It also offers the author a chance to reflect and portray the changes and shifts in society – from a midpoint place of what Leo calls this hideous century back to the waning Victorian era at the dawn of the 20th century.

The micro details of Leo’s life are thus set against the macro picture of the times.

One of the joys of reading novels set in the past is, to me, to gain a feel for what it was actually like to live then. Not a historical record but a real lived experience of the times.

And I’m not talking about truly historical novels set in Tudor times or the civil war or the French Revolution et al.

For these days, change is so rapid, so bewilderingly and frantically hectic, that simply slipping back 30 or so years to the mid 1990s will reveal to us a very different place to where we live now. How we live now.

Think of it:

No instant and perpetual connection with mobile phones for a start.

An absence of the internet to look up, check, verify (assuming the search and its findings are accurate!) dates and facts.

No internet shopping or checking bank balances, paying bills, transferring money at any time of the day or night from our own homes.

Our lives were, in fact, inevitably far less cluttered by such activities.

Tip back another 10 years to the mid 1980s – and another to the mid 1970s ….and yes, indeed, the past certainly feels like a foreign country. We did things very differently.

Dickens set some of his novels in what I call his ‘recent past.’

The Pickwick Papers, published in 1836, is set around 1827 to 1828. Barnaby Rudge, published in 1841, is set in 1780. Martin Chuzzlewit, written in monthly instalments between 1843 to 1844, appears to start somewhere around 1830 as there is a reference to the ‘new London Bridge’ which opened in 1831.

And of course novels such as Great Expectations and David Copperfield, encompass the tale of a protagonist who grows from childhood to adulthood, the latter aligning with Dickens’ present so there is an inevitable sweep across eras, allowing him to write with hindsight.

George Eliot’s Middlemarch, published in volumes between 1871 and 72, is set between 1829 to 32 and the personal lives and relationships of her characters – the micro details – are very clearly defined against the macro picture. The setting reflects a time of dramatic developments in politics, science and industrialisation and the characters’ reactions to such turmoil is often used by Eliot to portray aspects of them – for example, protagonists who welcome such change and reform with excitement are contrasted with those who hold negative and reactionary views . Writing some 40 years after the events means she is writing with the gift of hindsight and awareness of the longer term impact on society.

In my own very humble way, I have always set my novels in the recent past – whether that is in the now seemingly remote era of 1983 in The Odyssey of Lily Page or the dual time line of late 1960s and early 2000s of The Legacy of Mr Jarvis or the more recent ‘recent past’ of 2005-06 of Miller Street SW22.

And now with my fifth novel, I am digging far further back with my first truly historic novel in that I am writing of a time before I was alive – notably WW2 – and once that is finished, my sixth novel is likely to be set in WW1.

So what is the attraction of writing about the past where they do things differently ?

Well, yes – just that.

Just as I want to read fiction about lives in the past, to gain a sense of the recipe of the times, the warp and weft of the texture of daily life 50, 60, 70 or more years ago, I write about the past partly to examine its impact upon my life and the lives of others.

To understand.

The choices we made and the avenues we ventured down.

Even, perhaps, to forgive ourselves for certain directions taken and what subsequently might seem like wrong-turnings or regrettable decisions.

For we are, like it or not, very much defined by the era into which we are born, however much free will we think we possess.

And we ask too few questions when older family members are alive, lacking the curiosity or interest when young, so that writing novels set when our familial predecessors were living is a way of finding a link, getting to know them, connecting with the course and flavour of their experiences.

Or so it feels to me.

And apologies for finishing with a quote from T.S. Eliot of whom I know very little and probably understand less, but I do love the words which certainly speak to me:

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

The door never opened is a wonderful way of thinking of novelists embarking on the adventure and the creative process of telling a story …taking a step over the threshold of that door and inviting readers in!

The post The Pull of the Past … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

I have a large number and like nothing better than to waste time looking at the splendid glossy photos and scanning the ingredients.

Of course, most of the time, I never go on to cook the dish.

Or if I do, I end up adapting that ingredients list, exchanging the prescribed herb or spice or sauce for whatever I happen already to have lurking at the back of my cupboard or fridge.

Which is, with a bit of a stretch of the imagination (and after all, that’s what every writer has in abundance) a bit like writing a novel.

There are numerous ‘helpful’ articles, books, podcasts, manuals, courses, online sites et al giving out various recipes for writing a novel.

Not just that, but these days so many claim confidently to have the secrets to writing a best seller or an irresistible page-turner or a sure fire successful novel.

