Cornwall Vacation Reading

Best to seek refuge in a Cornish cave. Oxford forecast on reuters yesterday: “tons of rain.” Tons? So what’s to come next: cats and dogs? Followed by a 50% chance of really crappy weather? One hour later the forecast was revised: “heavy rain.” Weather gremlins!

According to my English in-laws, the weather over the May half term break is almost always terrible. Nonetheless the extended Laurence family headed to the West Country with our wellies and waterproofs. We even brought the dogs. The gorgeous Cornwall scenery was worth it.


The Georgian house my father-in-law rented for the 11 of us was out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I warned my delighted daughter not to hide in the wardrobes – they were more likely to tip over than to lead to Narnia. As the rain pelted down, the cousins put on a puppet show. We discovered an old copy of Alice in Wonderland, which I read aloud at bedtime. It seemed all the more magical in that setting.

The country lanes were abloom with wildflowers. Foxgloves are favorites of mine. Other than mud walking, there was little else to do. One sign said it all: free horse manure. Good thing I packed several novels!

I couldn’t wait until June for Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth to come out in England, so my kind mother sent it from NYC. Unaccustomed Earth’s debut in April sent it to the top of the NYT bestseller list. This was unheard of for a short story collection written by an ethnic woman author. Literary fiction rarely tops the charts.

Lahiri’s first short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. It was the best collection I’d ever read until I read her latest. Once again Lahiri has hit a homerun. You might know Lahiri from the movie The Namesake based on her first novel. Her short stories are better: not a word out of place, the writing subtle and the characters real. Judge them by craft or by content - they are perfect.

Lahiri writes about the Indian American (not the American Indian) experience and yet her tales of family dysfunction, inter-generational gaps and half-failed dreams are universal. At one point all Americans (excepting Native Americans) were immigrants. Ask us who we are, and we will describe our roots.

With my curly black hair and olive skin, I have been mistaken for an Italian, a Greek, an Egyptian, an Arab etc. I’m half Lithuanian and half English-Swiss. My husband is an Englishman who is a small part Chilean, and we have lived in both the USA and the UK. I relate to characters strung between cultures.

Lahiri titles her latest collection after a Nathaniel Hawthorne quotation:

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

Lahiri’s stories are beautiful, but they are grim. In one, a lonely housewife in the suburbs anchors her sari with multiple safety pins (so it can’t be ripped off) and douses herself in kerosene. Will she strike the match? My reviews never have spoilers, so you will have to read the book yourself.

Buy Unaccustomed Earth because these stories will haunt you, and you will want to reread them. The three interlocking stories in the second part create a novella. I had read the first two in The New Yorker without realizing their connection. The final new story ties them together and pulls the knot so tight it hurts, and yet you will want to unwrap it to enjoy the precious gift inside.

A fine complement to Lahiri’s bitter tales was an up-beat all-American novel: Patricia Wood’s Lottery. I didn’t expect to like a book about that – I have no interest in gambling – writing a novel is bad enough! I am interested in disability in literature and here is the narrator of Lottery:

My name is Perry L. Crandall and I am not retarded . . . . You have to have an IQ number less than 75 to be retarded. I read that in Reader’s Digest. I am not. Mine is 76.

Perry reminded me of autistic Christopher in Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The novels share a similar dark humor with a double meaning half lost on the narrator. You root for the protagonist and see a world of challenges through his eyes.

These narrators are not unwitting victims but pro-active young men who shape their own life narratives. True, duplicitous people surround them, but our heroes can resist. They are guided by a core sense of what is right even if they can’t understand the depth of evil.

Lottery is a fairytale of good vs. bad, but the characters are well formed and quirky so escape cliché. It is a simple, somewhat predictable story, but a good one. The morals are a bit off-color, spouted by a beloved grandmother even from her grave: don’t be smart.

Lottery is laugh out loud funny and a well written tale of good luck, but success didn’t come to the author overnight. Wood worked hard to perfect her craft and to understand the market. She had written two other novels that didn’t find representation, but she didn’t give up. Her third novel found a good agent, was revised and then Lottery sold in an auction a week and a day after its submission to publishers. It was pitched as “Forrest Gump wins Powerball.”

Lottery wasn’t just a marketing gimmick as Wood writes from the heart about what she knows. Wood’s father won the lottery, and she is in graduate school studying disability among other topics. This is not a PC book – it’s a good book period.

I’m not alone in my praise. Lottery is buzzing through the blogosphere as the author is a fellow blogger. Wood’s novel is on the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction short list. The winner will be announced tonight (I’ll post a comment later.) Good luck, Patricia, and welcome to England!

