SIGNS OF THINGS TO COME

Professor Gloom never fails to surprise me. In between the hours spent deciphering the mysteries of the universe (and those of bridge and golf) he reads murder mysteries and Georgette Heyer historical romances. These I am accustomed to, but last week's book was Just Another Dead Boy by Kelly McCaughrain. It's a Romeo and Juliet-style Young Adult novel full of 'that heady cocktail of hormones, life force and jaded ennui' so typical of youth. And so untypical of septuagenarians. Apart from the ennui, that is.

Now, Kelly is an exceptional writer, who regards Gloom as her own tame astrophysicist when she needs scientific advice, but I wouldn't have expected him to give her book more than a passing glance. Instead of which, he was hooked. He even came along to a Belfast Book Festival event, chaired by Children's Writing Fellow Shirley Anne McMillan, which featured four YA writers with new books: Kelly, Sue Divin (Runaway Road) Jenny Ireland (French Kisses) - all of them award-winning writers - and Stephen Daly, whose first novel The Last Death Poet I also enjoyed - to my own great surprise.

The book festival took place at the Crescent Art Centre (which never fails to deliver extremely well-run programmes of events) and Belfast's much-loved No Alibis bookshop ran a pop-up bookstore in the foyer. Of course, the island of Ireland has always been famous for literary talent, but Northern Ireland punches above it's weight, and there were an encouraging number of local authors on display. Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, Louise Kennedy, Bernie McGill: they're all wonderful short story writers as well as novelists. But it's the YA writers who seem to be stealing the show right now, and there are others like Sheena Wilkinson and Angeline King whose books I've also enjoyed - again, to my surprise.

The book I've most enjoyed recently though, is Donal Ryan's wonderful 'Heart, be at Peace', and I have Maggie O'Farrell's 'Land' waiting. I also recently discovered someone entirely new: Sofka Zinovieff. I'd heard her interviewed on BBC Radio 3's Private Passions, Michael Berkeley's music programme that regularly throws up memorable guests, and I was so engaged by her (and her Greek connections) that I got hold of her novel Putney. It turned out to be an engrossing, and in many ways surprising, read. I'm very much looking forward to reading The House on Paradise Street next.

I'm also looking forward to Gabriel's Moon. Like me, William Boyd is in his seventies, and has African connections. And it just so happens that the title of the  adult novel I'm publishing this year is Gabriel's Angel. And my two new middle-grade children's books are Moon's Travelling Circus and The Voyage of the Molly Moon, so all these Gabriels and Moons I take to be a promising sign. (Probably of the sort of straws that writers clutch at.)

If only...

Being a writer is bad enough; having to plug your own books is  a nightmare. Especially if, like me, you loath the whole marketing /publicity business. But this time I've had a brilliant idea, because the one thing I always enjoy is having all my friends round for a party. They're warned each time, on pain of death, not to bring any gifts, and they never pay the slightest attention. But this year  marks our 11th wedding anniversary. It will also be my 78th birthday and Gloom's 79th, so what I plan to do is throw a great big launch /anniversary/ birthday party at home, and instead of bringing the usual wine, flowers, chocolates, etc, every guest will be obliged to buy a book. Or possibly two.

But to get back to Gloom's surprising enjoyment of a YA novel (and mine). I've always been ambivalent about the whole YA category: in my day you went straight from Enid Blyton to Agatha Christie, Sci Fi or Mills and Boon, depending on your tastes. But now I think the publishers might be on to an even better thing than they realised. Let me explain: I've never in my whole life had a stye in my eye, but in the last month I've had two nasty, oozing little lumps in rapid succession. My optician confirms that it's age related - much like adolescent acne. So it seems pretty obvious that both Gloom and I are now entering second adolescence, and it's therefore only a matter of time before second childhood kicks in. 

It'll be Winnie the Who? and The Grumpalo next.

