Bristol fashion

I moved to Bristol four years ago, around the same time that I first started writing The Book of Summers. To me the city is synonymous with every stage that my manuscript went through, in its writing and re-writing. I played with plot as I walked the Bristol streets, to and from work. I sat in Bristol cafés, tinkering with characters. And I did a lot of dreaming, in Bristol supermarket queues, in the corners of Bristol pubs and across the Downs parklands. So it's rather fitting that my first interview as an author should appear in Bristol's local paper The Evening Post. Many thanks to Suzanne Savill for such a great write-up, and for this line perhaps above all:


It is a book that is exquisitely written, with a plot that is both uplifting and heartbreaking, and a sense of place that has the potential to do for Hungary what author Peter Mayle did for Provence. 


A Year In Provence, j'adore. You can read the piece in full here.

Beginnings

One of the questions I’ve been asked a lot over the past few months is, ‘did you always want to be a writer?’ And the answer, of course, is ‘yes’. When I went home for Christmas I found signs everywhere that the path I’m on is one my ten-year-old self would approve of…

My family home hasn’t changed for decades. Maybe it’s a sign of my parents’ nostalgia, but you won’t find spritzed and neutral guest quarters in their house – my bedroom is more or less the same as when I left it. The bookcases creak with pony club paperbacks and college texts, Daniel Deronda sharing shelf space with Arthur Ransome, Le Morte d’Arthur nudging up against a book of fairy spells. My old typewriter sits on the window sill. I remember being a lousy typist and in the end I got fed up of spending my pocket money on eraser ribbon and went back to my notebooks and blobbing fountain pens. And behold this for vanity: In the kitchen, a piece of my writing still hangs framed on the wall, approximately twenty five years after I decided it’d make the perfect birthday present for my mum. It’s a piece I wrote at primary school when we were set the task of describing the houses we lived in. I wrote about our Devon cottage, huddling under its thatch on the side of a hill. I noted the crumbled patch of wall where I leant my bike, a head of straw poking through the cob. I mentioned the quiet corner, where beneath a spindly apple tree our old cat is buried.

But despite the copious books, the tools of the trade, the celebrated, um, early works… it’s when I go into the garden of my childhood that I remember all over again why being a writer was always the right thing for me. The garden was the place where I dreamt up my stories, where I slipped into worlds of my own making. It wasn’t the biggest patch of land but it felt like it, the way it ran in a slope that gathered speed, the edges of the earth falling away into the neighbouring field. The way the hillside opposite seemed to be in touching distance, but really lay beyond a line of gangly birches, a twisting lane and a knee-deep stream. I’d stay out in my garden until darkness fell and the foxes started barking in the high woods, and, come morning, I’d be the first to dance away the lawn’s dew. Sometimes I kicked a football or batted around a shuttlecock, built a den or a bike assault course, but mostly I spent my time exploring; my feet treading the same old ground, my mind somewhere else altogether. My mum used to open a window and call out ‘are you talking to yourself?’ I’d shake my head, then pick up the story where I’d left off.

This Christmas, upon my return, the garden was etched out by winter. Old sweet corn stems stood cracked and white. A new crop of leeks persisted messily. Long rotted apples were scattered like billiard balls. The birches had lost their leaves and the distance hillside seemed closer than ever. So too, did my memories of a childhood spent roaming the edges of a page. Plucking words from thin air. Travelling, ad infinitum, in my garden of verse.

Resolutions for life and reading

For 2012 I'm making resolutions on reading - with a little help from Raymond Carver. You can read them over at the Book Slam website, where I'll be blogging through the year. 

Happy New Year, one and all. May 2012 bring us books to make our souls sing, and plenty more besides.

Here comes the sun

In the bleak midwinter, it's comforting to think that it's always summer somewhere. I woke up yesterday, on a cold and wet Bristol morning, to a wonderfully warm review of The Book of Summers from the Australian books site, Booktopia. Describing it as 'a lovely coming of age story with a sting in its tail', Toni Whitmont writes:


'Newcomer Emylia Hall weaves a touch of magic in The Book of Summers... the magic of snatched dreams, half-recollected in the dawn. The magic of snapshots of memory. The magic of some really beautifully pieced together sentences.'