Whereas in truth the guidance on offer is simply one approach or method, a kind of stepping stone approach to what might or might not work for the aspiring author. For what might or might not appeal to the reading public.

For, like the experimental cook, it’s so often a case of trial and error, working out the route, the path, the recipe that works best for each individual writer. For each and every genre. Some authors like to plan meticulously, create spreadsheets, power points, possibly, for chapter contents and plot and character development. Others – and I belong in this second category – have a far more impulsive, intuitive and somewhat random approach.

But there are, surely, a few generalisations that can be made about writing novels.

Let’s call them, harking back to my cookery book analogy, the ingredients.

For a start, you can’t write a novel about Happiness.

About Contentment.

It’s too passive. Nothing is ever going to occur.

Sometimes a writer might appear to be suggesting a state of happiness in the main character, but there will, in fact, be a subtle suggestion that things are not quite as they seem.

Take Jane Austen’s eponymous heroine, Emma.

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

That word seems is the clue that Emma actually has an awful lot to learn before she acquires true happiness.

So if happiness is not going to work as a starting point for a novel, conflict or some sort of irresolution is needed – personal, internal or external – if the novel is to go anywhere.

And that’s rather the point, isn’t it? A story has to take the reader somewhere.

So Conflict heads our list of novel ingredients.

Then there’s the matter of Plot.

Even in the most lyrical and quietly understated novel, there has to be a plot of sorts.

And Plot is really action that has consequences. And Complications.

And really, that’s when the hard work starts for the novelist.

It’s easy to come up with some conflict, a few characters and a plot of some kind, but how to handle these elusive, slippery elements? How to blend, fold, beat and whip these parts into a satisfying dish?

Then there’s the matter of how much has taken place before the novel even starts.

The back story to a protagonist’s life, the illuminating flash backs and essential exposition to ground the reader in some sort of context.

Handling these ingredients so that the narrative does not unduly slow down, so that the reader is not bored or overstuffed but appropriately hooked and intrigued are demanding tasks.

Of course skilful writers do it so seamlessly that the reader is barely aware of being informed and guided to an understanding of what happened prior to page 1.

Charlotte Bronte manages immediately to let us know Jane’s situation in the Reed household at Gateshead. In fact, reported speech instantly spells out Jane’s inferior standing: She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance Jane tells us of Mrs Reed, followed by dialogue What does Bessie say I have done? And pathetic fallacy has already established the mood and used to reflect Jane’s unhappiness as a result of her dependent, orphan state: the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre and a rain so penetrating …

Of course first person novels do provide the author with a direct address to the reader which can be extremely useful in sharing key information. It seems natural for the first person protagonist to tell – like a conversation – thus getting over the awkwardness of shoving in essential back story.

But in a third person narrative other methods have to be found that are not too clunky or cloying, rendering those essential opening pages as unpalatable.

There might be some sort of preface (I use this technique in three of my novels) or the exchange of letters (Forster’s Howard’s End comes to mind) or even direct authorial intrusion a la George Eliot style (who would dare to do this in a contemporary novel …it’s rare these days!)

Or perhaps the writer simply enters the protagonist’s thoughts and reflections, their inner life and consciousness, as he or she casts back over events that have brought them to this point.

But not for too long. The energy of the novel must propel forward.

A soggy bottom, a solid texture or a fallen soufflé are not what the novelist is aiming for in those key opening pages – their function is to appetize, after all!

The post A Novel Recipe … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

That’s the idea, anyway.

Fiction sets out to create situations, scenarios and settings with which we, as readers, can identify, relate or at least imagine.

Yet in many ways, fiction is utterly unlike Real Life.

Take the turning points the author has to create and inject into the story to propel the plot on its way.

Those sudden realisations or revelations where the protagonist spontaneously becomes aware of something crucial or makes a life-changing decision.

It’s part of the plotting and pacing of a novel – a moment at which the author has to take control and head the narrative and characters into the downward straight towards some sort of conclusion and the final page.

It might take the form of a character realising a supressed love or equally an antipathy for another. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, for example. Jane and Mr Rochester.

Or there might be a poignant epiphany where the protagonist suddenly has a sense of revelation about the direction of their life.

In E.M.Forster’s Howard’s End Margaret Schlegel has a sudden and startling – both to her and the somewhat sceptical reader, it has to be said – discovery of her unexpected love for Mr Wilcox:

An immense joy came over her. It was indescribable…on leaving him, she realised that the central radiance had been love…waves of emotion broke, as if a tide of passion was flowing through the night air.

