A Frankenstein breakfast… and lunch… and tea

Pretty much every month from now on till April 2024 marks the anniversary of something significant in the lives of those hectic, high-achieving younger Romantics. But this summer’s anniversary is special even by their standards. From May to July 1816 Lord Byron took up residence in the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. On 27 May he met the poet Shelley for the first time, accompanied by Mary Godwin. He had already become intimately acquainted with Mary’s stepsister Claire, who facilitated the introductions.

The Shelley party moved next door and the two poets procured a boat for excursions on the lake (one perilous outing almost caused the death of Shelley; but the Fates dictated he was not to drown until 1822). However, the rain was so incessant and the skies so dark that many days and evenings were spent around the fire at Diodati. The friends talked of galvanism and new scientific theories; then they all tried to spook each other with a ghost story competition. The result, famously, was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Yesterday John Murray’s legendary premises in Albemarle St opened for a one-off exhibition of letters, drafts and original reviews connected with Frankenstein and its slighter sibling, The Vampyre, a novella by Byron’s doctor, Polidori. In addition, a specially commissioned performance, ‘One Evening in Summer’ allowed visitors a peek into the gloomy, candlelit salon of Diodati. Jay Villiers was a saturnine, brooding Byron; Richard Goulding a tense, febrile Shelley; Nicholas Rowe charmed as the poignantly eager Polidori; and the poet Pele Cox, director and deviser of the piece, played a cool and playful Mary.

The celebrations began over croissants and coffee with readings from Frankenstein by Damian Lewis as a savage yet poignantly needy monster, and Helen McCrory as a chilly, intense Mary/Frankenstein. In the audience I spotted some old friends, chatting to Miranda Seymour, author of a wonderful biography of Mary, and talking about Romantic science and ballooning with Richard Holmes, author of Shelley: The Pursuit and The Age of Wonder. It was also good to see Giuseppe Albano, curator at Keats-Shelley House in Rome, who hosted two previous Pele Cox productions, ‘Unbound’ and ‘Lift Me Up, I Am Dying’, the latter an evocation of Keats’s last days, supported by his artist friend Joseph Severn – brilliantly played by Rowe, again.

Cox’s short drama played out four times in all, and I had volunteered to set the scene with an introduction to each performance. I decided to focus on a different aspect of the story each time rather than repeat the same speech, stressing the piecemeal evidence we have for what actually happened on those wild, wet nights, and what each person’s role might have been in the psychodramas that ensued.

Then it was over to the actors. The protagonists sat around a rumpled table in candlelight, mulling over their wine as though they’d long finished dinner but were loth to go to bed. Although I must have heard the piece seven or eight times now, including rehearsals, the text, taken almost entirely from the diaries, letters, prose and poetry of the protagonists, cast its spell every time. Subtle differences and nuances developed as the day went on. ‘Did you like my grape work?’ laughed Jay in the green room.

As first Byron, then Polidori, then Shelley left, Mary remained at the table alone, mourning the loss of everything she loved. That was the reality, she affirmed; all the rest of her life proved to be the dream.

Many thanks to John Murray VII and his wife Virginia for their generous and jolly hospitality during the day, and to the performers for allowing me to be part of this thrilling and memorable experience.

 

 

 

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Best and Worst of 2015

Festivals:

People have been telling me to go to Port Eliot for ages; this is the year I finally made it. Everyone was right; it is blissful. I was chairing a few events but as ever the best festival moments involved chance encounters with friends and sitting on the grass with pints of beer. The weather was gracious, the setting astonishingly beautiful, the vibe laid back. The writer Rachel Lichtenstein guided me to a marvellous audio event featuring the vanished sounds of London, including the last recorded street cry, a man selling lavender in (if memory serves) Leadenhall Market. Utterly haunting. I also thoroughly enjoyed Will Hodgkinson’s event honouring Sandy Denny and listening to Port Eliot’s noble seigneur, Perry Eliot, describing having bohemian poet Heathcote Williams as a decade-long house-guest. Give him an inch and he’ll take over a wing of your house, apparently. During my event with Owen Sheers, the heavens opened and the sizeable crowd all made a dive for the shelter of the stage, turning it into a cosy literary teepee, brimming with shared warmth. Nothing will ever dislodge the Althorp Literary Festival from my heart but Port Eliot (memorably described to me as ‘Althorp with cigarette burns’) certainly charmed me.

