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Tag Archives: Waterstones

Another Book For Your Christmas List

18 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by ninevoices in Books for Christmas, Maggie

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Tags

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.

 

Good news for a certain chain …

03 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Bookshops, Ed

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

profitability, Waterstones

books

Waterstone’s are back in the black – good news for those of us old-fashioned types who like to buy actual books and who feared that our few actual remaining bookshops were in danger of disappearing ….   And sales of novels are up – more good news!  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/01/waterstones-first-year-of-profit-since-2008-financial-crash-bookseller-amazon-rise-sales

Criminal Activities in Tunbridge Wells

29 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by ninevoices in Crime, Historical, Maggie, Mystery

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Antonia Hodgson, City of Masks, Death at Fountains Abbey, J D Sykes, Plague Land, The Butcher Bird, Waterstones

On Wednesday, 14 September, two successfully published authors of historical crime will be at Waterstones in Tunbridge Wells to talk about their latest books and the journey to their publication.

S D Sykes (see our post of July 7 about her Bloomsbury Press workshop : How to Write Historical Fiction and Get Published) will be discussing the latest adventure of her hero, Oswald, who was sent to a monastery at the age of seven, only to be called home at eighteen when his father and brothers succumbed to the Black Death. Finding himself the reluctant Lord of Somershill Manor – and wrestling with the aftermath of the plague, peasant unrest, and some infuriatingly troublesome female relatives – he discovers a talent for solving gruesome murders, in Plague Land and The Butcher Bird.

City of Masks is Oswald’s third adventure, which takes place when a pilgrimage to Venice finds him trapped under seige by the Hungarians. I have yet to read it, but look forward to following this endearingly diffident young man’s journey towards maturity.

The magnificent cover, I’m told, is The Relic of the True Cross by Gentile Bellini, which can be seen in Venice and is apparently HUGE.

Scan_20160824

 

As a complete contrast, Antonia Hodgson’s latest book, Death at Fountains Abbey, features a rakish Georgian antihero, Thomas Hawkins, who is employed secretly by Queen Caroline to uncover the blackmailing activities of a previous Chancellor of the Exchequer. (Let’s hope George Osborne doesn’t read it and get any ideas…) Hawkins, previously featured in The Devil in the Marshalsea and The Last Confessions of Thomas Hawkins, has a host of enemies and a long-lost daughter returning from the dead to ramp up the pace and atmosphere.

Scan_20160829

Tickets for what should be an enjoyable and informative evening are available now from Waterstones for the very reasonable sum of £3, which can be redeemed against the price of the books, if purchased.  I have mine already…

CIMG0007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waterstones – Buy Books for Syria Campaign

02 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by ninevoices in Maggie

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Tags

Oxfam, Syria Crisis, Waterstones

From October 1st (yesterday) Waterstones bookshops will be selling books by bestselling authors in their Buy Books for Syria campaign.

100 percent of the retail price of each book purchased will go to Oxfam’s Syria Crisis Appeal. A list of the titles on offer can be found on the Waterstones’ website.

Help them reach their target of raising one million pounds by doing what you love most – buying books.

 

 

 

Waterstones comes up trumps

11 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by ninevoices in Publishing, reviews, Tanya, Writing

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Tags

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/

Judge a book by its cover…

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by ninevoices in Publishing, Tanya

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

All Desires Known, Gwen John, National Portrait Gallery, Waterstones

AllDesiresKnownCover‘

‘If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at all’. Oscar Wilde said this, or something very like it. I have to agree with him.

This may be an age thing. As you get older you realise with dismay that there are going to be many excellent books you are never going to read. Time is short. Is it too short to waste it on anything that isn’t worth reading more than once?

It was with these thoughts in mind that I chose how I wanted my self-published novel All Desires Known to look. It’s not a plot-driven page-turner. If readers enjoy it, it will be for its examination of character and its prose style. I hope they will look forward to the next chapter for the pleasure of reading, rather than only caring about what happens next. I hope they will be sorry when they see there’s only one more chapter left.

