Guest review by Cindy Jefferies: ORBITAL by Samantha Harvey

 

"This jewel of a book is out there, like our beautiful planet in space; silent, modest, wonderful, waiting to be found."

First published in 2001 for children, Cindy Jefferies found success with her Fame School series with Usborne Books, obtaining 22 foreign rights deals. Latterly writing fiction for adults as Cynthia Jefferies, her first title The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan was published in 2018, followed a year later by The Honourable Life of Thomas Chayne, set during the English Civil Wars, followed in 2019. Both titles are now available in paperback.

I can’t think of a more divisive recent novel. Friends and acquaintances either loved or loathed this 2024 title. Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, written in 2007 attracted similar strong emotions. Both are novellas, both were shortlisted for the Booker Prize but McEwan, having won in 1998, dipped out in 2007, while Harvey went on to win in 2024.

Major prize winners are always open to a superfluity of opinions. It goes with the territory. Critics are asked for their reviews, book groups, along with huge numbers of the general, book reading public rush to buy or borrow, so they can see what the fuss is about. So what was the fuss about in 2024?

The major complaint seemed to be that ‘nothing happens’ in Orbital. I beg to differ. Admittedly, in spite of it’s 136 pages I didn’t find it a quick read. Orbital demands attention. Once one does pay the story the compliment of starting off with an open mind, and being ready to concentrate; it, for me at any rate, repays every reading moment. What is there to be said about orbiting the Earth multiple times for nine months? Well, quite a lot as it happens. There are the many facts sprinkled through the narrative. Harvey thanks NASA and ESA for the wealth of information made available and my goodness, these facts don’t disappoint, nor does the way she relates them with her quiet, authority.

The novel rotates with the space station, passing developing weather patterns, ambling past the ink dark Atlantic, or brilliantly lit Europe, over and over again, measuring the hours of astronaut time as if they are living Earth sunrises and sunsets, though at seventeen and a half thousand miles an hour. The pace of the novel suggests Earth time, while for the astronauts the days pass quickly, with so much to do, so much essential exercise, experiments, housekeeping. Hanging in their sleeping bags, asleep, head over heels over head…

And of course there are other stories, the astronaut’s stories. Each individual is out of reach of a loved one to embrace, short of Earth knowledge, though seeing the planet more entirely than anyone living on its surface. Such a disconnect at so much distance, such possible domestic disasters, and yet not one wants to go home early. Hidden illness, the death of a Mother, and yet somehow, the six of them are sufficient unto each others’ equilibrium.

Don’t expect great drama, fallings out, or violence in the space station. A hand’s breadth away from disaster, the metal holds, in spite of its age. And, so do the six men and women within it. This jewel of a book is out there, like our beautiful planet in space; silent, modest, wonderful, waiting to be found.

Orbital is published by Vintage. 

See also Samantha Harvey's The Shapeless Unease, reviewed by Graeme Fife

More of Cindy's choices: 

The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Katherine Rooney

Guest review by Emma Pass: THE MIDNIGHT HOUR by Eve Chase

 

"Primarily a mystery, but it turned out to be so much more ..."

Emma Pass has been making up stories for as long as she can remember. She wrote her first novel – a sequel to Jurassic Park – when she was 13 in maths lessons with her notebook under her work. She used to be a library assistant but now works a full-time writer, creative writing tutor, mentor and editor for organisations such as The Literary Consultancy and Writing East Midlands. Emma is autistic, has Cerebral Palsy and lives with CFS ME. She writes historical romance for adults, sci fi for teenagers and adventure stories for children. She was shortlisted for the 2023 Romantic Novel Awards, won the 2015 Concorde Book Award and the 2014 NE Teen Award, was longlisted for the Bransford Boase Award and has twice been nominated for the Carnegie Medal. She also writes poetry and short stories, has had an article published in Mslexia Magazine, and in 2020 was commissioned to make a poetry film for the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site in Derbyshire. Find out more from Emma's website.

