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Et tu, Brute?

Tags

Books, Jane Austen, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare

We can be forgiven for assuming Shakespeare revered the printed word as so many of us book nerds do. The turning over of the corner of a book page, for example, does dangerous things to my blood pressure. If I discover evidence of this sin on the pages of a novel lent to a friend, the poor culprit is never offered another tome. Shakespeare surely felt the same.

Or did he?

My husband and I recently watched the old classic black-and-white film of Julius Caesar on IPlayer. We had seen it before, decades ago, but found it every bit as captivating second time around. The actors – including fantastic performers like John Gielgud, James Mason, Deborah Kerr, Greer Carson, Marlon Brando – were superb and I urge you to hurry over to IPlayer for a treat.

However, something in the performance irked me. In Act 4, Scene 3, Brutus mentions to his servant, Lucius , that he has found in the pocket of his gown a book that he had “sought for”. Producing it, he tells him: “Let me see, let me see, is not the leaf turned down where I left reading?”

Is this possible? In the days when books were rare and parchment costly, would this not have been an incredibly reprehensible habit? Was Shakespeare really condoning such behaviour? Or was he perhaps subtly indicating weakness in the character of Brutus?

We shall never know, but I like to think that was his intention, for I can no more believe he would wantonly turn down the page of a book than I can imagine Jane Austen doing so.

Halik Kochanski: the challenges of writing non-fiction

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Halik Kochanski, Wolfson History Prize

_{Resistance by Halik Kochanski – winner of the 2023 Wolfson History Prize}

First, a word from Sarah:

On 14^th November last year, I turned on Radio 4’s Today and heard a familiar voice. Halik Kochanski, a fellow dog-walker in my local park, was being interviewed. It turned out she’d just won the Wolfson History Prize. I was stunned – and thrilled. I knew that Max Hastings had called her latest book, ‘The best book about the resistance I have ever read.’ Now she had won the UK’s most prestigious history prize https://www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk/. I messaged my congratulations. Within the hour, she’d written back, ‘It still seems unreal.’ I loved the fact she even replied at such a time.

            Halik and I had been bumping into each other with our dogs for a while. We almost always talked about historical writing – though we were in different leagues. She was a scholar published by Penguin whereas I was an unpublished novelist doing historical research for the first time. How, I asked, had she gone about the massive task of uncovering the extent and nature of resistance in occupied Europe for the whole of the Second World War? Her answers prompted me to ask her to share more here.

Halik:

Sarah suggested that I might like to contribute something about the challenges of writing non-fiction – history in my case – so here goes. In the first place you have to be prepared to read a lot of books. It doesn’t need to be the 700-odd I read for Resistance, but it will be a lot. I would suggest starting by reading widely around your chosen subject, and then gradually narrowing your focus. But do not forget that for non-fiction you have to produce footnotes. These are author, title, place and date of publication and page reference. Don’t forget the page references because it will drive you crazy having to spend time hunting down the elusive page reference later.

            I always build up my bibliographies from the bibliographies of other books. Finding books can be a problem if they haven’t been published recently and you don’t want to spend a fortune buying them secondhand. I used to borrow a suitcase full of books from the London Library regularly, but membership is expensive. It does, however, give you access to a wide selection of books as well as being a lovely place to work. Alternatively, you may get lucky with the inter-library loan scheme run by local authority libraries when you only have to pay a small fee for a book to be sent by another library. It helps to know which library you want the book from. Finally, there is the British Library which has everything printed in this country and is free to use. Don’t worry about spending hours in the library making notes. Nowadays everyone takes photos of books and documents using a phone or camera. If you need to use archives, then check whether their catalogue is online. Most archives are only open a few days a week and most need notice before you come in because the material is stored off site.

            Having done the research now comes the difficult part – the thinking. First you need to decide how to divide the material into chapters. That should not be too difficult. What I find takes time but is time worth spending, is the preparation for writing each chapter. What are you trying to communicate? I always divide my notes into sub-sections. If I get that right then the chapter would almost write itself. I find that the best thinking happens away from the computer, such as when walking the dog or doing the gardening. It has always amused me when proofreading my books to remember where I was when a particular phrase or idea came to me.

