NINTH BIRTHDAY SPECIAL FEATURE: guest Michèle Roberts chooses OFFSHORE by Penelope Fitzgerald

 

 "Her genius is to record her characters’ flounderings with infinite compassion. Her imagination works as a kind of embrace, both tender and supremely intelligent."

Photograph: Viv Pegram

Michèle Roberts is half-French and half-English. She has published fifteen novels, plus poetry, memoir, essays and artist's books. Her first cookery book French Cooking for One came out in 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and Professor Emeritus at the University of East Anglia. She lives in London.

My (highly subjective) definition of a classic novel is one that I regularly re-read. Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore (1979) perfectly fits that bill. I enjoy it more every time I read it, relishing its celebration of unconventional attitudes, its sharp observations of the thrills and dangers of life afloat, its wry, dry humour that makes me burst out laughing. Fitzgerald’s humour is rooted in her lack of sentimentality, her honesty about human behaviour, the messes we make, our illogical yearnings, the way we sabotage ourselves. Her genius is to record her characters’ flounderings with infinite compassion. Her imagination works as a kind of embrace, both tender and supremely intelligent.

The novel’s ending is pre-figured in its beginning. Grace, a leaky old barge with a rotting anchor, no cabin doors and unreliable plumbing, is moored at Battersea Reach on the river Thames. Other nearby boats are in similarly dodgy condition. Sooner or later, we begin to suspect, disaster will occur; possibly even drowning.

On board these rickety, rackety craft live an eccentric crew of neighbours, all lovers of the water in different ways. Chief among them, on Grace, is Nenna James, her two young daughters Martha and Tilda. Nenna is estranged from her husband, who skulks in a rented room in far off north-east London. One strand of the engaging plot concerns Nenna’s hapless attempts to stay afloat morally and financially, to keep an eye on her truant children, to deal with her need for love and sex. Fitzgerald draws splendid sketches of the earnest priest visiting from the local convent school Martha and Tilda attend, the hopeful marine artist trying to sell his boat while knowing it is riddled with leaks, the chancer-thief hiding his stash of stolen hairdryers below decks on another craft nearby, the kindly ex-naval stalwart who tries always to do the right thing: “Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment. Fortunately he did not have to define duty. War service … and his whole temperament before and since, had done that before him.” Even Nenna’s cat, Stripey, is given a portrait, a place in the story.

Fitzgerald writes well about men. In these pages they may be unheroic, self-deluding and occasionally incompetent (just like the female characters) but they are never mocked. Richard, the ex-naval officer, says to Nenna: “I can’t for the life of me see why, if you really feel something, it’s got to be talked about. In fact, I should have thought it lost something, if you follow me, if you put it into words.” Later in the chapter he does manage to pursue his conversation with Nenna, and to act on his feelings. When they return from a trip in his dinghy and tie up alongside his boat, Lord Jim, he realises “He had to do the right thing. A captain goes last onto his ship, but a man goes first into a tricky situation … Their sense of control wavered, ebbed, and changed places.”

Nenna’s younger daughter Tilda regularly swarms up the mast of the barge, the better to survey the movements of people below, the swelling tides, the shifting light. These are all lovingly, beautifully and accurately described. Tilda stands for the novelist herself, sometimes seemingly omniscient and sometimes inhabiting a close-up perspective, surveying the world she inhabits and has brought into being and valuing its goodness mingled with its flaws.

The major delight of this short, packed novel, for me, lies in its brilliant writing, which of course creates and illuminates its story and its characters. In the gap between land and river, wharf and deck, Penelope Fitzgerald entrancingly suggests that we can find and explore both freedom and belonging.

Offshore is published by Harper Collins.

Michèle Roberts' Negative Capability: a diary of surviving is reviewed here by Jill Dawson.

 

SUMMER ROUND-UP by Adèle, Celia and Linda

Adèle Geras, Celia Rees and Linda Newbery are the hosts of Writers Review. Here we each share two books that have impressed us recently and one or more titles we're planning to read next. 

Linda's choices:

In The Lost Rainforests of Britain, Guy Shrubsole has almost single-handedly raised public awareness of the temperate rainforests we have in Britain – often in damp microclimates where a deep gorge creates the right conditions of moistness and protection from wind. He’s an engaging writer and the book ranges widely, recounting expeditions with his partner or friends to remote places in Wales or the West Country, describing in detail the species found in these ecosystems, and exploring references in poetry and folklore. We justifiably criticise other countries for destroying their rainforests, but Shrubsole points out that we're largely unaware of how much of our own has been lost. His campaign has resulted in government acknowledgment of these precious habitats and a commitment to protecting and restoring them. 

I went straight on to Guy Shrubsole's more recent The Lie of the Land (clever title) - an angrier but equally informative book that looks at who owns land in Britain (the wealthiest 1% owns 50% of it), what they do with it, and how they deny access to the rest of us. You won't be surprised to hear that Guy Shrubsole was a leading figure in the successful challenge to Dartmoor landowner Alexander Darwall when he attempted to ban wild camping. Shrubsole is outraged about the (mis)management of huge areas of moorland for grouse shooting, which includes practices such as burning moorland and the illegal slaughter of birds of prey, foxes and anything classed as 'vermin' which might reduce grouse numbers - all this subsidised by taxpayers. The mass release of pheasants each year, again in the interests of the shooting minority, receives equal condemnation - in what other circumstance would the widespread release of a non-native species into the countryside be considered acceptable, at a time when bird flu is rife and we're all aware of the risks of another pandemic? As recent parliamentary debates have shown, it's down to the lobbying power of those with vested interests in shooting estates. More optimistically, Shrubsole looks at instances of communal purchase of land for the benefit of all and for nature restoration. 