In 1998, teenager Maggie's beautiful but fragile mother Dee Dee, a fading actress and model, walks out of the house one evening and doesn't return. Maggie, left in charge of younger brother Kit, must try to unravel what might have happened with the help of new friend Wolf, but Dee Dee seems to have vanished off the face of the earth and every which way she turns, Maggie's only met with more questions. Then something happens, and Maggie and Kit are forced to flee to Paris to take refuge with their aunt, Cora. Twenty-one years later, still living in Paris, Maggie gets a phonecall that threatens to shatter the life she's so carefully built for herself: in London, the caller tells her, the new owner of her and Kit's childhood home is excavating the basement, threatening to reveal the dark secret hidden for all these years…

Although the blurb for this novel drew me in immediately, I've never read a book by Eve Chase before, so I wasn't sure what to expect – at first glance it seemed as if The Midnight Hour was, primarily, a mystery, but it turned out to be so much more. The story has two timelines, one set in the late 1990s and one set in the present (pre-Pandemic) day, both told mainly from the viewpoint of protagonist Maggie with the occasional chapter from Kit, and switching between first and third person so it's immediately clear which one we're in. Although there is a mystery at this novel's core, it's also a richly layered coming-of-age story about family, loss and love, warmly written in a poetic voice that, with its use of metaphor and simile, stirred up vivid imagery and emotions that lingered in my mind long after I'd finished reading. The 1990s sections evoke a powerful sense of nostalgia, too, with their descriptions of London and the antique shop belonging to Wolf's uncle. I lived in the south-east of England during this decade, am roughly the same age as Maggie and visited London frequently as a teenager; the sights, sounds and smells of the city in this era are brought to life on the page so evocatively, I almost felt I was back there.

The plot itself is deftly handled. Sometimes, with mystery stories, I can see the twist coming a mile off, but The Midnight Hour kept me guessing right to the end, and in the age before mobile phones and the internet became ubiquitous, the fact that Dee Dee could simply disappear without trace feels completely believable. However, after a fairly dramatic opening chapter, the novel takes a little while to get going – not something I have an issue with, personally, as I adore immersive stories that allow you time to get to know the characters and settings, but if you're an impatient reader who likes to be thrust straight into the thick of things, this may not be for you. If you're a fan of twisty, multi-layered stories with compelling characterisation and beautiful writing, though, I'd urge you to give The Midnight Hour a go! I am now a firm fan of Eve Chase and will definitely be reading more by her.

The Midnight Hour is published by Penguin.

Guest review by Laura Parker: LAND BENEATH THE WAVES by Nic Wilson

"At one level, this is the story of how the natural world entranced, comforted and sustained her as she developed her expert eye ... there is a lot to learn and enjoy in her observations, and in her intense feeling for the land."

Laura Parker is the author of no books (yet), but she is working on one about drystone walls, and has written a growing collection of articles published by Country Life magazine. Her work covers animals and the art and history of the countryside. She has also been published in Little Toller’s The Clearing, an online journal in which writers explore and celebrate the landscape we live in, as well as in Scottish Field and Scottish daily The Courier. Find out more on Laura's website.

As one might expect from a Guardian Country Diarist, nature runs through this book like the chalk bedrock that unrolls beneath Nic Wilson’s adopted home territory of Hertfordshire. Despite its bold opening statement: ‘I am not a memoirist’, what ensues, initially, are some delicate childhood recollections of birding with her father and being introduced to nature close up: moths, rosebay willowherb, birds’ nests. At one level, this is the story of how the natural world entranced, comforted and sustained her as she developed her expert eye. Trained as a teacher, Nic is a natural educator and there is a lot to learn and enjoy in her observations, and in her intense feeling for the land. There is beautiful, tangible writing: ‘Oak bark knuckles my back, its touch reassuringly solid.’

But Nic’s past – and her present – is clouded with pain, both mental and physical. Some stems from the experience of her mother, struggling with undiagnosed ME in the 1970s, a time when women’s pain and illnesses were ignored to the point of tragedy: Nic and her brother were nearly taken away. The act of writing this book reveals to her the impact of a childhood spent not wanting to worry an ill parent. Counselling helps her to unlock her writing. ‘Can open; worms everywhere’ reads her journal.

