Where do good ideas come from?

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Cheltenham Literary Festival, Franz Kafka, Ian McEwan, Jean-Paul Didierlaurent, Metamorphosis, Pulp fiction, Ros Schwartz, The Cockroach, The Reader on the 6.27

Where do good ideas come from?

Sometimes you read a book with a strikingly original and simple idea; you then think, “Well, of course, I could have thought of that if I I’d tried,” but the point is YOU DIDN’T.

Two examples from books I’ve just read:

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan. We know Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which opens with a man waking up to find he’s a giant insect. Why not reverse that? Have an insect who wakes up to find he’s turned into a man? Brilliant. And when we learn that that man is the British Prime Minister, who is leading the country into a whole new economic system that merely a few years back was advocated only by people who were thought crackpots …. Well, you can finish the sentence. A topical satire and, as I’ve said, a great and simple idea. (Unfortunately I’ll have to return the book to my sister who lent it to me, as she got it signed by the author at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.)

The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent is the other (translated from the French by Ros Schwartz). Here the simple idea is to have a central character who loves books but is compelled to work in a factory that destroys them. This is an appalling place where books are pulped. They are devoured and converted into a disgusting slush by a dreadful and dangerous machine into which our hero has to climb each day as part of its maintenance. And each day he rescues a page from whatever book is going into its maw, and reads it to his fellow-commuters on the train to work the next morning. They love it. The other characters are grotesques, all with some often bizarre link to books and writing. (Fortunately I was given this by a friend so can keep it. Thanks, friend.)

Wondering what to do with that gift card you got for Christmas? You could see if you like as much as I did what these writers made of these original and simple ideas.

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan, published in 2019 by Jonathan Cape, ISBN 978-1-529-11292-4 RRP £7-99 (it’s only 100 pages)

The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent, translated by Ros Schwartz, published in 2016 by Pan, ISBN 978-1-5098-3685-7 RRP £8-99

Books make great presents

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Brexit, British Library Crime Classics, C J Sansom, John Bude, Pitt the Younger, Richard Askwith, Sophie Hannah, Stephen Fry, T H White, William Hague, Zatopek

A great gift haul this birthday and Christmas, my thanks to all the givers and authors!  All encouragement to those of us who like to put the odd word in front of another.

Thanks, guys.

 

Another Book For Your Christmas List

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Books for Christmas, Francis Spufford, Golden Hill, The Miniaturist, Waterstones, Wolf Hall, Writing Historical Fiction

On one of my frequent trawls through the treasures in our local Waterstones I noticed that the wonderful Golden Hill by Francis Spufford is out in paperback. For anyone who enjoys a classy historical novel, this would make a perfect Christmas gift.

Having loved the book in hardback, and enthused about it on this site when it first came out, I thought I’d reproduce those earlier thoughts here. Since that time I’ve re-read Golden Hill several times, seeking pointers on how to write a top-flight historical novel. Francis Spufford makes it look easy, but sadly that isn’t so…

With apologies for repeating myself, here, again, are my thoughts on this outstanding book. I’m still waiting for him to write a sequel, or Hollywood to come up with the film. It’s a cracking tale.

An impatient, personable young man from London has himself rowed from the brig Henrietta to the New York shore of 1746, carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It’s for the vast amount of one thousand pounds – and must be honoured within sixty days by trader Master Lovell, who owes this sum to the London company who issued the bill.

Deeply suspicious of this ‘strip of a boy who comes demanding payment of an awk’ard-sized fortune, on no surety‘ – and with London a six-week sail across the ocean, meaning a fraud couldn’t be uncovered before the money falls due – Lovell and his fellow merchants have a decision to take which could ruin them. Is the mysterious Richard Smith genuine? A bold-faced crook? Up to devious political mischief? Or attempting something much darker?

For everyone agrees he’s up to something. He openly admits to it. Yet despite hints and red herrings, nothing will get the truth out of him – not offers of violence, rooftop chases, a duel, a branding, nor the threat of the hangman’s noose. Smith keeps his surprising secret to the final page.

Francis Spufford’s novel is a fine plum pudding of a book, rich with spice and full of silver-sixpence-like surprises. I gobbled it up, swallowing (along with envy of an author who can create such a clever game of pass-the-parcel) layer-upon-layer of story from which the reader must tease out clues to the secret at its core.

The language is gloriously dense in places. But if it is occasionally purple, it’s the colour of a Georgian brocade waistcoat, the texture of the cloth opulent under one’s exploring fingers, yet not necessarily giving helpful information about the wearer’s identity. This is arguably necessary, since modern language would struggle to convey the landscape of a city where church spires look down on a display of trophy human scalps; where the reality of a duel of honour is a blundering struggle through deep snow, with spurting blood and unexpected consequences; where one of the great cities of the world is in the bold process of creating itself.

Then there are Spufford’s wonderful characters: the feline Tabitha, who hates novels yet quotes Shakespeare; the voluptuous Mrs Tomlinson, who makes Smith a saucy but generous offer he cannot, for politeness, refuse; the intriguingly erudite Achilles, ‘a tall African of about Smith’s age, wearing livery, with long limbs and a tight knob of a head like the bole of a dark tree‘ who has a complex and surprising relationship with Septimus Oakeshott, the Governor’s young aide. My heart still breaks over Septimus.

Historical novels don’t have to be bodice-rippers. They can be Wolf Hall. They can be The Miniaturist. They can be Golden Hill. Those of us trying to write about the distant past can only see such mastery, and gnash our teeth with envy.