Speaking of Althorp, my ‘I’m not worthy’ moment of the year was interviewing Sir Tom Stoppard on stage. We had had several lengthy phone conversations in advance, after which I usually had to lie down with smelling salts. The theme of the event was the books in his life; it turned out he only really wanted to talk about Le Grand Meaulnes, which made for a tough hour, but he was stunningly charismatic and remarkably self-deprecating.

Events:

My Halloween and Valentine’s evenings are a relatively new tradition in the Authors Club calendar. For Valentine’s I rounded up some poet cronies – Pele Cox, Heather Wells, Max Wallis – for an examination of the dark side of love: obsession, unrequited passion, break-ups, heartbreak, anger and resentment, all delivered with wit and aplomb. Halloween was an all-star line-up with Neil Spring (the TV adaptation of his debut novel The Ghost Hunters has just aired); Jeff Norton, the creator of a hilarious YA zombie series; Syd Moore, illuminating on the topic of Essex witches; Treadwell Bookshop’s Livia Filotico on the anthropological roots of Samhain, and the great Christopher Fowler with not one but three unsettling tales. Plus, a haunted house story from me. There’s nothing like the thrill of spinning a ghostly yarn and watching people blanch.

Worst launch party:

I really should know better, but it looked like fun: a ‘speakeasy’ party to celebrate the launch of a YA novel. Secret location, hidden bar, access via a password – all of that. When I finally found the venue it was littered with mirrors and dress-up props – feather boas, masks – and hashtags were prominently displayed, along with invitations to tweet selfies. What, am I ten years old? (Excited bloggers were doing just that.) The two cocktails on offer were disgusting. When I’d finished coughing I asked what was in them. They both featured VINEGAR. Who on earth thought that was a good idea? Nobody from the publishing company bothered to mingle or say hello; I made my excuses and left.

Best launch party:

The Dennis Severs House in Spitalfields is another place I’ve been meaning to go to for years. Fortunately Brian Selznick helped me out by launching his fantastical graphaganza The Marvels (Scholastic) there. This intricate, gorgeous book is a paean to the last lingering bits of old London. Heartwarming speeches, oodles of champagne, and then we were let loose to explore this magical and eerie time-warp house by candlelight (and meet the house cat, dozing on a four-poster). My companion was Katy Guest, Lit Ed of the Independent on Sunday – we had a thrilling time, but worried a bit about whose job it was to do all the dusting.

Best YA novel:

I was blown away by Philip Reeve’s Railhead (Oxford), an  exhilarating space adventure about Zen, a teenage thief who falls in with a Machiavellian freedom fighter and a resourceful female robot. Reeve creates a world brimming with sensory overload: Zen’s encounter with creatures called ‘hive monks’ beats any Ant’n’Dec Jungle challenge (or vinegar cocktail) for the retch-factor. Archaic remnants of our time float about in the shimmering Datasea; hence space-trains with names such as ‘The Thought Fox’ and ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’.

Best Novels:

The ones I like best tend to be uncategorisable. God bless the publishers for bringing us such out-there fare as Scarlett Thomas‘s brilliant The Seed Collectors (Canongate) and Steve Toltz‘s Quicksand (Sceptre). Both are very funny and very peculiar; the latter is likely to be the most hilarious book I’ll ever read about emotional dysfunction, failure and the death wish. Thomas’s sexy-strange horticultural family saga reads like an Iris Murdoch reboot. Oh, and David Mitchell‘s Slade House (Sceptre) is a terrific horror yarn, both genre-playful yet recognisably Mitchellian.

