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Tag Archives: Ian McEwan

Where do good ideas come from?

30 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by ninevoices in Books for Christmas, Ed, Ideas, Inspiration, Newly Published, Plot, Read Lately, Satire, Writercraft

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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

The Opening Chapter

06 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Ed, Fiction, Read Lately, Writercraft

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Balloons, Daphne du Maurier, Enduring Love, Ian McEwan, M40, Rebecca, Vicar of Dibley

The opening chapter – it must really work, we’re taught. Maybe it’s the bit a potential agent would read. Maybe it’s the bit that a browser in a bookshop will look at. Maybe it’s the bit that will make a reader decide whether to carry on reading …

One of the most exciting opening chapters I’ve read is that of Enduring Love by Ian McEwan. This was recommended by our creative writing tutor, and as soon as I read it I could see why. Its dramatic account of a balloon ride gripped me. I think of it every time I drive down the escarpment on the M40 where it’s set (going towards Oxford, near Stokenchurch – as in the film shown during the opening credits of ‘The Vicar of Dibley’). Curiously, after that amazing start, the subject matter of the rest of the book drifts away from balloons. But that opening definitely made me read on.

The opening chapter of the book I’m reading now, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, is another Must Read On one. Its description of the abandoned and overgrown Manderley is all the more evocative as it’s a dream, and reads with all the mystery and menace that a dream can have.

What opening chapters stay in your memory?

The Charleston Festival

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by ninevoices in Ed, Festivals

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Charleston, Charlotte Bronte, Ian McEwan, Jane Austen, Jeanette Winterson, Rose Tremain, Shakespeare

The Charleston Festival follows, from 20-30 May. See www.charleston.org.uk. Highlights (taken from a Festival e-mail and the website) include:

  • an appearance by Sir Tim Berners-Lee;
  • Jeanette Winterson on The Gap of Time, her response to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Echoing the original play, the book is a contemporary story of betrayal, paranoia and redemption. We are to expect a zestful performance;
  • Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, cosmologist and space scientist, and Ian McEwan, one of our most science-savvy novelists, discuss the future of our planet;
  • Award-winning author, Rose Tremain, talks about her new novel, set in the lead-up to WW2. The Gustav Sonata revolves around the relationship between two Swiss boys and follows them through to old age;
  • Jane Austen versus Charlotte Brontë: who better to try to resolve the contest than Claire Harman, current biographer of Charlotte Brontë and John Mullan, Professor of English Literature and author of What Matters in Jane Austen? The audience will have the final say. Moderator Virginia Nicholson, social historian, will be entirely impartial.

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