            Then there is the writing itself. Do not start with the first chapter. That is the most difficult one to write because it’s the first the reader will see. Instead, choose a chapter which excites you so that you can set the tone of your writing and communicate your enjoyment to the reader. You are human so don’t expect to be able to write every day. Some days you just can’t form a decent sentence and when you think you have, you will hit all the wrong keys on the keyboard. If you, as I did, find you have written something as clumsy as ‘the demonstrations demonstrated…’, you know it’s a bad day and the writing won’t come. Other days will make up for it.

            Finally, don’t be intimidated by the challenge, just get on with it! If you don’t enjoy the work needed for your book, then don’t do it, and choose something else to occupy yourself. As I confessed to the audience when receiving the Wolfson History Prize, I nearly gave up once I realised the sheer scale of the challenge I had set myself. In fact, I burned out so badly writing Resistance that I swore that I would never write another book. However, I just can’t trust myself because I am working on a new book, but this one will be much shorter and less deeply researched and I’m enjoying the process again.

_{Halik & Sarah – just after one of the dogs had tried to steal a sausage!}

Writing Competitions to Enter in April

Tags

Bath Short Story Award, Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize, Bristol Short Story Prize, Charles Dickens, Dickens Museum, Oliver Twist, The Rooker Prize

This Georgian terraced house in London’s Doughty Street, WC1, is where Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist. Now a museum, the place is well worth a visit when you are next in London and, hopefully, its picture might provide inspiration for one of the writing competitions closing this month. There are not many, but you can use them as a warm-up for the many on offer next month.

Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize for stories between 1,000 and 5,000 words.Prizes: £1,000. Entry fee: £10. Closing date: 3 April. Details: bricklanebookshop.org

Bristol Short Story Prize for stories up to 4,000 words. Prizes: £1,000. Entry fee £9. Deadline: Details: http://www.bristolprize.co.uk

Bath Short Story Award has a £1,200 first prize, £300 second prize, £100 third prize, and £100 Acorn Award for an unpublished writer. Stories should be up to 2,200 words and the entry fee is £9. Deadline 14 April. Details: http://www.bathshortstoryaward.org

The Mairtin Crawford Awards 2024 for short stories up to 2,500 words and poetry no longer than 60 lines. Winners in each category will receive £500 and two runners up will receive £250. Entrants must not have published a full collection of poetry, short stories or a novel. Entry fee is £10. Deadline 10 April. Details: https://belfastbookfestival.com/mairtin-crawford-award

The Rooker Prize is Lewes’ own literary competition (associated with Lewes Football Club) is asking for the first 250 words of a novel, to be read by the panel of local judges. The deadline is 19 April, with the winner being announced on Saturday 27 April. The winner will receive a beautiful hand-carved wooden trophy, plus £250 to go to the charity of their choice. In addition, Hachette UK – one of the Uk’s leading publishing groups – is also offering an hour’s feedback/coaching session at their UK offices in London with an experienced editor, which might hopefully kickstart a new career. Entry is free. Details: Rooker@lewesfc.com

Writing Magazine Competition: Past Times. They are looking for a story or creative non-fiction set any time before 1980. Prizes: £200 and £50. Entry fee: £7.50 (or £6.50 for magazine subscribers). Closing date: 15 April. Details: http://www.writers-online.co.uk

With so much horrible weather out there, surely settling down in the warm to write a winning story is just what you need.

Please remember to double-check details before entry. Good luck!

Where the Dickens family meals were prepared.

The earthenware bowl in the centre is for

baking bread and resembles one I own

that belonged to my own great-grandmother.

Writing Competitions to Enter in March

Tags

Competition, Fiction, Flash 500 Fiction Competition, Fowey Festival Short Story Competition, Henshaw Short Story Competition, In a Flash Fiction Writing Competition, Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing, Neil Gunn Writing Competitions, News, Poetry, R L Pearson Books, South Warwickshire Literary Festival Writing Competition, The BBC National Short Story Award 2024, Win Your Way to Swanwick Short Story Competition, Writing

Writing competitions offer so much more than the possibility of winning a monetary prize, though monetary prizes are not to be sniffed at. They get you writing. They develop your craft. They provide discipline. They offer the possibility of seeing your work in print, or possibly offer a helpful critique. They inspire you to spread your wings from short stories to full-blown novels. Over the years, members of ninevoices have been longlisted and shortlisted. Have won trophies and cheques and, on one occasion, a publishing contract. So why not follow our example and make March the month you triumph.