One of my favourite self discoveries or epiphanies is at the very end of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers as Paul (thinly veiled fictionalised version of Lawrence himself, of course)

But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city’s gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.

(and how perfect is that use of the adverb quickly to define his steadfast intention!)

But in Real Life, such discoveries are rarely so neatly confined to a moment, a carefully staged scene on a page in the manner of a novelist.

In fact, it’s only with the gift of hindsight, looking back down a tunnel of years that we unfictional mortals think in such a way.

It’s all in retrospect that we ponder such matters as:

There must have been a last time, a final occasion, when I sat with my small child at bedtime and read a story.

There must have been a last time, a final occasion, when same said small offspring wanted to hold my hand out in the street, have his tears wiped away with my kisses, held up his arms to be lifted high and embraced into the safety of mine.

Perhaps it’s just as well. The poignancy of these moments would be too much to bear if we realised them at the time of their occurrence.

Then there’s Love. Love in life and Love in fiction.

Of course there’s the whole matter of coup de foudre. Falling in love at first sight does inhabit the Real World rather than purely the fictional.

Or does it? Is it more a case of coup de lust or coup de convenience?

Not so much a turning point as a gradual and slow burn towards something more substantial?

In novels, characters have to be depicted as coming to conclusions.

They have to be described in a certain situation or place and some sort of inner dialogue has to be written to indicate this – and all within a matter of a page or two.

Whereas in life our busy and muddled lives rarely offer such carved out moments for us to see or think quite so clearly. We gradually swim our way a little blindly towards discoveries and decisions until we find it’s too late to turn back or change our minds.

So no wonder writing stories is such fun!

Controlling characters’ lives and destinations, having a clarity of thought and direction for them that the real world fails to offer us!

If only we could live in a fictional universe with such control over the timing and outcomes of our lives, it would all be so much more comfortable and rewarding!

In the meantime, clear tipping and turning points remain solely in the hands of the author – who really does require them to serve the needs of the novel!

The post TIPPING & TURNING POINTS … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

The historian and commentator on British social history, Juliet Gardener uses it when talking about fiction written immediately in the wake of historic events, the recounting of an age unclouded by nostalgia or hindsight.

And in recent months, my reading diet has been composed of fiction written around, in or immediately in the wake of WW2.

Initially, this was to serve as research for novel 5, my work in progress, (with a working title of By the Green of the Spring but that will no doubt change) but I have now found so much enjoyment from reading these authors that I’m beginning to spurn anything written later than half way through the 20th century.

There are so many wonderful writers and brilliant stories to discover and I fear that many may be neglected these days. There seems to be a kind of thirst to read books on prize lists, the latest bestsellers, books by authors being interviewed on Radio 4 or featured in papers or on podcasts.

And there seems no better way for sensing the mood of a particular time, the flavour of ordinary, domestic life in a certain phase or decade than by reading the fiction that was produced either in or just after – within touching distance, in fact, so fingertip history.

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s collection of short stories, English Climate: Wartime Stories, provides a delightfully entertaining read and all the stories were written and published between 1940 and 1946. This is domestic life during the war years. There is no mention of battles or theatres of war or second fronts or campaigns – but a great deal about jam that won’t set through inadequacy of sugar rations, the impossibility of making a successful omelette with dried eggs, the bossiness and petty squabbles between women on committees and parish councils.

There are also more complex issues addressed – the service man or woman home on leave who returns to different circumstances, who can no longer find their place in the household.

Molly Panter-Downes’ short story collection, Good Evening, Mrs Craven: the wartime stories is equally compelling through engaging with the Home Front side of the war. Here, again, are the stories that history books don’t concern themselves with – yet they are the human story – and a wonderful minefield for the contemporary writer wanting to find out the climate of those times.

Monica Dickens’ novels seem to be very overlooked these days. Yet again, I have found them so enjoyable with characters that leap off the page with conviction. Of course, as Charles Dickens’ Great Granddaughter, that’s probably no surprise. Many of her books were inspired by her personal experiences – as a nurse, in a munitions factory producing spitfires, in a newspaper office, as a home help – although she made clear that I did not take these jobs in order to write books – the books just came out of the experiences. Her novels capture so keenly for the contemporary reader what it was like being a woman in the 1930s, 40s and 50s – informal social history, if you like, in the guise of a novel.