To read the review in full, go here. Thank you, Booktopia! And here's to a sun-filled Christmas Down Under. 

Happy Mondays

I love Mondays. This is a relatively new state of being, traceable from the end of October when I began to write full-time and with a capital W. I love them for lazy reasons (lolling in bed reading, edging into the day with peanut butter on toast and a mug of coffee) and sparky reasons (embarking on a working week that'll include new words written and take me ever closer to Publication Day). But this Monday has surpassed all others... 


First, The Book of Summers was blessed with a truly lovely first review. Great thanks to book blogger Charlotte Chase for reading it so kindly and describing it as 'a captivating first novel' and 'a delicate treat'... Wow. As a newbie author whose edges are yet to be roughened and toughened, these are words to be cupped and cherished. You can read it here.

Then... the Red Pages published their Hot 100 list for 2012 this morning. Tis the season for lists aplenty, but this one caught my eye more than most. Last year the only novelist to be included was Téa Obreht and she went on to do okay, didn't she? In previous years Poppy Adams and Adam Foulds have appeared alongside actors, singers, models, child-stars, chihuahas and the like. Therefore it's sort of crazy to see that for 2012 I'm listed, along with fellow Headline writer Eowyn Ivey, author of the wonderful The Snow Child. Oh, and Lana Del Ray's on there too. Just saying.

I know, I know, this is the golden time. When the dream and the reality are twining in crazy fashion, and with a magnanimity that even a relentless optimist such as me knows cannot last forever. And so I tell myself this; there won't always be glowing reviews and hot lists but there will be other things. Like peanut butter. A second pot of coffee. A novel to read. And new words to be written. And that's enough to make me glad on just about any day - especially a Monday.

New for 2012

In the January issue of ELLE magazine, Naomi Wood, Morgan McCarthy and I are tipped as three of 2012's "most anticipated debut novelists". What a thrill. As a teen, ELLE was the first 'grown-up glossy' I ever bought (Just Seventeen never did it for me, nor the naughty More, the mag my classmates used to cluster round, giggling into their sleeves). I'd read it as my village bus bumped along the country lanes, with fields of moody bullocks looking on. I'd feel glamorous just for having a copy of ELLE in my hands, for it was like peering into another world. Not that I was dissatisfied with my own, but I had the curious nature (curious? Nosy) that I suppose all writers are born with, and the wish to live more lives than one.

     
Back to now. In the feature 'We've only just begun', each of us write on the subject of 'new.' My piece is about me quitting my job in a London advertising agency to become a chalet girl. And how it was during those months in the mountains that I realised what I really wanted to do. I've said elsewhere on the pages of this blog that I owe a debt of gratitude to the high peaks of the Portes du Soleil, for that is where I gently found my way with words. I never tire of celebrating what those months meant to me. There, I wrote a little poetry, the kind that only ever stays between the pages of a notebook and is quite happy doing so, and I began to plan a novel. After six months of chalet work, the time I write about in ELLE, my boyfriend and I decided to go back for another winter. We rented a tiny one-room appartment, with a balcony that just had room for a table and chair. That was the notoriously mild winter of 06/07, where the lower ski slopes were streaked with mud and peppered with pebbles, and the days were long and sun-filled. As winter ebbed to spring and snowboarders turned their last tricks in the park, or rolled down off the mountain and into the town's bars, I sat on our balcony and wrote. 

'A new view' is the title of my ELLE piece. And while I took that literally, decamping to a part of France where there were inspiring vistas at every turn, I do believe that we can change the view from our window at any moment. Watch the clouds clear. Spot a ray of light. For the mind is by far our nimblest mode of travel. We just need to work out where we want to go. 

A fashionable reading list...

It's lovely to see The Book of Summers in the January issue of ASOS magazine. It's included in their '2012 Preview' and tops their recommended reading list.  Hurrah!  Thanks, ASOS. Clearly the only way to celebrate is to go and do a little online shopping over at their place... the leopard print ballet pumps are winking at me, but then so is the tangerine leather satchel... maybe a more bookish choice... and the knitted earmuffs are just, well, practical. Perhaps I'd better get started on a list of my own.  

