Writer Workshop Week: Zoë Marriott

Writer Workshop Week

Day 2 – Zoë Marriott

Writer Workshop Week is a week of guest interviews with well-known authors who Elle and Kate have asked to share a little bit of their writing process for aspiring novelists and readers alike!

Hej, Memoirites! Hvordan har du det? It feels appropriate to say hello and ask you how you are in Danish because today’s author is young-adult novelist Zoë Marriott! No, Zoë herself is not Danish but her wildly popular first book, The Swan Kingdom, is an ingenious retelling of the fairytale ‘The Wild Swans’ by Hans Christian Andersen… (See what I did there?) Zoë is also the author of the acclaimed fantasy novel Daughter of the Flames and the highly acclaimed Shadows on the Moon, currently available in a bookstore near you. We love Zo and we’re always delighted to have her on the site.

Elle: Hi, Zoë! Thanks so much for agreeing to be here. In prepping for the interview, I spent some time working through your treasure trove of a website and all of your tips for aspiring writers. If you had to pick one single piece of all-important advice to give to budding novelists, what do you think it would be?

Zoë: Thanks so much for inviting me, girls! Now, this first question… Oh, heck – where’s Yoda when you need him? The thing is, the One All-Important Piece of Advice probably changes from writer to writer, from day to day, even from minute to minute. It all depends where you are in your book, your life and your career. If I’m going for a one-size-fits-all type of thing I’ll probably plump for a reminder that the only difference between a published writer and an unpublished one is that the published one never gave up. So don’t ever give up. Persistence is three times as valuable as luck.

Kate: As a big fan of fairy tales and folk stories, I’m curious: what made you decide to use an Andersen story as the backbone for your novel? Was this a conscious decision at the get-go, or an evolution as you worked through ideas?

Zoë: I’ve always been fascinated by fairytales, and The Wild Swans was my favourite fairytale growing up. Looking back, I can see that what really captured my attention about the story – and all folkloric works – is the wide gaps left for the imagination within the narrative. Fairytales always tell you who did what and where, but somehow that essential WHY is never provided. Just why is the wicked stepmother so wicked? Why is the father or King always so willing to banish and forget his own children? How do the children themselves feel about it? What kind of courage does it take to go on when your fairytale world has fallen apart like this? I promised myself that I would explore these questions when I got older. And then I forgot about it. But when – several years later! – I realised that I wanted to write young adult novels, The Wild Swans immediately presented itself as a story that I needed to re-tell. It was as if it had been waiting patiently at the back of my mind all that time for me to grow up and notice it.

Elle: I’ve noticed that in my search for information, I haven’t seen anything which speaks to your writing process. Do you story-board? Are there lots of pieces of paper stuck haphazardly on your walls or do you have nice, neat index cards full of plans?

Zoë: Here’s where I bust out my camera! As you can see here, I’m a devotee of notebooks. Generally when I get a little spark of an idea I’ll pick out a notebook that seems right – I have nearly a hundred neatly stored in my Writing Cave – and I’ll start shoving Post-It notes into it with all my random thoughts. Later on, when the idea has matured or collided with another idea to make something that seems juicy enough for a book, I’ll get the notebook out again, pop a working title and a date in the front and start scribbling like mad – everything from fully formed scenes to one-line snatches of dialogue, to character sketches.

I do almost all of my rough drafting with a pencil in a notebook, which means that about 75% of my notebook is full of messy stuff which bears no resemblance to anything in the finished book at all. I’ve tried typing directly into a computer but I find it adds a lot of hard work to the revising later on – things look so official once you’ve got them in a Word Doc., it’s much harder to be flexible, play with ideas, change your mind. When I feel like I’ve rooted the story firmly in my brain I start trying to write a synopsis to contain all the craziness. Oy vey, synopses! I’m terrible at them! Plotting is definitely my week spot. I’ve developed all kinds of elaborate graphs and diagrams to try and keep control of my plots (as you can see!).
I’m not sure any of them really work – they’re more like a comfort blanket that I need in order to keep going when really I have no idea how things are going to fall out. For instance, after finishing the first draft of my current book I was forced to go back and change the gender OF EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER except two, and completely re-write it to make that work. I feel as if I’m a 50/50 mix between a planner and a pantser, and I hope one day to find a combination that works for me a bit more smoothly.

Kate: As someone who’s fairly private with her own writing, I always wonder this about published authors: when do you share your writing with other people? Do you have a sounding board you bounce ideas off of from inception or do you wait until you have some or all of a first draft done?

Zoë: Oh, you’re not alone, Kate! Lately I’ve been feeling like a bit of an anomaly in this regard, because Twitter and other writers blogs show me that everyone – but everyone! – seems to have teams of alpha readers, beta readers and critique partners. But I don’t. I never have. The only people who even get to glimpse what I’m working on before I’ve completed the first draft are my agent and editor – and when I say ‘first draft’ I actually mean ‘third or fourth draft that I call a first draft because I don’t want to admit how awful the actual first draft was’.

When I was first writing this was because I couldn’t find any person in my real life who was a) interested enough to comb through a first draft on my behalf and b) capable of doing so in a meaningful or helpful way. Seriously, you can’t exactly ask your mother, can you? By the time I became aware of the huge online YA community and the critiquing boards on places like AW I found that I didn’t really want feedback from anyone who wasn’t going to be directly involved in getting the book published, because so often the comments I saw online were contradictory and unhelpful.

