The Blurb (from Goodreads):
To the River is the story of the Ouse, the Sussex river in which Virginia Woolf drowned in 1941. One midsummer week over sixty years later, Olivia Laing walked Woolf's river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Along the way, Laing explores the roles rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature and mythology alike. To the River excavates all sorts of stories from the Ouse's marshy banks, from the brutal Barons' War of the thirteenth century to the 'Dinosaur Hunters', the nineteenth-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code. Central among these ghosts is, of course, Virginia Woolf herself: her life, her writing and her watery death. Woolf is the most constant companion on Laing's journey, and To the River can be read in part as a biography of this extraordinary English writer, refracted back through the river she loved. But other writers float through these pages too - among them Iris Murdoch, Shakespeare, Homer and Kenneth Grahame, author of the riverside classic The Wind in the Willows. The result is a wonderfully discursive read - which interweaves biography, history, nature writing and memoir, driven by Laing's deep understanding of science and cultural history. It's a beautiful, lyrical work that marks the arrival of a major new writer.
My Thoughts:
Sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing walked its length from the source to the sea. A slow, deep, poetic meditation on landscape, memory, and literary ghosts, with moments of sharp beauty.
The Blurb (by Goodreads):
Arlo Goodman lives with his Uncle Avery in a run-down flat above their bookshop. He has no friends, except for his pet mouse, Herbert.
But when a girl called Lisette bursts into the shop and begs him to hide her from a murderer, Arlo's life changes forever.
He's swept up into an adventure involving kidnappers, car chases and a story in The Book of Wondrous Possibilities, where Arlo and his skymouse battle dragons. But can Arlo find the courage to battle an even greater enemy, who threatens to destroy everything he loves?
My Thoughts:
I had a very happy week reading the latest works of two of Australia’s most popular children’s authors, and then I got to have the pleasure of launching them in the stratosphere! Belinda Murrell is, of course, my darling sister, and Deb Abela is one of my dearest friends, and both their books are crammed full of magic, adventure, mystery, danger, and amazement. They are exactly the kind of books I loved reading when I was eleven. Perfect Christmas presents for the bookworm in your family.
“A book is a machine; every word is a cog or a part, and if it’s not adding to the smooth functioning of the machine, it needs to be moved, oiled, or removed . . .” Kate Forsyth 2014
These are the first words written in the notebook I took to the Cotswolds History, Mystery, and Magic writing retreat. This notebook has become my writing bible, and I refer to it often.
I’d always longed to write, but never got past the first draft. I love reading historical novels, but I had no idea how to research, and even less of how important historical accuracy was until Kate’s lessons and comments showed me. I’d been playing around, trying to write a young adult time-slip story, and had been mashing history together until Kate pointed out that most people learn about history through fiction.
While I loved to write, attending Kate’s retreat, taught me to be a writer. She taught me about voice, structure, pace, point of view, tense, style, character, setting, research, and the business of publishing. I learned more than I could have imagined, but one thing I noted all those years ago, and has kept me returning to more of her courses, is Kate’s ability to cater to each and every one of her students regardless of where they are in their writing journey. I’ve attended courses with Kate as a total newbie, a contracted author, and a published author, and she’s always offered insightful advice and answers; and is incredibly generous with her time and knowledge. I will be attending courses with Kate when she’s ready to retire.
After I left the Cotswolds, my husband and I travelled to Scotland where I visited the setting of my YA story, and thankfully, I was no longer floundering around, I knew what I needed to research, and how to go about finding it. I finished the manuscript and began submitting it and received very positive feedback from Walker Books. Unfortunately, personal tragedy hit, and I was unable to continue at the time.
Regardless, the need to write remained and so I tried my hand at writing contemporary romance. In all I wrote eight contemporary stories, and two historical, but I struggled to edit any of them until I was encouraged to rewrite my Australian Historical, and after a year of rewriting and researching, I submitted to Harper Collins and was offered a contract with their Harlequin Mira line. I like to think of those ten manuscripts as my apprenticeship, and I am hugely grateful that I invested in my writing career. It has paid off.
