The Servant: A Review

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Historical fiction, Just published, London's Foundling Hospital Museum, Maggie, Review

This month marks the publication of The Servant, an historical novel by ninevoices’ own Maggie Richell-Davies. Inspired by the author’s visit to the Foundling Hospital Museum in London and set in the latter half of the 18th century, The Servant tells the story of Hannah, the orphaned daughter of a silk weaver forced into service at the age of 15. At first Hannah is employed in the safe and nurturing home of a widow, Mistress Buttermere. But when circumstances change, she is obliged to move to the sinister Chalke household where, in addition to hard work and cruelty, she encounters mystery, villainy and danger.

The Foundling Hospital’s clients were largely from the servant class, women who had little in the way of education, even less in the way of rights, and were therefore ripe for exploitation, as Hannah’s story in The Servant so vividly illustrates. The author shows with sometimes excruciating period detail the difficult lives of housemaids, cooks, beggars, and fallen women. For example, when desperate circumstances force Hannah to leave the Chalkes, she is led by her friend and co-worker to the only relatively safe lodgings she can afford: ‘We reach a stinking network of courtyards, washing frozen into ragged shapes on sagging ropes, and stop before a derelict house. Wooden planks are nailed over most of the windows… Inside, the stench is like a buffet in the face and I bite the edge of my shawl to stop my stomach heaving… damp mottles the walls as if they have a scabrous disease.’

The novel is beautifully (‘The sky is pewter rubbed with sharp sand.’) and economically written with strong characterizations. Hannah’s first sighting of Mistress Chalke in the opening pages fills us with dread: ‘…the visitor is ramrod straight. Hands twisting like snakes in the lap of her black gown…The eyes…sharp as a skinning knife.’

Despite the peril and powerlessness of her position, Hannah finds reserves of strength and ingenuity to both survive and act to bring about justice. In this she is aided by Peg, as downtrodden a scullery maid as ever there was, and other women who act in defiance of men’s control. My favourite of these is Fat Nellie, a wise and strong-minded woman who minds children in the lodging next to Hannah’s and provides practical assistance without expectation of return. I’d have liked to see more of Nellie, especially at the end of the book.

Unlike most women of her class, Hannah can read and write. Her intellectual curiosity endears her to farmer Thomas, a thoughtful and well-read widower who delivers milk to the Chalke household. It also drives her to discover the nature of the Chalke’s villainy and seek to end it.

All in all this is a satisfying novel rich in historical detail with a sympathetic heroine battling to survive the injustices of the age.

The Servant, which won the Historical Writers’ Association 2020 Unpublished Novel Award, is available via Amazon on Kindle at a very affordable £2.99, and paperback at £7.99. 

How Proust can change you into a best-selling author

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Marketing, Proust, Social Media, Writing Magazine

It seems that self-promotion is now part and parcel of being a writer, whether self or traditionally published. But where should the line be drawn?

Discovering that Marcel Proust, the creator of the iconic In Search of Lost Time, cunningly wrote a critic’s review citing the first volume Swann’s Way as a ‘little masterpiece … almost too luminous for the eye’ will hardly shock anyone in the business today. Proust was just ahead of his time.

Authors are bombarded with advice on how to promote their books, especially on social media. While it isn’t ever suggested that posting fake reviews of their own work is a good idea, the advice to authors is relentless, even ruthless, enough. There is no room for shrinking violets in this game.

Readers certainly like to be informed about a new book by an author but they may well begin to feel annoyed and manipulated if the chasing is too hard-boiled. Like ‘an insane cuckoo clock’ was the expression describing it that caught my eye when researching the subject on the internet. Is this what marketing on social media can turn into? The last thing many writers feel like being part of.

But I can feel Proust egging me on. Maybe not to write a lyrical review about a ‘little masterpiece’ of my own, but to point to a couple of prize-winning short stories in ninevoices’ writings. Maggie Davies’ Till Death Do Us Part won a Henshaw Press competition and Tanya van Hasselt’s Marshmallow Truth won the subscribers ‘Changes’ competition in Writing Magazine. Whilst the writing style in the latter story is nothing like that of my two self-published novels, it was both fun and fulfilling to try something new. Thank you Writing Magazine for this encouragement. 

Critical reviews: thick skin required

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All Desires Known, Iris Murdoch

In this world nothing is certain except death and taxes, wrote Benjamin Franklin. Authors might want to add nasty reviews to the list.

Every novel that is ever published will get at least one bad review – that is, if it gets any at all. You cannot as an author please everyone.

But a critical review still makes for painful reading. You’ve done your very best and here is some stranger being rude about your work. It feels like a personal attack, and no amount of re-reading of praise in other reviews removes the sting.

Some critical reviews – however unpleasant they are to swallow – may be a good thing. They can point out weaknesses of which we’d been entirely unaware. This is useful constructive criticism, offering things to consider when writing our next novel. We can be very grateful for this help.