But even though I don’t have any beta readers, I do belong to an informal writing group which was founded by an online friend of mine several years ago. We call ourselves The Furtive Scribblers and you’ll find them mentioned in the acknowledgments of everything I write. We have enormous, no-pressure fun, brain-storming, bouncing ideas, testing plots for holes, and pushing each other through writer’s block. I adore them, and without them my books would be HALF as good, if that.

Elle: I’m really interested in your experience of planning a fantasy novel and the alternative rules of that world. For high-fantasy, everyone’s advice is to start with a map, urban-fantasy seems to carry the recommendation of working out the mythology first. What did you do first whilst plotting your brand of fantasy novel?

Zoë: Panic, normally. As soon as I start to get an idea of what my fantasy world is going to be, I freak out and become convinced I JUST DON’T KNOW ENOUGH OMG. I wear out my library card, spend all my cash on reference works, documentaries and world music CDs and Google until my fingers bleed. Because my fantasy worlds so far have all had a historical basis (Daughter of the Flames was a mixture of India, Africa and Tibet, Shadows on the Moon is Japan and a sprinkling of China) it would have been all too easy to get things wrong.

Which may sound crazy when I’m making up my own world – but if you’re creating a pre-industrial country with no mass production and you have your characters pull out a ‘tarp’ or carry water in a metal bucket, you’ve already messed up. If you’re going to create fairytale Japan you need to know about real Japan or instead of an homage you’ll create a stereotypical parody, and not only insult the real culture you’re using but embarrass yourself. I do not like to embarrass myself!

Only when I’ve stuffed my brain to bursting point with every real life fact I can find do I feel as if I have the right to start messing around and actually making stuff up. This is the fun part. I used to draw incredibly detailed maps, but my publisher doesn’t like them and won’t actually put them in the book, so now I mostly sketch out relative areas so that I don’t get mixed up later on. I have a mental check list of vital facts I must know before I start work in earnest, like – what is the primary religion or religion of this country or countries? How strongly does this affect the day-to-day lives of the people? What does the general populace look like? What is the climate like, what are the major geographical features and natural hazards? What are is the wildlife like? The list goes on for quite a long while. But once I’ve filled those boxes I’ll give myself freedom to make other things up as I go along and as the plot or characters require. Some of my favourite bits of world building have come from impulse invention – like the facial tattoos in DotF.

Kate: Do you have any writing “rituals”? Do you have to cut yourself off from the outside world? Do you start rereading what you last wrote? Is there anything that has to be done for the juices to get flowing?

Zoë: I try not to let myself get into too many rituals, because I have an addictive personality and I feel as if I would just end up strangling myself. So, generally, I try to be in my Writing Cave by 9:00, I usually have a large mug of tea or coffee with me, and I generally try to re-read and revise what I wrote the day before, and then go onto new material. But if I blocked the doorway of the Writing Cave with three baskets of un-ironed laundry and I have to write downstairs instead? I try to be OK with that. If the dog rolled in something awful and needs a bath and I can’t start until 10:00? Golly, I really, really try to be OK with that. I think the only things I absolutely must have are my notebook/pencil and my iPod. Music is one thing I can’t do without. I mean, I can write without it, but I find it so hard to get started, it’s just easier to give in.

Elle: You’ve mentioned in one of your Q&A answers on your website that the ending to The Swan Kingdom changed drastically halfway through as you got to know your characters. Do you tend to find you start a novel with a fully-formed character in mind, or do you often begin with a handful of details and surprise yourself as you go?

Zoë: Actually, the ending itself stayed exactly the same. What changed was where the ending took place, how it took place, and all the characters involved!

I always start with a character. Stories come to me through the filter of a character’s eyes. I get that little whispering voice in the back of my head, and their life begins to unreel itself before my eyes. And because of this I fool myself that I know who they are and what’s going to happen. But of course, I’m not actually receiving messages from an alternate reality – it’s all coming from the little Writer Plugin in my hindbrain. And so what seems to come to me as incontrovertible ‘fact’, like this character’s actions, or that character’s traits, are all negotiable.

It’s only when I actually put the characters in the world, set them against each other and and let them get to work, that I truly start to understand them, and see how their histories, personalities, and conflicting desires, work together to create what I hope are fully realised people. And as soon as this starts, the story – what it means to them and what it means to me, and hence what actually happens – begins to warp and change.

Zoë's plot diagram - click to enlarge!

This is a good thing. Even if it does cause the occasional panic attack…

Kate: At what point do you abandon an idea – be it for a plot twist, a character, or part of your fantasy world – as unworkable? Is there some threshold that lets you know “this won’t work”?

Zoë: Nope. I’ve not yet figured out how to be well adjusted about this stuff. There’s things that I love, and things I don’t. The things I love stay no matter what, and the things I don’t go out the window in a constant stream. Then I send it to my editor and she cuts half the things I love, brings half the things I don’t love back from the flowerbed under the window, and tells me to make it work. And I groan and clutch my head, and try to sneak as many of the ‘love’ bits back in as I can, but it’s never as many as I wanted. If anyone else has any tips on how to handle this? I’d be extremely grateful!

