Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers: review in the Financial Times

I've reviewed Sam Byers' novel, Perfidious Albion, for the Financial Times. Read it here.

A Writer's Week

 A Writer's Week

People seem to be quite interested in how writers and artists deal with their time - not least my family. (It is a proper job, I promise.)

Following on from Sarah McIntyre's post about the life of an illustrator, I thought I would post a fairly typical week from a writer's point of view.

The actual act of writing a book - of putting words on the page, whether by hand or by keyboard, (and I do both) - takes up, as you will see, a very small amount of time. 

Others will have their own routines: my days are always different, which makes setting aside composition time crucial. I don't have word limits, but I have something better: guilt.

Generally speaking, I try to leave some time for my own reading - I have six or seven books going at once, which currently include: Samuel Pepys (ongoing for five years); J G Ballard, Claire Messud, Robertson Davies's The Cornish Trilogy, James Davidson's book on Greek Love, and Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake, each in various states of perusal, each clamouring for attention like hungry fledglings.

The best time for reading is between 4:30 and 6:30 in the morning; then I can snooze again for an hour before getting up properly. Piano practice comes and goes; as does exercise. As for a social life... well, that somehow sneakily manages to find its way in, proffering cocktails with a glimmer in its eye.

Monday 18th May

My week began at 615 am, as I woke up with a dog's (admittedly very friendly) snout in my face. She's only a pup, and she wakes up earlier and earlier as spring shades into summer, sprinting out of the front door like a racehorse. I grabbed the time - quiet, dawnish time is the best for creation - to work on The King's Revenge, the final part in my Darkening Path trilogy, which is out next year. 

I did so, in a happy semi-daze, until 10, when I was teaching a Latin lesson over Skype. It never fails to fill me with joy that I can pass on the words that Ovid and Vergil spoke, to a child inhabiting a high rise flat on the opposite side of the world. I'm sure those poets would have loved it. Perhaps it would be no different for them than communicating with a spirit, or a god.

The rest of the day is taken up with making editorial notes on someone's manuscript, and reading for the children's book round up I do biannually for Literary Review. Out of fifty or so books, every six months, I have to choose a mere dozen or so. Each year (and I've been doing it for about ten years now) it becomes harder.

In the late afternoon, most days, you'll usually find me jumping onto the underground for a face-to-face (that is what we call them now) lesson. Today, it's in Chelsea, and a young pupil doing her Common Entrance Latin. I don't mind train time, as I usually read, or, more excitingly, think, or stare at the passengers and wonder what they're all doing. Which is, no doubt, making notes for their own novels.

Tuesday 19th May

Another early start: I managed about an hour's work on The King's Revenge, whilst simultaneously brushing my teeth, taking a phone call at 7:30 from a colleague about a project we are working on that is soon coming to fruition, and preventing my dog from eating my toothbrush. I hustled onto the overground for a meeting concerning said project, in Haggerston: we huddled around the computer, making notes, until 1pm, whilst our dogs barked around our feet.

I hightailed it back for a quick lunch before a pupil arrived and we became immersed in Catullus for two hours - the longer poems, which I have always loved.

Then it was back on the tube for another lesson - this time in South Kensington, and with a much younger boy for beginner's Latin - before meeting an editor at 8pm. We discussed a potential project over dinner, which is slowly becoming less like an inchoate idea and more like a book.

Leaving her building, I got myself locked in to the hallway. Rescue soon came, but not before I envisaged sleeping on the mat. I could have made quite a nice bunk in there. Private, too.

Wednesday 20th May

The website We Love This Book asked me to write a piece  about the state of fantasy in children's books, so the morning passed in its composition. I filed it smugly before lunch time, made some notes on someone else's manuscript, and spent the afternoon reading for the Literary Review round up, answering emails intermittently (as well as Twittering, blogging, and all the other social media ephemera we must contend with). A piece about writing fantasy, done for The Guardian, was published on their website today, so I dealt with  feedback from that, which can sometimes feel like pinging table tennis balls back and forth.

At 6pm I sped off to the bright lights of Soho, for the launch of Elizabeth Day's new book, Paradise City, which was in the Ham Yard Hotel. There were actual proper canapés, and gallons of wine, and I'm sure I saw Sebastian Faulks. There's nothing writers like more than parties, particularly with actual proper canapés and wine. It means you don't have to have any dinner. (And the mini-burgers were a delight.)

