All Things Bookish....

Donna Tartt in conversation with Kirsty Wark– Tuesday 12th November St James Church, Piccadilly

The Goldfinch arrived on UK shores on the 22nd October and the loyal (and patient) fans of Donna Tartt flocked to purchase it and submerge themselves into the rich all-consuming narrative they've come to know and love with her work. I would have joined them however I am still waiting for my deluxe signed and numbered copy to be dispatched, let alone delivered (thank you WHSmith for extending my waiting time even further!).

And so I attended Tartt's first London event in 11 years in the beautiful setting of St James Church, Piccadilly in the desperate hope that no spoilers would be leaked. Unfortunately there were a couple and a few heads were shaken in the audience accompanied by a reverberation of disappointed mutters.

Much has been written in the press already about the novel and the painting that inspired it, along with the artist responsible for its creation. I wanted to understand more about the writer herself and specifically her writing process and influences.

Tartt has been described by the press in the terms ’reclusive’, ’secretive’ and ’a precocious sprite’, the latter being my personal favourite. Kirsty Wark who carried out an interview as part of the event vehemently disagreed with the former term and Tartt concurred, offering her lack of appearances at the standard literary events as the reason for earning this reputation. She went on to say how she is very much a public person, writing anywhere and everywhere – on a bus, in the park, in the New York Public Library – she sees herself as more of a "hermit about town". But I must admit that after the event I did question how much more she really revealed about herself and her writing practices.

Her latest novel has taken an incredible 10 years to complete. Tartt explained why the novel writing process takes so long, likening the procedure to “painting a wall size mural using a brush the size of an eyelash”. The idea for The Goldfinch came way back whilst on the promotional tour for her debut novel The Secret History and it was captured in one of her numerous notebooks that are constantly being compiled. The notebooks themselves are as disjointed as an artist’s sketchbook with all sorts of thoughts and observations which may or may not eventually make it into a book. Some notes that were captured around 20 years ago in Amsterdam finally made it into the end of The Goldfinch.

Tartt accepts that 10 years is a long time to work on a novel, but experiences it in terms of a sea journey. There are bad days when the boat gets pushed around, but you must have faith that you will eventually get to shore. She sees no fun in writing quickly and believes strongly that a novel written in haste will be no fun for the reader either. 

Saying goodbye to characters that have spent such a long time in her life is sad, but they tend to eventually leave her around 6 months after a book is released. By that point she will be developing a new set of characters for the next book. Stopping herself from noting down something that might be relevant to Theo, the main character and narrator of her latest novel, has been hard. Even here in London she has had to stop and remind herself that he has been completed now. 

She spoke of an eight month detour that she took whilst completing The Goldfinch, evaluating it as a passage she had to go through to get to the right place. Comparing it to a scientist who has to go through failures before getting to where they need to be. That part of the draft novel that never made the final cut was never shown to an editor. She knew it wasn't right and after trying to fix it for a long time it was finally discarded. The narrative developed won’t be used for a later book, but it wasn't at all wasted and does serve as what she described as "invisible underpinning" to this book.

Writing in solitude is very hard and she does consult others for their feedback on passages of her work prior to release. These people tend to be friends and common readers that will tell her the truth rather than professional writers. Her mother is a particularly good person to read these to as she apparently has a total inability to conceal boredom in any situation – family gatherings and social situations included!

Her personal reading choices are very carefully selected. She reads what she wants to read and looks forward to her reading time as a reward at the end of a long day of writing. Alongside novels poetry might also be chosen with the likes of poets such as Ezra Pound so that some nights she goes to sleep dreaming of China.

Dickens has been a huge influence to her, having read his work as a child without even understanding it and returning as an adult to revel in the complexity he presented. 

“There is nothing that Dickens doesn't do well; suspense, character, beautiful metaphor, sentence construction…”


Although there has been talk of converting The Secret History into a film it seems highly unlikely that or any other of her books will appear on the big screen. She is very protective of her characters, and rightly so I would agree. She lamented that “to attach a face to a character, you lose it psychologically”.