Elle: I’ve taken great pleasure in putting this question to everyone else but I especially can’t wait to see what you say! Writers are often asked who their biggest influences are but I would instead like to know which novels most influenced you as an individual and as writer, barring the most obvious answer (cough, cough)!

Zoë: The Holy Trinity for me as a young person was – The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, Lioness Rampant by Tamora Pierce, and Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith. If you’ve read these, you’ll sense a common theme – resourceful, brave, compassionate heroines, with bag-ass swords. These books taught me who I wanted to be and I like to think I’ve lived up to that, at least in a small way. Even though my sword is only a wooden one.

When it comes to writers who influence me and my work as an adult, though – writers that I’m still striving to emulate, writers whose books have expanded my horizons and continue to make me a better writer myself – the picture changes a little. Suddenly I’m looking at a new top three:

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones, The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold and The Other Wind by Ursula Le Guin.
These books have a lot less in common on the surface, but each of them has a core of… something, some indefinable thing, that I’m constantly trying to breach and understand. I’ve re-read each of these so many times you’d think I’d know them by heart. Instead, I find myself reading a new book each time. THAT is greatness. I bow down before them.

Thanks again for having me Elle and Kate, and for coming up with such different, intriguing questions!

Keep an eye out for out Writer Workshop Week giveaway 22/23 October!

Tomorrow on the blog: EC Sheedy!

Writer Workshop Week: Ellen Hopkins

Writer Workshop Week

Day 1 – Ellen Hopkins

Writer Workshop Week is a week of guest interviews with well-known authors who Elle and Kate have asked to share a little bit of their writing process for aspiring novelists and readers alike!

 

Hello, everybody! Today, we’d like to welcome author Ellen Hopkins to Writers’ Workshop Week here on The Book Memoirs. Ellen is the author of eight young adult books, including the Crank trilogy (consisting of Crank, Glass, and Fallout) and the soon-to-be-released Perfect. All of her novels are New York Times best sellers. Formerly a non-fiction author, Ellen was inspired to write her first novel, Crank, after real-life events surrounding one of her daughters.

 

Kate: Hi Ellen, it’s lovely to have you here! As most people have heard, your début novel, Crank, was inspired in part by your daughter’s drug addiction. What was that experience like, in terms of taking painful reality and transposing it to fiction? It seems too obvious to ask if it was a difficult experience.

Ellen: It was cathartic. Something I had to do, really. For me, if not for an audience. I truly didn’t start the book expecting, or even considering, publication. But through the writing process, it became clear that the story was important, not only to me, but to anyone who has been touched by addiction. The book, in fact, sold with only 75 pages complete because the editor who first saw it realized how powerful the story would be.

Elle: Speaking of real life and real situations making it into your fiction, on your website under the section for budding writers you mention always keeping a writer’s notebook for “when the muse strikes” – just how much of your day-to-day observations of people and places do you think makes it into your novels?

Ellen: Quite a lot, really. Writers must be observers. I can’t stress that enough. Creating realistic, multi-layered characters requires voyeurism, something I practice with zeal.

Kate: When I taught, your books were easily the most stolen from the English department’s classroom libraries, a massive compliment to any author! What most helps you keep writing authentic situations that teenagers are drawn to?

Ellen: Respect for the generation. It was never easy to be a teen, despite what some adults might think. Just because your years don’t number many doesn’t mean your problems don’t. Navigating school, relating to others, falling in and out of love, dealing with the adults in your life… these are the easy things. Toss in major choices like whether or not to have sex, drink, use, etc., the waters become choppy. Add things you cannot control—abuse, desertion, rape, etc., you have a tsunami. Survival is everything. I want to help them survive.

Elle: You mention critique groups on your website. Many writers advocate a group of fellow writers, others show friends and family, and others seem to keep their manuscript solely for their editor. Who is your first audience and how important would you say that their opinion is to you in terms of revisions?

Ellen: I used to have an amazing critique group, but over the years it dissolved. People moved. People got frustrated and quit writing. Toward the end, I had published a couple of books and my group became a bit too deferential. Now, I have a select group of writing friends, all published, whose opinions I totally respect. We do retreats together, and this is where they might serve as beta readers. Truthfully, though, at this point in my career, I don’t have time for rounds of revision. Rather, I self-edit heavily as I write, so my first draft is largely my last draft.

Kate: You used to write nonfiction books for children. I think the number was somewhere in the 50s! How was your writing process when you were writing nonfiction books different from your process now that you’re writing fiction?

Ellen: I wrote the nonfiction much faster. But it still had voice, which is why the editors loved it. I could also write more than one nonfiction book at a time. Can’t do that with fiction. I need to stay vested in the characters I’m writing. And, even though fiction pays better, it feels less like a job. This is fun!

Elle: I’m interested in the locations that you write in. Do you only take notes in your notebook or do you ever flesh out full scenes? Do you prefer quiet or activity? Coffee shop or office? All of your notes and/or storyboard with you or writing-free, so to speak?

Ellen: I am now writing two books a year—one young adult and one adult. I don’t have time to write scenes in a notebook, then transpose. And my note taking is, too often, on scratch paper. I have stacks to sort through. Also, because the verse-novel formatting is so specific, I actually write to trim size, so that the word placement is exactly how I want it. I write at home in my office, or on the road on my laptop (sometimes on airplanes, often in hotel rooms). I need quiet and focus.