Karen Connelly’s The Lizard Cage is another book with sympathetic characters facing a challenging world. This first novel won the Orange Broadband Prize for New Writers last year and well deserved it.

The Lizard Cage was one of the most beautifully written and deeply disturbing books I have ever read. The story of Burma/Myanmar feels topical now with so many real people dying in the wake of the cyclone. Connelly’s tale is fictional but is based on time spent in Burma and in refugee camps on the Thai border where she interviewed political dissidents.

Connelly locks us into a vermin-infested prison with a university student serving a 20-year solitary sentence. Teza’s crime was composing revolutionary songs which criticized the authoritarian regime. The songwriter becomes a victim of the cruel regime: undergoing near starvation and torture for speaking his mind. He finds solace and fortitude in Buddhist meditation and faith and also through friendship.

Other characters in Teza’s drama: a young boy raised in the prison who kills rats to survive; a prison-guard who struggles to hold onto his humanity and another guard who does not. Even the lizards and insects become characters, in line with Buddhist beliefs. As horrible as the prison setting is, The Lizard Cage shines bright on the potential of the human spirit.

The Lizard Cage is a book you must read. I recommend taking it on vacation and not reading it before bedtime. It may trouble your sleep and your conscience, but it is more than a moral crusade. The writing and story telling is beautiful, full of perfect sentences. Here’s a passage on censorship:

As long as there is paper, people will write, secretly, in small rooms, in the hidden chambers of their minds, just as people whisper the words they’re forbidden to speak aloud.

The generals can’t stop them. Ne Win himself can’t stop them. He never could. Words are like the ants. They work their way through the thickest walls, eating through bricks and feeding off the very silence intended to stifle them.

Fortified by these rich words, I explored Tintagel in Cornwall on our one sunny day. Below the hilltop castle ruins, my son and I ventured inside a cave expecting only darkness but finding bright light shining from the murky depths. It wasn’t truly a haven for at high tide this cave would flood, creating a watery grave. An allegory?

Deep thoughts receded as we puffed up a myriad of cliff steps. At the top of the bluff were ruins of a medieval village which had crumbled into the sea. Despite strong fortification, wildflowers were the only survivors. Although Tintagel castle was the inspiration for the King Arthur legend, the land is now ruled by bumblebees.

The setting was spectacular but dangerous:

Another coastal walk was equally treacherous. How would we pass through this bridge/gate with a large, damp dog?

Luckily the English love dogs:

We hiked for this view:

In late May, yellow flags were in full bloom. Americans would call them water irises, but the English name suits them better. Where castles once stood, nature now unfurls its bright flags.

Oxford Literary Festival 2008

It was not without irony that Lionel Shriver announced that she would be the first to read “smut” aloud in Christ Church Library. At The Oxford Literary Festival Shriver read two sexually explicit but intellectually charged passages from her latest novel, The Post-Birthday World. Shriver takes a bold stab at what people really think about when making love. As she said, there is a limit to the number of physical combinations of which part goes where. Lionel didn’t blush once, her enunciation was as faultless and subtly nuanced as the most seasoned actress. The stage was set with leather-bound books housed in oak below ornate moldings, an ivory tower out the window.


It made me want to go back and reread her book; I blogged about PBW last May. A review in the Guardian (spoiler alert) claimed this work was her most autobiographical. Shriver left a long term relationship for the love of a jazz musician. Like her heroine and like me, Shriver is an expat American living in England. We were both dressed in black t-shirts and jeans, unlike anyone else in the silver-haired, tweedy audience. I confess to feeling comfort at hearing an American accent again, like finding an old friend.

The PBW has been called chick lit although it tackles deep issues such as the inspiration for creativity and even the conflict in Northern Ireland. It is still quite a change from the disturbing We Need to Talk About Kevin. Her Orange Prize winner was about a school shooter. A hand count showed that I was one of the few that had read her latest; most were Kevin fans and women.

I asked how she managed to defy genre typing and what her next project would be. Shriver was wary of “the women’s fiction pigeon hole” as she cherishes her male readers too. Her claim was that women read more books then men and are just as happy to read broadly. She did admit that her agent was nervous about her next novel: a reflection on the American healthcare system written in a male voice. As long as Shriver continues to write beautifully and honestly about controversial subjects, I believe her audience will only grow.