A withdrawn but clever child, silent in class, Nic begins to find comfort in reading, and self-expression in drama. At university, she locates soulmates, a partner, and a land she really loves in the north-east of England. Happiness begins to percolate through habitual anxiety and mysterious seizures. But when she and her new husband are uprooted to move to Hertfordshire, the balance again becomes precarious, and she seeks a new anchor. It is her exploration of this unpromisingly (to her) tame landscape, that for me contains the most interesting and thoughtful writing. Through observation, research, and natural curiosity she digs below Hitchin’s historic reputation as a centre for lavender and finds it was also once famous for its nightingales. She learns which Victorian collector planted the giant sequoias, and how the land was worked, and enclosed. The fossils found in the railway embankment lead her to imagine how a Conulus (extinct sea urchin) made its way under Cretaceous oceans. She introduces her small children to nature, discovering plants and insects on the way to school, and starts to grow vegetables. Alongside the quotidian, she seeks to explore what the land means to her and why. ‘And what it could, or possibly should, mean to every one of us.’

The book is laced with personal pain. After suffering post-natal depression, Nic receives a late diagnosis of coeliac disease, and outlines the inconveniences of a diet that not only restricts food choices but inhibits her social life. In flashbacks, she uncovers how her dissociative seizures could have been caused by past trauma, subconsciously triggered by extreme emotion. Gradually, and against her natural instinct, she lays herself open about how these fits make her feel as though she is trapped in an alternative reality, horribly ashamed. Then her health crisis deepens: ‘fatigue and anxiety, my old nemeses, have called on a new accomplice, pain, to complete the unholy Trinity.’

Adenomyosis, an excruciating uterine condition, is tardily diagnosed and unsuccessfully treated, echoing her mother’s story.

She turns to landscape as her salvation, sitting it out in local wooded wetlands. As she hits rock bottom, her busy writer’s mind finds parallels. ‘When you reach that lowest point, it’s worth taking a careful look at the bedrock that caused your fall.’ She identifies with mineral beneath her feet: ‘Though I’d like to be flint…I’m all chalk.’

Parts of this book are cris de cœur, painful to read. And in contemplating the state of nature, Nic Wilson inevitably deals with loss. ‘What have my children done to deserve this?’ She also – not that this is a comfort – finds parallels in the past. The famous nightingales hit a sudden decline in the 1880s. And she asks a question about our relationship with history that resonated with me most:

‘I want to ask how, without an awareness of local landscape history, without some sense of what once existed – those plants, animals, habitats we have disregarded, forgotten and destroyed – we can ever truly assess the legacy we’re leaving for future generations.’

Land Beneath the Waves is published by Summersdale. 

Laura Parker has also reviewed The Place of Tides by James Rebanks

See also Nature Cure, by Richard Mabey, reviewed by Linda Newbery

Guest review by David Breakell: DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK by Kate Atkinson

 

"Only a writer of Atkinson's skill could pull this off without straining credibility to breaking point."

David Breakell, formerly a practising lawyer in the City of London, writes historical fiction. His novel The Alchemist of Genoa was published in March this year - find out more on his website.

Great fictional detectives have dysfunctional personal lives. Or at least that's how it seems: Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Laidlaw - just add your favourites to the list. And Kate Atkinson's sardonic ex-cop turned private eye, Jackson Brodie, is a great detective. Not 'great' for his brilliant deductive reasoning or his observational powers, or even that he (usually) gets his man, if not the girl. Rather that his humanity, fallibility, dark humour - and the sheer train wreck of his life - grab our minds and hearts and never let go.

If you've read any of Atkinson’s novels, then you won't need much arm-twisting to read this one, the sixth to feature Jackson Brodie. Just as there are spy fiction writers and then there's John Le Carre so, in this reviewer's mind at least, there are crime writers and then there's Kate Atkinson.

Jackson Brodie trails his personal history like a long-life shopping bag and he's instrumental in unravelling the truth behind the crimes, but he's not a permanent presence in the novel. DC Reggie Chase, the rookie police detective last seen in “Big Sky”, is given equal billing this time. Reggie is a warm-hearted young woman who’s clever - but not always wise - beyond her years.

