Guest review by Graeme Fife: JAMAICA INN by Daphne du Maurier

 

"Du Maurier weaves a careful web of intrigue, the threads of which she untangles with great dexterity."

Graeme Fife is a regular reviewer here. He has written many plays, stories, features and talks for radio, stage plays and articles for newspapers and magazines, and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent. He's the author of a string of books - children's stories, biography, works of history and fiction. His novel of the French Revolution, No Common Assassin, tells the story of Charlotte Corday.

‘I’m not drunk enough to tell you why I live in this God-forsaken spot, and why I’m the landlord of Jamaica Inn.’

Thus Joss to his outwardly timid niece, Mary, who, now orphaned and driven by poverty from her family farm at the death of her mother has come to stay with her mother’s sister, Patience, and her husband, a giant of a man with volatile temper to match his brutish size. Once a busy posting house on the remote market road on a bleak stretch of Bodmin Moor, the Inn now welcomes no visitors other than a local crew of boozers from time to time and is more generally shunned. Mary and Patience form a close intimacy and it’s soon clear that the aunt is sickeningly overborne by her husband’s cruel behaviour; Mary takes brief refuge from the claustrophobic atmosphere and threatening circumstances in which she now finds herself in lonely tramps across the moor. Scarce any domestic comfort, disturbing noises in the night, the raucous evenings of drink and merriment in the locked bar…it’s a grim situation and Mary stays only to support her frightened, lonely aunt. The interim nocturnal traffic of men and loaded wagons points to some nefarious activity about which Mary eventually learns and, caught in a trap of deception, unwilling to put herself or her aunt at even worse threat than already broods over them, Mary finds promise of help in an unexpected encounter, this against the backdrop of night, the solitary moors, the secret tracks, the fogs and barely suppressed violence of inebriation, the veiled menace…it all feeds into a potent sense of misery, confusion, claustrophobia, imprisonment.

Du Maurier weaves a careful web of intrigue, the threads of which she untangles with great dexterity. This is adroitly worked mystery and suspense. The evil-doing surfaces: horse theft, wrecking, smuggling (Jamaica rum, hence the name, and the rest). An apparent avenue of rescue disappoints and the dénouement works a clever, an arresting, twist.

However, in the course of building a story of sinister dealings, innocence betrayed, psychological contradiction, du Maurier also plumbs another unexpected depth: the nature of love, its conflicting power, the subversion of dream unsullied by reality. Torn in her sense of filial duties, Mary confronts another, overwhelming force: that of emotion. ‘She loved him in the weakness of her flesh.’ The Protestant overtone is clear but the raw fact does not differ for that. And this insight hits Mary even as she unearths, in her own perception, the truth of what is happening in the supposed haven to which she has fled, Jamaica Inn. She stays because she hopes to extricate her aunt to a better repose, the two of them safe in what had been the place of both sisters’ companionship and happiness, home, before life, the toils of existence snared them and death both separated them and offered reunion. Of her uncle, she says to his brother – another meeting of which I leave you to find out – ‘You’d best have a care for [him]…His mood is dangerous; whoever interferes with his plans now risks his life. I tell you this for your own safety.’ She says this in a sort of transfer because it’s more herself to whom she speaks this unseemly truth and it very nearly undoes her.

I once visited a picturesque bay on the Orkney island of Hoy, Rackwick, named for the local wreckers – active there years past as on other ironbound coasts in the British Isles principally in Cornwall and Scilly. It was sunny, peaceful, serene, that morning, the soothing wash and hiss of the tide, the yelp of the gulls, the gentle heave of the sea, a pleasant place, amiable, but what a dark story lurked in those waters. Read a version of it here in this captivating novel.

One character says to Mary who arrived as a naïve creature, now stiffened into a knowing young woman, an enterprising creature ready to grasp escape and redemption on her own initiative and courage: ‘There is a fire about you that the women of old possessed. Your companionship is not a thing to be thrown aside…Poor Mary, with your feet fast in the nineteenth century and your faun face looking up to mine, who admit myself a freak of nature and a shame upon your little world.’