The nasty reviews where you can’t help thinking that the reviewer hasn’t bothered to read the book can be dismissed but they are still irritating. One less than complimentary review of my novel All Desires Known said something about its sleepy village backdrop, which struck me as odd as it’s set in a busy town with scenes involving the local theatre and mentions of  Waitrose! Clearly I had failed to give enough sense of place …

Authors have a range of advice for coping with negative reviews. Worth remembering is that most would-be readers have learnt to be suspicious of nothing but praise and a hundred per cent crop of five stars. All those friends and relations roped in …

Iris Murdoch’s philosophical approach might come in handy as well. ‘A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waterstones comes up trumps

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self-publishing, Something in the Water, Tunbridge Wells Writers, Waterstones

Waterstones might once have been less than welcoming to self-published authors wanting to launch their books.

No sign of this at the Tunbridge Wells branch on Wednesday evening 9th September when a local writing group called Tunbridge Wells Writers launched a small book called Something in the Water Unreliable Biographies.

It’s a sparkling collection of fictional pieces about writers, following the lives and opinions of people as diverse as Jo Brand, Vita Sackville-West, Victoria Hislop, Arthur Conan Doyle and W.H. Davies.

Guests were treated to some amusing readings by the contributors and the amazing re-appearance of a Suffragette! Not surprisingly, the pile of copies on the counter being sold by friendly Waterstones staff had vanished by the end of the evening. With tickets to the event costing £3, another £2 seemed very reasonable; the book would make an ideal present for anyone with connections to Tunbridge Wells or with a quirky, literary turn of mind and a fondness for local history.

The group’s website is http://tunbridgewellswriters.org.uk/

‘The Monogram Murders’

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Agatha Christie, pastiche, Poirot, Sophie Hannah

Followers of Hercule Poirot have had a long wait. Curtain appeared from the pen of the Queen of Crime back in 1975. Since then we’ve had to wait for new actors to play him – Peter Ustinov or Ian Holm, for example – or for the amazing David Suchet to work his way through the oeuvre.

Now (or since last year, when it was published by HarperCollins) we have a new novel, The Monogram Murders. This is a most entertaining pastiche by Sophie Hannah. The dustjacket carries an approving statement from its chairman, Agatha Christie’s grandson Mathew Prichard, chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd.

For me it was a great read. An intriguing plot, with a splendidly complex solution. There are echoes of At Bertram’s Hotel meets St Mary Mead. (I know those are both Miss Marple, but it’s the venues that do the echoing …)

The narrator is Edward Catchpool, a 32-year-old Scotland Yard detective who is temporarily sharing lodgings with Poirot. He appears to be in awe of the great man and lets him have more or less complete control of the investigation. Poirot seems to have decided to train him.

The story starts in Pleasant’s Coffee House, a café somewhere away from central London which Poirot frequents because it serves uniquely good coffee. He is much taken with a young customer called Jennie who seems in fear of her life and who utters cryptic sentences, such as “It’s too late. I am already dead, you see, or I shall be soon”, and “Let no-one open their mouths!”

The scene shifts to the Bloxham Hotel, one of London’s finest. At the same time as Poirot is meeting Jennie three bodies are found: all poisoned, all laid out neatly, and all with cufflinks in their mouths bearing the monogram PJI. They are in rooms 121, 238 and 317. They are Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus, and they have all been seen alive at 7-15 pm when they were served tea together in room 238. A mysterious note is then left at reception, saying ‘May they never rest in peace. 121. 238. 317.’ This prompts the discovery of their bodies at 8-15 pm.

We also visit Great Holling, a village very much à la Christie, where you can almost smell the malice and the distrust. Catchpool goes there but the only person who will talk to him at all reasonably is Margaret Ernst, the widow of a former vicar, who is friendly with the doctor, Dr Ambrose Flowerday. We learn of a tragedy of years past.

To say more would give too much away. Suffice it to say that the traditional scene at the end where Poirot explains all, in the Bloxham Hotel’s dining room, has its surprises.

If I have one criticism it is that in the first half of the novel Poirot himself seems somehow static, and he did not come over to me as having quite the colour of the original. But that detracted little from my enjoyment of this meticulously plotted whodunit.

Well done Sophie Hannah.

Religion: yes or no?

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Abide with Me, Elizabeth Strout, religious fiction

Steer clear of religion, readers don’t like it. This was the advice given to me a dozen years ago by one of those apparently market-savvy literary consultants who advise writers hoping to find a publisher for their novel.

I can see that anything smacking of a bossy moral tale, written in heavy-handed religious language, is to be avoided. None of us like being preached at. But a novel without any moral vacillation in the minds of characters, with no reference to anything beneath the surface of life, sounds very dull indeed.