As for the books I'm looking forward to, I'm treating myself to a re-reading of Judith Allnatt's touching and beautifully-written The Poet's Wife, which tells the story of poet John Clare's descent into madness from the point of view of Patty, his wife. I first read this ten or more years ago and am now delighted to see it reissued in our own imprint, Writers Review Publishing. With wonderful evocations of the Northamptonshire countryside and rural life, it begins with Patty's deep concern when her husband John, who's walked eighty miles from a lunatic asylum in Epping Forest, appears to believe that he's still married to his first love, Mary. How will Patty cope, as his behaviour becomes increasingly delusional?

I'm also tempted by Anna Hope's Albion, having been captivated by the abridged version as Radio 4's Book of the Week. With a funeral, a will, a privileged family, a big country house, complex relationships and a big surprise sprung on the gathered relatives, it has elements in common with my own novel, which Celia's kindly chosen below. Here, no spoilers, but the revelation brought by outsider Clara shocks the family out of its smugness and leaves them with a difficult dilemma to face.  

And I can't omit to mention that I'm currently in thrall to Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. It's been sitting on my reading pile for some time but now that I've started, I can't wait to get back to it - a marvellous and moving novel whether or not you're familiar with David Copperfield, which it cleverly shadows.

Celia's choices:

I have been reading…

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. The house of the title is in Elk Park, a prosperous suburb of Pennsylvania. It is A large mansion, built in the 1920s, with a glass frontage ‘as big as storefront windows’. The use of glass in the design makes it possible to see right through it, which cannot be said of the characters who come to live there. The house is more than a setting – it is a powerful and enduring presence in the novel with a deep and lasting effect on those who inhabit it. The characters change. The house does not. It is named, not for the design, but for the Van Hoebeeks, the originally owners. It is acquired in 1946 by Cyril Conroy, a real estate developer, who buys it and moves in with his wife and two children, Danny and Maeve. He leaves the contents intact including a library of Dutch books no-one can read and large portraits of the Van Hoebeeks. Nothing about the house changes. It is as if his family have no impact on it. The house affects them, however. The mother loathes it and leaves house, husband and children. Cyril quickly installs a young widow, Andrea, with two children of her own. Danny and Maeve are pushed out, underlining the book’s fairy tale quality. Told over five generations, Pratchett continually plays on fairy tale elements and archetypes: rags to riches, absent fathers, neglectful mothers, abandoned children, wicked stepmothers, faithful retainers but it is done with such skill and delivered with such laconic, casual insouciance by narrator, Danny, that it all seems completely natural.

Our own Linda Newbery also has an iconic house, Wildings, and more importantly an iconic and beautiful garden in her novel The One True Thing. The garden is created by Bridget, a renowned gardener, who is married to Anthony who owns the house. There are two narrators, Bridget herself and her daughter, Jane. With echoes of E.M Forster’s Howard’s End and Dickens' Bleak House, the novel revolves around a death and a quirky will which leaves the future of house (and garden) in doubt. Her mother having pre-deceased her father, daughter Jane is doubly bereaved. The garden and the idyllic rural surroundings are so beautifully described that the reader begins to feel the imminent loss as acutely as Jane does. She is forced to confront not only the threat to her home, but a complex set of revelations that strike at her core beliefs about her family. The skilfully handled dual narrative gradually reveals the lies, evasions and emotional complexities of the past, leading to a resolution where past and present can be reconciled.

Having recently read The Dalai Lama’s Cat by David Michie, I'm now looking forward to The Claw of Attraction by the same author. Plucked as a tiny, dying kitten from the streets of New Delhi by His Holiness The Dalai Llama (who just happens to be passing - not coincidence {obv.} but karma), the eponymous heroine re-counts her life as HHC: His Holiness's Cat. Her day to day encounters and challenges, from the temptations offered by over generous food providers (she is, after all, the Dalai Lama’s Cat) to the sudden arrival of a dog, an abandoned Lhasa Apso, serve as lessons in timeless Buddhist wisdom, compassion and the way to true contentment. As a cat owner and therefore lover, I found The Dalai Lama’s Cat utterly charming and deceptively wise. It would work for dog lovers, too. Don’t like animals? What’s wrong with you?

Adèle's choices:

This year, I have discovered a writer I'd never heard of before and I really want to introduce her to readers of this blog. Her name is Laurie Colwin and she died in 1992 at the age of 46. She was mainly known as a short story writer and especially a food writer during her lifetime but her novels are wonderful and deserve the attention of anyone who is interested in the texture of life and relationships, food and houses, animals and children .... I'm highlighting her last novel, which was published posthumously in 1993. It's called A Big Storm Knocked it Over and it's about a woman preparing for her own wedding, while also working at a publishing house where she is the editor in charge of illustrations in adult books. Her run ins with recaltricant writers who will not listen to her excellent advice, her beautifully depicted dealings with her fiancé and her friends and the toings and froings with regard to the wedding...everything takes you straight in, and you're part of the proceedings which are described with grace, humour and attention to detail. She's comparable to Anne Tyler in her ability to absorb you into what's happening on the page, seemingly without any effort. Her writing, sentence to sentence, is elegant and considered and engaging. Here is a tiny example, picked at random: "The enormous manuscript of In the Polar Regions by Hugh Oswald-Murphy, had been placed on Jane Louise's desk three times and taken back three times by Erna Hendershot. Then, just as Jane Louise felt she had a grip on what this thing should look like, Erna would appear in a tearing rush and inform her that the author had added to it or taken something away, or that most likely it had been pushed off the spring list or that he had decided that some Eskimo artist would do little line cuts to be scattered throughout, and furthermore that his photographs -still to come- would have to be keyed in.