So here are a few suggestions:

Win Your Way to Swanwick Short Story Competition. To celebrate 75 years of the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, enter short stories up to 1,000 words on “Jubilee Jollies” theme. Prize: A place at Swanwick Summer School. Entry fee: £7.50 Closing date: 1 March. Details: http://www.writers-online.co.uk

The BBC National Short Story Award 2024 is for stories up to 8,000 words and has a £15,000 first prize. A further four shortlisted entrants will each receive £600. Winners will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and available to listen to on BBC Sounds. The five winning stories will be published in an anthology by Comma Press. Entry is FREE, but each writer may enter only one story and must have a previous record of publication of creative writing in the UK. Deadline is 18 March. Details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nssa

In A Flash Fiction Writing Competition from R L Pearson Books, is for unpublished stories of 50-400 words. There are first, second and third prizes of £20, £15 and £10 respectively. Entry fee is £5 per story. Closing date 31 March. Details: httpe://rlpearsonbooks.wixsite.com/rl-pearson-books/ffc2024-1

The South Warwickshire Literary Festival Writing Competition is inviting entries of prose (fiction and creative non-fiction, up to 800 words) and poetry (up to 40 lines). In each category there is a prize of £50, and the winner plus two commendeds from each category will be invited to read their pieces at the Festival in September. Entry fee is £3.50. Deadline: 29 March. Details: http://www.southwarwickshireliteraryfestival.com/writing-competition-2024

Flash 500 Fiction Competitions. Quarterly competition for flash fiction up to 500 words. Prizes: £600. Entry fee: £5 for one, £8 for two. Closing date: 31 March. Details: http://www.flash500.com

Henshaw Short Story Competition. Quarterly competition for short stories up to 2,000 words. Prizes: £200, £100, £50. Entry fee: £6 Deadline 31 March. Details: http://www.henshawpress.co.uk

Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing is for unpublished and unperformed one-act plays by amateur playwrights (30 minutes or less, with no more than six actors). Prize: three entries will be selected for performance and the winner awarded £500. Entry fee £15. Deadline 15 March. Details: http://www.windsorfringe.co.uk

Neil Gunn Writing Competition for short stories up to 2,500 words interpreting a quote from Scottish writer Neil Gunn: “Mystery. That was the last word, the word you came to at the end. No corner of its coverlet could you lift.” Prize: £500. Entry fee £8. Details: http://www.neilgunntrust.org

Fowey Festival Short Story Competition on the theme: “beaches”. Short stories up to 1,500 words. Prizes: £200, £100. Entry fee: £5. Deadline March 28. Details: http://www.foweyfestival.com

Not a vast selection this month, but you only need to win one of them! Do, as ever, remember to double check all details before entering. Good luck.

Little Boy Lost – a book for today

Tags

book reviews, Books, Fiction, Reading

Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski is a short novel and so compelling that readers may devour it in a single day – and then turn back to the beginning to re-read and linger over every immaculate sentence.

Hilary Wainwright goes back to France after he is demobilised in 1945 to search for his small son who is lost but may still be alive. Before she was killed by the Gestapo, Hilary’s Polish wife Lisa had written to him telling him that she could endure anything if only their baby was safe and Hilary would one day come for him.

But Hilary has shut his mind to unsettling emotion; the death of his beloved Lisa has left him terrified of exposing himself to more pain. His life has lost its meaning and there is only the artificial safety offered by escaping into literature. He ‘dreaded nothing more than to be stranded without print … he had chosen the books he had brought with him on this journey principally for their length, good fat books that might annihilate many hours.’ It is only for Lisa’s sake that Hilary is searching for a five-year-old child he remembers only as a baby, and who if found will disturb the precarious boundaries he has created for himself.

Published in 1949, Little Boy Lost mirrors a Europe struggling to come to terms with the unspeakable horrors of war. Marghanita Laski paints a devastating picture of post-war occupied France – the everyday squalor and food shortages, the stench of corruption, the shifting of guilt and denial of collaboration. As one character says: ‘To me, the most horrible thing is hearing everyone excusing themselves on the ground that deceit was started against the Germans and has now become a habit…’ Her schoolmaster son replies, ‘I am not sure that we really deceive ourselves. I think we pretend this and that because we must be ashamed of so many things, even of the truth.’