The Oxford Literary Festival lasts an entire week and is housed in Christ Church which many may recognize from Brideshead Revisited. The events were well worth the £7.50 admission just for the venue alone. I attended one where I sat at high table in Hall. If the space looks familiar, it was the model for the Hogwart’s dining hall in Harry Potter.

Even the entrance to the Hall and other conference rooms was beyond grand.

Of course nothing at the venerable college was accessible, so the panel I attended on "Disability in Writing" was housed across the street. The chair was the academic Tom Shakespeare. Susan Clow, manager of In the Picture spoke first about the importance of including disabled children in mainstream children’s picture books. It’s a more representational vision of reality, and inclusion sends the important message that the disabled are not invisible. Her website has many good tips for illustrators.

Susan Clow, Tom Shakespeare, Mark Haddon and Lois Keith

Novelist Lois Keith listed 3 approaches to avoid when writing about the disabled:

1. “I wouldn’t wish disability on my worst enemy.”
2. “He threw his wheelchair out the window to walk again.” (eg Colin in The Secret Garden)
3. "Show the disabled character watching passively in the corner." (eg sweet Beth in Little Women)

The main draw of the panel was author Mark Haddon. A sharp-eyed reader will note that the chapters in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time are all in prime numbers. Not once in the narrative is it spelled out that the engaging narrator with a number fixation has Asperger’s Syndrome. Haddon’s only regret was that the publisher added that information to the jacket blurb. His novel invites you to see the world through autistic eyes, but it is not a book about disability per se.

The Curious Incident is one of the best young adult books I’ve read; my son at age twelve loved it too. Encouraged by Haddon, I have included a disabled character in my novel S.A.D..

I attended the panel on Japanese Historical Fiction just for fun. I’ve always enjoyed reading novels about Japan. One of my favorite authors is Haruki Murakami. My husband teaches Japanese Politics, and my sister-in-law is Japanese.

Ellis Avery was worried that a 21st century American couldn’t understand what it felt like to be a 19th century Japanese girl. I applaud her choice of narrator: an American orphan, adopted by a Japanese family as a servant. The Teahouse Fire is as beautifully choreographed and unrushed as a tea ceremony. What drives the narrative is the complex relationship between the fictional maid, Aurelia, and a real historical figure, her mistress. Shin Yukako rescued the tea ceremony from obscurity in a rapidly modernizing Meiji Japan, just opening to the west.

What is striking about Avery’s story is that it reads like a Japanese novel. It reminds me of Mori Ogai’s The Wild Geese which is set in the same time period and is one my favorite novels. In both we see the attention to detail, the importance of family tradition, the theme of unrequited love and even the slow pace. What enlivens the narrative in Teahouse is a distinctly American feminist perspective, including a lesbian romance. It’s an unusual mix, but it works. I’m missing her voice since finishing the book.

I don’t have as much to say about Lesley Downer’s The Last Concubine because I haven’t read it. Like Avery's novel, it is set in 19th century Japan. Although Downer lived in Japan for 15 years, the only Japanese women she said she could relate to were geisha. She characterized the rest as married at 24, had kids, were gossipy, didn’t know men (even their husbands) and didn’t work. That isn’t the Japan that I know.

At the end of the readings, Avery delighted the audience by passing out Japanese sweets and conducting a tea ceremony. Avery has studied the art of Japanese tea for years. She held her arms as if wearing a kimono and moved with measured grace. Downer was an obliging guest, her role as ritualized.

On Avery’s website I discovered that we share the same literary agent, Jean Naggar. I introduced myself to Avery and her partner, Sharon Marcus; both teach at Columbia University. Oddly enough, they already knew me. They had googled “best tea in Oxford,” found my blog and enjoyed a decent cup of tea and lunch at The Rose. Professor Marcus studies 19th century women journals and said my blog reminded her of the travel journals from that time. Isn’t cyberspace a small world?

Another panel I attended was “Blogging the Classics” which debated book review blogging vs. newspaper literary criticism.

John Carey, John Mullan, Lynne Hatwell and Mark Thwaite

Mark Thwaite, founder of ReadySteadyBook.com and a librarian by profession, spoke on the value of book blogging as giving recognition to good but unusual titles. He listed 7 words that should be avoided when reviewing:

1. poignant
2. compelling
3. intriguing
4. astute
5. craft
6. muse
7. lyrical

Uh oh, have I used them all? Thwaite posts a list of about 80 English book bloggers on his website at BritLitBlogs. Too bad there isn’t an American equivalent of this directory. Thwaite pointed out that there are a lot of blogs out there - well over 100 million tracked by Technorati alone. Diversity is a given.