My golden city

When I was at university I spent a year living in Lausanne, on the shores of Switzerland's Lac Léman. My tiny room in university lodgings opened onto a balcony with an uninterrupted view of tumbling rooftops, the shining lake and jagged mountains rising beyond. I couldn't believe my luck. There, I read Molière and Rimbaud, and wrote an essay on A Farewell To Arms, whose final pages take place in the city. I watched the sun rise and set, and hung spellbound on the railing as electric storms churned the lake waters and rimmed Les Dents du Midi in neon. To be possessed of such a thrilling and unexpected view seemed to set the tone for a year that shines golden in my memory. I was nineteen, the age of possibility, and Lausanne with all of its elegance and drama suited me perfectly. It was a Riviera playground, the like of which I'd only ever read about. Just along the shore was Montreux, with its palm trees and casinos, where gentle old folk promenaded in furs and cavern jazz bars were tucked off steep and winding streets.  We used to take the train there on a sunday sometimes, eat roasted chestnuts down by the water and drink wine that came from the vines that rose vertically behind the town. It is these places and this time that are the inspiration behind my second, work in progress, novel. Last weekend I went back to Lausanne, to remember and remember and to find new stories to tell. While the words are still finding themselves, I turn mostly to pictures.

Ouchy, Lausanne's waterfront, out of season.

A grey November day, brightened.

Graffiti on chipboard? Everything seems picturesque.

Lausanne's old town - the stuff of fairy tales and hidden stories.

Rude colour blooms in glitzy Montreux.

Nabakov passed happy years at the Montreux Palace, holed up in a suite.

Retracing footsteps, along the shores of Léman.

Terms of endearment, in Lausanne centre.

In my last days as a student in Lausanne, I remember going to see my tutor just before I was due to return to England. She asked me why I seemed so reluctant to leave.  Had I fallen in love? she said. Oh, yes, I replied. For I had, and I was sure that Lausanne loved me back. Returning now, twelve years on, I'm still flushed with passion for the place.  I passed one of the happiest years of my life on that lakeside, and over the mountains on the opposite shore I spent two snow-filled winters, just a few years ago. It's a corner of the world that will forever be linked for me with an unerring sense of possibility. Of new beginnings. And of tales worth telling.

The Book of Summers - the movie

Or, at least, a trailer.  Which in my world is almost as exciting as a feature length picture.

The trailer was launched at www.thebookofsummers.co.uk,  just as a number of special limited edition proof copies were sent out by the Headline marketing team.  These books are a thing of beauty - hard-backed, cloth-bound and adorned with delicately foiled gold flowers.  I went into the Headline offices to sign them all a few weeks ago - my first official signing session. I tried to play it cool but, really, my delight was there for all to see. 

As if the proofs themselves were not lovely enough they were then packaged in brown paper parcels tied up with string, and further decorated with poppies and Hungarian stamps.

A huge thank you to Vicky Cowell for making the build-up to publication feel so special. Where are we now - November?  Four months and counting...

An extra day of summer

Just as the rest of the country was adjusting to the first Monday out of British summertime, the lovely people at Hachette Towers were basking in the warm glow of what they're calling 'an extra day of summer.'  Thanks to Vicky Cowell (marketing whizz) and Leah Woodburn (editor extraordinaire) 250 Hungarian Ischler biscuits were baked over the weekend and laid out for the Hachette workforce as they arrived this morning - a piece of homebaking of industrial proportions.  Ischlers are no ordinary biscuit.  Made of two rounds of walnut shortbread, stuck fast with apricot jam and painted over with chocolate, they're a real Hungarian treat.  My mum makes them for us at Christmas, and whenever else we can persuade her to dust off her walnut grinder. In the loving hands of Headline, Ischlers were served accompanied with proof copies of my novel, and specially-created recipe cards.  All in all, it was a celebration of The Book of Summers, designed to whet the taste buds and the literary appetites of all throughout the Hachette building.  I'm told they ran out of proofs before the working day officially began... as for the Ischlers, I suspect they might have disappeared even more quickly.  

The best goodbye

Parting is - thanks, Will - such sweet sorrow.  I always knew that my last day at work would be emotional.  I didn't expect those emotions to include amazement, astonishment and bewilderment.  And all before the clock struck nine o'clock in the morning.  Here's what happened...