Kate: What do you find distracts you the most from writing? Do you find you suffer from writer’s block? Writing yourself into corners? “Delete everything I wrote yesterday” syndrome?

Ellen: My family. I do travel a lot for promotion, so I understand they want my attention when I’m home, and I do my best to spend quality time with them. But that is also my best writing time, so it can become an issue. I don’t block on story, but do sometimes on scenes. When that happens, I work my body somehow—walk or garden or play with my dogs. Physical movement lets my subconscious kick into gear and gets me where I need to go. I don’t write myself into corners and if I have ever deleted everything I wrote the day before it was totally by accident, and completely maddening.

Elle: Linear or scene-by-scene? Do you think that it detracts from your writing if you don’t write in order or do you think it packs more of an emotional punch to craft the scene you’re most in the mood for?

Ellen: Straight ahead. I have to, because each page flows very specifically into the next, and every single word counts. I might, in fact, stress for a half-hour over the exact word or sentence or stanza and get that right before I move forward.

Kate: Your books are written in a very poetic, free-flowing style. Was this a conscious decision you made when starting to write Crank, or just something that came more naturally to you?

Ellen: I started Crank in prose, but the voice was all wrong. Put the book away and went to a writer’s conference, where I saw Sonya Sones (another verse novelist) speak. I’ve written poetry most of my life and decided to try combining verse and story. It worked.

Elle: Most authors seemed to be asked which fellow author is their biggest influence. Instead, I’d like to ask you if you have any particular books which have influenced the way in which you write or have changed the way you view the writing process.

Ellen: Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey. Four very different voices, and unique writing styles for each. Complicated viewpoints. It’s a hard book to read, but brilliant, and totally character driven. That one spoke loudly to me.

Keep an eye out for out Writer Workshop Week giveaway 22/23 October!

Tomorrow on the blog: Zoë Marriott!

Book Babble: IMM the Highly Anticipated Edition!

Chasing Brooklyn by Lisa Schroeder | Goodreads | Elle’s review of The Day Before
If I Tell by Janet Gutler | Goodreads
Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins | Goodreads
Working Stiff by Rachel Caine | Goodreads | US cover

In My Mailbox: The YA Crazy Edition

YouTube cut off the end of my thank you to Daph (thank you a MILLION, Daph! ) and my last few books so looks like it’s split with next week!

Books I mentioned in this IMM:
Dear Bully edited by Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones | Goodreads | Dear Bully website | Stomp Out Bullying
Eve by Anna Carey | Goodreads
Variant by Robison Wells | Goodreads
Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan | Goodreads

People I mentioned in this IMM:
Daph @ Loving Books

Other things I mentioned in this IMM:
Klout.com
Moo UK

Book Babble: In My Mailbox the Long Awaited Edition

In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in click here.

Books I mentioned in this IMM:
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare | Goodreads
Sing Me to Sleep by Angela Morrison | Goodreads
Heist Society by Ally Carter | Goodreads
Blood Bound by Rachel Vincent | Goodreads
Working Stiff by Rachel Caine | Goodreads | US cover | UK cover
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern | Goodreads
The Jewel and the Key by Louise Spiegler | Goodreads
I Love You, Goodbye by Cynthia Rogerson | Goodreads
Saints and Sinners by Paul Cuddihy | Goodreads
The Good Mayor by Andrew Nicoll | Goodreads

People I mentioned in this IMM:
Rosie @ The Review Diaries
Daphne @ Loving Books

Books I didn’t mention in this IMM:
A Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbons | Goodreads
A History of Scotland by Neil Oliver | Goodreads
Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum by Mark Stevens | Goodreads

Review: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Review by Elle

Publication information: Virago Press / 30 Jan 2003 / 448 pages

Where I heard about it: This was one of my set book for my Open University course this year but it’s been on my radar for a while.

Spoilers: None. ZIP. Nada. To spoil even a little would be to ruin the suspense!

Review:

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

Working as a lady’s companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers.

Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman.

I can confidently say that I have never once converted so many people to wanting to read a novel using nothing more than my Goodreads status updates. Furthermore, I can absolutely say that I haven’t read a single novel this year which has so completely lived up to its potential in the way that Rebecca has and, let me tell you, this year has been the year of good books so that’s really saying something.

“I do love you,” I said. “I love you dreadfully and I’ve been crying all night because I thought I should never see you again.”

When I said this, I remember he laughed and stretched his hand across the breakfast table. “Bless you for that,” he said; “one day, when you reach that exhalted age of thirty-six which you told me was your ambition, I’ll remind you of this moment. And you won’t believe me. It’s a pity you have to grow up.”

Rebecca had been on my wish list for what seemed like forever; it was one of those novels that I just never quite got around to. My interest was piqued earlier this year, however, by some intense research into JM Barrie (the author of Peter Pan for anyone not quite up on their British literary traditions) and his involvement in the du Maurier family (indeed, Daphne du Maurier called JM Barrie “Uncle Jim”). In all of the literature that I’d waded through in my quest to illuminate something real and tangible about Barrie, I kept tripping over the wan and distant figure of Daphne du Maurier, finding hint after hint of her troubled life and the way in which she achieved catharsis through her novels (something which somewhat disturbingly mirrors Barrie’s idea of catharsis). I am not, it has to be said, someone who is vastly invested in authorial intentions when I read novels – what the author intended doesn’t matter all that much after the novel and its ideas become the property of its readers – but I must confess to having a small obsession with dearest Daphne, so when Rebecca turned up on my set books list for my 20^th century literature class, I just about jumped up and down on the spot.