Daughter of the Hunter Valley was published in October 2021 and won the ARRA (Australian Romance Readers Association) Favourite Debut Romance Author 2021. The most rewarding and satisfying thing is that almost every review for Daughter of the Hunter Valley, mentions the level of detail and historical accuracy, and I have to thank Kate for instilling in me the desire and determination to get it right.
Kate is an amazing writer, and her approach to teaching makes you feel as if you can do it too.
Paula's book is available to purchase HERE
In my novel ‘The Crimson Thread’, my heroine Alenka embroiders messages in secret code on her wedding quilt to smuggle clandestine information to the Greek resistance.
I had to learn how to embroider in order to make sure that I described it properly in my novel. I had never sewn anything more ambitious than a loose button, so I was not at all sure how to go about it. A friend on social media suggested I try an embroidery kit from Kiriki Press which would include everything I’d need, such as a hoop, needles, thread and some pretty stork-shaped scissors. So – after some time trying to decide between all the very cute designs on their website - I bought the barn owl kit and got to work.
Details for the Barn Owl HERE
It was the height of the COVID lockdowns here in Sydney, and so it was good to have something new to do. I liked the fact that I could watch television or listen to an audio book at the same time. When I had very proudly finished my owl, I bought a few more kits online. I had discovered I really loved making flowers bloom from the point of my needle – creating beauty with nothing but cloth and thread and my own hands. I found it incredibly calming and meditative at a time when I was so busy and tired and overwhelmed.
I became increasingly fascinated by the history of the art too. I loved the subversive way women had used embroidery to tell their stories in the past. The English women who embroidered the story of the Norman conquest into the Bayeux tapestry. Mary Queen of Scots who sewed secret treason into her needlework to communicate with the world outside her prison. The banners made by the suffragettes as they marched to demand the right to vote. Face masks embroidered with political slogans protesting violence against women.
“To know the history of embroidery is to know the history of women”, Rozsika Parker says in The Subversive Stitch, which shows how the artistic work of women has always been devalued and marginalised. Yet the drop spindle and the needle were among the very earliest of human inventions, and revolutionised our existence. Women were able to spin thread from wool and flax and other natural fibres, to make tents and clothes and shoes and nets and carrying bags and ropes.
The more I sewed and the more I read about sewing, the more passionate I became and the more determined I was to make something beautiful and meaningful with my needle. So I decided to make a memory quilt – to essentially sew my life story.
I spent quite a bit of time researching different ways to make a quilt. I knew I wanted to do it all by hand, and that I was going to have to find a way of doing it in small steps as I travel so much. I discovered Quilt-As-You-Go which essentially means you create small squares, each sewn to wadding cut to the same size. When you have enough, you the attach them to backing material. I liked that idea as I wanted each square to capture a memory or tell some kind of story, and I meant I could just concentrate on making one at a time. Slowly, stitch by stitch, I began to find my way forward. I thought I’d share with you some of my journey:
I decided to make the first row a family tree, with old photos surrounded by designs in white, fawn and gold
This is one of the first squares I made. It is a self-portrait by my great-great-great-great-grandmother who wrote the first children’s book published in Australia in 1841. I scanned in the image from her sketchbook and then uploaded it to Canva. I also uploaded scans of her paintings of flowers and butterflies, which I arranged around the image. I then chose a quote from her book and set it into a calligraphy font, surrounded by a design of golden flowers.
Once I was happy with the designs, I had them printed onto fabric via Spoonflower, an online site for print-on-demand fabric and wallpaper. I printed each design as a 200mm x 200mm test swatch which only costs $3.50 each.
When the test swatch arrived, I sewed it onto some pretty fabric of birds and flowers, and sewed it all to a 10-inch x 10-inch square of soft bamboo wadding, which I had determined would be the size of each square. I used running stitch and seed stitch.