Thursday 21st May

My first full day at home for about a month, as one of my pupils cancelled her lesson in the evening. The King's Revenge occupied the morning; in the afternoon, I began to go through the edits of my book The Double Axe, coming out in Spring next year. It's a re-telling of the Minotaur story. I also started to compose a synopsis of it that the publishers need. In breaks I answered emails about a host of other things: forthcoming events; Tweeting a competition; arranging lessons.

In the evening I read - for my own pleasure: J G Ballard's Hello America, a trippy, steam-punky fantasy, which I am halfway through, and one of Claire Messud's novels, When the World Was Easy, about a pair of sisters on either side of the world. I am rather an admirer of Messud: she has a lucid, calm intelligence that is deeply poignant and precise.

Friday 22nd May

I am in the last third of The King's Revenge. Battles are forming; positioning my characters is becoming more crucial then ever; working out how they've developed over the course of two books, placing them into the final configurations that should - I repeat, should - put them into an explosive finale. 

Having woken up with glee, and eaten a whole duck egg for breakfast, disappointingly I only managed about 750 words with pen and paper, but I felt that they were good words. Perhaps I should try a bigger egg.

Another lesson took up the rest of the morning - Greek translation for two hours - and in the afternoon I turned back to The Double Axe, and my editor's marginal comments. Some are easy to deal with, others less so; but it's all part of a long process of shaping, forming and massaging, to get the script into shape. 

And so Friday afternoon comes. Although I have written TAXES in my diary, as I do most Fridays, that little green folder mysteriously fails to move itself to my desk.  I begin each tax year with a song in my heart and a new system; by about now, that system has reverted to my tried and tested one: otherwise known as Bernard's from Black Books: 

"This is March to... boobelyboo
[takes out more receipts]
Bernard: this is err... misc
[takes out more receipts]
Bernard: and this is... other."

And each time, I do it all in three days of spreadsheets, receipts, bank statements, random screaming, and scribbled notes. But just not today. Now, I feel, it might be time to have a glass of wine. Writers do get weekends too. Sometimes...

One Night, Markovitch: review

Gundhar-Goshen: dextrous

Evenin' all: I've reviewed Ayelet Gundhar-Goshen's debut novel, One Night, Markovitch, for The Telegraph. Read it here.

Review of Constantine Phipps' What You Want in The Spectator

Afternoon all: I've reviewed Constantine Phipps' new book, What You Want, for The Spectator. Read the review here.

Launch party for Constantine Phipps' What You Want

Phipps, with wife Nicola Shulman

Last night Chelsea was simply heaving with literary types, for it was the launch of Constantine Phipps' third novel, What You Want, an epic poem about life, the universe & everything. I've reviewed it for The Spectator: the piece will appear soon.

It was a roisterous, champagne-filled, wonderful party, with guests spilling out into the garden, chattering and laughing and having the ballest of balls. 
 

Review of Nigel Williams' Unfaithfully Yours

I've always been a fan of Nigel Williams, so I was very pleased to review his new novel, Unfaithfully Yours, for the Financial Times. Here it is.

Launch of Philipp Meyer's The Son

To Soho, last night, in the heat, for olives, peanuts, rosé, and also for the launch of Philipp Meyer's The Son, a book that has been garnering impressive reviews in America and Australia. Meyer apparently spent years researching this sprawling Texan family drama, including going on tracking courses. Which is pretty cool. The book's definitely one to look out for. As I left, Meyer appeared to be practically drowning under female attention - those tracking courses must have paid off. Sometimes I wish that my novels required more research than, er, sitting on the sofa.

John Boyne's This House is Haunted: review

Mornin' all, I've reviewed John Boyne's new novel, This House is Haunted, for The Telegraph. Read it here.

Home Fires by Elizabeth Day: Party

Miss Elizabeth Day

To Lincoln's Inn Fields, for the launch of Elizabeth Day's novel, Home Fires - her second, and a lovely, moving read it is too. The party took place in an officer's mess - perhaps in homage to the military theme, Elizabeth Day was in a striking red dress - and was attended by various literary types (I got told off for having a copy of Wuthering Heights in my pocket, and the London Review of Books in the other), including biographer Andrew Lycett, and novelist Sadie Jones; also present was Molly Oldfield, whose book, The Secret Museum, is hotting up displays all over London.

Home Fires looks at grief and loss: it starts with the burial of the Unknown Soldier, seen from a little girl's perspective. It's written with great clarity and intelligence, and I suggest that you go out and buy it - although as Elizabeth herself said, "it's not a beach read." Go! Buy!