I really loved this book and have also read Home Cooking and More Home Cooking which are superb and also contain recipes in plenty. She's a writer to take to your heart.

If you’ve not come across the four police procedural novels of Simon Mason (The Wilkins and Wilkins books) then I urge you to find them and read them in the right order. I don’t think nearly enough readers have discovered them and they’re very good indeed.

Even fewer readers will know about the Finder novellas. These are short, spare books in which a man, who calls himself The Finder, turns up in a place (in the case of The Woman Who Laughed it’s a rather drab suburb of Sheffield) and sets about finding someone who has disappeared. In Sheffield, a young sex worker who was murdered some time ago is seen on a bus…. Then she disappears again…. The Finder begins to follow threads which lead into many strange places.

He always takes a novel with him when he travels. In this book, it’s Persuasion by Jane Austen. His reflections on the novel add to this reader’s pleasure.

My advice? Read Simon Mason!

Two books I’m looking forward to:

I’ve just downloaded Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. His name seems to suit the subject very well. It’s about fungi which have complicated networks of communication and which behave in all kinds of very fascinating ways. I love books that open up a whole new world and I am looking forward greatly to learning much more about mushrooms than the fact that they’re delicious when they’re not poisonous.

And I’m about to start on a new novel by Stephen King. It’s called Never Flinch and is a follow up to a terrific and very gory thriller starring the private detective Holly Gibney. That’s called Holly. This story involves a murderer who embarks on a plan to kill 12 innocent people, to avenge the death of a prisoner who has just been stabbed to death in gaol…. but who was falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.

One thing is sure: never a dull moment in a King book, and this one looks terrific!

Happy reading and have a great summer….

Guest review by Jane Rogers: STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL by Charlotte Wood

"I first read Stone Yard Devotional in great greedy gulps. It is intense and nakedly personal, and left me wanting more on every page."

Jane Rogers has written ten novels, including The Testament of Jessie Lamb, Man-Booker longlisted and winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award 2012. Other works include Mr Wroe's Virgins (which she dramatised as a BBC drama series), and Promised Lands (Writers' Guild Best Fiction Award). Jane also writes short stories, radio drama and adaptations, most recently of Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day which was a Radio 4 afternoon play. She has taught writing to a wide range of students.

Her new short story collection Fire-Ready, in which several of the stories are about the climate emergency now or in the future, is now available in paperback. For more information, see Jane's website.

I first read Stone Yard Devotional in great greedy gulps. It is intense and nakedly personal, and left me wanting more on every page. Afterwards I re-read it more slowly, with my writer’s head on, trying to work out how Charlotte Wood has made this, her seventh novel, so compelling.

At first glance it’s not riveting subject matter. A burnt-out environmental activist goes on retreat to a small religious community in rural New South Wales, near the town where she grew up. She then decides to stay there permanently.

If you were to pitch this idea to a publisher, I wouldn’t fancy your chances.

But the novel is, as they say, unputdownable, and has won accolades around the world including shortlisting for last year's Booker prize.

The unnamed narrator is initially bemused by the nuns’ prayers and psalms: ‘The words seem to make no sense. There’s a lot about evil-doers trying to destroy the psalm’s narrator. All day long they crush me. All this warbled by a bunch of nuns way out here on the high, dry Monaro plains, far from anywhere.’ Her critical observations of life in the nunnery are intercut with memories of her beloved parents and her grief at their early deaths.

Three events disrupt monastic life. The first is a plague of mice, caused by a drought in the north. First they nest in the piano; soon they have eaten all the electrical wiring and infested every room, to the point that nuns are emptying traps every hour and an excavator has to be brought in to dig a pit deep enough for the stinking corpses and the layers of lime which must cover them. ‘Opening the car door now takes mettle. Yesterday I lowered myself too heavily into the seat and felt a squirming sensation at my back that made me roar and hurl myself from the vehicle … A dozen mice exploded into the air from behind the cushion.’

The second is the discovery of the bones of Sister Jenny, who had gone missing after leaving the convent to work in a women’s refuge in Thailand. Covid shutdowns complicate the return of her remains, and her coffin is accompanied back by the third disruptor, Helen Parry. Now an internationally famous climate activist, and the convent’s most celebrated former member, Helen Parry is returning to her home town to visit her dying mother.

The tension between activism and retreat from the world is a vital thread running through the novel. Early on the narrator quotes to herself, firstly from Joan Baez: Action is the antidote to despair. And then in opposition, from Hippocrates, First, do no harm. She chronicles the harm done by even the most well-intentioned of activists (‘Every minuscule action after waking means slurping up resources, expelling waste, destroying habitat, etc’ ), and develops real respect for the nuns’ spiritual work; their slow careful observation, the depth of their attention. I was reminded of Death of a Salesman’s Willy Loman: ‘Attention must be paid.’

