The Blurb (from Goodreads):
In Homer’s account in The Odyssey, Penelope—wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy—is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumors, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters, and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and—curiously—twelve of her maids.
In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged maids, asking: “What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?” In Atwood’s dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. With wit and verve, drawing on the story-telling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality—and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery.
My Thoughts:
In July, my daughter and I flew to Athens to meet my husband and sons for three weeks in the Greek islands. Her English teacher suggested that she read The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood in preparation. It’s only a slim book, and so I tucked it in her bag. I read it while we were in Crete, my daughter having thrown it aside.
The Penelopiad is essentially the famous story of Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy, told from the point of view of his wife Penelope and her twelve maids, who were all hanged by her son Telemachus at the end of the saga. I love retellings of myth and fairytales, and I studied The Odyssey in my first degree, so I was really looking forward to seeing what Margaret Atwood would do with this ancient tale.
It was not quite what I was expecting. Each section is followed by a different poem or song told in the voices of the twelve hanged maids. Margaret Atwood says in her introduction that they ‘form a chanting and singing Chorus.’ For example, ‘The Chorus Line: A Rope-Jumping Rhyme’ begins:
we are the maids
the ones you killed
the ones you failed
we danced in air
our bare feet twitched
it was not fair
Another is entitled ‘The Chorus Line: Kiddie Mourn’; yet another is called ‘The Chorus Line: If I Were A Princess, A Popular Tune’ and is structured like a sea shanty:
Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave –
The water below is as dark as the grave
And maybe you’ll sink in your little blue boat –
It’s hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat.
One of the maids’ chapters is presented as an anthropology lecture, positing ‘possibly our rape and subsequent hanging represent the overthrow of a matrilineal moon-cult by an incoming group of usurping patriarchal father-god-worshipping barbarians.’
It is all very clever, and Margaret Atwood is adept at the ventriloquist’s craft, though Penelope’s own voice – wry and self-conscious – is strangely modern. Each chapter is very short, and basically tells the same story as The Odyssey, but at a remove since Penelope is not present and is only repeating tales she has heard. This, of course, has a distancing and deadening effect … and adds to the artificial quality created by the hanged maids’ chorus.
I read it all in a matter of hours, and overall I loved the bravado of it all. I’m not sure anyone but Margaret Atwood would have got away with it. The back-cover blurb describes it as ‘playful’, and that adjective certainly fits. I am not a fan of satire or parody, and so would have much preferred a more serious attempt to engage with the retelling of this ancient myth. Nonetheless, it was very readable and quite amusing – if one can forgive using the hanging of twelve young women for comic effect.
Another great review you may enjoy is The King Must Die by Mary Renault:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-the-king-must-die-by-mary-renault
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Anne Brontë is the forgotten Brontë sister, overshadowed by her older siblings -- virtuous, successful Charlotte, free-spirited Emily and dissolute Branwell. Tragic, virginal, sweet, stoic, selfless, Anne. The less talented Brontë, the other Brontë.
Or that's what Samantha Ellis, a life-long Emily and Wuthering Heights devotee, had always thought. Until, that is, she started questioning that devotion and, in looking more closely at Emily and Charlotte, found herself confronted by Anne instead.
Take Courage is Samantha's personal, poignant and surprising journey into the life and work of a woman sidelined by history. A brave, strongly feminist writer well ahead of her time -- and her more celebrated siblings -- and who has much to teach us today about how to find our way in the world.
My Thoughts:
Every few months, I like to re-read an old classic that I haven’t read for a while. Last year I chose The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, a book I had not read since I was a teenager. I was completely blown away by it. In my review of it, I wrote:
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an astonishingly brave novel for a young woman to write in the early part of the 19th century. It’s a story about marital abuse, and Helen’s courageous action in leaving her husband would have been thought utterly shocking at the time. One of the biographers of the Brontës, May Sinclair, wrote “the slamming of Helen Huntingdon’s bedroom door against her husband reverberated through Victorian England”… The Tenant of Wildfell Hall does not flinch away from depicting alcoholism, adultery, domestic violence, or attempted rape. It is clear-eyed and unflinching in its depiction of the realities of 19th century English life.
I’ve been a fervent fan of Anne Bronte’s ever since, and feel she has been unfairly dismissed by many readers & critics who prefer the wild romances of her sisters Charlotte and Emily.