This is a photo of my mother Gillie and my aunt Rozzie when they were little. I scanned in the photo, then uploaded it to Spoonflower to be printed. I then laid it over some vintage lace, sewn to soft white flannel with warm golden dots. I then made two applique roses from fabric printed with text. The one on the right has lines from one of my mother’s favourite poems, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” The one on the right is from Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott, a favourite book of my aunt’s. I also cut petals from fabric printed with a golden rose, and sewed it all with matching silk thread (with lots of cross stitches like kisses).
This is a photo of my grandfather, with four of his seven children including my father Gerry (the littlest boy). I overlaid it with a design of yellow flowers and green leaves that felt very Australian to me (my grandfather was in his RAAF uniform, about to go and fight for his country). I used Cretan stitch to applique it to the backing fabric, which I then embroidered with bees and a phrase of music from ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ by Rimsky-Korsakov which my grandfather used to play to me on his double-bass. I can remember sitting cross-legged, entranced, listening to the musical bumblebees, half-sure I could see them.
I decided that each row would commemorate five years of my life, and I would feature a fairytale that somehow epitomised that period of my life. So the second row in the quilt recalls my life from birth to the age of five, and I chose ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as my theme. The central image is a painting by my grandmother Nonnie that she made for my sister and me when we were little. I accompanied it with fabric designed by Bradbury & Bradbury that I bought from Spoonflower. I cut out some of their briar roses and appliqued them over the central image, with embroidered rose tendrils, to tie the two designs together.
This square features fabric printed with an antique woodcut of roses and thorns, with a few lines of my poetry half-hidden within. My poem ‘Scars’ was inspired by a childhood accident that saw me in a coma for weeks, and then in and out of hospital most of my childhood. I appliques the image on to vintage flannelette sheets that look like the ones my mum put on to my hospital bed when I was a little girl.
This was my baby bib, loving embroidered by my grandmother and kept safe by my mother since I was a baby. It is sewn to a medieval rose trellis design, which is appliqued to a dress my grandmother made and embroidered for me.
This square features a photo of me as a kid with my mum Gilly and my sister Belinda. I decorated it with wreaths of pink flowers in Canva, and sewed it to pink flowered fabric that used to be a dress of my daughter’s.
Another thing I decided to do was create squares that celebrated some of my favourite books at different times of my life. This is my Narnia square. I appliqued a crowned lion on to small squares of a wintry forest (and then deliberately frayed the edges of the lion to give it a more three-dimensional feel). I joined the squares with cross stitch (sometimes called ‘witch’ stitch) and embroidered a few extra snowy trees. This was all overlaid over fabric printed with metallic stars, some of which I embroidered too. I then appliqued and embroidered my favourite quote from the book: ‘Courage, dear heart.’
Another square inspired by a favourite book was this one of a robin and a key, appliqued to rose-printed fabric that I quilted with seed stitch and a quote I embroidered in stem stich. Do you know which classic children’s book this is from?
Slowly, stitch by stitch, square by square, my story quilt is growing – made with hand and heart.
Hannah Kent’s first novel, Burial Rites, was translated into over 30 languages and won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year, and the Victorian Premier's People's Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Stella Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and is being adapted for film by Sony TriStar. Her second novel, The Good People was translated into 10 languages and shortlisted for the Walter Scott Award, the Indie Books Award for Literary Fiction, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the Readings Prize. It is being adapted for film by Aquarius Productions. Devotion, her third novel, won Booktopia’s Favourite Australian Book, was shortlisted for an Indie Book Award and longlisted for the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. Her original feature film, Run Rabbit Run, directed by Daina Reid and starring Sarah Snook will be produced by Carver and XYZ Films. Hannah is also the co-founder of Kill Your Darlings, and has written for The New York Times, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Qantas Magazine and LitHub. She lives and works on Peramangk country.