OWL'S HOUSE PRESS

I have a great affection for The Secret Bookshelf in Carrickfergus, not just because of my admiration for the owners, Jo and Chris, and the way they've turned this little bookshop into what it is - Best Indie Bookstore (Ireland) 2024 and 2026 - but because it's by the sea. A bookshop by the sea is my idea of heaven. What's more, I always come away with something unexpected. Jan Carson and Horowitz were safe bets, but I've never read anything by T J Klune. The House in the Cerulean Sea caught my eye because of the title. A combination of house and sea - much like bookshop and sea - is hard for me to resist. 

Even more unexpected was The Last Death Poet by Stephen Daly. A book billed as a Young Adult LGBTQ+ novel with a supernatural twist is about as likely to attract me as J D Vance's upcoming memoir about his conversion to Catholicism. Some of my best friends write YA novels (very well, as it happens) but I'm ambivalent about the category and I really don't like the supernatural. Still, I'd met Stephen Daly and I liked him very much. Plus he's local, and the book is set in Belfast, so I bought it. I fully expected to skip through it, or give up after a chapter or two, instead of which I'm half-way through, and I'm hooked. And if you can hook a 77-year-old pedant with limited patience for modern trends, then good for you!

It's also a relief to find that a book which has been widely praised is actually well-written. There's so much rubbish out there, and so many good books that never see the light of day, because getting traditionally published is becoming harder and harder. Which is why, like so many others, I've  turned to self-publishing. Either way, it's a bumpy road, with rather more downs than ups. There's nothing quite as exciting as that first book launch, or seeing your novel in bookshop windows, but then there's the library reading with a turn-out of four, including your husband. Although to be fair, your granny might also have been there. She's been dead for decades, of course, but there was a familiar sighing noise, and a faint smell of wintergreen. (This is what reading Stephen Daly does for you.)

Fortunately, I do have an up of my own to report, and it's connected to a small, rented house called Owl's House in the village of Fish Hoek, near the southern tip of Africa, where I lived for a time as a child. (See detail in autobiographic-art on the right.) On one side of the valley was the Indian Ocean, on the other the Atlantic, and of all the houses I've lived in, this is the one that I remember with the greatest affection and nostalgia. It had a verandah where swallows nested in the summer, a garden where I played with my brother, and a shadowy pond full of frogs and tadpoles. Inside, like all our houses, it was full of books, and it was where I first discovered the world of my imagination.

I've lived in many different flats and houses since then, and every so often I find myself back in some town or country and am tempted to revisit the places I once knew. I've thought about doing this in Northern Ireland, a country I first came to in 1970, but Professor Gloom thinks this is a bad idea. He's probably right. Although, once in Zimbabwe, a man rang our doorbell and explained that his wife, who was with him, had lived in our house many years before. The man's name was Dan Jacobson and he seemed quite surprised when I told him how delighted I was to meet him, a fellow South African whose writing I admired. They stayed for tea and later he sent a signed copy of his autobiographical Time and Time Again, which I still have. 

But to get back to the up I mentioned earlier: with the help of my wonderful editor and publishing director (thank you, Averill Buchanan!) I have a new creative venture. My two previously published adult novels, The Traveller's Guide to Love and Life Study #2, along with two middle-grade children's fantasies, Moon's Travelling Circus and The Voyage of the Molly Moon, are all going to be brought together under the roof of my own imprint. And they'll be joined by my third adult novel, which will be published later this year. 

No doubt there'll be plenty of downs to come, but for the time being it gives me great pleasure to unveil the logo. This, as you can see, is a delightful little owl, because the imprint itself is called Owl's House Press - as a grateful tribute to that long-ago, far-off house where my love of words first began.

ISHIGURO, ISTANBUL AND INSECTS FOR TEA

Sunday morning, up early and down the stairs to feed Archimedes, switch on the kettle and the radio - and there's Mark Tully with Something Understood. There aren't many good reasons for getting out of bed at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning, but Mark Tully is one of them. This week the subject was living with regret: lines of poetry, snatches of song (Edith Piaf, of course - no regrets there) and an extraordinary exchange with a man who went to prison for murder and will live with regret for the rest of his life. 