I went to visit Haworth Vicarage while I was in the UK recently, and saw this for sale in the museum shop. I bought it, and began reading it while I was staying in the village where these three extraordinary women writers grew up. I spent the day visiting their cramped home and marvelling at the tiny books they made as children, then tramping on the moors in the fresh heather-scented wind, then snuggled down to read this in the evening. It was perfect.
I would describe Samantha Ellis’s book as a bibliomemoir, as it examines her own thoughts and feelings about Anne Bronte and her life and work in a very warm, intimate and natural way. It is like drinking good wine with a dear friend by the fire, talking excitedly about a book and why you love it and what it has taught you about life.
There is no high tone or literary theory here. Samantha Ellis compares the Bronte sisters to the Beatles, for example. (Charlotte is like Paul McCartney, ambitious, accessible and the driving force behind the group’s success; Emily is like John Lennon, a mercurial genius; and Anne is like George Harrison, unfairly overlooked and forgotten.)
Each chapter explores a different influence upon Anne’s work, such as her mother who died when she was very young, or her brother Patrick whose love affair with the married wife of their employer destroyed Anne’s career as a governess. It all, of course, examines her novels The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey (which I’m ashamed to admit I have not read).
I think this is a wonderful book – intelligent but accessible, intimate yet well-researched and thorough, witty yet extremely poignant, familiar in its content yet fresh and illuminating in its outlook. Read it, then go and discover Anne Bronte’s work for yourself (and yes, yes, I plan to read Agnes Grey very soon!)
You may also like to read my vintage review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-reviewthe-tenant-of-wildfell-hall-by-anne-bronte
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
This is the story of a woman's struggle for independence. Helen "Graham" has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter.
My Thoughts:
I first read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall when I was in my late teens and discovering the lives and work of the Bronte sisters. It came third in my esteem, after Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. For some reason, I have never re-read it, even though I’ve re-visited the work of her sisters many times. It might have been because I remembered it as being rather gloomy, with a pious self-righteous heroine and an unlikeable hero.
Talking the book over with a friend last year, she said that she thought it was one of the earliest examples of feminist fiction. I decided I had to read it again and I’m very glad I did.
Basically, the story begins with Gilbert Markham, an affable but rather shallow and impetuous young man, taking an interest in a beautiful but secretive widow who comes to live in Wildfell Hall with her young son. Helen supports herself with her painting and has very decided views on alcohol and other social problems. Gilbert talks with her and finds himself admiring her steadfastness and intelligence, in stark contrast to Eliza, the pretty but silly girl he had been courting previously. As his fascination with Helen grows, so does his curiosity about her past. But Helen guards her secrets closely. He asks her to marry him, and she refuses – but gives him her diaries to read.
The narrative then switches to Helen’s point-of-view. Headstrong and passionate, she falls in love with a handsome, charming young man and marries him, despite her family’s reservations. He rushes headlong into dissolution, however, spending long months drinking and carousing in London, then bringing his debauched friends back to spend months at their estate. He embarks on an affair with one of his friends’ wives and mocks Helen’s sense of betrayal and pain. After he begins to teach his young son to drink and smoke and swear, Helen finds the strength and courage to leave him. She takes refuge at Wildfell Hall and lives in dread of her vindictive husband finding her.
The third section returns to Gilbert’s point-of-view. He is no longer the shallow, pleasure-loving character of the first part of the book. He has been transformed by his love for Helen into someone much deeper and more thoughtful. He agrees that he and Helen must not see each other again, as she is not free to marry and does not wish to be tempted into being unfaithful to her wedding vows. Helen returns to nurse her dying husband, and Gilbert is filled with anguish and grief. After her husband dies, he stands by his vow not to contact her but then hears rumours that she is to be married again. So he rushes to the church to try and stop the wedding. In the end, the two are reunited again and find happiness.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an astonishingly brave novel for a young woman to write in the early part of the 19th century. It’s a story about marital abuse, and Helen’s courageous action in leaving her husband would have been thought utterly shocking at the time. One of the biographers of the Brontës, May Sinclair, wrote “the slamming of Helen Huntingdon’s bedroom door against her husband reverberated through Victorian England.”
It is also a story about a woman who stood up for what she believed in, and who supported herself with her art. This was surely the unspoken dream of many young women bound within their society’s narrow view of a woman’s role in the world.
Finally, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall does not flinch away from depicting alcoholism, adultery, domestic violence, or attempted rape. It is clear-eyed and unflinching in its depiction of the realities of 19th century English life.