It seems that Atkinson has decided to have fun with this latest novel in the series. She places her focus on the other main characters. And what a menagerie they make: the battleaxe - or just plain batty - dowager marchioness and her graceless offspring; the solitary vicar who has lost his only child, then his faith and now his voice; and the young army officer, invalided out with only one leg and yet to find an alternative purpose in life.

Written like that, it might not sound as if humour was the intention. But Atkinson sets these characters against a background straight out of Agatha Christie: a crumbling stately home, a missing Old Master or two, a killer on the run, a snowstorm in which three of the main characters get separately stranded, and the unloved novels of a whodunit writer, whose creaking plots mirror the real-life crimes.

Atkinson ramps up the comedy by pitching her real-life characters against pretend ones, a troupe of might-have-been actors who are contracted to perform in a Murder Mystery evening at the stately home. No-one, except perhaps Jackson, seems able to separate the stage villains from the real ones. The action hurtles at an ever-increasing pace towards near-farce and the bodies, dead or just acting, mount up.

The Christie parody is of course intentional: only a writer of Atkinson's skill could pull this off without straining credibility to breaking point. In the meantime, her trademark one-liners propel the reader along. Talking to the heirs of a deceased old lady who describe her death as 'peaceful', Jackson muses, "He had seen a lot of dead people, and he wouldn't call them peaceful. He would call them dead." When it comes to the Pet Service at the local parish church, Lady Milton "made a point of not taking her own dogs. It might have given them ideas."

Atkinson also has the uncanny ability to take an everyday observation and turn it on its head. Contemplating the gravestones in his churchyard, the vicar reflects that plague victims "had never tasted coffee. Or tea for that matter. Or potatoes. The list of deprivations in the Middle Ages was a long one." The invalided soldier with his too-stiff-upper-lip parents believes that "if you spent too long trying to look on the bright side, you became dazzled and couldn't see anything properly.”

So, how does this compare with other Jackson Brodie novels? Much as I enjoyed it, I doubt it will rank with her very best. Admittedly, "When Will There Be Good News?" was a pretty hard act to follow, with one of the most jaw-dropping opening chapters I've ever read. The book had the power to make you both laugh and cry, many times. The bereft vicar apart, this latest novel is weighted more towards comedy: and indeed, I laughed, but I would have liked more of the emotional tug of its predecessors…

In the same way as Graham Greene described some of his own oeuvre, “Death at the Sign of the Rook” could perhaps be classed as an 'entertainment' rather than a novel. But I'll take a Kate Atkinson 'entertainment' over someone else's magnum opus, any day.

Death at the Sign of the Rook is published by Penguin.

David Breakell's The Alchemist of Genoa is published by Dower House Books.

See also: Nicola Morgan's review of Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins.

SPECIAL FEATURE: a tribute to Aidan Chambers, 1934 - 2025

 

"A quiet trailblazer, always innovative with structure, bold and provocative ..."

Aidan Chambers is known and widely respected for his ground-breaking youth fiction and also as an educationalist with a special interest in how children/teenagers and books interact. With his wife Nancy he founded Signal, a review of children's literature, for which they were jointly given the Eleanor Farjeon Award, and from 2003-2006 he was President of the School Library Association. He has an international reputation and was a winner of the Hans Andersen Award, the Carnegie Medal and the Michael Prinz Award - the two latter for Postcards from No Man's Land. Aidan died on May 11th.

Celia Rees and Linda Newbery on how influential and inspiring a writer he was and how important to their own writing.

Linda: I wish I'd been able to read Aidan Chambers as a teenager, which certainly isn't to say that I haven't loved his books as an adult - they're enduring favourites. But had I read them when younger, I'd have been enlightened and reassured, discovering myself in his characters and situations. He was a quiet trailblazer, always innovative with structure, bold and provocative for those readers who found and engaged with his work, while never a publicity-seeker. Dance on my Grave was one of the first teenage novels about homosexuality, without ever trumpeting itself as such; Postcards from No Man's Land included the now very topical subject of assisted dying. Neither, though, could be described as 'issues' fiction; he would rightly have resisted such categorisation.