And then, On Your Farm, which is usually when I switch off and take my tea back upstairs, but this week we were in Zimbabwe, farming insects. Crickets, to be precise. Now, I'll listen to anything coming from Zimbabwe - I spent 18 incredibly happy years in that country, my youngest child was born in Harare, and I still have dearly-loved family and friends there - but this was one of those BBC gems. Off we went with a woman who, with the help of a charity, travelled to Costa Rica to study and then came back to set up a cricket farm in her village. Just the sound of those crickets churring away took me back...  This lot had mountains of empty egg cartons to hide in, they are very low maintenance, and as far as I know, produce no methane. If chirping is anything to judge by, they were perfectly happy. In the end, of course, they find themselves in hot water. Literally. They are despatched (the actual term used was 'harvesting') by dunking them in hot water. Apparently it only takes a few seconds and then they are dead and ready to fry. They are packed full of protein and taste, so we are told, like fried chicken skin. The reporter ate a whole plateful but she said it helped not to look at her plate.

It was also the BBC that recently serialised Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel, Klara and the Sun. I'd listened to a couple of episodes while I waited for the copy I'd ordered to arrive, and it was one of those satisfying occasions when you enjoy reading the book even more than you'd hoped to. A lovely, poignant, thought-provoking and beautifully written novel. 

Then, in my never-ending quest for books to lighten the prevailing gloom, I re-read Cluny Brown, and if you want to cheer yourself up, then Margery Sharp's 1940s parlour maid who doesn't know her place is the answer to your prayers. I defy anyone not to laugh out loud. I also enjoyed Jan Carson's new book of linked short stories, The Last Resort, set in a surreal Ballycastle caravan park. I always like her writing, but this format was especially pleasing: maybe it's just age that has fragmented my brain lately (although I suspect Covid is also to blame: people a lot younger than I am are reporting the same lack of concentration) but it's a bit like having a mental ulcer - right now I need small, regular, nourishing dollops of stories, not indigestible 500 page novels.

Staying local, I have Sue Divin's highly-praised Guard Your Heart to look forward to, as well as The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (my title of the year) by Louise Kennedy. Having read her brilliant short story, Hunger, earlier in the year, I've been dying to get my hands on this one.

And one more link with Zimbabwe to end my week: I have a young relative from Harare who now teaches English in Istanbul, and because I love her (and loved Istanbul when I went there some years ago) I agreed to do a reading and question & answer session with a group of 60 Turkish 10-11 year-olds. You know how you agree to something because it's still 2 weeks away and if you're lucky, the end of the world or an alien invasion might come first, or you might lose your voice? Well, none of those things happened and I duly found myself talking about my writing life, and reading from Moon's Travelling Circus, the book that found an agent but never a publisher, but which has still managed to reach quite a few children. And these particular children were enchanting (as were their teachers). Articulate (in a second language), interested, curious, appreciative. I enjoyed the whole thing so much that I think I may have invited all 60 of them, and their teachers, to visit me in Ireland. I can only hope they don't all come at once.

Istanbul's covered market

A post script. I wrote this before news reached me of the terrible fire on Table Mountain that destroyed the restaurant at Rhodes Memorial and badly damaged Cape Town University. Apart from fears for the safety of all those affected, my family connections with UCT are very strong and so many of my memories are linked to the surrounding areas, that it was hard to watch: the pictures of the burnt-out Jagger Library would break your heart. But South Africans are extraordinarily resilient and at least the mountain will recover, in time. A reminder though, that in the end all our zeal for building up and tearing down, all our sound and fury, are no match for natural forces. Even Rhodes will fall in time, with no human help at all.

After the fire

A TALE OF TWO PUZZLES

The Reading Room

On Christmas morning Professor Gloom found a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle in his stocking. It was called The Reading Room and featured a lot of books and, appropriately, a telescope. I got one too: The Fantasy Bookshop.

I usually limit myself to doing jigsaws while I'm talking on the phone, waiting for food to cook, or listening to something on the radio, and I like to do them downstairs on the dining-room table. But Gloom got to the table first this time, so I decided to do mine upstairs, in my study. Big mistake: every time I went up to my desk to work I ended up doing the puzzle instead.

Fantasy Bookshop (This might be the one that was finished first.)