Worst novel:

Bit mean, that. Let’s say, most of a struggle. The accolade goes to Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (Picador), which meant ten days of mostly unrewarding trudge through extremes of abuse counteracted with absurdly gilded privilege. I got so tired of pathetic protagonist Jude St Francis that every time he recommenced self-harming I wanted to beat him repeatedly over the head with a … Oh! I see what she did there. Good trick! Reminiscent of Sade’s Justine in its setting of an innocent cipher against a nightmarish universe of torture and abuse, A Little Life becomes almost comical in its determination to heap degradation on its hero. Just once couldn’t there be a nice priest? I’m glad I made it to the end, if only on the Everest-climbing principle that once you’ve got so far you might as well make it to the summit. Not sure the view was worth it though.

 

 

 

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Learning to fly

Having heard actor and author William Parker read at the Polari Literary Salon at the South Bank, and chatted with him a couple of times there, I was intrigued enough to take a look at his novel The House Martin. It begins dramatically. We first encounter Ben Teasdale, the protagonist, blind drunk and falling down the steps of Charing Cross station. I liked the voice immediately; not just the immediate yelp of ‘Oh fuckandbolloxandpissandshit!’ but also the waspish note that his ruined suit is from ‘Marks and Spencer’s Italian Collection actually’.

Ben has just been scoping out a gay bar, when a dimly familiar face looms into view. The sight of Val Lorrimer triggers a Madeleine moment for Ben – memories begin to flood back of their time together at a small prep school in Wales. The bulk of the novel relates to his difficult time there. The young boy’s voice allows the adult reader both to inhabit his fears and anxieties and to see beyond them to the real story that Teasdale (the boys are always called by their surnames) is too naive to understand.

His father is a shadowy figure, unwilling or unable to reach out to his son. The boy’s main emotional focus is his glamorous mother, Pamela, whom he both longs for and dreads, for she invariably turns up at the school drunk. A little detail of them both drinking sherry out of teacups before departing for the new term tells us all we need to know about the source of adult Ben’s problems.

Courtlands School is no better and no worse than most – Parker resists any tendency to melodramatise. It’s no Dotheboys Hall. There are some bullies, but some kind boys, some odd masters, some watchful and percipient ones. Teasdale is profoundly ashamed of his bed-wetting (again, we as readers have more compassion for him than he has for himself). He constantly feels the need to protect and cover for his wayward mother, and the pressure builds until he’s forced to take dramatic action.

The other boys are well characterised in all their cheek, cruelty and, sometimes, their surprising compassion. Despite a rather troubling friendship with a male teacher, Teasdale’s closest relationship is with his teddy, Jollo – these scenes are truly heartrending. The birds of the title nest under the eaves of the dormitory and feature in a telling incident, both realistic and highly symbolic. Though the overriding ambience is elegiac and melancholy, some rays of humour peek through the clouds. A lovely read.

The House Martin by William Parker, Eirini Press

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Come, chill death…

Having strong Vancouver connections I am always on the lookout for fiction or poetry based around my second city. So when I got an email from Parthian books and noticed that the banner ad was for something called Burrard Inlet by Tyler Keevil, I just had to take a look.

This imposing waterway divides downtown Vancouver from the North Shore; the seabuses plough across it, Lion’s Gate bridge spans it, seaplanes use it as take-off and landing strip, cruise ships like mobile blocks of flats come and go. It runs far inland beyond the city to quiet coves and sleepy towns. The inlet has many moods, from bustling and workaday to festive or melancholic, and they’re echoed here.

Keevil’s short stories have already been garlanded with prizes and praise. The collection was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year (Keevil now lives in Wales). Adulatory jacket quotes come from such luminaries as Miriam Toews, Carys Bray and Niall Griffiths. Despite the big build up, the stories don’t disappoint.