Ivy Compton-Burnett is another writer that is well worth our attention. Born in 1884 and living until 1969, she is described in the edition I have of her novel A House and Its Head (picked up at a charity shop sale) as one of 20th century England’s most original and admired writers. She published 18 novels and was made a Dame shortly before her death – yet how many book groups and contemporary readers bother with her now? On the back of my edition, there’s a quote from a review describing her as One of the most original, hilarious and disturbing novelists of her generation. A House and Its Head is set in 1885 and was first published in 1935 – so again, we have fingertip history for Compton-Burnett was still within touching distance of the decade.

So next time you are trying to figure out a choice for a book group read or are scanning the shelves for something neither classic nor contemporary, why not give these wonderful authors a consideration?

You will, I promise you, be richly rewarded!

,

The post FINGERTIP HISTORY ….in fiction appeared first on Jude Hayland.

a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,

Further on in the wonderfully sharp, observant, amusing and perceptive A Room of One’s Own, which grew out of a lecture that the author had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928, Woolf clarifies:

five hundred a year …and rooms of our own.

Obviously, £500 a year was a considerable amount of money in 1928. According to my very brief and scant google search, it equates to the buying power of around £40,000 today. How many women in 1928 were in possession of such sums that they could call their own?

Precisely. Very, very few.

But what interests me more is the fact that Virginia Woolf apparently considered that it was only the lack of a room of her own and a tidy sum of money that prevented women becoming writers of fiction.

For in our current self-promoting, assertive, social media fuelled era, it seems to me that very different requirements, demands and priorities exist for the aspiring fiction writer.

For we live in a world where an online presence, brazen self-belief, frenetic networking and an eye and an ear perpetually alert to marketing opportunities divide and rule.

These, it appears, are the essential qualities and skills needed to secure writerly success and a recognition of sorts.

But what about talent, you may ask?

Well, yes, what indeed? But let’s leave that relatively insignificant matter aside.

Some time ago, I went to a talk given by a literary agent in which the startlingly young and coolly collected woman was asked what criteria she used in selecting authors to represent.

What was most crucial for her, she declared, before she had even read a word of any submitted manuscript, was to check out the author’s social media presence, frequency of engagement and number of followers.

We’ve clearly come a long way from the Bronte sisters submitting under pseudonyms from their remote Haworth parsonage or Jane Austen only admitting on the title pages of her novels that they were Written by A Lady.

And self-belief as a fiction writer is, I have found, extremely hard to acquire. After all, there are so many books! The shelves of every book shop in the country is crammed with them. Why should I spend my time – days, weeks, months and years – adding to that mass of invented words and consider anyone interested in reading them?

But daily I see on social media writers proclaiming the worth of their novel, asserting to be prize-winning authors and best sellers to boost the validity of their worth. So could I claim to be a prize-winning author because in my time, over the years, I have been a prize-winner in writing competitions, on various short lists and long lists – all of which, quite frankly, I find irrelevant and a little embarrassing to state when trying to promote my novels.

But perhaps I should be bolder.

Then there’s marketing and advertising on social media.

Virginia Woolf did not have to acquire complex computer skills, awareness and understanding of such matters as algorithms, a comprehensive grasp and ability to handle Amazon’s advertising potential and techniques.

A couple of years ago, I went to a conference in London on How to Market and Successfully Sell your Novels – or words to that effect. There were several seminars led by – you’ve guessed it – Multi-Award Winning and Selling Authors – and after three minutes of the first of these seminars, I was entirely lost.

It might as well have been delivered in an oral dialect of a forgotten tribe in Ancient Britain.

I did not possess the lingo. The lexis. The language. Explaining brain surgery to me would have seemed less elusive. I felt pathetic and very much a dinosaur with a 20th century mindset.

In other words, I was entirely out of my depth and immediately wanted to crawl away and admit ruefully that I was out of tune with the times.

I do not consider myself luddite in my attitudes. I am ever thankful for the ability to save work, copy and paste, print out on demand, delete et al. I am a very swift, touch typist.

But that’s where my abilities on the key board start and stop.

And how I envy those who can promote assertively and confidently, use the tools that the internet age provides for us, access and exploit the marketing potential of social media.

Authors are told that they need to think of themselves as A Brand. And to market and sell that brand – a kind of disassociation from the actual act of writing, a branch of PR, if you like.

But I find this near impossible – a burden. And want to crawl back to my silent study, my solitary cup of coffee and my desk to address only the blank page/screen.

To my very cosy and accommodating Room of My Own, in fact.

And if Virginia Woolf was alive today, she would find herself in a very different world where a room of one’s own and an unearned annual income of £500 – or even £40,000 a year – would be judged as entirely inadequate as requirements for writing fiction.