But there was another problem - almost immediately an unfortunate element of competition crept in: who was going to finish theirs first? We pretended there wasn't a race going on at all, but of course we were both hell-bent on winning. So someone would casually remark that they were going to work on their novel/ paper/ Greek revision - and then sneak off to their jigsaw. Words were exchanged and feelings ran high, there was even an accusation made that someone had UNDONE a bit of the other's in the middle of the night...

Modesty forbids that I say who won but I don't think we'll be doing any more for a while, not at the same time anyway. We won't be eating any turkey either. Professor Gloom won our Christmas turkey at golf. I don't even like the things - give me a goose or a duck any day - and this one weighed in at almost 9kg. (And given the secrecy surrounding its collection - at the dead of night, from the back of white van in a carpark - I strongly suspect it fell off the back of a lorry.) With 500g of butter under the skin and stuffed with onions, garlic and lemons, it wasn't too bad, but there's still an awful lot of it in the freezer, so if anyone missed out on turkey this year, you know where to come.

In between the eating, drinking, puzzle-mania and old movies on TV, I managed to read a few books. 'Crooked Heart' by Lissa Evans had been recommended on Radio 4's 'A Good Read' and turned out to be a funny, touching story about an orphaned war-time evacuee and his profitable (and criminal) business partnership with a crooked foster-mother.

Before that I read 'Grief Is The Thing With Feathers'. I had to read it quickly because it was intended as Kelly McCaughrain's Christmas present but luckily it's a slim book, a beautiful, haunting - and funny - poem to loss, partly related by Crow, who will stick in your mind forever. I also bought Myra Zepf's wonderful picture book 'Don't Go To School!' for the various grandchildren. (It's the first of her books to be translated into English; the others are all in Irish.)


My own Christmas presents included Stephen Fry's 'Heroes' - a witty re-telling of the stories of the likes of Theseus and Jason - and  Madeline Miller's 'Circe'. (I'd bought this one some months earlier: what I do is I buy presents throughout the year, and give them to Professor Gloom to hide until Christmas. I'm so old now that by the time I open them - assuming he remembers where he put them - I've forgotten all about them, so he doesn't have to rack his brains about what to buy me and I get delightful surprises that I actually want. A win-win situation.)

Anyway, I greatly enjoyed 'Circe'. Even before my son had the good sense to marry a Greek wife, I was in love with all things Greek. I soaked up mythology as a child - I even had a cat called Circe. In Miller's book she's a remarkably honourable immortal, and well-disposed towards humans - apart from the ones she turns into pigs. But the rest of the gods are an absolute shower: arrogant, touchy, dangerous, and continually at each other's throats. I was frequently reminded of our politicians... and I'm not sure a bunch of Greek gods wouldn't do a better job.

And now I see Jan Carson is compiling a fantasy literary government. This could turn into a good game. I'm still working on my own list but it will probably include Mary Poppins and Gandalf. And possibly Charlotte the spider from Charlotte's Webb - a creature of infinite patience and attention to detail. Which is exactly what you need for jigsaw puzzles.

WHAT? NO STUFFED VINE LEAVES?!

I was standing in Tesco not long ago bewailing the absence of stuffed vine leaves. What? No stuffed vine leaves?! What would the avocado toast classes do now? Eke things out with a few artichokes or truffles, perhaps. Actually, stuffed vine leaves are delicious, digestible - and cheap. They are also excellent for offering to those of your friends and relatives who are currently vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free or in any other way digestively-challenged.

Carnivorous and entirely gluten and conscience-free

There was none of this when I grew up. You ate what was put in front of you and if liver made you feel sick, you surreptitiously fed it to the cat. As for the majority of the impoverished population, they ate whatever they could get their hands on in order to stay alive. Including, I regret to say, the odd cat.

Jan Carson had a short story on Radio 4 this week about a family whose groceries had to come from the local food-bank but who had a magical, unending tin of beans in the fridge. I didn't like beans before and I like them less now. It was a poignant little story that stuck in your head like a bean in the throat. And now I read that 400,000 UK children don't even have a bed of their own to sleep in - and this in a part of the world where so many of us can afford to be picky about our food and complain about stuffed vine leaves being in short supply.