The same man speaks of his rejection of Christianity, having found it to be ‘built upon hatred and jealousy, and greed – all the man-made attributes of civilisation, while the old pagan barbarism was naked and clean.’ The paradox is central to the book’s compelling force, the challenge of self-knowledge thrown full-pelt at received wisdom and supposed safety.

Jamaica Inn is published by Virago. The cover shown is of the Virago Modern Classics edition.

Read this Q & A with Graeme about his novel of the French Revolution,

SPECIAL FEATURE: Q & A with guest Patrick Gale on his new novel MOTHER'S BOY

 

"This is really a novel about someone becoming a writer ... "

For this special feature we're honoured to welcome Patrick Gale, an author whose new books we always look forward to - and this is one we particularly admire. Thanks so much to Patrick for answering our questions.

Photograph by Jillian Edelstein

From the best-selling author of A Place Called Winter comes Mother's Boy, a superb historical novel of Cornwall, class, desire and two world wars.

Laura, an impoverished Cornish girl, meets her husband when they are both in service in Teignmouth in 1916. They have a baby, Charles, but Laura's husband returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave her a widow. In a small, class-obsessed town she raises her boy alone, working as a laundress and gradually becomes aware that he is some kind of genius.

As an intensely private young man, Charles signs up for the navy with the new rank of coder. His escape from the tight, gossipy confines of Launceston to the colour and violence of war sees him blossom as he experiences not only the possibility of death, but the constant danger of a love that is as clandestine as his work.

Mother's Boy is the story of a man who is among yet apart from his fellows, in thrall to yet at a distance from his own mother; a man being shaped for a long, remarkable and revered life spent hiding in plain sight. But it is equally the story of the dauntless mother who will continue to shield him long after the dangers of war are past.

Patrick Gale answers questions from Jon Appleton, Adèle Geras, Linda Newbery and Celia Rees


Celia: What attracted you to Charles Causley as the focus for a novel?

Patrick:  He intrigued me. I loved the poems, in particular the ones which snatches of narrative which show a novelist’s gift for thumbnail characterisation or the ones which are downright spooky in what they suggest but don’t quite spell out. I wanted to piece together myself what shaped the man who wrote them. Whenever he was asked why he didn’t write his memoirs he answered that “it” was all in the poems. So in large part what this novel does is to go back to the poems in search of “it”.

Jon: Could you have told Charles’s story without his mother Laura’s?

Patrick: I could but the danger then would have been that he’d have become even more chilly than he already is and she would have been reduced to his view of her, and early in life, at least, his view of her could be both patronising and dismissive. Also I found the challenge of telling such a private woman’s story utterly addictive, and not just because I’m a laundry obsessive…

Adèle:  Laura is an astonishing creation. Did you speak to many people who knew her?

Patrick:  Only one or two, and they only knew her as children. I largely got to know her through the numerous, often rather crotchety glimpses Charles gives of her in his tiny, scribbled diaries. And I extrapolated her from his poetry. Having been raised largely by her alone he must have drawn much of his nature and voice from hers, so I trusted in that. And then read up on things like nursing TB patients, and doing laundry by hand.  

Linda:  Did you immediately decide on the structure (alternating between Laura and Charles) before you began the novel, or did that solidify through the writing?

Patrick:  I’d settled on it from the start. This was partly because I always need a few unanswered questions to energise my fiction and the more I saw of Laura, in old photographs, the more I needed to know who she was. But it was equally because the more I found out of Charles’ character – which in many ways was chillingly like that of an expert spy, different things to different people but withholding his essential self from all – the more I realised I’d need to balance his story out with one that was warmer and kinder, more approachable.

Celia:  Were there details of his life that you had to change/add/ supply? How much did you find yourself deviating from his actual life?