My new novel is called Devotion. It’s set in the 1830s and is about a young woman called Hanne, the child of Prussian Old Lutherans who are being persecuted for refusing to join King Frederick William III’s Union Church. A child of nature, Hanne would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood and she is considered an oddity within her congregation. Then she meets Thea, the daughter of new arrivals to her village. Hanne and Thea become fast friends, and as the community of Old Lutherans seek emigration to South Australia, their friendship deepens into a devotion that must withstand the hardship of a journey across the world, and the mysteries that lie at its close. It’s a queer love story
READ MY REVIEW OF DEVOTION HERE
As soon as my second novel, The Good People, was published in 2016, I started consciously musing on what would become Devotion. That said, there is so much in this novel which I feel has come from deeper wells of memory and interest. In many ways it’s a story that has been growing in me for most of my adult life.
Initially it was a desire to write the landscape that raised me. There is so much nature in this book – Hanne hears it speak to her; she communes with the natural world – and I think a hope to embody the beauty of Peramangk and Kaurna Country led me to my characters and their concerns. The 2017 Same-Sex Marriage Plebiscite was another spark of inspiration. That vote was hard for so many in the LGBTQIA+ community, myself included, and it prompted my decision to make Hanne and Thea fall in love. I wanted to create a historical queer love story that did not centre around a narrative of shame or punishment. I wanted something more divine, more joyous. As soon as I made that decision, the heart of the novel started beating, creatively-speaking.
About five years! Longer than I usually take, but I had two children during the process. I spent most of that time reading and researching, thinking and daydreaming and trying to find a way into the story I wanted to tell. The writing process was largely completed in a breakneck six months that I hope never to have to repeat.
Finding the time and headspace to work while severely fatigued from and busy with caring for newborns and toddlers, as well as other work. In the end, my wife took on the huge and total burden of care and household responsibility so I could get a full draft completed. I got there, but only because of her.
I wish I could be someone who carefully plots and plans before writing. It seems so organised and efficient! My process is much more chaotic. I spend a year or so reading and researching the subjects that I feel hold interest for me, or that I know I want to feature in a book. Then I write my way into the writing of it, by which I mean that the only way I figure out how to tell the story I’m telling is to write lots of material. The more I write, the greater my understanding of the shape and pace of the would-be book. I write knowing that most of it will be discarded, which can be freeing. I often write 50,000 words, ditch it, then start over. My approach is non-linear. I do lots of drafts. Sometimes I say that I’m a poor writer but a fair re-writer.
It’s a process that takes time, much like getting to know anyone. I write my way into character as described above, learning new things about them as I go, as I try out voice and daydream about their lives. Sometimes I dream about them, or dream that I’m walking around the place they live. Sometimes I will write something that hits so true, I paste it in a notebook as a reminder of what lies at the heart of that character’s being. While writing Devotion I wrote a small paragraph that I felt perfectly encapsulated the voice I wanted for Hanne. I used it as a touchstone for the rest of the writing process, thinking all the while that I’d never find a place for the paragraph itself in the novel. Funnily enough, it’s now the first paragraph in the published book.
Chronic daydreamer. I can disappear from myself so totally I will not hear someone calling my name in the same room.
My parents say that I announced my intentions to write when I was six. There’s certainly a lot of very embarrassing footage of me solemnly reciting poems about natural disasters and things as a little kid. I used to want to be other things, too, but it was always ‘I want to be a writer and x.’ The x changed. The writing never did. When I was a teenager I wrote, ‘Writing feels like breathing’ in a diary. I think this has always been true for me.
All of my books have been written in different places. Burial Rites was written in a walk-in closet in a sharehouse in Fitzroy. The Good People was written in a spare bedroom in Brunswick. Devotion was written in my study at home in the Adelaide Hills, where I still write and will probably continue to write for some time yet. It’s a lovely, light-filled room with big windows and a view of trees. There’s some built-in bookshelves with a ladder, several neglected pot plants, and lots of sentimental items I like to have near to me as I work. I love it there.