People without food, children without beds, families fleeing from fires or war, no government in Northern Ireland for - how long now? (And more power to Dylan Quinn who posted a video on the subject.) Sometimes it all feels a little hopeless, and if you were listening to Radio 4 the other day and heard some institution's failings being attributed, not to stupidity, incompetence or bad management, but to 'their own poor decision-making' you too might have banged your head against the wall. Mind you, it does explain some of our politicians. They're not a venal, intransigent, self-serving shower, they're just victims of poor decision-making - on the part of anyone who was stupid enough to vote them into power in the first place. But enough of that. As my mother used to say, when things are bad, all you can do is the next right thing. So I'll do what I can, when I can, and I'll put some treats in the food-bank collections along with the tins of fruit and fish. But definitely no beans.

Someone did us a good turn this week. I had remarked to Professor Gloom as we walked by the shore that the only thing wrong with our house was that we couldn't see the sea. And the very next day someone cut down a large fir tree, thereby revealing - a view of the sea!! I can now distract myself endlessly by sitting at my desk and watching the changing light on the water and all the little boats and ferries passing by. I haven't worked out whose garden the tree was in but when I do I'll be round with a bottle of wine. And maybe a few stuffed vine leaves.

TRICK OR TREAT

After Bernie McGill's The Watch House (go and buy it NOW and if possible take it to Rathlin Island and read it there) the next book in the pile was A Card From Angela Carter by Susannah Clapp. I don't know where I got it - I buy books every week, friends and family lend or give them to me, and by the time I get round to reading them, their origins are long forgotten. (This can be helpful if you've got your eye on any of my books: all you need to do is check there's no inscription, and say 'This isn't the copy I lent you a couple of years ago is it?' I'll probably apologise profusely for not returning it.)

Anyway, to get back to Angela Carter. It was top of the heap of twenty-odd books I'm planning to read soon. There are five times as many lying around that I'm planning to read if I live long enough.
It's small (103 pages) beautifully produced (Bloomsbury) and it's a captivating portrait of a writer interspersed with the postcards and messages Carter sent over several years to Clapp, who was her friend and literary executor.

I fell in love with Angela Carter when I first read The Bloody Chamber, that fabulously lush and sinister retelling of old fairy tales. Then I read Nights at the Circus and Wise Children, but what I most admire was her glorious, fierce refusal to be anyone but herself. She was, in her own words, 'a kind of phoenix, a fabulous beast...an outlandish jewel' - outspoken, political, a fearless and unfettered writer. You read Angela Carter for inspiration, provocation, and for wild, flamboyant flights of fantasy, not literary restraint.

I have a soft spot for small, beautifully produced books - preferably short, illustrated and unusual. Step forward The Emma Press. (https://theemmapress.com/) I only discovered them when I bought a copy of Jan Carson's Postcard Stories. And I was thinking about Jan the other morning because I'd seen on Facebook that she was celebrating Miracle Day - the day her lost laptop (with all her work on it) was returned intact. What a happy note on which to start my own day, I thought - who knows, perhaps a miracle would be waiting for me too? Then I turned on my laptop and found all my desktop files missing. Nothing. Even Dropbox was empty.

Professor Gloom held out little hope that they could be recovered. Still, he has access to the Great Wizard of Queens (I can't tell you his name but he has a closely-guarded office somewhere in the labyrinthine depths of the University) so he departed with my laptop, leaving me to contemplate the random cruelties of fate.

And you know what? I had a wonderfully peaceful and creative day. I sat at my desk with paper and pen and felt a Zen-like serenity. Yes, I thought about the years and years of work that had gone into my latest book, but I also realised that the chances of anyone ever publishing it were so slight that I should probably be grateful to be spared the exhausting effort required these days to hook an agent, interest a publisher and get your book noticed, talked about, talked up, sold... There are several reasons why I like short books and short stories - and I recommend the one I'm reading at the moment, by the way: David Park's 'Gods and Angels', which is beautifully written and somehow manages to be both understated and compelling at the same time. Apart from the fact that small books are easier to carry around, I've never managed to produce more than 50,000 words myself so naturally I look on them with favour. But the main thing is that I'm 69 and my stamina is diminishing. And before anyone tells me today's 69 is the new 49, no it's bloody not: it might be the new trying-to-stay-49 but that's a different matter. The plain truth is that when you're pushing 70, you get tired. You ache, you twinge, you lose concentration and patience, and occasionally you behave like a cantankerous old bat.