Algorithms, Virginia? Digital Marketing? Feeds on Insta, TikTok, Facebook? How many influencers are promoting your work, Virginia?

I thought not – and her ghost appears to show not a flicker of interest in any of them!

The post Just A Room of One’s Own …or so Virginia thought … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

It’s one of those phrases – narrative perspective, narrative voice, point of view, that attention is drawn to on creative writing courses.

The reader is obviously aware of a first person narrative as in Jane Eyre, for example, where the main character is clearly narrating the story and therefore viewing events solely and purely from their perspective.

But if the story is a third person narrative, no doubt the reader simply enjoys the tale and gives little thought for the author’s task and dilemma in considering – well, basically, which characters to view only externally and which to inhabit from inside their minds.

After all, a constantly shifting viewpoint can be extremely irritating and confusing.

Think of any favourite novels. Do you know every characters’ thoughts and desires? Do you know what they are all thinking and feeling throughout the story?

Absolutely not.

For the author, there has to be a selection process.

And that choice is often dictated by the plot.

After all, surprise and revelation are essential ingredients of any novel and if every character reveals their inner most thoughts and motives to the reader – well, there is little chance for a revelation to occur!

If we knew that Darcy actually had designs on Elizabeth from the start, that Wickham was constantly up to no good and that Charlotte fancied her chances with the odious Mr Collins, Pride and Prejudice would be a far less entertaining novel.

But we are privy to Elizabeth Bennet’s thoughts. Other characters, on the whole, are viewed externally and revealed through their dialogue. We are very clear about Mrs Bennet’s intentions through her dialogue, for example, and Jane Austen’s marvellous ability to convey character through dialogue and her narrator’s ironic voice complete the task.

Sometimes, a first person narrative is given to a minor rather than a central character. It is curious, in this case, that the author has chosen to avoid the obvious of giving control to the main protagonist. The Great Gatsby, for example, gives the job of first person narrator to Nick Carraway who is on the margins of the main action rather than centrally involved in it. This means that he can comment with some sense of distance and even judgement.

Of course there’s always the problem – or use, depending on whether we see this from the author or the reader’s perspective – of the unreliable narrator. Is the reader to trust what the first person voice is telling us about events and other characters? On the other hand, a narrator like Nick can offer the reader more nuance on an event as when Gatsby meets Daisy again for the first time in years in a meeting engineered by Nick:

As I went to say goodbye, I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! …There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.

A first person narrative can seem more personal to the reader – as if the story is being shared specifically with that reader. Here, it’s Nick’s interpretation of Gatsby’s face as displaying bewilderment – a view which might be right or wrong – whereas in a third person narrative it would be expressed as fact rather than opinion – An expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face – reads as definitive. And that phrase colossal vitality of his illusion – well, it tells us so much and is so poignant. It’s as if Nick is saying to the reader we all build people up in excess of their worth!

Back to third person narratives.

When I was writing my fourth novel, The Odyssey of Lily Page, I was actually at least a third of the way through before I consciously realised that I could only be in Lily’s head and not roam into the thoughts of the other key protagonists since …well, without giving the plot away, it was essential that should happen – the story and its resolution simply wouldn’t work otherwise!

So it’s not just first person narratives that limit the freedom of the author to roam freely between different mindsets and inner feelings.

Third person, omniscient narratives also require choice.

Plays are another thing altogether, of course. And Shakespeare uses the great tool of the soliloquy when he wants the audience to hear direct from the character.

But that’s for another discussion, another blog post!

In the meantime, getting close to halfway through writing my fifth novel, I am tangling with the idea of whether seeing events through the viewpoint of two characters – Ralph and Harriet – is sufficient. Effective.

Or whether, in fact, I need to trespass into the minds of Connie or Edith or Edmund or Florence or …..

A decision needs to be made before I progress any further!

So next time you are engrossed in a novel that has a third person narration, stop and think about which characters you know from inside – their thoughts and feelings – rather than purely their actions and dialogue.

It might surprise you how few, in fact, the author has decided to allow your access!

The post WHOSE POINT IS IT, ANYWAY? appeared first on Jude Hayland.

Not my words but those of Thomas Hardy.

And I certainly agree with the sentiment.

In fact, the sheer absurdity of how swiftly time goes – not just the days and weeks and months but the years. The decades.

How is it possible, for example, that our children are no longer babes in arms, toddlers, tentative five year olds starting their first term at school? It is such a cliche to talk about how fleeting time is but its cliche status simply confirms its truth.