It’s a good thing American author Elizabeth Strout doesn’t listen to such bad advice. Her novel Abide with Me is all about the inner struggles of a New England pastor, following the death of his young wife. It’s certainly not an instant attention grabber; it’s some pages in that the reader might fall in love with the extraordinary luminous quality of the writing. And it’s sharp stuff, as biting as its setting of long dark winters and brief hot summers; occasionally shocking or grimly humorous. Nothing flowery or sentimental here.

Gradually in a series of vivid scenes the reader is led inside the head of not just the hero but his mute five-year-old daughter, and members of the close-knit congregation dealing with their own griefs and disappointments. The ending is one of redemption and hope – at least for some.

But clearly some readers miss the point – or would agree with that literary consultant, that religion in books is essentially boring. Among the many admiring reviews of Abide with Me, I came across the following: “The narrator’s folksy tone does nothing to enliven this dispiriting story; the overall effect is rather like listening to a slightly cantankerous maiden aunt dispensing local gossip.” It all proves the point that we look for – and find – very different things in the novels we read, and really this can only be a good thing.

‘Expo 58’

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Belgium, commuters, Czech, Ian Rankin, Jonathan Coe, Russians, spies

How I must have annoyed my fellow travellers on the train as I chuckled away and occasionally laughed out loud, reading Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe. Published last year, it’s an enjoyably comic novel set at the Expo 58 exhibition in Brussels in 1958. It contains spies, the British Civil Service, love interests, and twists in the tail. An author’s note at the end shows to what lengths he went to get verisimilitude, even in a committee meeting that I had assumed was just invented farce.

Our hero is Thomas Foley, who holds a junior position in the Central Office of Information. His mother was a Belgian refugee and he grew up in a pub, so he is thought to be the ideal person to go on the COI’s behalf to ‘keep an eye on’ the replica Britannia pub, part of the British exhibition there. His duties at the Britannia are vague (indeed we never get to learn what they are), but he is taken aside by two mysterious men from the British Secret Service, Tweedledum and Tweedledee-type characters called Radford and Wayne, and told also to keep an eye on what Eastern bloc folk might be getting up to at the Fair.

Among others we meet a beautiful Belgian guide/hostess, Anneke, for whom our hero develops a soft spot; her plainer friend Clara; Thomas’ roommate Tony Buttress (who is involved with the cutting-edge scientific Zeta Project); the Russian ‘editor’ Andrey Chersky, who befriends Thomas and is unusually interested in the Zeta Project; Emily from Wisconsin, who demonstrates vacuum cleaners in the American pavilion and who is keen on Andrey Chersky; the bulky British spy Wilkins; the alcoholic Mr Rossiter, the manager of the Britannia, who resents Thomas’ presence; and his able barmaid Shirley Knott (indeed!), who pals up with an American, Mr Longman. We learn through some brilliant letters between Thomas and his wife Sylvia that back at home she resents his absence and is getting too close to the obnoxious next-door neighbour, Mr Sparks.

Events get rather complicated. There is farce, and wryer (presumably ‘wry’ has a comparative form?) humour such as the brilliant Civil Service committee meeting near the start of the book. There are some great set-pieces such as an evening in a German bierkeller; a romantic meal for Thomas and Anneke in Expo’s best restaurant, the Praha in the Czechoslovak pavilion (which did indeed have that reputation, and was reassembled back in Prague after Expo); and a picnic in the Belgian countryside. There are sensitive passages too – such as Thomas’ reactions to a concert – and a poignant epilogue.

It is notoriously difficult to recommend humorous books to others – what makes me LOL may raise barely a titter from you. But Expo 58 worked for me. Now I’m reading a cracking Ian Rankin, so my fellow-commuters can snooze undisturbed.

Church Times – reviews worth reading

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All Desires Known, Barbara Pym, Church Times

Reading reviews of one’s published writing can be a mixed experience. Grateful pleasure when the reviewer has understood what one was trying to achieve, a disconcerting recognition that a particular criticism may be justified and occasional irritation when it’s obvious that the reviewer has apparently only read the first and last pages.

A clear, accurate and sensitive review of Tanya van Hasselt’s novel All Desires Known  in the Church Times 7th November written by Sarah Meyrick left the author feeling thankful that here was someone who appreciated the story for what it was – and who wanted more about the character at the religious heart of it. But this will have to come in another novel…

Here’s an extract from the Church Times review, reproduced with permission from the editor.

‘… an easy and enjoyable read. The author clearly knows the world of schools from the inside, and paints a largely convincing picture of a family in meltdown. The book asks questions about betrayal and forgiveness – just how possible is this? What are the boundaries between patient and psychiatrist – and where does the responsibility for a patient’s well-being begin and end? Do we have a right to be happy?

‘The author’s experience as a writer of short stories (she recently won joint first prize in the Barbara Pym centenary competition) shows in her sure touch…’

The link to the Church Times: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/