It all began when husband Bobby said he'd walk me to work.  Out of the ordinary, but not suspicion-inducing.  We set off together, passing a Metro vendor en route.  Bobby reached out and took a copy, then handed it to me as we walked.  'You might want to see this,' he said.  I took it disinterestedly and glanced down, only to see my own, almost-as-large-as-life face staring back out of the newsprint.  At the base of the page ran an ad for The Book of Summers - Boxing Monthly apparently thinks I'm a real contender. The article was a piece about me leaving my role of Agency Champion (nifty moniker, non?) to begin a career as a writer.  And on the back page was a mock film poster for The Book of Summers The Movie, starring all my favourites... The Gosling, Audrey Tautou et al.  Whaaaaaat?  For one horrific moment I thought Bobby had bought a Bristol-wide run of Metro cover-wraps, making him one of those guys... you know, the kind that emblazon roadside posters with things like, 'Happy 50th Maureen, love Tony and the kids'... sweet, very sweet, but not quite cool.  My look was somewhere between gratitude and mortification.  What had he done? 

But, it turned out, he hadn't done anything at all (except a series of stealth hand gestures to warn the briefed-up Metro vendor that I was coming).  It was all the work of my friends at EMO, the marketing agency where I've worked on (mostly) and off (2010 - to write) for four years. One of the things they specialise in is community events and 'face to face consumer engagement' (true dat), so I suppose I should have guessed that me as Metro cover-girl was 1/1, and that yet more carefully planned antics would lie ahead.  That's right... my last ever walk to work turned out to be quite the magical mystery tour.

Paper in hand, we carried on walking.  College Green has been a tented Occupy village for days, and just as we were rounding the corner near the site four protestors jumped out with placards, chanting, 'Please don't go!' It was.... EMO again.  Specifically, Sarah, Annabel, Kristin, Ewan and a cardboard cut-out of the absent Kevin.  Mildly startled passers-by looked at us with interest and/ or reproof.  Bobby's shoulder came in handy as a place to hide my teary face.  I particularly liked the sign that said, 'Down With Bankers, Up With Mimi.'  Yeah!

Then someone suggested coffee.  We traipsed off up Park Street and ducked into the nearest café, to draw a little breath.  Moments later the barista turned to me and said, 'Enjoy your latte, Mimi.'  Okay yes, so... I'd never seen her before.  The cup she held out to me had my face beaming back on it, and carried a coffee-related quote from a short story competition I wrote eons ago.  Kind of bedazzling that anyone remembered I even wrote it, let alone could lay their hands on a copy of it still.  Two more work pals (Zoe, Andy) then jumped out from the corner of the coffee shop, to film the spectacle that was now a crying girl with her hands full of printed items mostly featuring her own face.  Whew.

Later, when I arrived at my desk, I saw a box of tissues awaiting me - with more moi branding and flowers from The Book of Summers cover art.  Were it not for my incessant booing I'd have have kept them intact.  

I later learnt that if it hadn't been for delayed trains, overly long coffee stops and pesky parking meters then I would also have been treated to a couple of busking boys (Gaz, Frank) on the steps of the office, singing Here Comes The Sun and strumming guitars.  You know, I'm sort of glad that didn't happen.  It might have sent me over the edge and into HR's office, demanding that they rip up my resignation letter.  Having the kind of workmates that get up early for you, skulk in shadows, tip off Metro workers, chant and protest, dig out your old words and brand mugs with them and learn one of your favourite songs, well... they don't come along too often.  Thank you, guys, so very much, for knocking my socks off in such inspired and lovely fashion.


The morning turned to day and day turned to night and night turned to Jägerbombs.  I said goodbye to my dear work friends down on the waterside, knowing that I'd been given a very special send-off. Knowing also, that if in the days to come loneliness creeps or block descends then all I need to do is pick up my very own copy of Metro and know that there are plenty of people cheering me on in this writing life. For all my reluctance to leave the place I've loved being a part of these last four years, I know that a brave new world awaits.  And I can't wait to join it. 