Other threads include mothers and daughters (the narrator was close to her earth-loving, honest, kindly mother; Helen Parry was beaten in public by hers, who spent long intervals in the local asylum, while Helen was left to bring herself up.)

In an interview for Literary Hub Wood says, ‘I realised early on that I have this place of silence and stasis, which is not good for a novel. I thought, I’m kind of writing a still life painting.’ Her solution is to use an episodic diary form, shifting seemingly randomly from one time period or place or event to another. In the course of a few pages she goes from the nuns’ diet, to their chickens eating live mice, to a childhood memory, to the arrival of Sister Jenny’s bones, to a dream, to pangs of guilt at having bullied Helen Parry as a child. The reader is expected to join the dots – the reader is an active player. And I believe this is the key to the novel’s strength. Wood cites W B Yeats as a powerful influence on her book, and the LitHub interview features a quote from him, which guided her in her work.

‘Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.’

Wood has followed his advice with consummate skill, and – to this reader at least – her novel is irresistible.

Stone Yard Devotional is published by Sceptre.

See also: a Q &A feature with Jane about Fire-Ready, her short story collection. 

Q&A: Alison Layland talks to Linda Newbery about her new novel AFTER THE CLEARANCES

 

"It's not only a Welsh community, but also a large-scale environmental stewardship project that is threatened with destruction, uniting two of the key themes of the novel."

After the Clearances: They were eager to remind themselves, and teach the children, that nothing should be taken for granted; things didn’t just happen at the flick of a switch

In a fractured world, the past is never truly buried and the future depends on what we choose to remember.

On a remote island ravaged by storms, a community of exiles known as the Seeders fight to preserve a fragile, self-sufficient way of life. When Sandy arrives from the mainland bearing secrets, young Seeder Glesni is forced to confront long-hidden truths about her people.

Far away in the wild hills, Bela lives by her own rules. Fierce, unyielding and shaped by the land itself, her voice carries the weight of loss in a world scarred by collapse. But when she encounters Winter, a fugitive from a shadowy government programme, their unlikely bond forges a path that leads back to the Seeders and a reckoning with the myths that bind them all.

Rooted in Welsh history and rich with the rhythms of its language and landscape, After the Clearances is an evocative, hope-filled story of resilience, resistance and what it means to belong in the ruins of what came before.

Alison Layland answers questions from Linda Newbery.

Linda: First, congratulations on writing such a compelling follow-up to Riverflow. As you know, I admired and enjoyed that (a link to my review is below) and now find myself equally impressed by this new novel, which moves forward to 2056.

Alison: Thank you for the invitation; it’s lovely to chat with you here on Writers Review. I'm delighted you enjoyed both novels.

Linda: Although After the Clearances includes some of your earlier characters, it can also be read as a compelling stand-alone. It's difficult to say more without spoilers, but were you already thinking of this new setting and time period while working on Riverflow, or did the idea come to you later?

Alison: Although I knew the connections when I began writing After the Clearances, it wasn’t something I’d had in mind from the start. I was reluctant to let go of the Riverflow world, and since both novels are set against a background of concern for the environment, and the issues surrounding protest, it made sense to look at how my characters would be faring some 35 years on – the world has already changed considerably since 2019, with the effects of climate change becoming ever more apparent, and the UK laws on protest becoming increasingly draconian, so I wanted to imagine how things would be in the 2050s, when the Paris Agreement targets are supposed to have been met, but look unlikely to be achieved.

Linda: Clearances has a particular resonance in Scottish history and is equally dramatic here. Was After the Clearances always going to be your title?

Alison: It wasn’t; in fact, this is the first time I’ve been asked to change a title – no small feat, since I find titles difficult! My working title throughout the process of writing, which had become entrenched in my mind, was Tidings (reflecting both the ‘tide’ and ‘news’ meanings of the English word, as well as the Welsh word taid, grandpa, since Glesni’s grandfather is a significant figure). However, my publisher, Honno, had recently published a novel called Tiding, so we agreed to change it. The ‘Clearances’ in the novel refer to a government scheme of deliberate rural depopulation to new towns, with the aim of greater control and simpler distribution of scarce resources. This policy was officially dubbed the Resettlement, but popularly known as the Clearances (or Digartrefu in Welsh, with the added meaning of ‘making homeless’), with all the historical associations. There is a similar colonial feel to the hints in the novel at typical English attitudes to the Welsh language and culture.

Linda: I liked the framing of the story with the viewpoint of teenage Glesni, who was born on the island, Ynys Hudol, and has never known any other life. We meet the various other 'Seeders' as established members of the community (apart from Sandy, the new arrival), gradually learning about their occupations and experiences before coming to the island - Cai, for instance, had been a policeman who became disillusioned with increasingly draconian measures towards protestors. I found this effective - too much of this from the beginning would have taken our attention away from the island set-up. You obviously thought in great detail about Seeder philosophy and ground rules - there are sections of their manifesto, or creed, in the book. Was this your starting point, or did you elaborate as you got into the story?