In spite of winning the Carnegie Medal for Postcards from No Man's Land, he was better known and appreciated in other European countries than in the UK. In the days when I was frequently in secondary schools, I regularly recommended his books, disappointed that so few teenagers knew of them - though there'd often be a teacher or librarian nodding in agreement. It was notable that reports of his death last week appeared more quickly in the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy than they did here. While never really on the festivals or author tour circuits, Aidan travelled widely to speak at conferences, where he was admired as much for his writing about children and reading as for his ground-breaking fiction. In recent years he'd given up being traditionally published, but still wrote prolifically - how could he not? - producing privately-printed fiction and memoir which he sent out to friends and acquaintances. I was honoured to be one of those, and my collection of these books has pride of place on my shelves. 

In The Age Between, he writes that youth fictions (his preferred term) "too often concentrate only on emotionally and physically sensational episodes, and neglect those other key aspects of youthhood which interest me the most and interests many youths: the cognitive, linguistic, and intellectual, the rich experience of fecund language and complex thought and spiritual awakening that are an important - I'd say vital - part of youthhood." These qualities are found in abundance in all his novels, never more so than in the one that remains my favourite, The Toll Bridge - cleverly structured, engrossing us in the lives of three characters, Jan, Tess and Adam (none of these their real names) linked by a physical and symbolic bridge and by the idea of Janus, who looks both forward and back. Brilliant, powerful, inevitably a bit dated but as fresh and vital as when I first read it in 1992, it gives the exhilarating sense of engaging with a mind that's constantly alert and agile, searching for meaning and identity. 

Aidan Chambers set the bar very high, showing just how complex and satisfying youth fiction can be. He's inspired and influenced many a writer, including both Celia and myself. The book of mine that probably owes the most to him is The Shell House - which I dedicated to him rather cryptically. ('The other AC' is because one of the novel's characters also had those initials.)

Celia: Periodically, I read in the review columns of newspapers, the pages of The Bookseller, or on a blog post, or I hear on a podcast, bookcast or a book programme that ‘there were no YA novels before ---'. You can fill in the date. I allow myself a wry smile and forgive the ignorance because I know that is not true. For me, the 1980s were the golden age of what we now know as YA Literature. The writers who were writing then were pioneering a genre that could, indeed, be counted as Literature with a capital L. They were writing novels with the all the rich complexity of adult fiction, on serious, provocative subjects, but they were writing for teenagers (which is was the term we used back then). Publishers had dedicated lists for Teen Fiction, separate from their Children’s Fiction. I know because I was teaching English in a comprehensive school and I was was always on the lookout for fiction that would challenge and stretch my students but would rivet them to a story that was not for children, not for adults, but for and about them. This is difficult, skilled writing, driven by a passion to deliver the very best to that most deserving but ill served group of readers - teenagers.

Aidan Chambers was one of a group of writers which included Alan Garner, Joan Lingard and American writers S.E. Hinton, Robert Cormier and Lois Duncan. Their writing was brave, innovative and powerful. It stood up to literary analysis and study but remained consistently engaging. Their fiction could involve serious issues: rape, homosexuality, violence and abuse but ‘issues’ were never central, they were part of the story, because the story mirrored real life.

I was a huge admirer of this cohort of writers. They directly inspired me to become a writer. I wanted to write the kind of books that they were writing. So that’s what I did. Many years after I began writing, I had the pleasure of meeting Aidan at a School Library Association Conference and was able to tell him what an inspiration he'd been to me and how much of a debt I owed to him. 

 

Aidan Chambers was also known for his deep knowledge, criticism and his commentary on the state of children's literature. He and his wife, Nancy Chambers, were passionate about reading and the need for books that would enable young readers to become sophisticated readers of adult fiction. This is one of the reasons that he was so highly regarded abroad. It was also why I was such an admirer. One of my favourite books of his is Postcards From No Man’s Land. In this book he not only tackles serious and difficult issues, sexual ambiguity and identity, assisted dying, but plays with narrative structure and form in ways that are as edgy as the subject matter. In my own novel, The Wish House, I took courage from him to challenge what is possible, or even acceptable in YA literature. It was a risk. The Wish House was admired by some, hated by others. It was a risk Aidan Chambers knew well.

*  

Celia and Linda both acknowledge their debt to Aidan Chambers - in particular for Celia's The Wish House and Linda's The Shell House.