It would be impossible for Daphne du Maurier not to doff her cap to Charlotte Brontë in the telling of Rebecca; the intertextual links to Jane Eyre and the original tale of The Other Woman linger softly around the edges of the novel from the first page and converge like a smog on the tale as we claw ourselves nearer to the end. Readers are immediately catapulted into the quasi-confident first-person narrative – which is almost unwaveringly delivered by our disturbingly permanently-nameless narrator – and astute lovers of the nineteenth-century novels that are du Maurier’s inheritance will here find the tenacity of Jane Eyre herself becoming muddled with the naïveté of Catherine Morland, the bumbling, socially inept protagonist of Austen’s Northanger Abbey . While we’re on the subject of genre-inheritance, I think it would be equally impossible not to regard Max de Winter in his full context as allusions to Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre shadow his every word (and what steamy and dark words they are, I was in love from the first page and willing to believe anything he told me, even if that included that martians inhabited Manderley and made the tea). Du Maurier draws on the aloofness of Darcy, the wit and cheek of Rochester and the brooding violence of Heathcliff to create the menacing, gloomy figure of the Bryonic hero that our narrator so completely falls for.

What du Maurier does achieve is a glorious reinvention of the Gothic. Readers of classics like Frankenstein and Treasure Island will revel in the pervading air of menace that exists in Manderley, shadowy halls delivering bumps and squeaks, surprise servant corridors where you least expect them, rooms untouched since the last Mrs de Winter sat in them, rain coats carrying perfumed scents. Indeed, the word “Manderley” itself seems to have so firmly fixed itself in our cultural consciousness that we are able to recall it mythic surrounds as quickly as we are Pemberley and Thornfield. Lovers of the more recent works of Kate Morton which take place around mysterious locations (The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden) will enjoy discovering the secrets of Manderley and will probably be able to make more Beauty and the Beast allusions when it comes to an entire wing being shut up and dark.

This was a woman’s room, graceful, fragile, the room of someone who had chosen every particle of furniture with great care so that each chair, each vase, each small, infintesimal thing should bee in harmony with one another, and with her own personality. It was as though she who had arranged this room had said: “This I will have, and this, and this,” taking piece by piece from the treasures of Manderley each object that pleased her best, ignoring the second-rate, the mediocre, laying her hand with sure certain instinct only upon the best.

To say that Daphne du Maurier draws on other sources of inspiration for her novel is not, of course, to say that it is not original in its own way. Each character follows their own personal path in their search for identity and the role of women and gender expectations are just as fully explored, demolished and built up again. There is a cast of truly unforgettable supporting characters, which is an achivement in itself and something I love to see in any novel but particularly nineteenth-century and twentieth-century novels because it seems that contemporary novels have a hard time of making them seem like anything other than bit-pieces to show how good the protagonist is (also, Frank stole my heart). Rebecca is also a manifesto, a view of the ever-changing fragility and of the superficial and blatantly surface relationships particularly typical of the 1920s and, curiously, of the 2000s.

In short, Rebecca is a jewel in the crown of twentieth-century literature: it manages to deliver that which what readers crave most and that which they don’t expect, all at the same time. It is recommended for anyone who is sick of formulaic romantic fiction and wants to sit on the edge of their seat clutching their throat for the entire ride.

My top ten list just keeps getting better.

10 decadent chocolate bon-bons: The best-of-the-best.

(For more rating information see here.)

Book Babble: Kate on the Future of (e)Reading

In aftermath of news that IKEA is changing designs for a world with fewer paper books, Kate discusses the digital book revolution and why the eReader-versus-”treeware” debate is less controversial and more just silly.

The Passage Readalong: Week 4 – Chapters 19 – 22

The Passage Readalong

Week 4 – Chapters 19 – 22

And once again, it’s time for The Passage readalong! This week is Viv’s week to host, and you can find that main post here If you’re trying to catch up or wondering what exactly we’re up to, please see our guide to reading along with us, found here.

Elle’s a bit swamped with uni right now (and Kate will soon be taking that position, but more about that coming soon!), so we’ll be sticking with Kate’s thoughts this week. Elle has promised a massive thought-dump when she’s a little less bogged down, so worry not; you’ll be getting her counter-point soon enough!

Kate’s thoughts…

And abruptly, The Passage is a whole different book.

I’m not overstating the experience. Starting Part IV felt like starting an entirely different book. At first, I was frustrated, annoyed, and just – disengaged with the entire thing. It took me probably an hour, all-told, to read the first 10 or so pages; I started it several times and always opted to do other things (including homework!) rather than climb in. I’ve come to distrust Justin Cronin – said in present tense because I still don’t trust him, not after I’ve been jerked here and there into caring about characters that are only stolen from me a half-dozen pages later – and couldn’t get back into the book when it had such a hugely different tone. I had no Wolgast to pull me in, and from the looks of it, no Amy. I simply could not bring myself to care.

Until I started getting into it.