Patrick:  I deviate very little from the established facts. I made Laura’s employers unmarried siblings, because that appealed more than the wealthy family of drapers who she actually worked for, but the accident with the boy and the cart that opens the novel actually happened to the Teignmouth doctor Charlie worked for. Beyond the two ships he was on, and the two “ stone frigates” where he also worked, Charles’ war story is largely cloaked in official secrecy so I was able to play with the facts to ensure that he and Ginger went to Malta on the incredible operation immortalised in C S Forester’s The Ship. The trips to Liverpool Playhouse are extrapolated from theatre programmes he’d retained from that period and the affair with a fellow officer is extrapolated from a letter he kept all his life, whose wording I barely alter. Laura’s adventures are made up in their details but she did have evacuees live with her, a black GI was murdered in just the way I describe and POWs did indeed construct a playground right outside her cottage on Tredydon Road. The dogs Jack and Wang were real but the kitten at the end is a simple prefiguring of the several cats in which Charles measured out the rest of his life.

Jon:  Do you think you’ve given Charles Causley a sexuality in the book or coaxed out – or simply given voice to – what was already there?

Patrick:  I was painfully aware of the temptation simply to “gay” Charles, to claim him for my team so I resisted it at every turn by trying to remain truthful to what he confided in his secret, minutely written diaries. These give a powerful sense of a young man who doesn’t fit the accepted mould of manhood, who knows himself to be special or different and who flinches from the sexual expressions of those around him. Then I found a letter he had kept to his dying day which I believe is proof that he had some kind of affair with a fellow officer when stationed at HMS Cabbala, one of those chilling “we need to put all that behind us now” letters probably all too common between men in the 40s and 50s. I will still correct anyone who says Charles was gay, as I think that word implies an acceptance of a sexual identity and, whatever fulfilment he may have found on British Council tours later in life, there’s no evidence that Charles ever arrived at such a self-acceptance.

Jon:  From Rough Music on, the dynamics of mother-son relationships have featured prominently in your novels. There’s a very strong sense in Mother’s Boy that Charles and Laura’s relationship isn’t instead of a marriage but a sexless marriage itself. Is this something you’ve noticed in families you’ve encountered, or was it specific to the Causleys?

Patrick:  I’ve always been interested in what happens to sexuality when it’s denied natural expression. I think what grows between the Causleys is little different to what happens not just to widows and widowers but to nuns, priests, schoolteachers or anyone put in a position where sexuality is safest left unexpressed. The cliché is that it results in something warped or bad; the truth is that it often results in creative energy. I’m sure we can all think of at least one transformative teacher we had who never married…

Adèle:  Speaking as someone who’s also written a novel about a real person, I’m curious to know if there are any lines you felt you shouldn’t cross? What effect do you think any boundaries you may have set had on the novel?

Patrick:  Scary, isn’t it? I’m still nervous that Mother’s Boy will give offence. So many men and women are powerfully protective of Charles and his memory! My main rule was that I knew I was never going to flesh out the characters of anyone with living descendants, which is why Laura’s numerous siblings barely figure. I also knew I had to honour the known facts, however inconvenient. But it was always a novel, never a biography, so I felt free to combine Charles’ real boyhood and wartime friends into totally fictitious amalgams and to ensure that his tragically doomed ship (in real life HMS Eclipse not my HMS Starburst) played a small but heroic part in the incredible operation to break the siege of Malta.  

Adèle:  You live in Cornwall and one of the striking things about the book is the way you bring places to life. Launceston, Laura’s house, ships etc. Did you walk through all the places you describe? Would you ever write about a place you’d never been to?

Patrick:  Place is crucial to the way I write. Once I’ve settled on a setting for a book I have to go there and immerse myself because I know it’ll become a character in the book. I already knew Launceston well, from my first ten years in Cornwall, when it was just up the road from my house, but to see it through Charles and Laura’s eyes I was lucky to spend a week living in their little house, Cyprus Well, taking daily walks they’d have walked, and working to imagine the bustling industrial town it once was. I’ve never had the sense to set a novel in the Caribbean or Venice or wherever. This novel involved a research weekend in Skegness and my next one will immerse me in Liverpool and Durham!

Jon:  As a British novelist who began work in the late 20th century, do you think it was inevitable that you’d write about the experience of war? (In the way you simply had to write The Facts of Life in the oppressive mid-90s.) Do you even believe in inevitabilities when it comes to writers’ trajectories or inspirations?