Growing up, listening to parents talking about their youth, I had always assumed that the time must have felt so very distant to them.

Belonging to bygone eras, ghostly and indistinct.

How wrong I was.

Now I know that all those memories, events, occasions feel in close touching distance.

As if with ease we could step back into one of our school days, let alone those of our children.

Another quote for you and this one from 19th century American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

A lovely image, somehow – the shadow of the past hovering and trailing emotions and memories.

Yet the absurdity of the speed of one’s life still nags. Still bewilders and disturbs.

But the wonderful thing about novels and their characters is that they are ageless.

Fixed and unaffected by the passing of time.

Indeed, the men and women we meet and get to know on the pages of novels are still, fixed entities that we can rely on finding when we return to a particular book.

We might leave protagonists poised on the start of a new life – marriage if it’s a Jane Austen novel – but for the reader they remain on the starting blocks and it’s a case of Age will not weary them.

19th century novels have neat and rounded endings, of course. We are aware of the fate and prospects for the heroes and heroines.

Unless you are reading Great Expectations for which Charles Dickens wrote two endings, his initial being exchanged for something more upbeat and optimistic prior to publication.

In his original, there is no likelihood for Pip of a union with Estella. Pip sees her in a carriage in Piccadilly, a married woman living with a doctor after the death of her first husband, the dastardly, abusive Bentley Drummle and they part forever:

I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for in her face and in her voice and in her touch she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.

The amended ending, however, allows us a sentimental picture of their future together:

the evening mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

Which would readers prefer today? The original version, no doubt, the bitter-sweet truth of it appeals to a modern sensibility. Whereas the Victorians clearly wanted their Happy Ever After ending so Dickens, ever a man to please the market, obliged.

But it is undoubtedly one of the endless joys of reading.

We may have changed, time adding its signifiers in facial lines and bodily complaints, but our book shelves still hold on to the moment of composition. Of creation.

And there’s the added bonus of picking up a novel read or even endlessly re-read in the past: it hooks us to a moment in our own lives when we chose that particular author and devoted hours to reading their work.

In a first flat or house, a favoured cafe, on a particular holiday, during a bout of illness or on a long journey: our books trawl with them not just delightfully fixed characters unaffected by the passing of time but also our own memories. They hook us to a time and a place.

And, until someone invents a way of stalling time and giving us back those spent and unspent years, it’s really the best that we can do!

The post Time Changes Everything … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

The article claimed that this was also the affliction of 19th century novelists who created too many diversions in their narratives.

The contemporary reader, evidently, has no time for such saggy centres and wants only to progress at lightening speed onto the next page. Our attention span is very limited these days, it claimed, and any author worth his or her salt will appreciate this and move their fiction at a pace that does not allow for any pause or contemplation or – dare I say it – interesting side note.

We have little time, our lives are too busy, getting and spending and generally doing to have leisurely moments to read at a moderate pace. Speedy consumption is all.

Well, yes.

And no.

Actually no.

Of course television has had a massive impact on our expectations of cliff-hangers and fast paced action resolving a narrative swiftly and climactically.

But the idea that we, well and comfortably lodged in the 21st century as we are, have less time for reading than our 19th and early 20th century counterparts is clearly absurd.

Think of the average woman a century or more ago- we are not talking aristocracy with a retinue of servants- in her Victorian, Edwardian or pre-war terrace house, with daily duties such as fires to light, three cooked meals to prepare (no swift cheese sandwich and smoothie on the hoof served family members for lunch in those days) dusting, cleaning, washing, darning, knitting, sewing – all without modern appliances. The notion that she had more time for a quiet read than today’s equivalent simply does not make sense.

To be honest, I found the literary agency’s post somewhat depressing – and bewildering – since 19th century writers, so condemned by this piece, seemed to have done rather well out of their so called saggy centres and certainly their diverting deliberations.

Dickens for a start.

George Eliot for another.

And Charlotte Bronte seems quite fond of a philosophical or back story diversion when it suits and Jane Eyre appears to have stood the test of time.

The term ‘page turner’ has always irritated me as it seems to reduce an author to a production line, packing and packaging a commodity for instant consumption.

Just as the review claim of a brilliant story – read it in one evening! sends chills rather than thrills down my spine.

I mean, how long does it take to write a novel?

The thought that someone can consume something that has taken months or years to write seems depressing rather than something to celebrate.

Of course genres vary.

A police procedural, crime or mystery novel might require that ‘page-turning’ ingredient to propel the narrative.