 ‘The only good thing we can do, the only goodness we can be sure of, is our own goodness as individuals and the good that we can do individually. As groups we often do evil that good may come and very often the good does not come and all that is left is the evil we have pointlessly done.’

Pierre, working for the underground resistance, here repeats the words of his dead fiancée to Hilary, spoken the night before she was taken away to be tortured and killed. He argues that ‘this was an impractically idealistic point of view in France at this time. Nearly all the work that I personally was doing was evil by Jeanne’s definition – spying and destruction and murder – and I believed, as we all did, that it was necessary and right, not of itself, of course, but because the end was good.’ He tells Hilary how he quarrelled bitterly with Jeanne, accusing her of being a traitor to France, but that she insisted,  ‘All that seems to be certain is that we should each do good where it is near to us, where we can see the end of it, and then we know that something positive has been done.’

Arriving at the dirty unnamed town clearly meant to represent all of France, Hilary determines not to become emotionally involved with the engaging child at the orphanage who might or might not be his missing son. The war left millions of displaced children all over Europe, many with no idea of who they were or where they came from. Hilary is horrified by the stark poverty of the orphanage: tubercular children are mixed with healthy ones and none have enough to eat or clothes to wear. How can he be sure that this child is his? Does he even want him to be? In his attempts to approach the whole business with a clinical detachment, Hilary is haunted by fears that he can no longer love, comforting himself with sordid sexual pleasures, but somehow without entirely losing the reader’s sympathy. He is, in effect, as lost as his son. In mounting despair we long for him to do the right thing and it looks as if he isn’t going to.

It’s seventy-five years since Marghanita Laski published Little Boy Lost, but it’s a book with a timeless quality, as deeply moving and relevant in 2024 as in 1949. On the surface it’s a simple story, simply told – the search for a missing child – but it carries with it profound questions about good and evil, and our responsibility for the moral choices we make.

When Hilary asks Pierre if he wonders, with every stranger he meets, what he did under the Occupation, Pierre answers that he is ‘tired with “collaborationist” as a term of abuse; we each did under the Germans what we were capable of doing; what that was, was settled long before they arrived.’

We might ask ourselves, what would I have done? What would I do now?

There’s a marvellously thoughtful and illuminating afterword by Anna Sebba in the Persephone Books edition of this unforgettable novel, but don’t look at this before finishing the book.

And despite the devastating tension, resist the temptation to skip ahead. You need to read every word to grasp the significance of the ending. If ever a novel had a perfect final sentence, this is it.

Writing Competitions to Enter in February

Tags

Bath Flash Fiction Award, Competition, Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award, Edinburgh Short Story Award, Exeter Writers Short Story Competition, Farnham Flash Fiction Competition, Fiction Factory Chapter Novel Competition, Fish Flash Fiction Contest, Flash 500 Short Story Competition, Lucy Cavendish Fiction Award, News, Short stories, Spotlight First Novel Competition, Writing, Writing competition, Writing Competition Opportunities

Spring is on its way. There are grape hyacinths in our garden and a few daffodils with fattening buds. Surely this is the best time to put pen to paper – or finger to keyboard – and create the beginning of a play or novel, or to enter a writing competition…

Farnham Flash Fiction Competition for original flash fiction up to 500 words. Prizes: £100 and £25, plus a £25 prize for an entry involving Farnham. Entry fee: £5 Closing date: 1 February. Details: http://www.flashfiction500.com

Bath Flash Fiction Award is a thrice-yearly competition for flash fiction up to 300 words. Prizes: £1,000. Entry fee: £7.50. Closing date: 4 February. Details: bathflashfictionaward.com

Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for the first 40-50 pages of a finished but unpublished novel by a woman writer. Prizes: £1,500 and feedback. Entry fee: £12. Closing date: 9 February. Details: http://www.lucy.cam.ac.uk

Writers’ and Artists’ Short Story Competition for stories up to 2,000 words on the theme of ‘risk’. Prizes: Arvon Residential Writing Week (worth £850). Entry fee: FREE. Closing date: 12 February. Details: http://www.writersandartists.co.uk

Spotlight First Novel Competition for a one-page synopsis plus first page of an unpublished novel. Prizes: professional input worth up to £1,9,50. Entry fee: £16. Closing date: 14 February. Details: adventuresinfiction.co.uk