And so we must accept that all her beautifully complex characters and their remarkably intricate stories are bound to the page and held captive in our imaginations long after we close the book. And we’ll wait patiently again, no doubt, for her next offering in however many years from now. In the meantime I'm inspired to pick up The Secret History again whilst I await the arrival of my Goldfinch. 

“Nice boys don’t ask that question”.

But thankfully Dan Brown continues to probe the realms of science and religion searching out which is true; if indeed only one can be, whilst encouraging us to debate them with an open mind.

Dan Brown entering the Freemason's Hall

On Tuesday 21^st May Dan Brown appeared at the Freemason’s Hall in London to discuss his life as a writer, what inspires and influences him and a little about his new novel, already set to be this year’s bestseller ‘Inferno’. He talked candidly about his upbringing and the impact the Da Vinci Code had on him and how he was perceived.

Dan wrote his first book at the age of 5 entitled ‘The Giraffe, the Pig and the Pants on Fire’ which he dictated and his mother transcribed.  He completes the holy trinity of a creative set of children – his brother is a musician and his sister is an artist. He was brought up in a household where science and religion battled both vying to be the invaluable source where we should find the truth. His mother was a church organist who also led the choir, whilst his father was a maths teacher and textbook author. He was brought up to believe that Christianity was fact.

He would accompany his mother to church whilst the choir practised and sung their hymns whilst Dan tucked into the Doughnuts that were the highlight of the evening for him.  His father would find maths everywhere. A family visit to a pizza parlour would be an opportunity to bring up the subject of arcs and circles and calculate which deal was better value – one large pizza or two smaller ones. Together Dan and his father would discuss topics like space, the universe and infinity.

At the age of 13 he started to discover contradictions within this world of science vs religion; the Big Bang vs the Seven Days of Creation; Evolution vs Adam and Eve. This led him to ask a priest which was the truth – science or religion. To which the priest replied, “Nice boys don’t ask that question”.

Over time Dan started to realise that science and religion are partners, just two different languages trying to tell the same story. Gradually man has discovered the truth behind why hail falls from the sky, what causes thunder and lightning. Where once the God of the gaps answered these questions, we now have the scientific explanations behind their occurrences and can place figures such as Thor firmly in the realm of mythology.

In The Da Vinci Code Dan wanted to explore what it would be like if Jesus Christ was not literally the son of god but an ordinary man like us. Interestingly, although the press chose to promote the criticisms he received from some areas of the church Dan stated that 90% of the correspondence he received from clerics and a number of nuns thanked him for bringing the subject into the mainstream, grabbing people’s attention and getting them talking about and exploring the bible. And this was his intention – to get people talking about these subjects openly.

Transporting the novel to the big screen was a very big decision to make. As a passionate reader he knew the magic of books and their ability to become many things to many people. Every reader paints their own version of the characters and holds those them very personally. Upon accompanying the crew on the film set Dan discovered how very different it was to create a movie as opposed to creating a book. A novelist never needs to wait for the perfect sunset.

He didn’t want to spoil his latest book by talking about the plot too much as it had only been released a week previously to the event. Most of the audience probably hadn’t finished it – some may not have started as the ticket came with a free copy of the book upon arrival. Dan knew for around a decade that he wanted to write Inferno. No other book apart from the bible had inspired so much art and creativity. So he talked around these 3 ideas that were central to the novel, ithout giving too much away:

Contrapasso – an Italian word meaning to suffer the opposite. This is evident throughout Dante’s Inferno as the punishments appear as the opposite of the sins – darkly imagined by the artist Gustave Doré who’s work is prominent in the book. An example being that those who believed they were fortune tellers had their head reaffixed backwards during their journey to Hell.

H+ – this is a rapidly growing philosophy of tranhumanism. It is an intellectual movement that looks at using technology to transform ourselves and the morality surrounding these ideas. It is something that has already started with key breakthroughs such as vaccinations and treatments for diseases that would previously have killed large numbers of people. The Nazis explored genetic selection and the possibility of breeding a super-race. Dan believes that this concept be an issue that we will all have to face in the very near future – not in 30 years time, but in as little as 3 years time as huge advances are made in medicine.