Most interestingly, for me, is the transformation of the character of Gilbert. In the first half of the book, he is confident to the point of cocky, and thinks nothing of toying with Eliza’s feelings, or of pressing his unwanted attentions upon Helen. He calls on her uninvited, he seizes her hand and tries to kiss it, he tries to pry into her past. His behaviour foreshadows the actions of Helen’s husband Arthur, who treats her with rough passion that escalates to violence, and his friend Walter, who tries to first seduce, then rape, Helen.
However, Gilbert changes once he has heard Helen’s story and understands how she has been abused in the past. He becomes more grave and gentler. Most interestingly, he swears to leave her be until she is ready for anything else. He does not write to her or hound her; he gives her the time she needs.
By the time they are at last united, he too has suffered from his long enforced separation from Helen and is far more worthy of her love. And the final scenes – when Gilbert races to stop her marriage to another – are compelling, page-turning drama.
I do have one small caveat about my new-found love and admiration of Anne Brontë – I’m afraid I skim-read most of the long speeches about piety and morality. I suspect they are why so many contemporary readers dislike the book!
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
At the age of fourteen, Laura Freeman was diagnosed with anorexia. She had seized the one aspect of her life that she seemed able to control, and struck different foods from her diet one by one until she was starving. But even at her lowest point, the one appetite she never lost was her love of reading.
As Laura battled her anorexia, she gradually re-discovered how to enjoy food - and life more broadly - through literature. Plum puddings and pottles of fruit in Dickens gave her courage to try new dishes; the wounded Robert Graves' appreciation of a pair of greengages changed the way she thought about plenty and choice; Virginia Woolf's painterly descriptions of bread, blackberries and biscuits were infinitely tempting. Book by book, meal by meal, Laura developed an appetite and discovered an entire library of reasons to live.
The Reading Cure is a beautiful, inspiring account of hunger and happiness, about addiction, obsession and recovery, and about the way literature and food can restore appetite and renew hope
My Thoughts:
Laura Freeman was diagnosed with anorexia at the age of fourteen. But this is not a book about her diagnosis and illness. It is instead a story about how books helped her recover her love of food, and that makes it both refreshing and powerful.
It began with her decision to read the entire collection of novels by Charles Dickens. She was struck with the immense pleasure many of his characters take in the consumption of food.
‘While I was reading Dickens something changed. I didn’t want to be on the outside, looking at pictures, tasting recipes at one remove, seeing the last muffin go to someone else. I began to want to want food. To share it, savour it, to have it without guilt,’ she writes.
Gradually Laura began to eat again. As she grew stronger she searched out books that would help her more. She read a collection of memoirs about World War I, an interesting and unexpected choice, and also the diary of Virginia Woolf, who was most likely anorexic herself.
‘While Woolf has been the most extraordinary consolation—and no other writer has so helped me make sense of my own mind, nor offered such a rubric for how I might mend it—she is also a writer who frightens me. For long periods she succeeded in reigning in and stabling her galloping horses, tied them, kept them in hay. For years, she managed it. And this from her 1935 diary, January, when she was fifty-two: “I wish I could find some way of composing my mind—It's absurd to let it be ravaged by scenes...On the contrary, it is better to pull on my galoshes & go through the gale to lunch off scrambled eggs & sausages.”
That is the remedy to: “I can't fight any longer.” That is what I hold tight from Virginia Woolf. Galoshes. Courage. On.’
A more obvious choice was returning to childhood classics such as The Secret Garden (a book that always makes me hungry!), and Wind in the Willows and Harry Potter (which is, of course, brimming over with delightful food-loving scenes.)
I absolutely loved this book. The writing is deft, razor-sharp, and brave, and I added a great many titles to my own to-be-read list.
‘What I have found in reading isn’t a dictionary of foodstuffs - A is for apple amber, B is for beautiful soup, C is for cheese on toast - but a whole library of reasons to eat, share, live, to want to be well.’
You may also love my review of Butterfly On A Pin by Alannah Hill:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-butterfly-on-a-pin-by-alannah-hill
I’ve been asked to compile my list of the best books to read if you are interested in learning about the history, meaning and purpose of fairy tales. I’ve tried to pick books of general interest, and which I personally have found illuminating. There are many, many more, of course, and no doubt I’ll kick myself later for forgetting one of my favourites but, for better or worse, here’s my Favourite Seven Books on Fairy Tales.