It’s hard to explain how the experience and mood of the settlement struck me. It’s a bit like if Lois Lowry’s The Giver grew up and proceeded to have a love child with George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. There’s this gritty, post-apocalyptic bleakness that is somehow combined with this larger-than-life fantastical element that I really actually came to enjoy by the end of this week’s reading. And for all of my grousing that he jerks around my emotions, Cronin is an excellent character writer. Within the first chapter I adored Alicia, Peter, and Theo, thought Michael was interesting and found Elton delightfully curious while still being strange. I connected in a way I hadn’t since Wolgast took Amy to the carnival, because I believed in these characters. I wanted them to be real people, I had aspirations for them (and theories on romantic attraction – hey, who doesn’t read a book and think about that?!) and I cared about what they were going through. The scene in the station, with Peter and Alicia on the roof and then the attack, put my heart in my throat. The library made my stomach churn and actually horrified me. The mall scene was haunting, mysterious, and brilliantly done. All told, I have to say that I –

I almost don’t have any complaints about Part IV this far.

It’s cautious optimism, though, which bring me to my overall criticism of the book as a whole. My first point, which I’ve said before and I’ll say again, is that I feel jerked around. I want to be invested in these characters and fully involved but it’s so hard when Cronin basically set up the first 250 pages of the book to ensure that every time I got attached to a character, he or she died a gruesome death! I understand, of course, that not every character can ride off into the sunset on an armored white horse, but I just feel that Cronin works too hard to keep his readers off-balance and shock them for the sake of shock. Plus, once again, there are no minor characters; everyone is so fleshed out that I kind of want to beat my head into a wall. I don’t need to know that dying Gabe (who is mentioned about once) has a mentally disabled son, that some random character has four children (complete with their names), or that Arlo and Hollis are identical except for the beard (but Sara can see the difference even if they both have beards). It’s simply too much information. And in a lot of ways, it was why Part IV was hard to get into; it was so laden with description and character information right off the bat that I didn’t have a chance to hit the “flow” of the chapters until something like 15 or 20 pages in.

My second criticism is that I’m sort of wondering what the first part of the book was for. Every composition teacher I’ve ever had, be it for fiction writing or creative non-fiction, has given me the exact same piece of advice: start in the middle. There has to be backstory, has to be exposition, and has to be something that happened before the meat of the plot. Here, it really feels like the first three parts was exposition that, instead of leaving somewhere on his computer labeled “first draft,” Cronin decided to incorporate into the actual novel. As much as I am in love with Wolgast, I have to wonder if the whole wouldn’t have been more coherent and more interesting to read if it’d started with Peter on the Watch than with Amy’s mother trying to cope. I hope that the beginning ends up synching up with the rest of the book more than it has thus far, but more than that? I hope this doesn’t sow the seeds that in Part VII, we’ll be moving on to some other era of human existence, a few thousand miles and a hundred years away from this one, and forced to learn a whole new set of characters in a whole new setting with a whole new primary conflict.

I want to believe that maybe the book has gotten marginally better, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

So what do you think? Part IV: Better or worse than Parts I through III? We’d love to hear in the comments! If you posted on your blog about the Readalong, please leave us a link so we can pop it on the end of this post!

The Passage Readalong: Week 3 – Chapters 12 – 18

The Passage Readalong

Week 3 – Chapters 12 – 18

Welcome to our third installment of The Passage readalong! As we’ve finished Part III, we’re back with new thoughts on the latest chapters! If you’re looking to catch up or wondering what this is all about, please see our guide to the readalong, which you can find here.

Please note: a lot happened in this section of the book, and there was absolutely no way to avoid some pretty major spoilers. If you’re not caught up, or you’re thinking about reading the book, please proceed with caution. There was literally no way to describe this section of the book or comment thoughtfully on it without some spoilers. Nature of the beast, I’m afraid!

Synopsis – Chapters 12 – 18

Chapter Twelve begins with a sickly, exhausted Sikes arriving at Wolgast’s cell within the compound with a purpose: Amy is in the compound as well, and they suspect she’s dying. Wolgast finds Amy in isolation, in a coma, and is told that he can only see her if he wears a special suit that will prevent him from contracting the virus. He goes in unprotected, itself. Meanwhile, Grey has started to lose hours, unable to recount them, and spends most of his time feeling ill and off-center. He begins to notice changes in the people he works with, both in their physiques and their demeanors. Another change has come in the form of Anthony Carter, who is now not really Anthony at all, and who manages to kill one of the men who cares for him, drinking his blood. Richards, who in his own right is as haunted as Grey and the others, suspects Anthony is the meanest of the lot. Richards also gets the disturbing news that a young black woman has arrived looking for Wolgast.

The black woman is in fact Sister Lacey, whose trip to the compound is recounted in Chapter Thirteen. Following the voice of God in her head, she walked, hitchhiked, and stowed-away to Colorado, eventually making it into the facility by hiding in the back of an Army-issue supply truck. Richards, who isn’t sure how to deal with her, goes to release Doyle from his cell, only to find that Doyle somehow knew she was coming. Before Doyle and Lacey are reunited, however, Grey – guided once again by the voice of Zero in the back of his mind – walks into Zero’s chamber and allows Zero to kill him and also, to escape.

