Reading Tom Fletcher’s new novel, I wondered what is the mental equivalent of hiding behind a sofa when you’re reading a spooky book?
I don’t usually read dark and creepy novels so my sensitivity to empty barns that people are unnerved by is very very low. So while the book’s true horror fest is a slow-burn, my jitteriness knew limitations like a crumbling drystone wall.
I am enjoying recognising elements from the short stories he published Before the Rain (Flax007), they pop up as snippets of myth and history in this more expansive novel. And this familiarity adds to their authenticity. It really is ALL true …
The wierdest thing (more so than The Leaping at Wastwater) is that despite thinking every clunk and tap in the house is some mad axeman I have to keep reading. There is a part of me not enjoying being scared at all, but the part that wants to know what next? what next? is far louder. Another fifty odd pages to go and my virtual sofa will be redundant.
Tolu Ogunlesi, who was commissed by Flax last year to write a short blog fiction: Adorna and Desiderus, has won The Guardian First Words competition. Which he is, obviously, very pleased about.
The competition was to write the first paragraph of a novel, called The Letting Go. What I like about Tolu’s entry is that it could be both the first paragrapgh and also a complete short story. Being both a poet and fiction writer, his writing transcends the clear boundaries that define the two.
See what you think:
He is my sister’s first, her only one. Born a week ago today, in this room. She cried (her cries hung like damp curtains in the still afternoon air), pushed him out, smiled in relief, and then continued to give birth – to blood. At the end of blood is death. She let go. Three months ago – or perhaps more – her husband left her; accused her of carrying another man’s baby. He left a suicide note behind. If he went ahead and took his own life, I cannot tell. What I can tell is this: that I have nothing to offer this boy. All I am is a frail connection to a past that he will know about only in stories – of a mother swift with her hands and paler than a full moon. And a father who delighted in inventing excuses.
Tom Fletcher whose short stories appeared in Before the Rain, Flax006 has just signed a two book deal with Quercus. So we’re very excited for him.
Apparently The Leaping shares some of the same characters with The Skin that She Bit (published in Before the Rain). Werewolves. The action happens between a call centre and the Lakes (two locations he uses to great effect with in some of the short stories). Judging on the stories we published last year, I guess it’s going to be strangely compulsive, a little bit sexy and very very tense.
We’ll keep you up to speed when we hear more.
Wildthorn cover
I read Jane Eagland’s novel this week. I picked it up in a slightly zombified state on Easter Monday, thinking a couple of hours reading would see me right before an early bed. It didn’t. I couldn’t put it down. And consequentially found myself finally switching off the light five hours later, when I knew what did happen to Louisa, who had betrayed her in the first place and how she dealt with her discovery.
It’s being marketed as a novel for teenagers, and to that effect is a straightforward read, but the characters are complex and empathetic, even the ‘wicked’ Weeks, and the theme of the book – incarceration of women into Victorian asylums for ‘deviancy’ – is potent and richly researched, tightly executed. Louisa’s crime is that she want’s to be a doctor, and doesn’t want to marry. She becomes friends with a rape victim. Another woman was dumped there for being unmarried, and dependent on her brother and his wife.
My only complaint would be the cover. I understand it’s a strong selling point, but it’s precisely the restrictive nature of the corset (and all it’s ‘feminine’ aspirations) that Louisa challenges.
I’ve worked with Jane. She was published in Flax001 and we’ve kept in contact since then. So seeing her motivation behind the story, how it quietly displays her sense of injustice and horror at this all too common practice, was an added pleasure, and gave another perspective to my read. Jane’s need to illuminate the abhorrant dependent ‘non-status’ women had in the nineteenth century is what fuels the book, keeps the fire of the language and plot alive. It made me realise what a great, compassionate, socially responsible writer she is and why I hold her in such high esteem.
She is currently writing her second book. It’ll be a pleasure to read her next quiet expression of passion.
In the meantime, if you’re in Lancaster on Wesnesday 20 May, you can hear her read from Wildthorn.
Litfest