Mathusian – derived from the name of the Reverand Thomas Robert  Mathus, a cleric and scholar. He argued for his theory on how population growth would ultimately be our downfall. There will simply be too many people on the planet in need of resources which are scarce. This idea can be seen as a problem of the future. At the moment we believe that depleting fossil fuels and scarcity of clean drinking water are the big issues, but ultimately Mathus would argue that there were too many people in need of them.

In terms of what next, Dan already knows what he is going to write and he indicated that Robert Langdon would again feature. But he never talks about what he is currently writing. When carrying out his research he even goes to places and views artifacts that are of no relevance to his novel just to throw people of the scent!

Shark Trouble? 

Getting into the cage...

Peter Benchley created one of the best monsters ever when he penned the novel Jaws. Steven Spielberg adapted that story and brought the monster alive with a blockbuster film that spun off 3 sequels of varying success. The shark might have been rubber and the effects may now look extremely dated, but the sheer terror that the film evoked of the predatory beast feeding on the locals and holiday makers of Amity Island stayed with the audience long after they had left the screen.

But the story was fiction and Benchley spent the rest of his days trying to educate people on that point. Unfortunately his story was taken as fact and the shark has been misunderstood, feared and hunted ever since. His book 'Shark Trouble' is a fascinating read about Benchley's experiences with sharks. It's a real education into their important role in our waters. The book is full of facts and stories of his encounters with sharks over the years, including the making of Jaws. Possibly the most powerful part of the book is the short story he includes to illustrate why sharks are essential to the balance of marine life and all those who live and prosper from coastal life. It's called 'The Day All The Sharks Died' and it's no more than 10 pages long, but is a really simple explanation of the important role that sharks play.

And if like me you start to really admire these animals and want to get even closer then you can get in a cage alongside them at the London Aquarium. At present the aquarium has 15 sharks ranging from the bottom dwelling Guitar Shark (which is a bit of a cross between a shark and a ray) to Black Tipped Sharks, Nurse Sharks and the ferocious looking Sand Tiger Sharks. These unfortunate beasts aren't able to close their mouths due to their large amount of teeth so they definitely look the most frightening. The sharks are well fed so they aren't interested in feasting upon you. But they are curious and will come right up alongside the cage and hold eye contact.

These animals are seriously endangered. They sit at the top of the food chain so have no natural predator, which means that we have become their only threat. And that threat takes a variety of forms; we hunt and kill them either for sport or for their fins, creating keepsakes from their teeth that get made into jewellery; we trap them in nets that are supposed to keep sharks away from the beaches, so they struggle and die. 

Maybe they aren't as attractive as the Giant Panda or Bengal Tiger, fellow endangered species, but they do equally deserve our protection. It is imperative that we keep the natural healthy balance upon which our oceans thrive. Nothing exists on its own, everything around us works together to keep a healthy planet.

The London Aquarium are donating £5 out of every ticket they sell to The Shark Trust, which is a great charity I have been supporting for the last few years. It aims to advance the worldwide conservation of sharks through science, education, influence and action (www.sharktrust.org).

So please consider taking the plunge yourself, or gifting the snorkelling experience to others and get to know these creatures better. They are incredible creatures and need all the help they can get to survive.

Crime in the Court at Goldsboro Books 

- 3rd July 2012

I met Ben Aaronovitch this week at 'Crime in the Court', an event organised by Goldsboro Books as part of the celebration of Independent Booksellers week. 
Having read both ‘Rivers Of London’ and ‘Moon Over Soho’ (see 2012 Books in Brief), I picked up a signed copy of the latest installment of Peter Grant’s developing career – ‘Whispers Underground’ - and had a chat with the author about the books. 
There isn't a limit to how many of these will be written, his plan is keep going for as long as he can come up with new ideas. And he’ll continue until he can buy himself a yacht (he said grinning!). Not a small yacht, but a large luxurious yacht. A James Bond style yacht.