Alison: My story always featured the Seeders as an idealistic community, living apart from the world but trying to establish a blueprint for a new way of life, kinder to both the environment and people. At first, I introduced various aspects of the community’s rules, customs and values, largely from Glesni’s point of view, within the main narrative, but at a later stage decided I could say more, while interfering less with the story, by incorporating extracts from Seeds of Change, the founders’ record of their experience and a blueprint for the community. I found it surprisingly easy, presumably since the community’s ethos was already embedded in my mind, and founder Edith Turner’s voice flowed readily (the pamphlet is credited to both founders, but for some reason I think of it as her voice). The hard part was slotting the extracts in, at the beginning of the relevant parts of the novel and at key points in the narrative, while taking care to edit out the previous references as appropriate, to avoid repetition.

Linda: Bela's sections are different in tone and style from the rest - first-person and very direct, a stream of consciousness. Living in the woods, in solitude until the fugitive Winter comes into her life, she is alone with her thoughts and impressions. Did you decide on this approach immediately, or was it something that grew from the writing?

Alison: Bela was there as a character from the start, as was her voice and attitudes. However, as I tend to make things up as I go along (I’m very much a ‘pantser’ rather than a ‘plotter’, to use the common writers’ terms), I only worked out where her story fits in as the novel developed.

Linda: It does take the reader a while to realise how Bela's sections connect with those about the islanders - it's a puzzle that slowly comes together, with hints along the way. Did this require careful tracking as you wrote - i.e. what you want the reader to guess at any point, and how soon the links and connections should be revealed?

Alison: It definitely required careful attention, but more at the redrafting and editing stages – which is how I tend to work. In the finished novel, some aspects are maybe revealed sooner than I intended, though it has varied from reader to reader. As I got feedback from early readers, it became clear that there were certain connections that some people were missing altogether, which made me realise I was perhaps being a little too subtle! I won’t talk about specific examples because of spoilers, but I hope I’ve managed to retain a certain amount of mystery without being downright confusing!

I did apply careful tracking throughout, as I always do when writing. I have a detailed timeline, both of characters’ backgrounds and events referred to – in the characters’ past but our future. I also have a detailed outline of each chapter with key points, both to ensure balance between chapters from different characters’ points of view, and also so I can detect and correct continuity issues if, or when, I move things around.

Linda: The main part of the story is set in 2056 but we're referred back to a dramatic incident in the 2030s in which some of the island community may have been involved. That the UK (not Welsh) government plans to take over lovingly restored land for a dam and reservoir to provide water supplies - for England! - was particularly poignant. Were you thinking of real-life settings where this sort of thing has happened?

Alison: Yes; the fictional Irlas Dam incident is based in part on the Llyn Celyn dam and reservoir. In the late 1950s/early 1960s, the Tryweryn river valley was dammed and the Welsh village of Capel Celyn drowned, to form what is now known as Llyn Celyn reservoir, which to this day provides water for the city of Liverpool. Despite extensive protests, both by the villagers themselves and much further afield, the project went ahead, drowning a traditional Welsh-speaking rural community. It was an significant event in the burgeoning Welsh language movement, which ultimately led to the language being given its due status in Wales, and to the fight for devolution. The beautiful and apparently peaceful waters of Lake Vyrnwy and the Elan valley reservoirs conceal similar tragedies, but it was Tryweryn captured the public imagination. This was partly due to its immortalisation in a famous graffitied slogan near Aberystwyth in the early 1960s that has become an icon – it even has its own Wikipedia page if you want to read more. The slogan Cofiwch Dryweryn (Remember Tryweryn) has seen a revival in recent years, with copies springing up throughout Wales.

In After the Clearances, it is not only a Welsh community, but also a large-scale environmental stewardship project that is threatened with destruction, uniting two of the key themes of the novel and highlighting the interconnectedness of social and environmental issues.

Linda: The 'Seeders' community on Ynys Hudol is convincingly drawn - the daily lives of the inhabitants, their communal beliefs and practices, but also the conflicts and tensions. Some members of the group are described as 'purists' - they want to live entirely self-sufficiently without recourse to trips to the mainland, or the use of money, and without harvesting fish from the sea - while others are more pragmatic. All this has the ring of truth about it which I feel must surely come from your own experiences with activist or community groups?

Alison: It’s largely human nature but yes, experience of community and activist groups comes into it! Although the Seeders are an idealistic community with a vision of how to live in the face of the effects of climate change, I wanted to make sure that they’re realistic, not all sweetness and light. There are always differences in opinion. For instance, there are constant debates within activist groups about whether it’s more effective to undertake direct action or concentrate on community-based activism, which takes time that we can ill afford to build up. I believe we need both – the attention-grabbing actions are still needed in the face of government inaction, but these need to be backed up by work at grass-roots level, both to do essential work in the community, but also to build up acceptance of, and support for, more radical protests.

Despite differences in opinion, the shared vision – both in real life and in the novel – is more important than the differences; my experience, for instance with deliberative democracy in people’s assemblies and guarding against the build-up of hierarchies, fed into the Seeders’ system of governance and decision-making, with Gatherings and regularly rotating co-leaders.

As far as the details of daily life are concerned, I enjoyed a number of fortnight-long stays on Ynys Enlli/Bardsey Island, which was the inspiration for my fictional Ynys Hudol. The guest accommodation there is lovely, the welcome warm and the island truly atmospheric, whatever the weather, but the houses have no electricity or running water and the facilities are basic (though there is excellent provision for guests, I hasten to add). These experiences helped to feed the detail of what life for the Seeders would be like. It also helped me become immersed in the atmosphere of the island – you can get a glimpse of this in the lovely video my daughter made on location to accompany the launch of the book. 