Celia Rees's Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook  (Miss Graham's War in paperback) is published by Harper Collins.

Linda Newbery's The One True Thing is published by Writers Review Publishing.

Q&A: Adèle Geras interviews Judith Allnatt about THE POET'S WIFE

 

"I wondered what it must have been like for Patty to deal with John absconding from an asylum not to return home to her and their seven children but to find his ‘other wife’, Mary Joyce."

Judith Allnatt discusses her newly-reissued novel with Writers Review's Adèle Geras.

Adèle: When did you first come across the work of John Clare? His absence from what’s generally taught in schools has always rather surprised me.

Judith: I’ve always loved both nature and poetry and as a youngster I read some of John Clare’s keenly observed poems about the natural world. One particularly stuck in my mind about a hedgehog collecting crab apples by rolling on them until they stuck to its spines and could be taken back to its nest. I was charmed by the picture of a ‘hedgepig’ trundling along and looking like a head of hair in curlers!

Years later, as a writer living in Northamptonshire, Clare’s native county, I was involved in an arts project that took me into Northampton Library to research local literary figures. I started by reading the journal John Clare wrote about his eighty-mile walk home from an asylum in Essex in which he survived on a diet of ‘grass and tobacco’. Reading his letters from a later period, when he was a long-term patient at Northampton General Lunatic Asylum moved me. Through his own words you could trace his heart-breaking mental decline.

Sometimes he thought himself to be Admiral Nelson or Byron or a boxer called Jack Randall. I became interested in him not just as a marvellous poet and naturalist but as a man. When I found out that John was obsessed with his childhood sweetheart, Mary Joyce, and believed himself to be twice married, to both his real wife, Patty, and to Mary, I knew that here lay the tinder for a novel. I wondered what it must have been like for Patty to deal with John absconding from an asylum not to return home to her and their seven children but to find his ‘other wife’, Mary Joyce.

Adèle: How well do you know Clare’s part of the world? Are you a native? If not, what drew you to this landscape, or perhaps it’s only through the poems that you met it…

Judith: I’ve lived in Northamptonshire for almost forty years but at the opposite end of the county to John Clare’s native village of Helpston, so it was a joy to explore an area that was new to me. As I drove towards Helpston for the first time, I remember performing the usual visual gymnastics of the historical writer to sweep away all evidence of modernity: cars, tarmac, bungalows, pylons and railway crossings. What was left was a blonde landscape of cut hay and pale, stone walls reminding me of John Clare’s description of wandering in such a scene before harvest ‘in the mealy light of waking day’.

The village evidences the esteem in which John Clare is held. The tiny cottage that once housed his family of eleven is restored and partnered by a museum. On a Victorian monument, his poems are carved in stone and in the churchyard on his birthday a living memorial surrounds his grave: a spread of Midsummer Cushions, squares of turf studded with flowers, placed there by local school children.

Over many trips, I also visited Northborough, on the edge of the fens, where the family later moved and where the copses and gentle slopes give way to the flat horizon and huge skies that John Clare found alien and unsympathetic. He longed for his old home and this homesickness perhaps contributed to his illness. From wandering knee deep in grass to find the family’s graves to visiting the mansion, Burghley House, where Clare worked as a gardener, I loved collecting all the little details I needed to build a convincing nineteenth century world.

Adèle: I’m very curious about the novel’s publishing history. What sort of publicity etc did you get? Was the book reviewed etc etc?

Judith: The book was favourably reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement, The Daily Mail and The Times, where Kate Saunders referred to it as ‘affecting and beautifully written.’ It was Book of the Month for Choice magazine and was shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award. I was also delighted to have comments from writers whom I admire. Clare Morrall called it ‘A fascinating, compelling book written with subtlety and a delicate touch’ and ‘a tender family portrait’ and Charles Palliser said ‘This book is superb’, which is of course just what a writer hopes to hear!

As well as several bookshop launches, the novel also had a wonderful launch at the John Clare museum. There I had the opportunity to do a reading in the cottage itself, standing in the very place where Clare would have written some of his poems on old sugar bags and any scrap of paper he could find, and where Patty would have arrived as a new bride full of hope and excitement about their marriage.