Edinburgh Short Story Award for up to 2,000 words. Prizes: £3,750. Entry fee: FREE. Closing date: 29 February. Details: http://www.storyawards.org

Fish Flash Fiction Contest for up to 300 words. Prizes: 1,600 Euros. Entry fee: 14 Euros. Closing date: 28 February. Details: fishpublishing.com

Exeter Writers Short Story Competition, stories in any genre, but not children’s, up to 3,000 words. Prizes: £700. Entry fee: £7. Closing Date: 29 February. Details: http://www.exeterwriters.org.uk

UK Film Festival Script Writing Competitions. 3-minute scripts, 10-minute scripts, feature film scripts. Prizes: possible production, publicity and marketing. Entry fee: see website. Closing date: 29 February. Details: http://www.ukfilmfestival.com

Fiction Factory Chapter Novel Competition for your first chapter and synopsis. Prizes: £500 and appraisal. Entry fee: £18. Closing date: 29 February. Details: fiction-factory.biz

Flash 500 Short Story Competition for stories up to 3,000 words. Prizes: £500, £200, £100. Entry fee: £7, £12 for two, £16 for three, £20 for four. Closing date: 29 February. Details: http://www.flash500.com

Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award for a crime novel. Submit the first 3,000 words plus synopsis up to 1,000 words. Prizes: £500. Entry fee: £42. Closing date: 29 February. Details: http://www.thecwa.co.uk

Lots of opportunities here for you to get your writing efforts noticed by people in the business and walk off with a monetary prize. As ever, do please double-check details before entering anything.

Writing Competitions to Enter in January

Tags

Creative Writing Competitions, Curtis Brown, Discoveries 2024, Kent & Sussex Poetry Society, The 2023 Exeter Novel Prize, The Plaza Crime First Chapters Prize 2024, The Prolitzer Prize for Prose

January is galloping down upon us and, with it, those New Year Resolutions to write more and write better. So here are some competitions to think about even before the decorations come down…

The 2023 Exeter Novel Prize is seeking the first 10,000 words of an unpublished novel manuscript by an author who is not currently represented by a literary agent. There is a first prize of £1,000 and five runners up will each receive £100. The final judge will be literary agent Hellie Ogden. Send the opening of the novel plus a synopsis no longer than 500 words. The total word count must be no longer than 10,000 words. Novel manuscripts may be in any genre, including children’s and YA. All entries must be original and unpublished. Entry fee: £20. Closing date 1 January 2024. Details: https://www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk/2023-exeter-novel-prize.html

Hachette Children’s Novel Awards 2024 are for debut authors resident in the north of England. Two winners will be awarded £3,000 and a programme of mentoring activities. Submit the opening of the novel (between 3,000 and 6,000 words, plus a synopsis. Entry is FREE. Deadline 4 January. Details: https://newwritingnorth.com/

Discoveries 2024. The writer development programme from The Women’s Prize Trust is inviting entries from aspiring women novelists in the UK and Ireland. Prizes will be given for novel manuscripts by unpublished writers in any adult genre. Submit the first 10,000 words plus a synopsis between 500 and 1,000 words. Novel manuscripts do not need to have been completed. The winner will be offered representation by Curtis Brown and £5,000. All six shortlisted writers will be offered a mentoring session with a Curtis Brown agent and a free place on a six week Curtis Brown online course. One writer will be named The Discoveries Scholar and win a free scholarship to attend a three-month Curtis Brown Creative Writing Your Novel course. All 16 longlisted authors will receive a bespoke two-week online Discoveries Writing Development Course. Entry is FREE. Closing date 8 January. Details: http://www.discoveries.curtisbrown.co.uk/

The Prolitzer Prize for Prose is for fiction or creative non-fiction that challenges or entertains the reader. The maximum word count is 2,500. The first prize is £200 and two runners up will each get £50. Winners will be published in Prole 35. Entry fee is £5, and £3 for any subsequent entries. Closing date 21 January. Details: http://www.prolebooks.co.uk/competitions.html

New Writers Flash Fiction Competition 2024 has a £1,000 first prize for original unpublished flash fiction up to 300 words, with second and third prizes of £300 and £200. Entry is £8 for one, £15 for two and £22 for three. £1 from each entry will be donated to the First Story creative writing charity for young people. Closing date: 31 January. Details: https://newwriters.org.uk/flash-fiction-competition/