What poetry can do

The other week I heard Romola Garai talk about 'the music of poetry' as part of the Bristol Poetry Festival. Purists may argue that the author of a poem is the very best reader of it, but after an evening of hearing Romola read, I'm not so sure. She opened with  'How To Cut A Pomegranate' by Imtiaz Dharker, a poem I've always loved.  Or have I?  It made me think of that line in Crazy Heart when Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) is talking about songs and says, that's the way it is with good ones, you're sure you've heard them before.  'How To Cut A Pomegranate' is a luminous piece of writing and the lines, 'Inside is a whole universe.  No common jewel can give you this,' seem to encapsulate the magic of poetry itself. From there the night unfolded with the likes of Seamus Heaney and Robert Frost, Derek Walcott and Fleur Adcock.  And, for me, some new treasures, in Julia Darling and Rosemary Tonks.  


That was a Monday night. I'd gone along on my own, and sat on a hard chair with a small glass of red wine for the best part of two hours. My wine ran out early on and I wished I'd chosen a larger glass, but I drank in the poetry instead. The simple act of being read to, as part of a crowd, was intoxicating. And as much as I was listening, I also found my mind pleasantly wandering.  Lost in the beauty of words - words crafted and shaped and caressed by people who really loved them and had made it their lives to do so - I thought about my own writing. Inspired, I made quiet but sturdy resolutions. Later that night I walked home, feeling the first dark shades of autumn. The streets of Clifton were wet and cold and quiet, but I was flushed with the heat of a new plan.  That was a Monday.  On the Friday I took a leap and resigned from my day job.  The writing life awaits me.  I will endeavour to fill it with poetry and perfectly cut pomegranates.          

Different strokes

*Warning!  Contains 'The Stranger's Child' and 'Nemesis' spoilers (only sort of - but you can't be too careful).*


My reading preferences (and listening preferences, and viewing preferences...) sometimes collide with those of my husband, but generally we tread quite different paths and are quite happy doing so.  Now and again this is thrown into sharp relief, and no more so than last night as we both climbed into bed and reached for brand new books from our bedside tables (this makes us sound old, old, old - why, why, why?).  Mine was Alan Hollinghurst's 'The Stranger's Child', his was Jo Nesbo's 'Nemesis'.  We were both chuffed with our choices and eager to tuck in.  It's true, they could have been more different, but nonetheless we played a game that was just hilarious.  Really, you've got to try it.  I think we'll call it 'the compare-the-opening-sentence-of-each-chapter-in-the-book-you're-reading-with-the-ones-in-the-book-that-someone-else-is-reading game.'  


It went like this...


My chapter 1: She'd been lying in the hammock reading poetry for over an hour.
His chapter 1: I'm going to die.


My chapter 2: While the maid was removing the tea-things, Freda Sawle stood up and wandered between the small tables and numerous little armchairs to the open window.
His chapter 2: The old man reminded Harry of an astronaut.


My chapter 3: Up in the spare bedroom, Jonah settled the first suitcase on the bed, and ran his hands over the smooth hard leather.
His chapter 3: 'Seen the video?'


My chapter 4: Hubert forwent his bath that evening, and had what he felt was an unsatisfactory wash in his room.
His chapter 4: 'Snow?'


Hilarity, as you might imagine, ensued.  Once recovered, we settled down to the business of reading - both lost in completely different worlds, but still hunkered convivially side-by-side. Me wondering perhaps a little bit why the old man reminded Harry of an astronaut, and Bobby not in the least bit curious about Hubert's bathroom habits.

Two new arrivals

As a fairly-recently married woman of a certain age, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that when I excitedly tell people that 'I have some news' more often than not their eyes go directly to my belly (where - depending on the size of the dinner I've eaten the night before - their suspicions are momentarily either confirmed or denied).  I should be used to it, I guess.  I've been working part-time for three years now and all too often this fact is met with the assumption that I've got tots at home that need tending, rather than words that need writing.   Last week, however, we were blessed in welcoming two new arrivals into our home, so perhaps there's merit in the presumption after all... 