Adèle: Following on from this, can you say anything about the new cover? It has quite a different feel to it … how did you choose it? Did you choose the first one?

Judith: Originally, when Random House published the book, I had only a minor input into the cover design. Having the book republished through Writers Review Publishing offered an opportunity for autonomy in its presentation. I collaborated with a designer who freelances for the mainstream publishers to produce a cover that is more contemporary in style and that includes more elements drawn from nature, to reflect the rural world in which the Clare family lived. This was important to me as I feel that John Clare’s love of his environment and the desire to protect it, and his awareness of the natural world and the place that Man has within it, have struck a chord with us now. Connections are being made between the depredations of enclosure and modern spoliation on a grander scale and John Clare’s words have found new resonance.

The kissing figures in silhouette are intended to emphasise Patty and John’s romance but as a touch of foreshadowing a wedding ring hangs, caught on a twig, as if lost or thrown away.

Adèle: What I always want to know from writers is the nitty gritty! Where do you work? Are you a plotter? Do you write on a laptop? Do you have stationery quirks? And so on…

Judith: My methods are quite ‘old school’! I always write the first draft by hand and do the main edit when putting it on to the computer later. I use big ‘Pukka Pad’ notebooks and write on alternate lines so I have room to insert changes. I write on the right hand side of the pad and make all kinds of notes on the left hand page – spider diagrams; sometimes even drawings that help me imagine a scene or decide the characters’ positions and attitudes within it. I have a very broad plan before I start but it might be no more than knowing the beginning, a climactic scene and the ending. I always have a picture in my head of the last scene and this acts as a kind of guiding light for the novel, the point I’m aiming towards even though at the start I may have little idea how I’ll get from A to B.

While I do jot down thoughts for a book anywhere, the heavy-duty work gets done at the library where there are no distractions. I usually do a six-hour stint and feel that I need that long to immerse myself properly in the novel’s world. I think of it as letting down a bucket into a deep well to find what’s at the bottom and it takes time to let down that rope.

Adèle: You seem to know a great deal about e.g. 19th century agriculture! Also childrearing…what kind of research did you do?

Judith: I was brought up on the farm of the Agricultural College where my father taught, so the rhythm of planting and harvest and the tending of livestock went on all around me. My dad, a born countryman, would tell me about the ‘old ways’ of farming as well as about modern practices. Later, when writing the book, he directed me to the sources I needed to answer such questions as ‘what are windrows’ and ‘why was a stook left at the field entrance when harvest was gathered in?’ The experience of walking the ground where the novel was to be set, was also invaluable as it gave me ways to describe the social history that I learnt about through reading: rural poverty, the greed of the powerful, the enclosure of the countryside and the passing of a way of life.

Finding out about Patty was the major research challenge; information about her is sparse. From the handful of poems written by John to Patty and from his letters and journal writing we know that she was attractive and ‘artless’ and that the lovers had a common interest in the natural world. We know that she was nineteen when she met John, that her family was above his in the social scale as they had six acres, pigs and a cow, and that her parents had aspirations for her to marry ‘up,’ and had a local shoemaker in mind. I rooted out other sources about the Clare family: paintings, photographs and artefacts handed down through generations. Then, through reading all the biographies, I looked at the events in the Clare family’s life: births and deaths, John’s courtship, his London popularity and his fall from publishing favour, the fragmentation of his personality and his delusion about being twice married. I imagined how each might have affected Patty and how she might have reacted.

Researching the social history provided detail too about the arduous labour of a countrywoman’s everyday life. To eat, you must first dig, sow, and hoe, to bake, you must first glean, thresh and grind, to have clothes on your back; you must first sew, alter or mend. I concluded that Patty must have been a strong woman to manage all this as well as seven living children and an elderly relative and grew very fond of her as I developed her character to reflect her warmth, good sense and grit.

The Poet's Wife is published by Writers Review Publishing

The other two launch titles for Writers Review Publishing are Mary Hoffman's David: the Unauthorised Autobiography and Linda Newbery's The One True Thing.

Q&A: Celia Rees interviews Mary Hoffman about DAVID: THE UNAUTHORISED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 

"That’s what I like best, when writing historical fiction, lots of facts to draw on but a great big gap where you can create the story."