The security breach picks up steam in Chapter Fourteen, when Richards discovers that all of the subjects have escaped and the soldiers throughout the facility are panicking rather than following protocol. One destroys the elevator and then power is lost, trapping Wolgast and a barely-conscious Amy in her isolation room. Dr. Lear comes in to rescue them, helping them to maneuver past the dead and dying and into an air vent, but ultimately stays behind to ensure Amy’s safety. Wolgast manages to get Amy through the ducts, up a ladder, and into the main area of the facility. He’s reunited both with Doyle and Lacey, where Doyle provides him keys to a get-away car. Despite the fact they exit together, both Doyle and Lacey stay in order to distract the subjects.

Chapter Fifteen begins Part III and chronicles Wolgast and Amy’s escape from Colorado to Oregon. They make their way to a camp Wolgast spent summers at as a boy, and as they settle in, Wolgast remembers meeting and falling in love with his ex-wife, Lila. He thinks of her often as they settle in at the camp, as well as detailing the changes in Amy: she no longer can tolerate the feel of the sun on her skin or in her eyes, she sleeps during the day but stays up at night, and she seems to know things she otherwise shouldn’t. But they can’t stay at the camp without supplies, forcing Wolgast to go down to a small store. There, he discovers that the virus and its carriers has spread from the incident at the compound to cover a large portion of the Midwest, putting the country into panic. The man at the store wars Wolgast that the virus is even worse than mentioned in the newspaper.

Wolgast and Amy continue to stay at the camp throughout Chapter Sixteen, as well, though the situation continually becomes more dire. Forest fires ravage the area and nearly destroy the camp; Chicago falls to those with the virus and California secedes from the union; the man who runs the general store is found dead. As they settle in for the winter in Chapter Seventeen, though, it appears that they may be safe from the woes of the rest of the world. A man arrives from nearby Washington after having been attacked by someone with the virus, confirming Wolgast’s fears that they weren’t as safe as they thought. Though he shoots the man to protect them, the damage has been done; soon, a nearby city is “cleansed” by a nuclear blast (as rumors’d said was happening to other infected areas) and blows out the window in the front of the lodge where Amy and Wolgast are staying. Though Amy is unharmed, Wolgast’s leg is pierced by a large piece of glass. Despite his very best efforts, Wolgast is unable to mend the wound properly and it gets infected. Amy takes care of him as best she can, but when he wakes up one night with the realization that he’s dying, he discovers that the trees are full of those with the virus – and Amy is gone.

Chapter Eighteen is entirely an excerpt from the diaries of a woman named Ida Jaxon, called “Auntie,” recounting her experiences during the evacuation of Philidelphia during some point we can only assume was contemporaneous to Wolgast’s last stand. In it, Ida recalls the restrictive lives of her family as the city was placed under martial law during the run-up to the “jumps” arriving, as well as her father’s decision to place her on a FEMA train that was leaving the city for safer places. She is eventually delivered to the newly-seceded California, where she is reunited with her cousin Terrence and proceeds to settle into a FEMA facility. She mentions things we’ve not heard of before, such as First Families, Watchers, the Chous, and the Time Before, but doesn’t elaborate. The end of the chapter marks the end of Part III.

Kate’s thoughts…

I can officially say, with meaning, that this book has turned into a disappointment.

I mentioned this to Elle on the phone this morning, and I think it bears repeating: Cronin’s habit of killing people off arbitrarily and without any real warning is now a full-out gimmick. I cannot even describe to you in words how frustrating it is that he builds up literally dozens of characters with all these meaningful details only to tear them down pages or chapters later with absolutely no remorse. Deaths in literature should mean something. They should make your heart climb into your throat, should make you want to weep, should stand on your belly and choke you, but in The Passage, they just feel – empty. Throughout the compound being destroyed and dozens of established characters all dying, I had absolutely no emotional connection to the experience. I didn’t care if they got out alive or not, because I knew some would and some wouldn’t and that the decision of who fit in which category was completely arbitrary. Because there’s absolutely no way to tell which characters matter, you either are forced to become emotionally connected to all of them – or none. And sadly, I think or none is much more likely.

I think that’s my biggest beef with this book, all things considered: there’s no emotional connection.  I don’t really care about any of the characters, or what happens to them; there’s no impetuous for me to keep reading. I tend to forget the book even exists until Sunday or Monday, where I read my five chapters, put it down, and then forget about it again. There’s not enough there to compel me to keep going, to light a fire where I am desperate to follow Amy to the next step of her adventure, and honestly? Killing Wolgast has stripped me of the only character I actually liked, which is just going to make it harder for me to feel anything about this book. Instead of connecting with it like a novel, I connect with it like I do my casebook for class, reading what I have to and then being finished when I turn the last page of the assignment.

The camping chapters in this section, though, were probably my favorite, I think in part because of Wolgast and part simply because it was a break from the disjointed, sharply segmented point-of-view jumping which’d taken place up until then. For the first time, it felt like a discreet narrative, and it made me really want to just take that part of the story and turn it into a novella. Man rescues little girl, protects her from the crazy world outside his control, man dies. Instead, those chapters were over too quickly, and we were back to another disjointed segment, one I’m not even sure belonged there. And I am back to not caring, because now the only emotional tie I had to the book is gone.

It’s funny, because the American edition starts with no fewer than four pages of quotes that just sing absolute praises of The Passage. I think nearly every newspaper on the planet is quoted somewhere at the beginning – and I can’t figure out why. I can’t figure out what in this book is so amazing that the world’s newspapers are writing odes to it. I’m a third of the way into it. You’d think I’d have some idea by now.