First came my husband's new graphic novel, Baggage.  On Thursday he received an advance copy from his publisher, David Fickling Books.  If Baggage was a baby he'd be a giggling, rambunctious type, forever putting unsuitable objects up his nose and spoiling his nappy.  I cooed as I turned the pages for the first time and, as ever, the work of The Etherington Brothers left me doe-eyed and proud as punch.

Then on Friday came another bundle of joy!  A proof copy of The Book of Summers.  I've spent countless hours writing-reading-rewriting my manuscript, but to actually see it bound between two gorgeous covers and hold it in my hands.... well, suddenly the whole thing became wonderfully real. And, like an awed mum-to-be clutching a picture of that first scan, I was smitten.  

I don't doubt that I'll be pulling my proof from my handbag at the slightest opportunity, saying 'isn't she beautiful?' and 'look, you can see her spine.'  Maybe in the run-up to Publication Day I'll even be able to get away with late-night cravings, sending my husband out onto the streets seeking pistachio ice-cream and salted caramels.  And I certainly envisage sleepless nights ahead, where we'll toss and we'll turn and in the end console one another with the whispered promise that the world will be kind to our offspring.  Knowing that all we can really do is work hard and hope.

When we were up we were up...

It's been a funny old week.


It began with a very exciting book deal with an American publisher - a dizzying feeling, to know that my words will be going across the pond - and it ended with an inspiring first face-to-face meeting with my editor at Headline, Leah Woodburn.  She showed me the initial cover design for The Book of Summers, and we talked animatedly about proof copies and what the next few months would hold.  Afterwards, I went to Liberty and enjoyed easily the most delicious piece of carrot cake I've ever had, and bought a turquoise leather document wallet for no other reason than it's very beautiful and soft as butter.


But throughout it all, my brother-in-law has been in hospital with an acute appendicitis.  He's the kind of guy who's given to superlatives, so fittingly his was no ordinary deal; he rocked the whole gangrenous, doctor-baffling, relative-terrifying variety.  Thank all the gods, he's home safe now.  But in the midst of his illness I was in Sainsbury's, queuing behind an elderly woman.  She was - as tradition has it - taking her sweet time, and talking to the check-out lady (who was no spring chicken herself) about her niggling and various ailments. As she shuffled away with her groceries the assistant smiled up at me and said, 'don't ever get old, dear.'  I pretended to hunt for my Nectar card but really I was trying not to cry a little bit.  Because, given the alternatives, it's about the best thing we can do, isn't it, getting old?  


In William Boyd's Any Human Heart, Logan contemplates a group of lithe and sun-kissed teenagers, and instead of lamenting his lost youth he muses, 'Play on, boys and girls, I say, smoke and flirt, work on your tans, figure out your evening's entertainment.  I wonder if any of you will live as well as I have done.'


Get well soon, Lorenzo.

What do you do when a dream comes true?

You run in the sea and caper like a wild thing...

You bask in the early evening sunlight that has briefly appeared, after a day of bluster and drizzle...

You get your husband to jump off something really HIGH...

... and then you team a bottle of Bollinger with a couple of packets of Scampi Fries and have yourselves a party.

That was the sequence of events when Rowan, my agent, telephoned to say I had a two-book deal with Headline.  Such amazing news is welcome anyhow, anytime, anywhere, but I was on a beach in Devon (a beach I used to go to when I was a child, and always my favourite, as it's reached by a smugglers' tunnel through the cliffs) and the setting made what was already an incredible moment even better.  After all the running and the splashing and the jumping we gathered pebbles to cherish forever and wrote our good fortune with a stick in the sand. Note to superstitious self, the words were duly washed away, was this a good idea after all?!  And then... we went to the pub.

Even now, a couple of weeks on, the news is yet to sink in. I guess it takes a while to accept, and to truly believe. Meeting Rowan in March was a milestone moment, the realisation of which provoked my very first blog. And a month or so ago, along came another...  It was the early hours of the morning and I was making finishing touches to my manuscript, knowing that it would soon be going out to publishers for the first time. It was probably the combination of sleep deprivation, soft lamplight and music in a minor key, but I had a quiet little cry, understanding suddenly and irrevocably that this was a further step along the road. I felt like I was on the cusp of something that night - whether it turned out to be boundless joy, great disappointment, or just a hellish long wait - the moment, I knew, was nigh.  