Lynne Hatwell from dovegreyreader was an engaging speaker: modest, funny and forthright. Blogging about books is the way to share her passion. Her blog is a bit like mine, a mixture of reading and personal narrative. It’s more about how she feels about the books than a critical review. She lives in Devon and is a healthcare visitor who did a literature degree in her free time.

The panel’s literary critic was Professor John Mullan. Mullan said his academic training allows him to understand literature better than a layperson. He may know books, but it didn’t sound like the professor was that familiar with blogs. He spoke of people raving, hostility and chaos in cyberspace. The moderator and Sunday Times chief reviewer, John Carey praised the diversity in blogging, but Mullan didn’t recognize its value beyond entertainment.

Near the close of the festival, came the biggest surprise: 3 inches of snow! My kids made a snowman with grape hyacinth hair. Port Meadow looked like a holiday card complete with swans. I felt like I had conjured the storm as I was writing a new cross-country skiing scene for S.A.D. and was having a hard time remembering a Maine winter. I actually got the idea under a flurry of cherry blossoms. My revisions are well inspired thanks to the literary festival and the April snow.

What is Women's Fiction?

As the daffodils and fruit trees are in full bloom, I realize our year in England is going faster than expected. It really takes six months to get settled in a new location, especially abroad. Last time we relocated to England for only half a year, and it felt like we left prematurely after too much work settling in and not enough payback. We were thrilled to get an opportunity to return for my husband’s sabbatical from Bowdoin College. Henry’s English; I’m American, and our children are dual citizens. We are both writers.

In Oxford Henry and I are gathering material and writing books. His book is on the politics of public television in the US, UK and Japan. My books are women’s fiction and set in the USA and England. The time here is for research. Free from the many distractions at home, we can focus on our writing. It has been very productive and fun time too.

My books might appeal to readers of all ages and genders, but marketing categories exist in publishing. Women writing for mostly female audiences about relationships and contemporary issues are pigeon-holed as “women’s fiction,” not to be confused with romance novels or its younger, urban sister chick lit. The central plot in romance is always love between a man and a woman, usually with a happy ending.

In women's fiction, key relationships include friends and family as well as lovers. Career is important too. Chick lit, a sub-category of women's fiction, tends to be set in London or NYC and features single women in their 20's and 30's with close friends looking for love, shopping and job satisfaction. Women's fiction can span all ages in various settings and may tackle substantive issues. The protagonist is a strong woman making realistic trade-offs in the modern world. Most of the editors and agents are female too. Is the term women’s fiction offensive, such as “lady doctor,” or does it celebrate the female voice?

In my so called genre of women’s fiction, I’ve enjoyed reading Michelle Wildgen’s You’re Not You. It’s a story about a young woman caring for a charming middle aged woman in a wheelchair. It explores attitudes towards the disabled including sexuality. Nothing is taboo, and the honest perspective is refreshing. Wildgen writes incredibly well even if the opening is a bit off-putting. Keep going; it’s well worth it. You’re Not You is a literary gem.

I’m juggling writing 3 women’s fiction novels: MOOSE CROSSING is looking for a publisher, S.A.D. is in revision and NOT CRICKET is gathering material. Having more than one project going on at a time means I don’t get stuck with down time. While editors and my agent are reading manuscripts, I can work on the next project. Despite recent growth in women's fiction, there are no sure bets in publishing except for Jodi Picoult. Serious writers know to keep writing. The process is hurry up and wait: writing, revising and then waiting for feedback.

Writing takes a certain personality. You have to be creative, but it’s just as important to be self-motivated, disciplined, comfortable working alone and able to set and meet personal deadlines or you’ll never finish. Given how hard it is to break into publishing, a writer has to be good at taking criticism and rejection and be willing to learn from it.

A novelist also needs to get out there and live life to have experiences worth sharing. Friendships with other writers help break the solitude, ease the stress and celebrate the benchmarks like completing a manuscript and finding an agent. You have to find your colleagues.

I’ve joined an informal writing group organized by the women’s fiction author Miranda Glover. That’s been a big plus as I’ve missed my writer friends back in Maine: Charlotte Agell, Maria Padian and Cynthia Lord. Just as I’ve learned about American publishing from those seasoned authors, I've gained insights into the world of English publishing from my new writing group. It’s a smaller market than in the USA and less dependent on agents although they still play an important role.