But even cantankerous old bats can acknowledge miracles. The Great Wizard (may he live forever) fixed my laptop and recovered my files. And a day away from the reproachful wails of unfinished manuscripts (like so many half-born children) never mind the twitter and gibber and racket of social media, gave me the breathing space I needed to work out what it was that I wanted to write next. I also practised my Greek, and went out to buy my Hallowe'en outfit. And if you're a friend or relation of one of the little trick-or-treaters who covered our door last year with something that wouldn't come off, which meant it had to be repainted, please tell them I'm very sorry we were out, and therefore unable to give them any sweets. Not that they want sweets, or so I'm told: it's only money these days - and some of them don't even bother with the outfit, they just pull their hoodies up....but don't worry, I'm ready for them this year. I've got my gashed throat transfer, my glowing eyeballs and my fangs. And at the first ring of the doorbell I'm going to erupt out of here like a fiend from Hell, howling and screeching and brandishing my broomstick as I chase the little hellions down the drive.

I hope Angela Carter would approve.

LITERARY SHENANIGANS...

A year ago I was persuaded, against my better judgement, to take part in the first Women Aloud NI event at No Alibis bookshop. A whole clatter (a quire?) of women writers were going to celebrate International Women's Day by reading short extracts from their work (well at least they'd be short) but then we were all going to have to read together. That's bits of fiction, poetry, travel, biography, you-name-it, read ALOUD, at the same time, in a confined space.

It was obvious to me that the organiser, Jane Talbot, was a lunatic, but she was a persuasive lunatic, and I'd already agreed, so I turned up. I took the other two members of the Literary Ladies Get Slightly Drunk Society along with me for moral support, but in the end we all enjoyed ourselves hugely and I had to take back everything I'd said.

I didn't take part in this year's events, mainly because I was reading in three branch libraries on three successive evenings last week, and that seemed like enough excitement. Also, this year's shenanigans took place in public places - in Belfast and in Dublin - and I don't think I'm that brave. Not without dark glasses and a false moustache, which might have looked slightly out of place... But I take off my hat to all who took part (and to the indefatigable Jane) for their enthusiasm, and their dedication to making women's voices heard.

The library events were a pleasure. Lesley Allen, Angeline King and I read from our novels and answered questions at Newtownbreda, Banbridge and Larne libraries, and at all three we were made enormously welcome. The number of people who turned out to hear us was surprising - to me, anyway. I don't usually expect much of an audience - Professor Gloom, the Literary Ladies (suitably bribed), two drunks and a passing dog would be average. Mind you, the Literary Ladies provide a certain arty glamour, and Professor Gloom's furrowed brow and downcast eyes are generally taken for evidence of deep literary thought, when he is, in fact, playing Solitaire on his phone.

The other great pleasure of public readings is that you get to know your fellow-writers, discover the

things you have in common, and the books you've recently enjoyed.
Lesley, Angeline and I all loved Sarah Winman's When God was a Rabbit, and if you liked it too, then you might try The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen: both books are whimsical, funny and touching. And we all three of us read, at least once, from the start of our own novels - which is hardly surprising: if your first few sentences don't grab the reader's attention, you're probably in trouble.

I'm a fan of clever, quirky novels myself, and three of my favourites (all by women, as it happens) have some of the most memorable opening lines in fiction.,

Dodie Smith's beguiling I Capture the Castle  - one of my all-time favourite books - begins 'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.' 

Kate Atkinson kicks off Behind the Scenes at the Museum with 'I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight...'

And then there is The Towers of Trebizond by the wonderful, witty Rose Macaulay, with her deathless opening lines:

'"Take me camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.' 

I defy anyone to do better.

And the week ended with Jan Carson's short story Egg being read aloud on Radio 4. All in all, a good week here for women's voices.