Patrick:  I turned sixty in January, which places me squarely in the generation that grew up with bombsites and air raid shelters still very much in evidence. Our parents’ attitudes were so shaped by the direct experience of world war that inevitably that shaped us too. But I didn’t set out to write a war novel; I set out to explore what made Charles and Laura tick, and it rapidly became clear that two world wars were going to form a big part of their story. But I think these things are often accidental in writers’ lives. An idea will just catch and refuse to be shaken off. I’ve promised that my next novel is a sequel to A Place Called Winter, and it is, but I’m realising it’s actually a novel about my mother and grandmother and their marriages.

Linda:  All the detail of naval training and life seems so convincing. How did you immerse yourself in that?

Patrick:  It was very hard as I was never one of nature’s war comic readers or war film watchers. But I ended up using that, realising that Charles wasn’t remotely in his comfort zone either when he shipped out on Eclipse. From his diaries I knew the books he was reading, I knew he was a swot and would have swotted up on how to be a sailor. I spent time in Gibraltar and Malta tracking where he’d have gone and what he’d have experienced. The hardest part was the coding, as that part of the war story was kept so obsessively secret for so long that physical material relating to it hard to come by, even in the Imperial War Museum archives. Happily these contain a few relevant bits of recorded testimony from old men recalling their coding training which I could combine with surviving manuals and wonderful details from Charles’ unfinished wartime novel.

Jon:  I can’t imagine a Gale novel without music being described in a visceral way – but what was it like to write about a writer?

Patrick:  I think I cheat a bit in that this is really a novel about someone becoming a writer. For much of the period described, Charles was primarily a musician, which gave me a crucial way into understanding him. He went to war a playwright and returned a poet, and I think that transformation was partly down to the interplay of his rigorous coding training with his earlier training as a pianist.

Adèle:  The book reads as though it cost you no effort at all but just poured on to the page like a spring gushing from the rock. How much rewriting/ editing do you do?

Patrick:  You’re very kind! I do an awful lot of mental churning around and notetaking and try not to start writing the actual text until I’m really clear who my characters are and what their stories are going to be. In this case I benefited from the amazing, if relatively sparse, Causley archive held at Exeter University and spent a lot of time reading through that and trying to join the gaps. The challenge then was to decide both whether there was enough “story” for Laura to balance out Charles’ adventures, and to decide where the novel should end. From there on the process has always felt to be one of painstaking accuracy rather than one of making things up. Very early on I realised that what I was doing was inspired by his poem Angel Hill and seeking to unlock whatever story lay behind its writing and that gave me a great momentum.

Linda:   Now that you’ve finished writing the novel, have the real and fictional Charles Causleys merged in your mind, or do you see them as two separate characters?

Patrick:  I fear they may have done a bit. The same happened with my great grandfather when I turned him into the hero of  A Place Called Winter. The difference here is that we have this incredible body of poetry (and some wonderfully atmospheric prose) left by Charles along with recordings of his voice and I ventriloquised that to such an extent that I’m now having to make a big effort to remind myself what I made up.

Linda:  Do you find yourself thinking differently about his poems now that you’ve been inside his head, as it were?

Patrick:  I don’t, but only because his poems were my constant guide as to who he was. I had a lot of fun not fleshing them out, exactly, but lifting names and scenes and places from them in ways I hope will reward readers who already know them well. His unfinished novel about his time on Gibraltar, his naval short stories and his numerous autobiographical prose sketches are so vivid that at times I almost felt I was taking dictation and not making things up at all.

Linda:  I am struck by the ending of Eden Rock. Do you think Causley is referring to the distance between him and his parents as one brought about by time and death? Or do you think he is regretful that he could never have (or never allowed himself to have) such a close relationship with another person?

Patrick:  Eden Rock is a masterpiece, I think, because it packs so much into so few lines. I believe it was inspired by that moment that comes to us all when our parents have died and we sense most of our life is behind us. He has a sense of his own looming death and of how seductive it is then flinches because he’s not yet ready. But buried inside there is also, I think, the strange dichotomy of the only child – at once confident that they are loved and yet forever left on the emotional sidelines by the love their parents have for one another. Several women of his generation have insisted to me that Charles longed for a family of his own. They say that, irrationally, as though such a longing would be quite alien to a man who also longed for the love of another man . I’m sure he longed for a family because it’s natural to want to belong and a family is a concrete proof of fitting in whereas, whatever his sexuality may have been, he remained always on the edge of things, on the outside looking in.