Instead, I’m just continually let down and disappointed, and frankly, very tired of it. I’m glad it’s a fast read, but mostly, I just want it to be done. And that is just sad.

Elle’s thoughts…

Elle is feeling a bit under the weather right now, but I’m authorized to tell you her thoughts will be coming very soon!

So what do you think? Did you enjoy the first few chapters? We’d love to hear in the comments! If you posted on your blog about the Readalong, please leave us a link so we can pop it on the end of this post!

Melvin Burgess: Kill All Enemies Blog Tour

Melvin Burgess:

Kill All Enemies Blog Tour

A few months ago, we linked you to a discussion from Melvin Burgess about his newest novel Kill All Enemies (you can find the post here if you missed it) and today we’re delighted to be participating in the blog tour for its release! Kill All Enemies just got a resoundingly good review in The Guardian which you can find here.

For our stop on the tour, we’re offering one book for giveaway. To win a copy of Kill All Enemies, please leave a comment on this post.

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Guest Post by Melvin Burgess
Bad Kids

We’re all aware of the recent riots, that brought so much opprobrium and loathing down on the heads of young people. How about you – did you have any sympathy for them? Now? What about the kids who disrupt lessons in the classroom, depriving other kids – maybe your child – of the chance to work hard, get an education and get on? After all, that’s surely what we want for all children; the chance to get on. Why should we have any sympathy for anyone, of any age, who stops that happening?

Bad kids. Who wants them?

I remember the story of one lad at my high school, a big lad – a huge lad, actually – who was a terrible bully. He did something bad – I’ve no idea what – and got sent to borstal. Some time later,

our headmaster came into assembly in a furious state. Apparently this lad had escaped from Borstal and been chased down by the dogs.

“Hunted down with dogs, like an animal!” he raged.

Wow! What a bad kid that was! You wouldn’t want him in the same class as your child, no way! We all lived in fear of him at school. When I look back now, he fills me up with wonder and wishes. I wonder what he did and how he did it. I wonder how he ended up there. I wonder what happened to him after? I wish he’d been different – for his sake, and for the sake of all his many victims.

Most of all, I wish I could sit down with him now and ask him to tell me his story. Not necessarily the story of that night he was hunted down with dogs. I’d love to hear it, but it’s not always the story of the event itself that tells you the most. I’d just like to get at the things that stick in his brain from his childhood. All these years later, he’d have a view on it. He’d have worked it all out into a story of some kind. It wouldn’t necessarily provide an explanation, or a theory; it wouldn’t be any kind of a reason an excuse. I just know this; that for him, it would sum up the things that happened in his life.

The stories that stick in our heads from certain seminal parts of our lives aren’t just memories. They’re myths – our myths. They express events and what they mean to us in narrative form. It’s what people do all the time. More to the point, it’s what novelists do as well.

There’s a lot of kids like that one – thousands, millions, perhaps, in most large towns and cities around our country. All of them have stories lodged in their heads and hearts, stories that describe, illustrate, illuminate, and clarify their lives. Somehow, amid all the clamour and theorising and policy and blame, those stories don’t get heard very often. In other words, these are young people who have no voice in society – no story, no myth. I think if we could, we would wipe them as thoroughly as we once tried to wipe out the myths and legends of aboriginal people the world over.

Of course, those youngsters do have stories to tell, and they love to tell them. All you have to do is ask. When you do ask, you get the whole thing there in front of you – voice, experience, people, character, situation – story.

Well, that was the idea of Kill All Enemies. I wanted to hear the stories of young people from deprived communities and try to get their voices down on paper. I went into PRU’s to talk to excluded students, and through youth workers to meet young people who’d had some really difficult backgrounds. I told them I wanted to write a book and would they tell me their stories. They responded with great generosity and pride, and told me all about what had happened to them.

Many of those young people were pretty dodgy. Most of them had been excluded form school at some time; all of them had been in trouble – some of them in serious trouble. They didn’t do well at school and most teachers would have been delighted to have them out of the class. They’re poor, disruptive and some, at certain times in their lives, had been actively dangerous. Many of them, I’ve no doubt, would have been out on the streets gleefully putting a foot through a shop window if they had half chance. And yet, so often, the stories they told me revealed a very different picture to the one you get from reading the papers. In fact, many of those kids were heroes. Real life, genuine heroes, who had been doing their very best for the people were important to them, the people who they loved and who loved them. The fact that it didn’t always leave them a lot of time for school was something anyone who knew their stories could relate to at once.

Kill All Enemies is a novel, of course, and there’s no pretence that the people in it are real, or that everything that happened in the book happened in real life. But behind each character there is a real person who set me off and inspired me to try and understand their life, or something like it, through fiction. I hope I did a good job – I’d hate any of them to feel I let them down.

Over the next few days on this little blog tour, I’m going to talk about the real people behind the stories, how I dramatised them and tried to give them a voice that they would recognise and that people would want to read. I hope you’ll want to follow it. So thanks to Bobby and Matt and Jamie and Callum, and to Deeta and Karen and Jen and Rob and Lisa and Joelle and all the rest of you. I hope you think it was worth your time!

- Melvin Burgess

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For the next step on the tour, please head over to Wondrous Reads.

For more information on Melvin and his other novels, head on over to his website. For a taster of his other work, please see our review of Junk which you can find here.