But there are a great many other genres for whom such speed would be entirely inappropriate.

And surely the idea of the ‘red herring’ drives many dramatic tale of murder, intrigue or espionage – that has to be considered a diversion but with a definite purpose attached to it.

Then there’s character-driven fiction where back stories can contribute so much to the complexity of a protagonist. It might not make for a page-turning experience if we read of what happened to a character twenty, thirty or forty years before the start of the novel, but it will help build the conviction of the character and engage the reader’s empathy and often serve as essential material for the story.

Narrative drive is, of course, important.

But character-driven novels need the reader to stop and consider. To admire the scenery, contemplate the setting, wonder about the inner workings of the protagonist’s mind.

And, dare I say it, observe the language and skill of the author.

So it seems to me that whilst some novels are ‘page-turners,’ and need to dispense with diversion, others are utterly different. And not all novels should be placed in the same streamlined basket.

It’s a bit like comparing an instant or take-away meal with a laboriously prepared, chopped, measured and slowly braised one.

One brings instant gratification and the other the satisfaction of a slowly contemplated and pursued path towards a denouement.

So I’d like to take to task this literary agency, instructing all aspiring novelists, regardless of genre, to speed their narratives and dispense with diverting delicacies which tax the reader’s limited attention span.

We don’t all choose to live lives at quite such frenetic speeds without a moment to pause over a perfect phrase, a poignant observation.

And after all, life itself is full of diversions and deviations, layers and dimensions – and the novel sets out to imitate life and the human experience- in all its messy and marvellous complications and confusions!

The post Saggy Centres or Delicious Diversions …? appeared first on Jude Hayland.

Something apparently unexpected. Original.

Of course, they were ahead of their time.

But it has struck me recently, hearing the phrase used on the radio a couple of weeks ago, how absurd and inappropriate it is.

After all, we are all of our time. Whatever Our Time means.

Either reflective of it or in retaliation. We are not ahead of it.

The conversation that made me think about the phrase was on Woman’s Hour, discussing the production of Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes currently on at London’s National Theatre – which I am going to see with my childhood/adolescent/adult/forever friend, Carol. (I am avoiding the use of that damning term oldest friend!)

We both loved Noel Streatfeild’s books and must have read Ballet Shoes, a novel written in the 1930s, numerous times in our respective reading youths.

Anyway, back to the conversation on Woman’s Hour about the book and the production. The three girls that feature in the story – orphans Pauline, Petrova and Posy who are given the surname of Fossil – were described by the director and one of the actors as ahead of their time with their strong sense of ambition. Streatfeild tells us that the girls will:

try to put our name into history books, because it’s our very own and nobody can say it’s because of our grandfathers and we vow to try and earn money for Garnie until Gum comes home.

The director and actor went on to say how unusual this was, for three girls in the 1930s to have such desire and claimed (totally inaccurately, of course) that this was in an era that was pre-feminism of any kind.

What about the suffragettes and suffragists? I said aloud to the radio that did not reply.

What about all those writers of the 19th century? I spoke to the kitchen walls. The Brontes in their Haworth parsonage determined to get published? Jane Austen writing discreetly in her Hampshire drawing room? George Eliot defying social convention by living openly with a man to whom she was not married? Charlotte Perkins Gilman in The Yellow Wallpaper?

(No answer from the radio or my kitchen walls.)

And beyond the world of creativity it’s easy to think of names such as Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, Marie Stopes, Nancy Astor – I could go on all day.

Were they all living lives that were ahead of their time? Or simply living IN that time and reacting to the constrictions or the opportunities, the barriers or the avenues that they saw and chose to surmount and venture?

Because it’s surely the very recipe of an era that shapes people – it’s the place from where people peer out to see what to change or develop. What to achieve.

People like fictional Pauline, Petrova and Posy from Ballet Shoes.

I am currently reading Fidelity by an american writer, Susan Glaspell.

First published in England in 1924, but written in 1915, this is certainly a novel that could attract the inappropriate ahead of its time label.

But clearly not. Susan Glaspell exposes the limitations of life in a Midwestern town for women and essentially asks questions about fidelity in its broadest sense. There is a revealing conversation between Ruth, the protagonist who propels the plot, and her friend Annie:

‘Romantic love is a wonderful thing – while it lasts. Sometimes it opens up to another sort of love – and to companionship. With me – it didn’t.’

Annie goes on to explain how she has survived in her barren marriage:

It’s what we think that counts, Ruth. It’s what we feel. It’s what we are. Nobody holds my thoughts. They travel as far as they themselves have power to travel. They bring me whatever they can bring me – and I shut nothing out. I’m not afraid!