Celia: What do you think Charles Causley would have made of his fictional self?

Patrick: I think he’d have been appalled. As would Laura. They were both deeply private people who didn’t put themselves forward. I hope he could see, though, that it’s a book driven by affection and admiration and from a desire that more people should visit Launceston and seek out the amazing work he left behind him there.

Celia: How much of the novel is Charles Causley, how much Patrick Gale?

Patrick:  That’s very hard to answer, so I won’t even try!

Adèle: Will there be another book about Charles? He lived to be very old.

Patrick:  Not from me, although he cries out for a scholarly, critical biography which has yet to be written. He needs a Hermione Lee! He lived to be very old but I have a powerful sense that he was a man who created a public persona behind which he could remain intensely private and in a way my job here is done if I’ve managed to suggest what he felt that persona was necessary and what the events were that led to its construction. I’ll be very happy if it simply leads new readers to his poetry, where they can make their own minds up about who he was.

Mother's Boy is published by Tinder Press.

See also: Notes from an Exhibition reviewed by Julia Jarman

Take Nothing With You reviewed by Linda Newbery

Guest review by Sue Purkiss: THE WILD SILENCE by Raynor Winn

 

"Often, a sequel is a rather paler version of the book it follows. That is not the case here ..." 

Sue Purkiss writes for children and young people. She has been a Royal Literary Fellow at Exeter and Bristol Universities, and has also taught English and worked with young offenders. Her latest novel for children, Jack Fortune and the Search for the Hidden Valley, is an adventure story set in the Himalayas at the end of the 18th century, featuring plant hunters, a sacred mountain – and its mysterious guardian! For more information, see Sue's website. She also has her own literary review blog, A Fool on a Hill (where this review first appeared), and is a contributor to The History Girls.

This book is a sequel to The Salt Path (which I reviewed in 2018 - the link is below). That was the story of how Raynor Winn and her husband Moth, in their fifties, lost everything after a dispute with someone who had been a lifelong friend over investments: they had to walk out of their beloved Welsh farmhouse with virtually nothing. On top of that, Moth was diagnosed with a cruel terminal disease, corticobasal degeneration, or CBD; he had about two years, they were told.

There are many things that emerge from The Salt Path and its successor, The Wild Silence. But one of the main elements is the rock-solid relationship between Raynor and Moth. So when they found themselves in this terrible situation, the one thing Raynor was not going to do was to simply accept the diagnosis and the doctor's advice - which was to avoid all strain and rest as much as possible.

Another element - which is explored even more thoroughly in this second book - is Raynor's profound connection with the land, with nature. Brought up on a farm, shy with other people, nature is her solace and her inspiration. So perhaps it wasn't surprising that she should turn to nature for relief. She suggested that, against all the dictates of caution and common sense, they should take to the wild and walk the South-West Coastal Path - despite the fact that Moth could hardly walk and would have trouble carrying a pack. (In any case, they had so little money to buy food or any other necessities that their packs must have been relatively - but only relatively - light.)

And it worked. They had an extraordinary journey, which resulted not in a miracle cure, but certainly in an improvement in Moth's condition. And at the end of it, a stranger offered them a refuge - a flat in Polruan, where they could live while Moth did a degree in sustainable agriculture, which he hoped would then bring him emploment.

This is where the second book picks up the story.

Often, a sequel is a rather paler version of the book it follows. That is not the case here. It seems to me that Raynor has gained confidence in her writing - not surprisingly, considering the huge success of The Salt Path. She writes absolutely beautifully in this book, and very effectively investigates subtle and complex ideas and emotions - as well, of course, as providing rich and evocative descriptions of nature.