The Plaza Crime First Chapters Prize 2024. Win a £1,500 first prize for the opening of a crime novel up to 5,000 words, plus a synopsis, and there are second and third prizes of £300 and £100. The winner will also receive feedback from the judge, crime writer David Mark. Winners will be published in Plaza Anthology 2. Entry fee is £20 for the first entry and £10 for any subsequent entries. Closing date: 31 January. Details: https://the plazaprizes.com/competition/the-plaza-crime-first-chapters-prize/

The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society Open Poetry Competition 2024 are looking for entries of original, unpublished poems in any style up to 40 lines. First prize is £1,000 and there are second and third prizes of £300 and £100. Four runners up will each receive £50. Entry fee is £5 per poem, or £4 each for three or more poems. Deadline: 31 January. Details: https://kentandsussexpoetry.com/

Good Luck! Make 2024 your winning year, either by winning or being placed in a competition or by making a significant start on a new book.

(As always, please check details before entry, in case the organisers have made any last-minute alterations)

At Christmas – a new Barbara Pym-ish short story

Tags

Anthony Trollope, Barbara Pym, Elegy written in a country churchyard, Elizabeth Goudge, Hartley Coleridge, Jane Austen, Philip Larkin, Some Tame Gazelle, Thomas Gray

In 1965 Philip Larkin wrote in a letter to a publisher unconvinced by Barbara Pym that he felt ‘it is a great shame if ordinary sane novels about ordinary sane people doing ordinary sane things can’t find a publisher these days. This is the tradition of Jane Austen and Trollope, and I refuse to believe that no one wants its successors today… I like to read about people who have done nothing spectacular, who aren’t beautiful or lucky, who try to behave well in the limited field they command, but who can see, in little autumnal moments of vision, that the so-called “big” experiences of life are going to miss them; and I like to read about such things presented not with self-pity or despair or romanticism, but with a realistic firmness and even humour, that is in fact what critics would call the moral tone of the book.’

Barbara Pym’s novels are a delight and comfort to fans because they are always full of ordinary people, with characters mentioned or reappearing in later novels. Some may be slightly odd, misguided, overlooked, undervalued. But they are like old friends, living alongside us. Christmas feels like a good time to make room for them all.  

She is not fair to outward view is a short story about what I imagine might have happened to one very ordinary character from Barbara Pym’s first novel Some Tame Gazelle.

Read it here: She is not fair to outward view

Or click the Writings tab.

Writing Competitions to Enter in December

Tags

Barbara Pym, H E Bates Short Story Competition, The Ellen J Miller Memorial 2024 Short Story Competition

My profound apologies, but this post is later than planned – owing to an attack of the vomiting illness that seems to be doing the rounds. The details of some of the competitions at the close of the piece are also missing, so please Google the title listed below to find out more. I will try and complete these in a day or so, assuming I recover. (Of course, I DO expect to recover. I should say WHEN I recover…!)

You will need fingers of lightning speed to enter the Ellen J Miller Memorial 2024 Short Story Competition, because it has a deadline of December 1st. But everyone likes a challenge, don’t they? And if you are a Barbara Pym fan you might find it an enjoyable exercise. To help, this post is going out a day or two early. Stories must prominently feature one or more characters from Barbara Pym’s published novels and be of approximately 2,000 words, maximum length 2,200 words. Cash prizes of $250, $100 and $50. Entries by email to: barbarapymsociety@gmail.com. Details: barbara-pym.org

The same applies to the Ringwood Short Story Competition 2023, which also has a deadline of December 1st. This is for writers with a connection to Scotland – those based or formerly resident in Scotland, or who identify as Scottish. The winner will receive £100 and the winning story, plus up to two others, will be published online. There are two new prizes: the Leela Soma Prize (£50) for the best entry by a writer of colour with a Scottish connection; also the Grant Muir Prize which is for previous Ringwood interns, staff and authors, and these stories will not be eligible for the main prize. Enter original, unpublished short fiction up to 3,000 words. Entry fee: £2 per story. Details: http://www.ringwoodpublishing.com/short-story-competition/ringwood-short-story-competition-2023/