The strange thing is, I haven't cried once since getting The News, and I am one emotional sap. Maybe that night hunched over my desk was my lot.  Or perhaps the weight of it all will hit me when I least expect it, like when I next see someone innocently munching on a bag of Scampi Fries. Whatever, I'm ready.  

I'm ready.

"Something glimpsed... in passing."

I was introduced to Raymond Carver by Louise Dean, on an Arvon course in November 2008.  I was in a barn, in a huddle of other aspiring writers, as she handed us the poems 'What The Doctor Said' and 'Late Fragment.' It was at the end of a session and around me people were getting ready to leave, shuffling papers and thinking of coffee and cigarettes and a brief break from the relentless pursuit of writerly progression.  But I stayed seated, reading.  Reading and falling in love with the quiet, tough, beauty of Raymond Carver.  


Later, at home in Bristol, I began to read his short stories.  His collection 'Where I'm Calling From' now occupies a permanent spot on my bedside table.  The author's foreword ends on a paragraph that I never fail to find affecting.  I won't quote it here - you need to buy it and read it for yourself.  But it cuts right to the very heart of what it means to read and write, and I love it.  It shames me to say it, but Carver's was the first book of short stories I've ever bought.  However I've proved a quick convert, discovering soon afterwards the incredible writing of Canadian Alice Munro.  Since then, I've never looked back.  


I'm moved to write about these two great short story writers because just a few hours ago I spoke to a friend who is a voracious reader.  One who reads well and reads widely.  And yet... she doesn't think she likes short stories - a reaction that Jonathan Franzen explores in his foreword to Munro's collection, 'Runaway'.  I say 'doesn't think she likes' as I rather think that's all set to change.  Tomorrow I will be presenting her with two of my most prized book-possessions - 'Where I'm Calling From' and 'Runaway'.  I'm not going to say anything to her... I'm going to resist all temptation to wax lyrical... instead I will let the stories speak for themselves, with sweet brevity.  And as V.S Pritchett says, I will leave her to discover "something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing."

Borrowed time

Whenever I visit someone's house for the first time, I always head straight for their bookshelves.  You can tell a lot about a person by the book-company they keep.  The libraries of old friends aren't free from my scrutiny either, and I recently sized up the collection of my friend Sonya.  A fellow York English Grad, her shelves were creaking with righteously-good tomes, and I quickly turned into a child in a sweet shop when she said 'borrow whatever you like.'  That night I took home with me An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay, What I loved by Siri Hustvedt, and Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains by Susan Elderkin.  What a haul!  


The pleasure of borrowing a book is quite different to buying one for yourself.  After peanut butter, chorizo sausage and extra-shot-cappuccinos, books are the thing I buy the most, and the thrill I get each time never diminishes (the same can be said for the other mentioned items). But borrowing a book from a dear friend, or perhaps even more tantalizingly, a newish acquaintance 'of promise', offers a pleasure all of its own - as indeed does lending. As a teen I thrust The Catcher In The Rye upon several potential boyfriends, thinking, 'are you, like Holden, the sort to care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row?'  Then I met a boy at university who already had a copy all of his own on his shelf...  Reader, I married him.


I've just finished the last of my borrowed books, and each were enjoyable and impressive in wholly separate ways.  But it was Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains that captured my imagination the most.  Perhaps it was the Arizona desert setting, conjured with such drama, beauty and a magpie-like eye for glinting detail.  Or maybe it was the dark fairytale-ish feeling that's evoked; don't be swayed by the saccharine title, Elderkin's is a book with its fair share of gruesome, a heady mix of idyllic and uncomfortable that smacks of Grimm... or, sometimes, just plain grim. Or it could even have been the dual storylines that run parallel all the way through and then criss-cross beautifully when you least expect it.  All I know is that I loved it.  And once I've returned it to Sonya, I'll be squeezing a new copy on to my own shelves.  After all, I might want to lend it to someone myself one day.