The structure of the book is complex. She is exploring different aspects and periods of her life simultaneously; in the first section she is taking care of her mother, who has been taken to hospital following a stroke. Alongside this we find that she and Moth are still, three years later, in Polruan, and that Moth, despite increasing weakness, is nearing completion of his degree - whereas Raynor has become increasingly reclusive and anxious about meeting people. She has to make a terrible decision about her mother's care, and, staying in her mother's cottage, memories come back to her of her childhood. We begin to see that her current state is rooted in the past, and we find out how she met Moth, and how their relationship developed.

Later, she describes how the writing of The Salt Path  came about. In the beginning, she knows nothing about publishing and has no expectations of success - she is writing about their extraordinary journey in order to capture it for Moth, who, to her dismay, is losing his memories of it. But of course it does become a success, and this leads to a new phase of their lives, when a wealthy businessman asks the two of them to take care of a farm he has bought, which is exhausted from intensive farming and almost devoid of wildlife. He wants them to bring it back to life, to re-nature it. At first, they are doubtful: the house is a damp and crumbling wreck, the farm will take a lot of work to enable the land to recover. But, never able to resist a challenge, they take it on.

In the last section of the book, they decide to undertake another ambitious walk: Moth is getting weaker, and they are convinced that what he needs, as before, is to literally and metaphorically stretch himself.

So they go to Iceland, with their friends Dave and Julie, whom they met on their first walk. They only have two weeks, which unfortunately fall at the end of the Icelandic summer and at the beginning of its fierce winter. Crazy? Well, perhaps - but when did that ever stop them?

Here is an example of Raynor's writing. She is describing the process of writing, of reliving, the coastal walk.

I stood in the dim evening light, faced the wall and spread my arms wide and the rain came stinging on gale-force winds, pounding my face, battering the rucksack. Winds roaring through granite-block cliffs, hurling crows through wild grey skies.

Here's another:

The soft rain became vertical rods of connection between land and sky, drops bouncing from the river with the force of a pebble, leaving ripples expanding and reflecting.

Enjoy.

The Wild Silence is published by Michael Joseph.

Read Sue Purkiss' review of The Salt Path

Guest review by Julia Jarman: NOTES FROM AN EXHIBITION by Patrick Gale

 

"Patrick Gale, a writer new to me, beguiles."

Photograph by Linda Newbery

Julia Jarman has written books for children of all ages. Her work includes The Time Travelling Cat series for readers of eight to twelve or thereabouts and the acclaimed picture book, Big Red Bath. She is currently trying her hand at writing for adults ‘to see if I can’.

The pram in the hall is Death to Art, to paraphrase Cyril Connolly. Not for Rachel Kelly it wasn’t! She had four children but they didn’t stop her painting. Nothing stopped Rachel doing what she had to do or wanted to do, not babies, not prams, not manic depression, as it was called in the second half of the twentieth century when most of this novel takes place. Rachel was bipolar but she made this work to her advantage, the highs inspiring work of astonishing intensity, the lows landing her in hospital, but that didn’t stop her for long. She thought the lows, made worse by postnatal depression made the subsequent highs worthwhile. Hence, possibly, the four children.

Rachel was lucky enough to have help, lots of help, from devoted and dutiful husband, Antony; from supportive doctor Jack, also a painter so he understood better than most; and from those four children, all devoted in their own way till, perhaps, they could stand it no longer. I say ’perhaps’ because, though we hear from each grown-up child in turn, we hear only parts of their stories.

There’s Garfield the oldest, not Antony’s son, a lawyer turned violin maker. Rachel was pregnant when Antony rescued her, after a suicide attempt, and took her to his grandfather’s house in Penzance, abandoning his own academic career at Oxford. Next came Hedley, whose devotion lasted longest, possibly because he separated himself a bit, rejecting the Quakerism of the rest of the family, but also because he understood Rachel, being an artist himself. Jack called him ‘the family glue’. Then there’s Morwenna, the only daughter, the one we know least about because she got the hell out of it. Lastly, there’s Petroc the youngest who dies first, but not on his seventh birthday as I feared when I first saw him on the beach, enjoying his special day with Rachel, both of them absorbed by the art they were creating, both heedless of danger. I wanted to yell at her, ‘Look out! Be a grown up!’