Mary Hoffman discusses her newly-reissued novel with Writers Review's Celia Rees.

Celia: David was originally published as YA, then re-published as an adult novel. Did you make any changes in the text to transition from YA to adult and where do you feel its real home lies?

 
Mary: It’s a tricky one. The original edition was published as YA, as you say, but reviewed in the UK press and on radio as an adult novel. My usual co-edition partners in Europe found it a bit too “adult” for their YA lists and I’m not convinced it was then seen by the adult editors and rights people in those publishing houses. We’ll never know. So I thought it should be re-issued with a better cover as as an adult novel. I made only minor changes to the text. I was told at the Bologna Book Fair this year that YA fiction is mainly read by 18-25-year-olds now anyway. So I think it may be that recent category “New Adult."

Celia: You have achieved remarkable success in a long writing career that has seen 90 books published for ages ranging from pre-school to Adult. What would your advice be to someone just starting out?

Mary: It’s 125 now! My first book was published 50 years ago, amazingly. But the publishing scene is so different now I don’t think my experiences would be relevant to someone just starting out. My advice based on what is going on now would be:

• Read widely. There was never a half-decent writer who wasn’t a voracious reader.

• Don’t give up the day job. The average annual earnings for a writer in the UK are £7K and that average is reached by including top sellers.

• Don’t write unless you must.

• Be professional, not a hobbyist, even when it is not your paid job.

• Be prepared to write many drafts.

• Try to get an agent; you will be more likely to be published if you have one.

Celia: You have an unusually wide range from picture books to adult novels. Do you have a favourite age to write for and what is your favourite genre?

Mary: What I like best is when the idea comes bringing its right length and format with it. I know now when an idea is going to be a picture book or a longer work of fiction but that took a while. My role model is the marvellous late New Zealand writer Margaret Mahy, who wrote from picture books to YA - all of the highest quality. I usually have more than one book on the go simultaneously, but whichever one I’m working on at the time is my favourite book and genre.

Celia: Your love of Italy shines through much of your YA and adult fiction. My favourites are your Stravaganza series, set in different Renaissance cities. Would you be tempted to write more of these novels, set in other cities?

Mary: I had outlines for a further six cities, characters and plots, but the publisher didn’t want more than the original six. Each book took nine months to a year to research and write and I needed a publisher’s advance to live on while I wrote them so self-publishing wasn’t an option.

Celia: Your love of Renaissance Florence and your ability to capture the life of the city are most evident in David. What made you want to write about the creation of one of the world’s most famous statues by one of the world’s most renowned artists? Did you ever feel in any way daunted by the task that you had set yourself?

Mary: Two things. I wanted to re-create the feeling of what it was like to see an iconic work of art for the first time. The Mona Lisa features in the book too, while it is being painted! And secondly, we have masses of information about the statue: the contract for it, the minutes of the committee meeting about where it should be placed, how it was moved from Michelangelo’s workshop to the Piazza della Signoria etc. But nothing at all abut the model, not even if there was one. That’s what I like best, when writing historical fiction, lots of facts to draw on but a great big gap where you can create the story.

Celia: Lastly, the inevitable question; would you care to share with us what you are working on now?

Mary: I don’t want to jinx it by revealing too much but I am about two chapters and an epilogue away from the end of the first draft of a historical novel for adults, set in the 14th century. Not Italy this time but England. I am obsessed with the Plantagenets and it is the first in a proposed trilogy. But it is uncommissioned, even though a senior Churchman believes in it so completely he has offered to host the (entirely notional) launch in his building in a certain Cathedral close! We shall see.

Most people of my age have retired but the “r” word is banned in our house. Remember what I advised about needing to write? It's who I am. I can’t imagine a day when I’m not writing, editing, proofreading, publicising or talking about books - oh yes, and reading them.

David: the Unauthorised Autobiography is published by Writers Review Publishing.

Celia's Miss Graham's War is published by Harper Collins - read the Q&A here.

The other two launch titles for Writers Review Publishing are Judith Allnatt's The Poet's Wife and Linda Newbery's The One True Thing.