William Peace's Blog, page 60

Review: “The Deceit”

I’ve been on holiday this week, so I have been a little negligent in keeping my blog current, but please rest assured that I will catch up.  While on holiday, I’ve been reading The Deceit.  I decided to buy Tom Knox’s thriller, The Deceit, because I wanted to see how another author writes a thriller, and because it is sited, at least in part, in Egypt, which is the main setting of my sixth novel.

The Deceit is a complex tale of the occult.  It begins with a prominent, old Egyptologist who is searching for the Sokar Hoard, a collection of ancient documents, which, rumour has it, will alter our concepts of religion.  Meanwhile, in Cornwall, England, there is someone practicing very sinister witchcraft, which involves the burning of dozens of live cats.  A detective inspector gets involved when a body is found – in mysterious circumstances – at the bottom of an abandoned tin mine.  The young protégée of the famous Egyptologist sets out to find the Sokar Hoard, on the basis of rumours that his mentor actually found the Hoard, but is now dead.  The young protégée is joined by a freelance movie maker and they discover part of the Hoard, but are – at first – unable to translate it.  Back in Cornwall, the detective inspector begins to home in on the practitioner of the deadly black magic.  The protégée, the movie maker and the detective inspector are threatened by various sinister forces, but they decipher the key message of the Hoard, and understand the nature of the black magic, respectively.  They also learn the connections between the message of the Hoard and the black magic.   If it were true, it would surely make your hair stand on end!

There are many twists and turns in this story.  Some of the twists seem more like diversionary devices, than essential elements  The characters seem two-dimensional; their purpose is mainly to facilitate the story.  The language is story-telling language; it does not aspire to literature.

What contributes substantially to its believability is the author’s compelling knowledge of ancient Egypt.  The places, the ancient culture and beliefs are all very real, and form the platform from which the occult tale can be launched.  Unfortunately for me, it’s a leap too far.  Too much of my religious understanding and my knowledge of science is called into question, but for those who do not suffer from credibility blockages, this novel may be just your cup of tea.

Childrens’ Books

Last week, I found myself in a position where I was reviewing a child’s book.  I had signed up with the Readers’ Favorite website to a contest.  I sent a book in to be reviewed, and one of the conditions was that I would review someone else’s book.  I could choose which book I wanted to review, and Readers’ Favorite would send the book to me (as long as I lived in the States).  I thought I would select a book, and buy it on amazon.co.uk.  When I began to search for a book on the Readers’ Favorite site, they all seemed to be ebooks.  I finally noticed a button labelled ‘Find a Hard Copy Book’.  I clicked in that button an one (1) book appeared on my screen: it was a childrens’ book.  When I queried the website whether there really was only one hard copy book available, I was told that for the time being, that was the case, because they were prioritising books which had been entered in the contest.

When I read, I much prefer to be holding a hard copy book, rather than a screen, so I thought, what the heck, I’ll review the children’s book.  I bought it on amazon.co.uk; it arrived, and I read it twice.  I can’t tell you the title of the book or the author’s name because Readers’ Favorite has a (quite sensible) rule that only they can post reviews on the internet.  (What follows could be considered a review.)

The book was about a baby animal which is born in winter and is brought into the family house and raised until it is old enough to join other animals of the same kind.  The story featured some of the pranks the animal got up to, as well as what its human carers learned in the process.  It was a cute story, and the author and publisher had obviously gone to a good deal of trouble to produce the book: it was hard cover with lots of colour illustrations.  The back cover had the author’s photo and bio.  There were also comments by local people about the story.  There were several informative pages at the back of the book where one could learn more about this particular animal. All well and good.

But . . . I felt that the story was told from the perspective of the animal’s carer (the author), rather than the perspective of a child.  In this sense, there was too much detail about things that were of concern to the carer, but which would be of little interest to most children.  There were missed opportunities to explore the feelings of the carer and to guess at the feelings of the animal in particular situations.  Many children find stories which provoke or include feelings quite interesting.

The illustrations were in colour, placed adjacent to the relevant text, and quite appropriate.  But for me, they were complete pictures, leaving no room for a child to add to the image from his imagination.  I believe that the most effective illustrations in childrens’ books are either fanciful or are incomplete in some way, thus provoking the child’s imagination.

So, for me, this particular child’s book should get a good score for effort, but it missed one important point: catering to the reader.  Of course all writers have to keep the reader in mind as they write, and this must be more of a challenge when an adult writes for children.

Writers without a Genre

Iain Banks, a Scottish “novelist of hallucinatory brilliance who attracted notoriety with his grotesque and bizarre tales” died last week at the age of 59.  His obituary in The Daily Telegraph says that until his first book, The Wasp Factory, appeared, he “plastered the walls of his room with rejection slips”.  I know the feeling!  The Wasp Factory was a controversial first novel which brought Banks notoriety (1984).  “Even before its appearance, one publisher claimed that the book had made him vomit into his waste paper basket.  It had a similarly emetic effect on many reviewers: ‘a repulsive piece of work’; ‘silly, gloatingly sadistic’; ‘a work of unparalleled depravity’ were among the judgements of the newspapers.  Many, though, also conceded the hallucinatory brilliance of the author’s imagination, and there was widespread acknowledgement that Banks’ control of tone and language were more assured than that of many established novelists.”