Annie shares with Ruth the books she is reading – and this is 1915 – and Ruth learns that:

there were new poets in the world; there were bold new thinkers; there was an amazing new art; science was reinterpreting the world and workers and women were setting themselves free. Everywhere the old pattern was being shot through with new ideas.

Evidently, Susan Glaspell’s book was indifferently received when first published – no doubt considered too ahead of its time. Yet it is so patently of its time, exploring ideas and thoughts prevalent in society in the first decades of the 20th century.

So when I go to see Ballet Shoes next week, I will consider the heroines Pauline, Petrova and Posy as representative and reflective of their author’s thoughts and ideas as she lived her life – Streatfeild was a Christmas Eve baby born in 1895 – rather than three aberrant creatures belonging to some future decade.

And let’s ban that irritating phrase of ahead of their time!

Happy New Year and here’s to lots of reading in 2025!

The post OF THEIR TIME …. appeared first on Jude Hayland.

And I don’t just mean those huge universal themes to be found in Shakespeare – the perils of excessive ambition or jealousy or pride – the fatal flaws of the tragic hero.

What I am talking about is the delight that can be felt when a character’s emotions strike such a familiar chord that you long to meet said protagonist for a coffee and chat over matters heart to heart.

I have just finished reading Dorothy Whipple’s novel They Knew Mr Knight, published in 1934. I have only discovered this novelist, reissued and published by Persephone Books, in recent years and have loved every title of hers that I have so far read. Whipple may be writing about characters and lives lived in the first half of the 20th century, but their depiction is utterly relatable and true.

She wrote what is often described – somewhat disparagingly, I feel – as domestic fiction and no doubt fell into obscurity for a while partly for that reason. There are no modernist tricks in her writing. Instead, she provides her readers with a straight-forward narration about people attempting to live ordinary and peaceful lives who come into conflict with some antagonist or other that threatens the stability of a contented existence.

I found myself, while reading They Knew Mr Knight, constantly saying out loud, Yes! Exactly! That’s just how it is! How life is!

Take this passage about Ruth, a young woman who is attempting to write a novel:

She took up her pen and bowed herself over the exercise book. Nobody knew what hard work it was to write a novel. Over and over again, she quailed before the task. If she could feel it was good, she could have done it easily, she thought. But the gap between what she wanted to say and what she said seemed to be unbridgeable. The struggle was endless. She despaired every night, but every morning, she hoped again.

Exactly! Every writer surely can identify with this!

Then there is Whipple’s understanding of motherhood.

Celia, the mother of a son and two daughters in the novel, expresses feelings about her children that are immediately identifiable. When her oldest child, Douglas, is away at university we are told that:

His intention was good. He meant to console her, but he made her sad. He would come to visit her now and then, but their life together was really coming to an end. What a short time you have your children, Celia thought, with sudden pain.

The novel might be set over 90 years ago, but the emotion is every present.

And how many mothers of adult children can identify with the following, when Douglas has had his heart broken by his first love and returns to the family home, unhappy yet unreachable?

Dismissed, Celia went away. She stood about the house, waiting for some sign from his bedroom. How much easier it was, she thought, when they were little. She had to be so cautious with them now. She spent a miserable afternoon by herself in the drawing room, worrying about him, wondering if he was cold or hungry and not daring to go and ask. Oh why must they grow up and get these troubles they wouldn’t let you help with?

There is a sense of dramatic irony somehow with reading so many novels – as I tend to do these days – set in the earlier years of the 20th century and I find myself worrying about what will happen to the characters during the First or Second World Wars. Hindsight means there’s an inevitable awareness of what came next of which the protagonists on the final pages of the novel remain ignorant. Who survived, who perished?

And it proves the strength of the authors’ skills, their ability to create a wholly believable cast of characters, that my imagination takes me to such thoughts.

So I am championing the so-called ‘domestic’ novel!

It seems to me such novels are important for their ability to portray those ‘ordinary’ lives that many us can identify with – finding consolation and comfort in seeing our anxieties and feelings experienced by protagonists across the decades. Our lives might be entirely contrary in a material sense to those of close on a hundred years ago, but our core concerns and values can be very close.

I just wish I could ring up Celia Blake from They Knew Mr Knight or better still, pop round to see her and have a companionable chat, woman to woman, over a pot of tea or glass of wine!

The post Consolation and Comfort in Fiction … appeared first on Jude Hayland.