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning & Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim
First published in 1975, this is one of the most important early books on fairy tales. It is stuffed full of ideas but must be read with a caveat in mind. Bettelheim was a Freudian psychoanalyst which means that some of his interpretations seem very out-of-date nowadays. Also, he was drawing on limited scholarship because he was essentially the man who sparked the later intense academic interest in the subject. His reputation has also been tarnished by his suicide and the accusations of child abuse that followed. Nonetheless, he was a man of vision that helped rescue fairy tales from the dust balls under a child’s bed. He says that fairy tales teach us ‘that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable … but that if one … steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.’
Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of A Genre by Jack Zipes
All of Jack Zipes’s books are eloquent, insightful and cleverly argued, but this is my favourite because it is so accessible to people outside arcane academic circles. He has the ability to communicate clearly and yet with great depth of scholarship. And he is interested in the socio-historical background of the tales as well as what they may mean. He says: ‘As we know, tales do not only speak to us, they inhabit us and become relevant in our struggles to resolve conflicts that endanger our happiness.’
Other books by Zipes that I would thoroughly recommend are The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of A Genre, which builds on Why Fairy Tales Stick; and Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales.
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner
I cannot tell you how much I love this book. I have read it so many times I know parts of it off by heart. It’s a massive work of scholarship that looks at the history and meaning of fairy tales with a strong feminist and revisionist slant. This is a must-read. She says: ‘The marvels and prodigies, the seven-league boots and enchanted mirrors, the talking animals, the heroes and heroines changed into frogs or bears or cats, the golden eggs and everflowing supplies of porridge, the stars on the brow of the good sister and the donkeytail sprouting on the brow of the bad – all the wonders that create the atmosphere of fairy tale disrupt the apprehensible world in order to open spaces for dreaming alternatives. The verb ‘to wonder communicates the receptive state of marvelling as well as the active desire to know, to inquire, and as such it defines very well at least two characteristics of the traditional fairy tale: pleasure in the fantastic, curiosity about the real. The dimension of wonder creates a huge theatre of possibility in the stories: anything can happen. This very boundlessness serves the moral purpose of the tales, which is precisely to teach where boundaries lie.’
The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales by Sheldon Cashdan
This book sets out to explore how fairy tales can help children deal with psychological conflicts by projecting their own internal struggles onto the characters in the stories. In this way, Cashdan is building on Bettelheim’s legacy. He divides the stories based upon vices such as vanity, gluttony, deceit, greed and lust, which is interesting but can sometimes be a little simplistic. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating read. He says: ‘Beyond the chase scenes and lastminute rescues are serious dramas that reflect events taking place in the child’s inner world. Wheareas the initial attraction of a fairy tale may lie in its ability to enchant and entertain us, its lasting value lies in its power to help children deal with the internal conflicts they face in the course of growing up.’
The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar
Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide and incest: the darker side of the Grimm fairy tales are examined in this fascinating book. She looks at the countless wicked women in a chapter entitled ‘Stepmothers and Other Ogres’ and the beastly men in ‘Bluebeard and Other Monsters’ – it’s a racy, clever, and intriguing read. She says: fairy tales are up close and personal, mixing fact with fiction to tell us about our deepest anxieties and desires. They offer roadmaps pointing the way to romance and riches, power and privilege, and most importantly, a way out of the woods, back to the safety and security of home.’
Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys By Ruth B. Bottigheimer
First published in 1987, this is a fascinating and insightful look at the history of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, and some of the key motifs and story patterns that emerge. She also examines the various different editions and shows how the Grimm brothers had changed the stories over subsequent editions to better suit their devout, middle-class principles. She says: ‘People tell tales: peasants and artisans, lords and ladies, mothers and fathers, priests and preachers, girls and boys. The literate read aloud, the gifted recount. Over and over people tell tales whose contains seem the same but that nonetheless differs in profound ways.’
Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm fairy Tales by Valeria Paradiz
It was this book that inspired me to write my novel ‘The Wild Girl’. It tells the story of the forgotten women who were the primary oral source of the stories the Grimm brothers collected. The book is wonderfully accessible and draws upon the tales themselves in a way which I think worked wonderfully. She says: ‘Few readers know that more than half of the 210 fairy tales included in the Grimm anthologies had a woman’s hand in them.’
I had the recent pleasure of interviewing Cait Duggan - read her answers to my questions below:
Are you a daydreamer too?