The next book in the series will be called ‘Broken Homes’ which I questioned him on given that it didn't seem to fit with the titles so far. He assured me that it would all make sense eventually, so I look forward to reading the latest book to see if there are any hidden clues in there.

We talked about the possibility of the books making it onto the big screen or being adapted as a TV series. He confirmed that there were talks taking place, but he is very reluctant to committing to any offers, as he is worried about the quality of the production (and in his words he doesn’t want them to “screw it up”). It is understandable given the popularity of these novels. People have really taken Peter Grant, the cast of surrounding characters and the mysterious Folly to heart and it would be a great shame for his writing to be diluted - there is a risk that any production could unintentionally lose the magic!

Alison Weir at Sutton Library - 26th June 2012
Once again Alison Weir gave a fantastic talk at Sutton Library, this time with the focus on her latest novel 'A Dangerous Inheritance'. She shared some interesting insights with the audience and led a lively question and answer session at the end.

She revealed that the novel was originally entitled “Innocent Blood” until her publisher pointed out that P.D. James already had a publication of that name and so it was changed. However the idea of blood - royal blood - running through the veins of the leading female protagonists is a key theme throughout the book.

Alison explained that she is very conscious of language when writing fiction. Writing in pure Tudor English would alienate the majority of readers and so she opts for plain modern idioms in place of Tudor references. She also highlighted the fact that we don’t really know how they actually spoke, we only have evidence of their written word. She has incorporated their written correspondence into some of the face to face exchanges that take part in the book in order to represent her characters as accurately as possible.

The central story revolves around Catherine Grey (sister to the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey) and the events that ensue following her secret marriage to Edward Seymour and subsequent pregnancy, which was a dangerous threat to the throne. Alison adheres to the facts as much as possible, but weaves a supernatural element into the book which involves the two Princes in the Tower. Strange voices in the night call to her in the Tower but are they the ghostly cries of two boys murdered some years earlier? Or is someone playing on Catherine's vulnerability in a plot to frighten her, or cause a miscarriage?

The discussion at the end of her talk raised the question of what really happened to the two Princes and Alison still believes (as covered in one of her previous history books) that they were murdered - although she keeps an open mind.

The remains that were uncovered in 1674 in a chest when part of the building was being demolished revealed bone, rag and velvet - a material so expensive that it was restricted to the use of only the highest ranks. In 1933 the bone fragments were analysed and although they didn't have the ability to determine the sex of the bones, the age was consistent with the time around when they are believed to have died (around 1483). They were discovered at the bottom of a staircase exactly where Thomas More had documented they would be.
Intriguingly Alison mentioned that Prince Charles is keen to exhume the bones and carry out further tests now that science has developed new examination technologies that could now reveal further details. However it needs permission from the reigning monarch, and the Queen will not allow it to take place.

But the Princes aren’t the only children to mysteriously disappear in the Tower. During Henry VIII's lifetime Henry Pole went into the Tower with the rest of his family but he never came out! Rumours circulated that he probably starved to death, but we shall never really know.

'A Dangerous Inheritance' was originally 642 pages long, but the publisher advised that it should be reduced by 140 pages as the length would increase the price of the book, which might affect sales in the current economic climate. Alison assured us that all sections that were cropped out can be found on her website, so nothing has been lost.

The recent change in law which now gives sons and daughters equal rights to the throne has inspired Alison and her fellow ’History Girls’ (Kate Williams, Sarah Gristwood and Tracy Borman) to collaborate on a new project exploring the ’Lost Queens’. The book will cover the girls through history who didn't make it to the throne, due to the previous succession laws dating back more than 300 years which decreed the monarch’s first born male as the heir.

In the meantime Alison’s latest novel is already on my ever growing list of books to read and after such an inspiring talk I hope to get at it very soon.




21st May 2012 - I managed to get a signed copy of Tom Daley's first official memoir 'My Story' when he popped into Waterstones Piccadilly branch - on his 18th Birthday! Fingers crossed he bags some medals in the Olympics and the book becomes a nice investment!