Linda: After the Clearances could be classified as cli-fi. All fiction set in the present day should surely at least include references to the existential crisis we all face, while stories set in the future will need to look at how the climate emergency has been addressed and how humanity has adapted (or failed to). Are there ‘cli-fi’ titles you particularly admire?

Alison: I recently loved The Wager and the Bear by John Ironmonger, published by Fly on the Wall press. With relatable characters and a brilliant combination of humour, tragedy and the tackling of serious issues, it’s the kind of enjoyable novel perfect for drawing people in – it’s made its way round my family with the speed of a calving glacier!

Another climate fiction novel I’ve particularly enjoyed is the magnificent Playground by Richard Powers, which does for oceans what The Overstory did so powerfully for trees.

And of course, there’s your own The One True Thing, a beautiful novel which may not immediately appear to be climate fiction, but has love of the environment and natural world firmly at its heart, as you suggest in your question.

Linda: Thank you! Can you give us any idea of what you'll write next? Are you thinking of making another leap forward in time with some of these characters, or will your next project go in a different direction?

Alison: I haven’t started writing a new book yet, but I’ve got ideas for Bela’s story in my mind – the events that led her to where she is now, and what shaped her unusual personality. Alternatively, I’m toying with the idea of connected short stories – before I began to write After the Clearances, I had an idea of people on Ynys Hudol sitting round a campfire, or the benches of the community’s roundhouse, sharing their stories. This didn’t come to pass, but may well make its way to the page in future!

Linda: Thanks so much for sharing these insights, and I hope After the Clearances will find its way to huge numbers of appreciative readers!

After the Clearances is published by Honno Press.

Linda's review of Alison Layland's Riverflow

Guest review by Nick Hodges: THIS BIRDING LIFE by Stephen Moss

 

"Moss can see an everyday bird and take pleasure from it - every day. His enthusiasm is catching: boundless."

Photograph with king parrot
by Judith Ramage

Nick Hodges is an Englishman living in Australia. He is a teacher and freelance journalist concentrating on Travel and Nature. His work has been published in Britain's Sunday Times, The Times Educational Supplement and the Tourist Board magazine, In Britain. Down Under, his work has appeared in leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Sun Herald. He has recently completed 20 years of writing a monthly Nature Notes article for a Sydney newspaper. He has designed and taught adult courses on The Birds of Sydney.

Nick Hodges is not a twitcher. Well - not really.

The book was old but still in good condition. I opened it and the phrase 'birds are so beautiful' grabbed me. That's right, I thought; that's why I like them.

The author, Stephen Moss, writer, broadcaster, TV producer and naturalist, knows what he's talking about. This Birding Life is a collection of essays on birds and birders which appeared many years ago at monthly intervals in The Guardian.

My copy had been half obscured at the back of a bookshelf and unread for a long time. I leafed through it and was struck by the similarities: I, too, had written once a month about nature. My pieces were published over a period of 20 years in a Sydney newspaper. But whereas Moss had written about birds my Nature Notes were more general: Kangaroos and Crocodiles as well as Cockatoos and Kookaburras.

I sat down, and read for several absorbing hours until I'd finished it: the book was that good.

Once, in northern Australia, 80 km from anywhere, I sat on the dusty bank of a tired, half-empty creek. Next to me was a naked tree, gaunt with what passes for winter in those parts. I waited. And waited. Then it happened. A great cloud passed over the sun before descending to immediately clothe the whole tree in what resembled a quivering mass of breeze-blown, green leaves. Winter became summer. And they weren't leaves - but Budgerigars! Thousands of them!

Corny perhaps to say it was a truly unforgettable sight. But it was. Who could I tell? Who would understand? Stephen Moss would.

Reading his book I felt a strong affinity with the man. When he sees his first Blue-cheeked Bee-eater he claims it to be 'the most breathtakingly beautiful bird I have ever seen: a vision of rich, warm colours somehow out of place in this harsh, grey landscape'. I know exactly what he means. That Bee-eater will stay with him always. And his first Little Bittern? 'One of the great moments of my birding life'. One suspects he means his entire life.

This Birding Life is divided into seven parts: Growing Up, Spreading my Wings, My Local Patch, Birding Britain, Birding Abroad etc. Each containing several essays. When you've read the lot you've also read much of the story of the author's life.

Stephen Moss's prose is straightforward but effective. His descriptions are illuminating. He says that Yellow Wagtails resemble flying lemons - and he's right. They do! On an offshore island of breeding seabirds he writes, 'The Puffins continued loafing about, posing for photographs until the boat came'. And he's right. They do! On Ivory Gulls, he writes, 'despite its name this species is not ivory coloured at all. A better name might be 'Persil Gull: its plumage is almost whiter than white'.

There are essays on birds seen on country walks, in car parks, while commuting and on his regularly visited local patch. There are essays about birds in childhood and on birders themselves, great men of ornithology. There are essays on bird names: Thekla Lark, Eleonora's Falcon, Montagu's Harrier. Why are they named thus? Who were these people? How do you pronounce Adouin's Gull? And what exactly is a twitcher? And a mass twitch? It's all here.

Have you ever had a good look at a house sparrow? Moss can see such an everyday bird and take pleasure from it - every day. His enthusiasm is catching; boundless.