Yes! I remember my mother getting cross with me on more than one occasion as a child, telling me to get my head out of the clouds. Not much has changed since then: one of my favourite pastimes is gazing into the middle distance, and I find myself doing this a lot! I’m a card-carrying introvert so I think it’s fair to say that I have a rich inner life.
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Yes, but I’m afraid I got sidetracked for quite a few years. As a kid I loved creative writing and was an avid reader. When I went to university in my mid-twenties, after spending a few years travelling, I was planning to become a journalist. Towards the end of my Mass Communications degree I started to get a bit nervous about my job prospects as I was a too old for a cadetship, so decided to take a first year Law subject and ended up really enjoying it. I stayed on and finished the Law degree. I’ve been working as a solicitor for quite a while now, but it can be the sort of career that doesn’t leave room for much else, especially in the early years. Before I started my first writing course with The Writers’ Studio in Sydney, I’d been doing corporate and commercial legal work for so long that I was worried I no longer had a functioning imagination! It’s been a long pathway since then to getting my first novel published, but I can honestly say it’s a dream come true.
Tell me about your novel:
The Last Balfour is about a 14 year-old-girl called Iona Balfour who’s from a family of witches at a time when witches were being persecuted in Scotland. It’s set during the reign of James VI, who’s sometimes called ‘the witch hunter king’. Iona is given a mission by her aunt, to take a magical object called the bloodstone and give it to a stranger who lives on the other side of the country. The bloodstone carries all the magic of the Balfour bloodline and Iona discovers that there are others who want to get their hands on the stone. As soon as she sets off, she finds there’s a witch hunter on her trail. The journey is hard, but she also finds allies along the way and starts to come into her own magical powers.
For me, the novel is about that time in your life when you’re leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult, and you’re really starting to think about existential questions such as, ‘What am I going to be? How am I going to make a living?’ I like to think of this as finding your own personal magic.
How did you get the first flash of inspiration for this book?
I’d had this kernel of an idea for a long time, about a witch being pursued by a witch hunter. I can’t remember where it came from, but I tried to sit down and write it a number of times, but it just wasn’t coming together. When I started the novel-writing course at The Writers’ Studio, I decided to write a legal thriller, because I thought it would be relatively easy, being a world I knew. Actually, the opposite was true, because I’ve never been into legal thrillers – I’m a fan of historical biography, historical fiction and magical realism. About halfway through the novel-writing course I found that the witch tale kept nagging at me, so I abandoned the legal thriller and started writing the story that eventually became The Last Balfour.
How extensively do you plan your novels?
I did a lot of planning and had a fairly clear outline of The Last Balfour before I started writing the scenes. I’m doing the same thing for my current novel. The narrative arc is written down as a plan before I start the writing. This doesn’t mean the story is set in stone, but it’s helpful as it provides a sort of road map, so I know where I’m headed. I like to know the big picture, and where the major turning points of the story will be. I’m sure this method wouldn’t work for everyone, but it works pretty well for me.
Do you ever use dreams as a source of inspiration?
As Freud said, dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, and I’ve been writing down my dreams for a few years now. A lot of what we’re doing as writers is excavating our unconscious minds and memories, so I find that recording dreams works in very well with the writing. I have at least one dream reference in The Last Balfour, and in the story I’m currently working on there’s a whole concept in there that’s based on a vivid dream I had a couple of years ago.
Where do you write, and when?
I write an awful lot on public transport. When I first started writing The Last Balfour, the only time I had in my day was on my morning train commute, which was about 45 minutes from home to work. So, I started writing in an A5 exercise book in the mornings on the train, five days a week. After almost a year of this, I had a really solid first draft. Then in 2014 I moved from Sydney to the Blue Mountains, so I had an even longer commute. I use this time productively, for both writing and editing. I tend to write more in the mornings as I find I’m much fresher then, and my left-brain thinking mind hasn’t taken over yet.
What is your favourite part of writing?
I like seeing the story come together over a period of time. I’ve found you need a lot of patience to write fiction, both for yourself and the story. Sadly, perfectly formed sentences do not tumble out of me and onto the page. Both writing and editing take up a lot of time, at least for me. But it’s like anything, if you’re patient and keep doing the work, you eventually start to see results. The other thing that I really love is when I’m not even thinking about my story but I’m out for a walk or vacuuming or whatever, and suddenly I get a great idea out of nowhere. It’s as if my unconscious is always thinking about the story, even when my conscious mind isn’t.