Oh, definitely the daydreaming. I love the time when I haven’t yet put a word on the page, and everything feels so rich with possibility. That said, I also love the moment when I realise I know what kind of book I’m writing. It’s often after throwing away those initial 50,000 words. It’s like finally being able to pull the thread that will tighten what has previously been so baggy as to be shapeless.
I walk. Sometimes I read, but mostly I walk.
I’m not sure. I don’t really suffer much from a lack of ideas; I have always finished a book knowing what the next would be about. I do like to withdraw and retreat a little between novels, but I think that’s more a process of stepping away from the world of publishing and back into a place of play.
I used to, but becoming a mother changed that. I used to keep quite strict hours, for instance, preferring to write when alone in the house, always starting at a particular time. Now I just write when I can, for as long as I can. Bluey might be blaring through the wall, my daughter might be drawing at my feet, I might have to stop to cook or make dinner or do a kindy pick-up. I’m not complaining. My life has expanded. And it will change again when they’re at school. The only thing I lean on to help me write is coffee. Coffee is my current ritual.
I find these kinds of questions to be so hard! I’ll inevitably forget someone crucial. But here goes, the first ten that come to mind: Robin Wall Kimmera, Max Porter, Alexis Wright, Emma Donoghue, Robert MacFarlane, Margaret Atwood, Sarah Waters, Charlotte McConaghy, Tara June Winch, Thomas Hardy.
Anything that makes the familiar unfamiliar in such a way that I am moved to state of wonder or awe. Anything that captivates me so fully I forget where I am.
The following is the advice that I try to tell myself:
Begin before you feel ready (I never feel ready).
Read.
So much of writing is done by just sitting down at the desk, day after day. Keep showing up. Keep writing. Keep re-writing.
I’ve just started working on a new book, which I’m really excited about. I think it will challenge me in new ways, which is good! I won’t say what it’s about yet, because, knowing me, it will change three times before I even finish a first draft, but I’m quietly hopeful for it.
Your website & social media
Website: www.hannahkentauthor.com
Instagram: @hannahkentwrites
Twitter: @HannahFKent
Facebook: @HannahKentAuthor
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
The tiny outback town of Nannine lies in the harsh red interior of Australia. Once a thriving center of stockyards and sheep stations, years of punishing drought have petrified the land and Nannine has been whittled down to no more than a stoplight, a couple bars, and a police station.
And it has another, more sinister claim to fame: the still-unsolved disappearance of young Evelyn McCreery nineteen years ago.
Mina McCreery's life has been defined by the intense public interest in her sister's case--which is still a hot topic in true-crime chat rooms and on social media. Now an anxious and reclusive adult, Mina lives alone on her family's sunbaked destocked sheep farm.
Enter Lane Holland, a young private investigator who dropped out of the police academy to earn a living cracking cold cases. Before she died, Mina's mother funded a million-dollar reward for anyone who could explain how Evelyn vanished from her bed in the family's farmhouse. The lure of cash has only increased public obsession with Evelyn and Mina--but yielded no answers.
Lane wins Mina's trust when some of his more unconventional methods show promise. But Lane also has darker motivations, and his obsession with the search will ultimately risk both their lives--and yield shocking results.
Compulsively readable, with an unforgettable setting and cast of characters, Wake is a powerful, unsparing story of how trauma ripples outward when people's private tragedies become public property, and how it's never too late for the truth to come out.
My Thoughts:
I love a good crime thriller, and am always on the lookout for one with masses of atmosphere, a clever premise, and lots of twists and turns. Wake, from debut Australian author Shelley Burr, was highly recommended to me and so I began it with a great deal of hopeful anticipation. It did not disappoint. Set in the hot red plains of outback Australia, it is a cold case investigation into the disappearance of a little girl from the bedroom she shared with her twin sister nineteen years earlier. Mina McCreery’s life has been defined by the mystery of her sister’s loss. She still lives in the old family house, and rarely ventures away from it. Every day she walks the property, searching for her sister’s bones. One day a private investigator comes, determined to crack the case and so win the million dollar reward. But his motivations are unclear. How far will he go to find the truth? What secret skeletons will he unearth? I was kept guessing right to the very end – just brilliant.