Being a birder is a reason to visit new, maybe-unknown spots: Minsmere Nature Reserve, for example, is surely one of Britain's most lovely places. Ditto, Cley Reserve in Norfolk; or the Hebrides. The very mention of these places inspires awe among birders. Me too. Stephen Moss visits all of these destinations in order to see different and new species of birds. He writes about these hallowed birding spots with what amounts to reverence. These are the places to go in order see rarities and possibly 100 species in a day. Yes: 100!

The book has no illustrations or photographs. However, Moss's prose carries the day. A word of warning: be careful if you check out his birds online. The Blue-cheeked Bee-eater for example. You'll be so dazzled by the colours you'll find yourself considering air fares to the bird's homeland. And air fares to Africa aren't cheap. But with or without illustrations the book is a decided tick.

This Birding Life is published by Aurum.

See also: 

12 Birds to Save your Life - Nature's Lessons in Happiness by Charlie Corbett, reviewed by Linda Sargent

Bird Cottage by Eva Meijer, translated by Antoinette Fawcett, reviewed by Daniel Hahn

A Sweet, Wild Note: What we Hear when the Birds Sing by Richard Smyth, reviewed by Dawn Finch

LOST ANIMALS, DISAPPEARING WORLDS - STORIES OF EXTINCTIONS by Barbara Allen, reviewed by Linda Newbery

 

"Allen says that she wrote this book 'accompanied by many tears', but warns that it is too easy to judge the generations that came before us, while our own shows equal carelessness."

Linda Newbery edits Writers Review. Her latest novel for adults is The One True Thing.

Mention extinction, and the first animals that come to most people's minds will be dinosaurs, followed by the iconic dodo, woolly mammoth and sabre-toothed tiger. Barbara Allen's book ranges more widely, taking in a number of creatures I (and probably you) had never heard of, and moving closer to the present day, to species whose demise is most definitely down to human activity. Inevitably a sad compilation, it's informative and engaging too, largely thanks to the author's device of giving a 'voice' to a member of each vanished species. Most famous of these is 'Lonesome George', the Pinta Island tortoise who died in 2012 at about a hundred and ten years old - like other animals here he was an 'endling', the poignant term for a lone survivor destined to die unmated and as the last recorded individual of its species.

In the opening, Barbara Allen, a minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, speculates about why she's included some animals rather than others - for example two of those I've just mentioned, the woolly mammoth and sabre-toothed tiger, don't appear here. "What I do know," she acknowledges, "is that no book, with one exception, can contain stories about every extinct species; the only volume that can, and does, cradle those sad tales close to its heart, its core, is Earth." 

The concept of extinction was first used in 1796 by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier, who spoke of animals living in "a world previous to ours". The religious establishment was affronted by this, just as it was sixty years later by the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. We now know that extinctions are caused both by cataclysmic events such as asteroid strikes or volcanic eruptions and by more gradual changes such as pollution, competition for food or shelter, and habitat loss. But how can we know when a species truly is extinct? The IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) is the global authority, categorising a species as extinct if no sightings have been reported for fifty years - though there are sometimes comebacks from 'Lazarus' species such as the coelacanth, which until 1938 had been known only as a fossil. But it's sobering to note that 41% of amphibians, 27 per cent of mammals and 13% of birds are currently threatened with extinction. More optimistically, the IUCN's Green List analyses conservation efforts and their impact on species recovery.

Allen also writes about 'de-extinction' or 'resurrection science', and how this could be done through cloning and genetic engineering; but she examines the ethics of this, how feasibly it can be done, the effects on other species if, say, mammoths were reintroduced to the Arctic tundra, and whether hubris might result in humans thinking that by 'tinkering' they could do better than nature. And, as she points out, "If we think we can 'replace' a species, then apathy may set in, making us less inclined to protect others."

In the midst of the sixth mass extinction, or Holocene extinction, many of us experience the ecological grief referred to by the American conservationist Aldo Leopold when he wrote of the 'world of wounds' experienced by those who care and learn about the natural world. Allen wonders how best to 'memorialise' the lost creatures, recognising that each led its individual life and was not just a representative of its species. She describes the huge 'Lost Birds' sculptures of Todd McGrain: the passenger pigeon, the Carolina parakeet, the great auk, the heath hen and the Labrador duck, each sculpture positioned, where possible, at the site where the last known individual was shot or sighted. As McGrain says, "at those places haunted by what is missing". Some of the creatures in this book are illustrated with drawings, others by sad photographs of an animal alive or preserved: Qi Qi, the world's only captive Yangtze river dolphin; the Xerces blue butterfly; a stuffed ivory-billed woodpecker; a solitary Quagga in a cage in London Zoo.

Allen's own approach is to give an individual of each species a character and allow it to 'speak' to us, in tones of outrage, resignation, boastfulness or accusation. The Dodo, for example, introduces itself: "What a stupid name! Sets me up as a thing of ridicule; if one is not accorded respect, it is easier to kill ... some individuals in the past and in the present have found it had to believe that I was real, that I was not a made-up character for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I wonder when children realize that I was factual, real, rather than a creature of legend or fantasy? But fantasy doesn't exist and now neither do we." The Spectacled Cormorant, which inhabited Bering Island, complains that "Less than a century after we had been 'discovered', we were extinct" - thanks to its short wings and lack of suspicion of humans.