I’m also learning about contemporary English fiction by reading. David Mitchell showcases his breadth in the dizzying Cloud Atlas. Every well crafted story is interlocking. The collection spans the full gamut of genre writing from historical fiction, to suspense thriller, to science fiction. It's almost a parody of shifting voice and form including: a journal, letters, a manuscript, a screenplay, a deposition and an almost unintelligible myth. Cloud Atlas was short listed for the Booker Prize. It should have won.

My husband, our teenaged son and I loved Mitchell's Black Swan Green which is literary fiction/young adult crossover, but he is hard to categorize. It seems like few have heard of Mitchell in England even though his work is so English and current. His novels got more of a buzz in the USA. The protagonists of 2 of his Cloud Atlas stories are strong women, but his work would never be labeled women’s fiction. How come when a man writes a novel, it's just called fiction?

Primroses in January from the land of eternal spring.

Here’s a male author/blogger’s perspective on gender issues in publishing: C.W. Gortner’s "Gender wars in books?"

On Politics: I’ve been following the neck-and-neck American primaries with fascination and the electoral problems in Kenya with concern. Here’s a provocative NYT op-ed that linked the two:
“Tribalism Here, and There”

Children's Author Cynthia Lord

“It must be something in the water,” Cynthia Lord surmised. Cindy’s first children’s book, Rules, just won a Newbery Honor Medal and the Schneider Family Book Award. We both live on the same street as Charlotte Agell who has published eleven children’s books. I guess I should drink more water.

Rules is fiction, but it rings true. Twelve-year-old Catherine tries to teach her autistic younger brother the rules of life. David has to be told that it’s okay to take his shirt off to swim but not his pants. Catherine creates the words to communicate with her paraplegic friend, Jason, and struggles to get her busy parents to listen to her needs too. The characters have challenges that restrict their lives but don’t define them. They find happiness on their own terms without a miracle cure.

When I read Rules aloud to my children, it made us laugh and almost cry. It was quite an accomplishment to create a book that would appeal to both a nine-year-old girl and a twelve-year-old boy, not to mention their mother. The book was flawlessly well written.

“Most books about autism are so sad,” Cindy said, “but a family has to learn how to laugh or they’re not going to make it.”

CYNTHIA LORD INTERVIEW:

Is there a true story behind your story?

When my son was first diagnosed with autism, I spent forty hours a week on Behavior Modification Treatment because Maine didn’t offer it. The state flew up experts from New York and paid for the student helpers I trained. It was worth it to see my son recover the words he had lost at eighteen months.

Now my fourteen-year-old son attends the junior high for special classes like cooking and art. It’s too noisy there for him to concentrate in such a big school, so he does his schoolwork at home. His seventeen-year-old sister attends the high school.

How did you find the time to write Rules when your son was only five?

I realized I would have to make time for writing or not want it anymore. I set my alarm for 4am and wrote every morning until my family got up at 7am. In four months I finished the first draft and then spent a year revising it with help from readers.

Was the road to publication as short?

The first two publishers rejected Rules but sent the manuscript back with helpful comments. I rewrote it and sent out a query letter and two sample chapters to four more publishers. One rejected it with a form letter, but the other three asked for the complete manuscript.

I loved the Scholastic Book Club as a child, so I granted Scholastic an exclusive read. Then September 11th happened, and everything ground to a halt. After eight months, I finally got a call from the editor saying they would be running some numbers and planned to acquire it. I realized that I needed an agent to negotiate the contract, so I called Tracey Adams in New York. We had met at a conference.

So why did the book not come out until 2006 – almost five years later?

As a first time author, I was put on the slow track. The manuscript went from one over-committed editor to a second one. There were revisions to add more drama. Even when the manuscript was ready, I was bumped off the list by established authors. New authors were the first to be cut when the list had to shrink for financial problems.

How did you deal with the long wait?

It was demoralizing, but I kept writing. Scholastic bought my picture book; it’s waiting for illustration. My second middle reader (grades 4-8) was pending senior editorial approval when Rules won the Newbury Honor Medal. Scholastic immediately made an offer on that book and another one I have yet to write.

What is the next book about?

Halfway Between Hope and Hurricane takes place on an island off the coast of Maine with a protagonist whose mother teaches at the school. I drew from both my own experience as a teacher on Chebeague Island and an historical incident on another island. In the 1960’s Frenchboro Island tried to head off closure of their school by bringing in foster children from the mainland. For me the ethical question is the most important part. Do the means justify the end?

You won’t have to wait too long to find out. Halfway Between Hope and Hurricane is projected for a fall 2008 release. Since the Newbury Honor, Rules has spent 10 weeks on the NYT bestseller list and is in its fourth run. Cynthia Lord is on the fast track!