Criminal Lines 2023. AM Heath’s competition for debut crime novelists is inviting entries by debut, unpublished, unagented crime novelists from the UK and Ireland. The winner will get £3,500 plus an offer of representation from AM Heath. The runner up will receive twelve months of mentoring from Orion. To enter, send the first 5,000 words of an unpublished crime novel manuscript and a synopsis of up to 1,000 words. Entry is FREE. Closing date: 7 December. Details: https://amheath.com/criminal-lines/

Orna Ross Green Stories Novel Prize

Scribble Quarterly Short Story

Retreat West Themed Flash Fiction Prize

Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award

H E Bates Short Story Competition

Ruth Rendell Short Story Competition

Ouen Press Short Story Competition

Moth Poetry Prize

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

Tags

Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s gauche Mary Bennet, middle sister of five, has already had a lot of attention from novelists over the years. To my mind, it’s a brave author who writes a new storyline for any character out of Pride & Prejudice, even one of the less famous ones. But in The Other Bennet Sister (2020), Janice Hadlow does it superbly, with tenderly affecting insights.

Readers will not just end up sympathising with (and understanding) Mary’s social ineptness and unerring ability to say the wrong thing; they will almost certainly care about Mr Collins too. Charlotte Lucas is already a sympathetic figure but here we gain further understanding of her character also. Her confiding in Mary, following Mr Bingley’s making the ‘polite choice’ of dancing with her first at a ball (before moving swiftly on to Jane), is poignant:

‘I know very well what I must do and say next,’ continued Charlotte. I must smile and nod and look unconcerned at my dismissal, while laughing and teasing Jane about her new conquest. And that is what I will do. I’m used to it. But I tell you what it is, Mary – I’m not sure if I can do it for much longer …’

The opening is my least favourite part of the novel; I would have preferred more dialogue to show the Bennet family’s situation and less authorial telling (skilful as it is). But that’s a small cavil, and I only say it because it would be a huge shame if a reader gave up on account of it.

The book is divided into five sections. The first draws a parallel between Charlotte and Mary’s situations; both girls are plain and only too aware of what this means for their marital prospects. Mary’s story, however, is the poignant focus. Her mother’s lack of interest in her because she is not a beauty – Mrs Bennet is especially exasperated when Mary decides to wear spectacles – and her father’s admiration for Lizzy alone are incredibly hurtful to this unformed girl. The steps Mary takes for self-improvement, because she longs for parental regard, culminate in the famously shaming scene where her father publicly closes down her piano performance at a ball. ‘You have delighted us long enough,’ he says in a voice loud enough for others to hear. As an aside, my family have laughingly used this expression for years to shut each other up – but here you feel its devastating effect. Mary is so confused and humiliated by her father’s words, she thinks she might faint.

Part I ends with Charlotte accepting the hand of Mr Collins, leaving Mary – who had thought she might marry him herself in order to help her family – agonisingly aware she is of such little worth that even this deeply unimpressive man ignores and dismisses her.

Part II begins two years later. All four of Mary’s sisters are now married and, from here to the end, is the story of Mary’s search for her place in the world. At times it is an almost desperate one. Among other things, she must learn how to deal with Miss Bingley’s vengeful disappointment at not securing Mr Darcy, which is now redirected at this new soft target. The woman is adept at reopening Mary’s wounds. Arriving at the end of one of her piano performances, she sneers, ‘…perhaps you fear you have delighted us enough already?’ The event makes Mary decide she must leave her sister’s house at once; otherwise, she will become a cowed victim. What she doesn’t realise is that running away will never be enough to escape Miss Bingley. She must find a different way, which will require courage.

But our heroine has delightful, as well as agonising, encounters, such as when Mr Collins attempts to teach her Greek (she is astounded at his encouragement) and, even more, when he opens up about his past and speaks of an incident that makes him wince: ‘Do you remember your father asking me once at dinner if I made up in advance the compliments I then thought were so pleasing to ladies? I was such a fool that I told him the truth. Of course I did. How else would they occur to a man such as myself?’ This is a Mr Collins I’d never imagined – but I believe in him. And am bowled over. We all have a public face. Unfortunately, Mr Collins has, up till now, shown the wrong one.

The Independent says of this book that it ‘will delight Pride & Prejudice fans’. I agree – because the author truly knows the original. But even if you are not a fan, this tender yet page-turning reimagining of Mary’s life, and of the lives of other non-aspirational characters, is enthralling in its own right.