So I needed All Desires Known to at least look like the kind of book people want to read more than once. It doesn’t matter if airport paperbacks end up dog-eared with broken spines – they’ve served their purpose of instant entertainment. But if a book is going to be sticking around on an owner’s shelf waiting to be pulled out again it should be a work of art in itself, not just a vehicle for words. Quality paper, a graceful, traditional font, a smooth matt laminate cover with flaps. A book which is a joy to look at, to hold and to turn the pages. Something like Persephone books in fact.

In modern publishing, the cover has to advertise the contents and inform the buyer exactly what kind of book it is. A publisher’s design department will know about what colours and graphics to use, what matches the market for your book, what catches the eye on Amazon. All very important, but it’s not your choice. Here’s where self-publishing has its rewards. You can have exactly the cover you want.

The heroine of All Desires Known, Nell Garwood, is an artist whose revealing portrait of an enigmatic public school chaplain misleads Dr Lewis Auerbach, the Jewish child psychiatrist who is caring for her daughter. The role of art in exposing the truth is played out through scenes at Wharton school, the Mall Galleries and finally in the National Portrait Gallery. So the cover of the book had to be a painting.

It is Lewis who spots the uncanny likeness between a portrait he has seen at Tate Britain and Nell Garwood. This is why All Desires Known has on its front cover Gwen John’s painting of The Convalescent, painted in 1918-19. A young woman deep in private thought, torn by the rights and wrongs of life, holding on to her interior life. We don’t know who the model was, only that Gwen John painted her many times while living in Paris where she had a passionate love affair with the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Here is the same intense psychological insight that Nell showed in her work, but so disastrously lacked elsewhere…

All Desires Known is all about moral vacillation and our infinite capacity for self-deception. Gwen John’s beautiful muted painting might not dazzle on the tables at Waterstones, an eye-catching seller for my novel, but it’s a perfect work of art you want to go on looking at and that’s what matters most on the cover of a book.

Thank goodness for Barbara Pym

18 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by ninevoices in Books, Fiction, Tanya

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Alexander McCall Smith, Barbara Pym, Excellent Women, Jane Austen, Jilly Cooper, Mavis Cheek, Reading, Waterstones

‘The Jane Austen of our day’ wrote A L Rowse. ‘I could go on reading her for ever.’ Yes, I know the feeling.

2013 is a brilliant year for fans of Barbara Pym; her centenary is being celebrated, and there are some splendid new editions of her novels being promoted, with introductions by popular authors such as Alexander McCall Smith, Mavis Cheek and Jilly Cooper. I found a table full of them in our local Waterstones, with a tempting offer for June…as Mavis Cheek writes, ‘Re-reading the entire canon, ten novels in all, has been pure bliss.’

It’s surprising (and reassuring) that Barbara Pym is so much admired by men, for much of the subtle comedy in her novels revolves around their not always endearing weaknesses and foibles. Do they recognise themselves and feel grateful that alongside the sharpness of wit there is tenderness and forgiveness to be found among the excellent women who pepper the novels?

Barbara Pym’s world is full of people like ourselves. Such a relief. No dungeons, designer living, desperate villains. But anyone who dismisses her as niminy-piminy has made a mistake. She’s never going to be up for the bad sex scene award, but passion of all kinds is there and not only among the young: self-deception, infidelity, unrequited devotion, romantic yearnings, cruel disappointment, misguided infatuation and homosexual love.

So as with Jane Austen, the novels may appear to be about the small doings of ordinary people, but they are lifted up into great and lasting literature by Barbara Pym’s extraordinary ear for the hidden tragedies as well as the small poignancies and comedies of our common experience. Such riches!

There’s a Barbara Pym Society centenary conference ‘Remembering Barbara’ at Oxford on August 30-September 1. It sounds wonderful. More details at http://www.barbara-pym.org

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