What do you do when you get blocked?
I tend to put the manuscript aside for a little while and do something else that’s creative. I like to take art classes occasionally. I’d love to be a visual artist but unfortunately can’t draw or paint to save myself. Having a ‘left-brain’ job, I think it’s important to force myself to make things, even though this doesn’t feel particularly comfortable. I’ve recently started doing ceramics classes which is challenging but a lot of fun. I also enjoy doing crochet, particularly in the cooler months. There’s something rather magical about crochet! Somehow it helps to untangle my overthinking mind. I find it’s great for daydreaming and, weirdly, for accessing deep memories.
How do you keep your well of inspiration full?
Over the past few years I’ve been inspired by authors who write about Celtic folklore and the western mystery tradition. I am now the proud owner of an extensive library of books about magic, witchcraft and folklore, from Scotland and elsewhere. I also like to travel, and while writing The Last Balfour I went to Scotland three times. I particularly love the tiny Hebridean island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, which my main character is named after. There’s a lot of myth and mystery associated with the island. It’s said that the first Christian missionary who settled there, St Columba, used magic to defeat the resident druids. It’s still a place of pilgrimage, for Christians and non-Christians alike.
Do you have any rituals that help you to write?
No, not particularly. I find I write well on the train because there’s no internet access and there are quiet carriages, so I don’t get too distracted. When I’m at home I often get sucked down rabbit-holes that I like to call ‘research’ but in truth what I’m doing is just procrastinating on social media and news websites!
Who are ten of your favourite writers?
This is such a hard question and my answer would probably be completely different if you asked me in a month’s time. I read a lot of non-fiction, so the list includes some of my favourite non-fiction authors, including some books I used for research.
Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials trilogy (I can’t wait for the TV series) and The Book of Dust
Charlotte Wood – The Natural Way of Things
Madeline Miller – Circe and The Song of Achilles
Paulo Coehlo – The Pilgrimage and Brida
Caitlín and John Matthews – Walking the Western Way and Caitlín’s Singing the Soul Back Home
1. Marian McNeill – I read a few of her books for research, but The Silver Bough is my favourite
Antonia Fraser – The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scots
Jane Meredith – Journey to the Dark Goddess and Aspecting the Goddess
Mara Freeman – Kindling the Celtic Spirit and Grail Alchemy
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I thank Cait for her time to answer my questions this month and I hope it gives you a great insight into her world as an author.
Read my review of Cait's Book here:
BOOK REVIEW: The Last Balfour by Cait Duggan
In recent months, I’ve been visiting a lot of Book Clubs who have read my novel ‘Bitter Greens’. Some have cooked me French onion soup; others have poured me fine French champagne. All of them have been full of questions.
Most questions begin ‘Is it true ...?’
Some of the most eagerly asked questions were about the court of the Sun King, and so I thought I would write a little more about this most imperious of kings. It is all really quite fascinating.
Yes, it is true that the Sun King used to ride out in a coach with his wife and his two favourite mistresses.
Yes, it is true that he married his bastard children’s governess (although he never acknowledged her as his wife).
Yes, it is true no-one except another royal was permitted to ever sit in his presence (except at the gambling tables, one reason why gambling was so popular with his footsore courtiers). Even his own sons had to remain standing, though his daughters were allowed to squat on little footstools, a privilege that they fought over bitterly.
Yes, it is true that courtiers had to bow or curtsey to any dish being carried to his table.
Yes, it is true that it was considered rude and vulgar to knock at a door. Courtiers grew the nail of their little fingers long so they could scratch at a door.
The etiquette of the court at Versailles was extraordinarily rigid.
Take the King’s daily routine.
He was surrounded at all times by his courtiers and soldiers – three or four thousand was the usual number.
Every morning, a chain of servants and courtiers passed each item of clothing to the king. For example, the Valet of the Wardrobe brought the King's shirt, passed it to the grand chamberlain, who handed it to the Dauphin, who passed it to the King.
He had one servant whose only job was to present him with his golden goblet of wine.
The King ate alone, watched by up to 300 people at a time. At one meal he is said to have eaten "four platefuls of different soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a plateful of salad, mutton hashed with garlic, two good-sized slices of ham, a dish of pastry and afterwards fruit and sweetmeats."