Wimbledon Love

The Championships, Wimbledon - my favourite two weeks of the year - are underway.  I've always loved Wimbledon, for reasons that are as much aesthetic and poetic as sporting.  The beauty's in the detail; the blond wooden net posts, the impeccable green lawns that turn sun-blistered and scratchy by the end of the fortnight, the way the sun falls on Centre Court coating it in a heavenly glow as behind, the tiered seats lie steeped in shadow.  And at this time of year, I always enjoy reading the writing of tennis correspondents who share this feeling.


I still have a stack of BBC Wimbledon magazines at my parents' house.  Through the Nineties this was a great publication, with a really high standard of writing and photography throughout.  I'd played the sport since I was eight, but for a spell during my teens I wanted to write it as well.  As a gangly sixteen year old I spent a week on work experience at The Guardian.  I lost myself in their clippings library and wrote about Andre Agassi for The Rose Guardian, the pretend newspaper that fellow work experiencees were putting together.  At home, I followed ATP and WTA tour matches on Ceefax.  With little sense of targeting or readership I typed a lengthy feature about Thomas 'King of Clay' Muster's reign on the red-dust courts of Europe, and sent it snail-mail to the Express & Echo, a paper more commonly interested in local football derbies and horse racing in the Exeter environs.  Unsurprisingly, it never ran.  Then, without ever being able to pinpoint the precise moment that it happened, my tennis writerly ambitions slipped further and further down the rankings until, eventually, they disappeared from sight.


Every time Wimbledon comes around though, I find these dreams suddenly reappearing in the main draw, wild-card like.  Once again I'm smitten; a starry-eyed teenager with a ring binder full of snipped articles and a head packed with stats.  I picture myself with a press pass, looking out over the lines of courts; the sun-hatted throngs; the knee-length-skirt-wearing officials who carry with them a whiff of the Church Fête.  I'd note the swirling brollies, colourful and rain-dashed; the jet-black VIP motors at the virginia creeper-clad club entrance; the track-suited, racket-bag shouldering players whose time in the sun is beckoning.  I'd watch the wistful faces of old pros turned pundits, stuffed in suits under studio lights.  I'd think of all that history, hearing the echoing ground strokes of great champions and ripples of applause from matches gone by.  And I would know that my job was to capture all of it and set it down as best I could.  Not just the score - which shot won what point - but the poetry, the romance, the dreams, the desire.  All the winsome details that add up to make the Wimbledon fortnight the loveliest two weeks of the English summer.


To borrow from MacArthur, old wannabe-tennis-journalists never die; they just fade away.

Making Hay

This is my office door and it's SHUT.  The artist's palette (thieved from my dad's studio while still wet) makes as good a 'do not disturb' sign as any.  I'm busy redrafting my novel so for the next few weeks, my head is well and truly down.  Resisting the temptations of procrastination that blogging undoubtedly offers, I'll make my Hay Festival follow-up post as short and sweet as I can bear to.  There's so much I could say about my first trip to this stellar arts fest, but in the end I'll settle for plain old 'awesome.'  Here's why...


I was bursting with pride all day long (still now, a week on), because The Etherington Brothers lit up the Starlight Stage on their first appearance.  My husband and his brother Lorenzo entertained and inspired a 200-strong crowd of children and parents, delivering a workshop on graphic novel creative processes and character development that had all-comers enthralled.  It was the first time I'd really seen the boys in action and, simply, they smashed it.

I also heard four exciting debut novelists talk about their work.  Téa Obreht, Sarah Winman, Sam Leith and Mirza Waheed are all members of the 'Waterstone's Eleven' - hugely different writers in style and scope but all brilliant at talking about what they do and why they do it.  It was an educative hour - a particularly gratifying moment coming when an audience member asked about 'redrafting' and they all said how different their finished books were as a result of copious revisions.  This is not new news - didn't someone say that 'writing is rewriting'? - but somehow it's ALWAYS nice to hear it again. 


Thanks to Bobby's VIP status, we wined and dined, gratis, in the artists' area of the Ascari Restaurant.  It was the cherry on the cake (actually it was steak frites and a bottle of rouge). I attempted to play it cool, while literary heroes drifted in and out of my sight lines. 


Just as we were leaving the sun burst out from behind the rain clouds, bathing the surrounding hillsides in a neon kind of light.  So there endeth our Hay day.  We trained it back to Bristol with hearts warmed, souls full, and creative spirit invigorated.