a younger audience.  Julia said the only trend she discerned was the publishers were looking for contemporary romances with a twist.  Very interesting, even just from the standpoint of a reader who loves children's books.

I came away from the morning with a head packed full of information and a keen desire to get back to editing my MS.

P.S.  That last event was held at Queen's College, which is beautiful!  I must go back soon with Tim and play tourist.