Jim Crace's Harvest: review

Hello there on this penultimate Februarial day: I've reviewed Jim Crace's new novel, Harvest, for The Telegraph. Digest it yourselves here.

First Novel by Nicholas Royle: A thrilling metafiction if ever there was one

Royle: meta-tastic

Hello all: I've reviewed Nicholas Royle's excellent First Novel (actually his seventh) for The Telegraph. Check it out here.

Patrick Leigh Fermor's The Violins of Saint Jacques

This is Patrick Leigh Fermor, who may well be described as legendary. I have just finished reading his only novel, The Violins of Saint Jacques, which is a lusty, dreamy, liquid thing; a tale of humour and humanity in an anachronistic society on a Caribbean island; here the Masques of the islanders mingle with the balls of the aristocrats; little boys dressed as wizards set deadly snakes free at parties; people live and love to the full, in a way that seems impossible now. Elopements, betrayals, forbidden desires and characters drawn so vividly they dance before your eyes long after you've closed its luscious pages.

Vainglory by Ronald Firbank: review

Ronald Firbank: orchidaceous

A champagne-tinged hello to you all: I've reviewed three novels by Ronald Firbank for The Observer. They are decidedly orchidaceous; somebody once described Fr Corvo's books as tyrianthine, which I think applies equally well to Firbank. He's an acquired taste, but once you've acquired it, there's much to enjoy. Read the review here.

Joy by Jonathan Lee: A Lawyer's Life

Jonathan Lee: Strong sophomore

Joy is Jonathan Lee's second novel, following on from Who is Mr Satoshi?, which saw an agoraphobic searching for clues in a cache of lost letters. Alienation was the order of the day; here, in Joy, the characters each inhabit their own peculiar bubble, but are connected in complex - and often devastating - ways.

Lee evokes the predatory, semi-psychotic atmosphere of life at a corporate law firm with gleeful vividness. He shows this world from varying perspectives - the titular Joy, a solicitor about to be "made up" (how significant those two little words sound) to partner, and who has decided that she wants to kill herself; Peter, a man with a selection of chips on his shoulder and an active sex life; Barbara, the secretary, complete with hip-problems and dreams of America; Dennis, Joy's rambling, professorial, older husband; and Sam, the obsessive compulsive gym attendant who likes counting and covertly watching his colleague, Jack.

Structurally, the book follows Joy in the third person as she goes about her last day, remembering the things that led to her decision - a lost nephew features prominently, as do the suicide of her father, her husband's deviant sex life, and the overwhelming stress levels of her job (defending an unscrupulous chicken factory). This main narrative is interspersed with sections of monologue, told to the unseen Dr Odd as the characters deal with Joy's fall (or jump).

Lee's writing is clear, as if lit by the fluorescent, constant lights of a law firm, and the darkness of his subject is pricked by little dots of often surreal humour - a lizard, a solicitor who likes to unzip under his desk. Paradoxically, it suggests that law firms have very little to do with truth - all the characters cloak themselves and each other in some way. Lee is an escaped lawyer himself, and the main thrust of the book concerns the deadening, stultifying effects of repetitive action whose only reward (and rare at that) is material. (There's a particularly effective "Make Law Fun" day at the office.) If the catalogue of horrors that beset Joy seem a little stretched, then it seems to work as a metaphor for the way that that sort of life can really cut you off from your family - talking to your children on speakerphone, seeing your partner once a week - and, crucially, from yourself.

This is a well-wrought, compelling novel that addresses the way we deal with work in an engaging and intelligent fashion. Lee is a fine temperature-taker of our psyches, and this book confirms his talents.

Anita Desai interview for The Telegraph

Hello chaps, I've interviewed the excellent novelist Anita Desai for The Telegraph. She has the softest, kindest voice of anyone I've ever had the pleasure of speaking to. She talks about art, nature, poetry and her life. The Artist of Disappearance, her latest work, is a collection of stories that weave into each other, reflect and refract light off each other, and is absorbing, mysterious and beautiful.



 

Philippa Gregory talks about her new YA novel, The Changeling

Toodle-pip, chaps: I've interviewed the lovely Philippa Gregory about her new Young Adult book, The Changeling, for The Daily Telegraph. I went up to Yarm to meet her in a country house hotel on a day that blazed with sunshine. We talked about witchcraft, werewolves, history and time. Check it out here, funsters.

 

The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall: review

Morrall: sweet

Hallloooo there. I've reviewed Clare Morrall's lovely The Roundabout Man for The Daily Telegraph - check it out, funsters.