It's hard to comprehend how the once so numerous passenger pigeon could have been allowed to become extinct. The acclaimed bird artist John James Audubon wrote in the 1930s that when a flock passed over "the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse". (The book's cover shows a version of his painting of these pigeons, with the birds as blank silhouettes.) A flight of the massed birds could take three days to pass. Of course, they consumed grain and damaged trees and were not beloved by farmers, so they were shot in their thousands, sometimes as part of organised competitions. Forest depletion also led to a reduction in their numbers; efforts to save them came too late. The last known bird, Martha, died in 1914 at Cincinatti Zoo. 

Allen says that she wrote this book "accompanied by many tears". but warns that it is too easy to judge the generations that came before us, while our own shows equal carelessness. The penultimate chapter has the Bramble Cay Melomys, a rodent inhabitant of Papua New Guinea, lamenting as the tides rise higher that humans destroyed it: "not face to face but, rather, through greed, or ignorance, or indifference ... or apathy". Snails, small rodents and amphibians don't attract the attention given to polar bears or snow leopards, but their loss is just as significant as that of the bigger, more iconic species.

It could be argued that the fate of most species on Earth is to become extinct in time, but human activity has produced a current rate of loss estimated to be between 100 and 1000 times the rate of natural background extinction. Allen's book doesn't include any British species, but the recent State of Nature report found that an alarming one in six species, including the once-familiar water voles, hazel dormice and turtle doves, are at risk because of farming activity, pesticide use and habitat loss.

"May we endeavour," Allen concludes, "to add as few names and pages as possible to this book of extinction." Amen to that.

Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds is published by Reaktion Books

See also: The Invention of Nature - the Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science, reviewed by Linda Newbery

Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie, reviewed by Sue Purkiss

Sarn Helen, a Journey through Wales, Past, Present and Future, by Tom Bullough, reviewed by Alison Layland

Guest review by Dennis Hamley: THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE by Jonathan Coe

 

"A superb book. You’ll have to work hard at it. But the rewards are intensely satisfying." 

Dennis Hamley's first novel, Pageants of Despair, was published in 1974. He read English at Jesus College, Cambridge, and has a PhD from Leicester. After teaching, lecturing and acting as County English Advisor for Hertfordshire, he retired to write full-time. He has written widely for children and young adults; one of his best-known books, The War and Freddy, was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize. His recent adult novel, The Second Person from Porlock, is a fantasy riff on the chaotic life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and was published in 2021. His highly-acclaimed novel Spirit of the Place will be reissued by Writers Review Publishing later this year. He lives in Oxford with his wife Kay, an artist.

Yes, Jonathan Coe is indeed a brilliant author. Acerbic about society and especially its politics, profound understanding of human, especially sexual, relationships, sometimes a bit of cosy crime, very funny – no wonder Bob Mortimer, himself a cosy crime author, says ‘My comfort read is anything by Jonathan Coe.’ But I think The Proof of my Innocence is anything but comfortable. Funny but alarming.

How many of us have been irritated by that persistent cry of 'See it, say it, sorted' which assaults our ears on train journeys? Well, it certainly annoys the first character, as yet unidentified, who we meet in the short, intriguing prologue. But the book has three parts. Guess what each of the three parts is called. A typical Coe joke. So why is Proof different in kind from its predecessors?

Phyl has come down from university. The only job she can find is preparing sushi at Heathrow airport. Back home, her mother Joanna, vicar of a small parish, is expecting an old university friend to call in on his way to a conference. Christopher Swann writes a much-read left-wing political blog and the conference he is bound for is the first of a group which calls itself British TrueCon. He knows he will not be welcome. He brings with him Rashida, his adopted daughter. She and Phyl will later make a formidable partnership.

Christopher and Joanna first met at St Stephen’s College, Cambridge, to which all the main characters went. I presume that the fictional St Stephen’s is based on Trinity College, the college of treachery, to which Burgess, Maclean and Philby went and of which Blunt was a fellow. Coe was at Trinity himself so he knows what he is talking about. The implication seems to me to be that the TrueCon gathering is not just a Reform-lite party conference but something sinister, treacherous and dangerous. Emeric Coutts, fellow of St Stephens, is the eminence grise. He runs salons in the college for like-minded students. This reminds me of the Apostles, a real subversive Cambridge secret society. When a Coutts salon is over and students leave, a few stay behind and disappear with Coutts into an adjoining room in which, presumably, really secret - and dangerous - discussions ensue.

These people are not playing politics. They are murderous. During the Truecon conference, Swann is murdered. Or is he? The strange ending of the book suggests otherwise. It parallels an odd incident on the notorious Fish Hill, three miles east of Evesham, during Swann’s drive to the conference. If the ending is ‘true’, perhaps he never got there.

The story continues teasingly obliquely. Odd footfalls in the memory. What is the significance of the old ballad, Oh you have been poisoned, oh Randall my son? Who has poisoned him? His sweetheart. What will he leave her? A rope from hell to hang her.

A Rope from Hell. The title of a novel by Peter Cockerill, a famous writer who commits suicide. Or does he? Somebody does. The trouble is, we can never be sure who we are talking to. Nothing is ever what it seems. This tightly constructed novel seemingly moves with the inconsequentiality of dream. Or nightmare.

As a final joke, the story begins on the first day of Liz Truss’s doomed premiership and ends on the day of its ignominious conclusion.

 
A superb book. You’ll have to work hard at it. But the rewards are intensely satisfying. The clue is in the title.

The Proof of my Innocence is published by Viking.

See also Dennis's feature on his novel The Second Person from Porlock.