The Blurb (from Goodreads)
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse--one studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
My Thoughts:
Geraldine Brooks is one of my favourite authors, and I always rush out to buy her latest book as soon as it is released. She never disappoints me. Her books are always impeccably researched, beautifully written, and full of surprises. Horse is no exception. It tells the story of a young slave in 1850s Kentucky who loves a horse, and trains it to be the greatest racehorse known in American history. The bay thoroughbred Lexington is most famous for racing against a stopwatch; he and his groom Jarret lived through the bloody turmoil of the American Civil War and the years of racial strife that followed. Woven together with this historical narrative is the contemporary story of an Australian scientist at the Smithsonian and a Nigerian-American art historian who are drawn together by their shared obsession with this magnificent and long-dead horse. The result is powerful and deeply moving.
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
When Kate Langbroek first dreamed of moving to Italy, she imagined a magnificent sun-drenched pastiche of long lunches and wandering through cobbled laneways clutching a loaf of crusty bread and a bottle of wine, Sophia Loren-style, while handsome men called out ‘Ciao Bella!’
In the stark light of day the dream Kate shared with her husband Peter after an idyllic holiday in Italy seemed like madness. They didn’t speak Italian. They knew no one in Italy. They had four children. Kate also had the best job in the world on a top-rating radio show with her longtime friend, Dave Hughes.
But the siren song of Italy was irresistible. This would be the adventure of a lifetime, a precious opportunity to spend more time with their children – Lewis, Sunday, Artie and Jannie – and it came from a deep well inside to seize life after they almost lost Lewis to leukaemia.
Ciao Bella! is about having a dream and living it as Kate shares the sublime joys and utter chaos of adapting to a new life in Bologna, what you discover about yourself when you are a stranger in a strange land, and how she fell in love. With a country.
Deliciously funny, insightful and often deeply moving, Ciao Bella! is Kate’s love letter to Italy and her family. It is also a glorious reminder of what Italians can teach us about living life to the full – and what really matters when the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
My Thoughts:
I’ve always dreamed of spending a year or two in Rome or Florence or Siena … a dream that is never likely to come true for me. So I loved living vicariously through Kate Langbroek and her delightful memoir about her experiences living in Bologna with her family for two years. Her style is warm and funny and intimate and real - it’s like having a long tipsy lunch with an old friend where you keep hooting with laughter & holding each other’s hands in loving tearful support. Fabulous!
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Let me tell you a story…
When Chloe Hooper’s partner is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive illness, she has to find a way to tell their two young sons.
By instinct, she turns to the bookshelf. Can the news be broken as a bedtime tale? Is there a perfect book to prepare children for loss? Hooper embarks on a quest to find what practical lessons children’s literature—with its innocent orphans and evil adults, magic, monsters and anthropomorphic animals—can teach about grief and resilience in real life.
As she discovers, ‘the right words are an incantation, a spell of hope for the future.’ From the Brothers Grimm to Frances Hodgson Burnett and Tolkien and Dahl—all of whom suffered childhood bereavements—she follows the breadcrumbs of the world’s favourite authors, searching for the deep wisdom in their books and lives.
Both memoir and manual, Bedtime Story is stunningly illustrated by the New York Times award-winning Anna Walker. In an age of worldwide uncertainty, here is a profound and moving exploration of the dark and light of storytelling.
My Thoughts:
A deeply personal and heartrending memoir which explores grief, the fear of loss, and the power of bedtime stories to teach us how to navigate the dark night of the soul. When Chloe Hooper’s partner is diagnosed with a dangerous illness, she does not know how to explain to their sons the possibility of their father’s death. She turns for consolation to the great children’s books of the past, and in doing so explores many of the books that have been my own childhood’s touchstone stories – the Brothers Grimm, C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Frances Hodgson Burnett. The result is extraordinary, and this is one of my favourite books of the year.