With titles such as ‘Snares’, ‘Fishhook’ and ‘Scrap Iron’ we’re firmly in rugged masculine territory, but there’s an intriguing interplay between the manly pursuits described and the antennae-quiveringly alert sensibility of each narrator. Many of the stories balance on the knife-edge of awe and danger familiar to any traveller in BC, where wild natural beauty combines with so many dumb ways to die (and some smart ones too). If what haunts the British imagination is the slow death of creeping bourgeois comfort, its Canadian counterpart is the altogether more intense fear of encountering something seriously nasty in the wilderness.

‘Tokes From the Wild’ sees a city-boy set off for Prince George to go tree-planting with a scant acquaintance, Kurt. Only once he’s up there, treated with suspicion and derision by the locals, the relationship sours and group dynamics begin to bite. Telling details include the rent charged by Kurt’s parents for sleeping in a tent on their lawn. ‘I’m not used to paying to stay at a friend’s house, but Kurt’s not quite my friend, and the fee includes food, so I guess that makes it fair.’

Each fellow tree-planter is vividly realised in just a few phrases. Boss-man Clayton is instantly recognisable: ‘Clayton’s wearing an Oiler’s hat and has a can of Molson in his hand.’ Yes, it’s breakfast time, and he’s driving. But characters have the additional dimension of onion-skin layers, gradually revealed. The unease of the back-country weighing down on someone who has never thought of himself as a city slicker is brilliantly evoked. The narrator makes it back to his home turf: ‘I stretch out in the park at Main and Terminal with the rest of the drug addicts that so terrified Clayton…’, realising that one person’s comfort zone is another’s nightmare.

My standout story here is ‘Carving Through Woods on a Snowy Evening’. Rescue team member Mark is at a Christmas party when the call comes through: ‘We’ve got one up on Seymour. This snowboarder – he has gone missing. We think he was riding out of bounds.’ Minutes later he’s in the helicopter, floating over a deadly winter wonderland. Nowhere is youth, skill and joy so fused with horror and chill death. This is a remarkable collection; Keevil’s also the author of a novel, Fireball, which I’ll embark on in due course.

Burrard Inlet by Tyler Keevil, Parthian £7.99

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HIstory takes over

Judging is well underway for this year’s BFNA (Best First Novel Award), administered by the  Authors Club. As ever, the process prompts all sorts of conclusions about the year in publishing, at least as far as debuts are concerned. The annual surprise is the number of publishers (even big-name, prestigious outfits) who don’t have anything to submit. This means they have published zero British debut novelists over the course of the year (as opposed to buying in books from America, and the DELUGE of short-story collections and novels from over the pond is no doubt something I will tackle in a future post).

The aim of the award is to support the work of UK-based writers, publishers and agents. Our rule of thumb is that authors should either be British or based in the UK (we also accept Irish novelists, with some provisos), and novels must be published first in the UK before anywhere else. Here’s the first headache – in a global publishing world, it’s getting more difficult to establish where a book was first published and whether it matters. UK/US publication dates are now often simultaneous, which is no problem, but then publishing partners may jump the gun and pre-empt the UK publication… cue anguished email exchanges to establish eligibility.

This year’s other surprise is the sheer number of historical novels submitted; reading is not complete but so far they seem to outnumber novels set in the present day by 3:1. Some of them are superb, and if that ratio holds true overall, this will presumably have to be reflected in the shortlist. No doubt there are many factors to explain this trend, an essential conservatism and risk-averseness in the industry among them, but can we credit Hilary Mantel with launching this?

Now is the panel’s chance to read the debuts that have electrified the publishing world this year, selling in huge numbers and garnering (other) prizes. Our response, after all the hype, is very often ‘meh…’ It’s very easy to be overwhelmed by competence when judging a prize like this, when what we are looking for is brilliance and originality. Authors who implausibly import modern viewpoints to historical fiction are a particular bugbear of mine. I’m also sick to death of characters who creep about listening at doors to glean vital plot information; what a tired device! But then again, that’s why I’m a critic, and not a wildly successful publisher.

 

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