The King expected all noblemen to live with him at Versailles. Anyone who preferred to live on their own estates soon fell from favour. The King would simply say, ‘I do not know them’, and favours would be passed to those who danced attendance upon him.
Louis XIV was Europe’s longest serving monarch. He reigned for 72 years and 110 days. He out-lived his son, and his two eldest grand-sons (all three were named Louis too). He was succeeded by his five year old great-grand-son, Louis XV.
And, yes, it is true that vichyssoise was invented because it took so long for the King’s soup to reach him after being passed along a long chain of tasters to ensure it was not poisoned. If the King ate cold soup, everyone must eat cold soup.
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
The first things to shift were the doll's eyes, the beautiful grey-green glass eyes. Slowly they swivelled, until their gaze was resting on Triss's face. Then the tiny mouth moved, opened to speak. 'Who do you think you are? This is my family.'
When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is very wrong. She is insatiably hungry; she keeps waking up with leaves in her hair, and her sister seems terrified of her. When it all gets too much and she starts to cry, her tears are like cobwebs...
Soon Triss discovers that what happened to her is more strange and terrible than she could ever have imagined, and that she is quite literally not herself. In a quest find the truth she must travel into the terrifying Underbelly of the city to meet a twisted architect who has dark designs on her family - before it's too late...
My Thoughts:
Frances Hardinge is my favourite writer for children in the world. Her books are so clever, so imaginative, so powerful and so fresh. I wish I could write like her. She reminds me of all the great fantasy writers of the past – Diana Wynne Jones, Joan Aiken, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Lucy Boston. I am wary of writing a plot precis of this wonderful book, because it doesn’t give you any true idea of just how marvellously eerie and magical this book is.
In brief, Triss wakes up one morning feeling strange. She’s been sick, her mother tells her. But that doesn’t explain the strange gaps in her memory, the strange things that happen around her, or why her little sister is frightened of her. Slowly Triss comes to realise there is something very wrong …
The plot is fabulously twisty and full of surprises, the characters are complex and alive, and Frances Hardinge’s writing is just marvellous. Children’s fantasy at its absolute best!
BUY THE CUCKOO SONG NOWYou might also be interested in The Extremely Inconvenient adventures by Jaclyn Moriarty:
VINTAGE POST: The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Every family has its secrets. Some are small, like telling a white lie or snooping through a private drawer. Others are more serious, like infidelity and betrayal. And some secrets are so terrible they must be hidden away in a deep, dark place, for if they ever came to light, they would surely tear a family apart . . . The Tides are a family full of secrets. Returning to Clifftops, the rambling family house high up on the Dorset coastline, youngest daughter Dora hopes for a fresh start, for herself and the new life she carries. But can long-held secrets ever really be forgiven? And even if you can forgive, can you ever really learn to love again? Secrets of the Tides is a family drama with a dark thread of suspense at its heart.
My Thoughts:
I had been tempted to buy this book for a while, primarily because of its gorgeous cover, which shows two little girls playing on the beach. One is blonde and one is dark, just like my sister and me. I’ve been trying to be stern with myself, though, and not buy any more books until I’ve read my way through some of my tottering to-be-read pile. Of course this was a resolution just made to be broken!
After I met the author Hannah Richelle at a literary event at Pages & Pages bookstore in Mosman, I just had to buy the book, it sounded so good. I’m so glad I did! I loved it.
The book is a parallel narrative, focusing on the Tides family in the present and in the past. The main character is Dora, a young woman in a loving relationship with a sculptor who finds out she is pregnant and is flung into an emotional tailspin wondering if she could possibly be a good mother. Her neurosis is more than just the normal anxiety that overcomes anyone facing such a big change in her life. Dora’s life has been scarred by tragedy and guilt, her own family broken apart by the stresses of the past. Dora sets out to find some closure – and along the way discovers the truth of what happened on that terrible day so long ago …
The thing I loved most about this book was how beautifully it was structured. Anyone who has studied creative writing with me, or been following my blogs and reviews for a while, will know how much emphasis I place on the importance of structure. Hannah Richell has built her narrative very carefully indeed, and the result is a slow-building suspense that makes the book utterly impossible to put down.
I also thought she showed great insight into the minds of her all her characters, major and minor. In particular, the three women at the heart of the story – Dora and her mother and sister – really rang true. I recognised many of their dilemmas and fears all too well.
All in all, a wonderful book by a new author – I’d really recommend it as a Book Club book as there’s so much in it to talk about!