It’s a novel about family relationships but it’s Rachel we hear about most. She is central in the book as she was in life. Everyone else circles round her trying not to hinder if not actually help. I’m fascinated and appalled when I read about children who protect their parents from the harsh realities of life, especially abused children. Are Garfield, Hedley, Morwenna and Petroc , neglected by their mother but cared for by their father, abused? Discuss. All the big questions are raised in this novel: nature v nurture, religious belief as practised by The Society of Friends, creativity, morality. I could go on.

I need to say it’s deep and very entertaining. Firstly because all the characters are so real. I identified with all of them and cared what happened and carried on caring when I stopped reading. Secondly, and this follows from the first, a lot happens. It’s gripping. I wanted to know not only what happened next to each character, but also what happened before. And finding out, especially about Rachel, after her death – the exhibition of the title is a retrospective – is fascinating. No spoilers but there were shocks.

Patrick Gale, a writer new to me, beguiles. Rachel the creative artist, her paintings, and the notes about the paintings, referred to in the title, are as real, or more real, than Barbara Hepworth and other artists of the Cornish School who also appear in the novel. Confession: I googled Rachel Kelly to check, but no, she didn’t really exist, but now she does, the product of a brilliant creative imagination. I salute.

Were any children harmed in the writing of this novel? I hope not.

Notes from an Exhibition  is published by Tinder Press

See also: Take Nothing With You reviewed by Linda Newbery

Guest review by Katherine Langrish: THE GOLDEN RULE by Amanda Craig

"The novel is about relationships destructive and supportive, and learning to see people for what they truly are..."

Photograph by Jo Cotterill

Katherine Langrish is the author of a number of historical fantasies including the trilogy West of the Moon, and Dark Angels (Harper Collins). Her most recent book is Seven Miles of Steel Thistles (The Greystones Press), a collection of essays on folklore and fairy tales based on her award-winning blog of the same name.

In the middle of a bitter divorce triggered by her husband’s affair, struggling to support herself and her five year-old daughter while working as a cleaner, Hannah is forced to spend money she hasn’t got on a railfare to Cornwall to visit her dying mother. Hot and thirsty in the standing-room-only carriage, her luck seems to change when rich, elegant Jinni invites her into the air-conditioned first class and offers her chilled water, chilled white wine – and confidences. Strangers on a train, the women have more in common than appearances suggest: they both feel like killing their husbands. When Jinni suggests that if they swap victims they could get away with it, Hannah agrees. But nothing is quite what it seems. Meshed in a web only partly of her own making, Hannah soon doesn’t know which way to turn.

This was a novel I really couldn’t put down, and not only for the strong story-telling. Amanda Craig has a cool eye for social nuances: the comfort mixed with prickling disquiet of fitting back into family and community you’ve tried to leave behind, the hurtful, casual ignorance of rich folk about what it’s like to be poor, the vitriolic exchanges of marriages gone sour. There’s also a wonderful sense of place and identity: the Cornish countryside and people in all their contradictory moods.

Above all the novel is about relationships destructive and supportive, and learning to see people for what they truly are. Since not being fooled by appearances is a fairy tale theme, it gave me great pleasure to discover the briar-rose tendrils of more than one fairy tale twining through the narrative, and references to children’s literature too. The classic book Green Smoke has captured the imagination of Hannah’s little daughter Maisie: all about a friendly Cornish dragon, who lives in a cave. But of course caves and dragons can be dangerous…

As I reached the end I realised that the writer with whose work I’m most drawn to compare The Golden Rule is Daphne du Maurier. She too told strong stories with strong characters in strong, often Cornish settings: her books live and are loved. Du Maurier has sometimes been belittled as a Gothic novelist, though why ‘Gothic’ should be regarded as in any way derogatory I do not know: frankly what was good enough for Charlotte and Emily Bronte ought to be good enough for anyone. Richly textured, modern, contemporary, literary, The Golden Rule  treads confidently in their footsteps.

The Golden Rule is published by Little, Brown.

See also: The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig, reviewed by Adele Geras