“The defining qualities of Banks’ novels, whether mainstream or genre, remained a macabre black humour and a taste for the bizarre and the Gothic. . . . In 1987 he published Consider Phlebas, the first of the Culture novels; thereafter there was, for a time at least, a clearer distinction between his science fiction output and his more conventional novels, which tended to appear in alternative years.  His space operas, which combined political musings, scientific speculation, mordantly funny asides (the names of the artificially intelligent spaceships were a long-running joke), and violent, frequently gruesome action sequences, brought him a new, large and enthusiastic fan base.”

My reaction is that Banks was one of those rare novelists who had two distinct audiences: a mainstream audience and a science fiction audience, although it has to be said that some of his works had their feet planted in both camps.  One recent commentator expressed the view that “not since Robert Louis Stevenson, has a writer so successfully bridged multiple genres”.  As a child, I was a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson; I liked Treasure Island and Kidnapped, and I thought of him as a clever novelist.  I decided to look him up, and I found that he, too, was a Scot.  His Wikipedia listing has him as a “novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer.”  In fact, Stevenson wrote twelve published novels, five collections of short stories, six uncollected short stories, five volumes of poetry, seven volumes of travel writing, and a long list of essays and other works.  In addition to all that, Stevenson ” wrote over 123 original musical compositions or arrangements, including solos, duets, trios and quartets for various combinations of flageolet, flute, clarinet, violin, guitar, mandolin, and piano.”

Unfortunately, he died at the age of 44, probably of a stroke, having suffered from poor health for much of his life.  With the rise of ‘modern literature’ after World War I, Stevenson was seen as a second class writer, specialising in children’s literature and the horror genre.  The 1973 edition of the Oxford Anthology of English Literature (2000 pages) does not even mention Stevenson.  But later in the 20th century, his reputation began to re-ascend with recognition of his literary skill and imaginative powers.  Setting the critics aside, he is the 26th most translated author in the world.

So, sometimes specialisation is not necessary.

Pupils Who Turn to E-books are Weaker Readers

This was the headline of an article in The Daily Telegraph – May 16.

The article reported the results of  a survey of 34,910 eight to sixteen-year-olds which was undertaken by the charity, the National Literary Trust.  It found that nearly all children had access to a computer at home and 40% owned a tablet or smart phone.  It reported that the number of children reading from a screen every day had, for the first time, exceeded those who read printed material.

The study reported that children had been slower to make use of digital devices than adults, but that the number of young digital readers has doubled in the last two years.  Publishers and retailers have understood this and are offering a larger range of children’s books and comics available in digital form.

The study found that pupils who read only electronic books every day were considerably less likely to be strong readers than those who read in print, and they enjoy reading much less.  Fewer electronic readers have a favourite book.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, boys are more likely than girls to read from digital devices.

One interesting (and not unfavourable statistic) from the study is regarding the reading of news by pupils.  While the proportion of students reading newspapers has fallen from 46.8% in 2005 to 32.2% in 2012, more than 40% of children and young people were reading the news on their computer, smart phone or tablet. This suggests to me that the number of students who are taking an interest in the news is growing.

One socio-economic statistic is that children who receive free meals at school are less likely to read traditional books than their counterparts who do not receive free meals.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literary Trust said: “While we welcome the positive impact which technology has on bringing further reading opportunities to young people, it’s crucial that reading in print is not cast aside.  We are concerned by our finding that children who only read on-screen are significantly less likely to enjoy reading and less likely to be strong readers.  Good reading skills and reading for pleasure are closely linked to children’s success at school and beyond.  We need to encourage children to become avid readers, whatever format they choose.”

The Boy Who Wore White Stockings

I had a rare literary experience recently.  A friend of mine, Peter Skala and his wife, Barbara, came to dinner, and they brought with them a recently published book about Peter.  The book is written by Peter’s long time friend and business partner, David Hutt.  Barbara has written a self-published autobiography, My Life as Me, which I have read, and I was eager to read the ‘sequel’ about Peter.  Briefly, Peter was born in Austria in the mid 1920′s; his mother was a well-known actress; his father was a business man, so he came from a comfortable middle class.  As you know, the 1930′s were a time of political and social turmoil in Austria.  Peter’s family had Jewish connections which were a distinct liability in Austria at that time, so Peter, who is Christian, and the rest of his family fled to the US.  Peter, en-route to the US, spent a year in the UK as a teenager.  He went to school in New York and joined the US Army, where he became an officer whose German language skills were put to good use in General Patton’s army.  He later went to Yale (my alma mater), worked as a key manager in several large multi-nationals and became a successful head hunter.

I have posted the following review of The Boy Who Wore White Stockings on Amazon:

This book is a captivating historical biography. David Hutt decided to write a biography of his friend and business partner, Peter Skala, but, in addition, he has included an examination of Peter’s genealogy back for about two centuries. This reminds one of The Hare with Amber Eyes, and like that story, it often makes fascinating reading from cultural, political, sociological, perspectives. Mr. Hutt is clearly a skilled, and dedicated researcher, and while the output of his research captures the reader’s attention, the linkages between the genealogy and the biography are somewhat tenuous, except when Peter’s grandparents arrive on the scene. In The Hare with Amber Eyes, it was the netsuke that made the inter-generational connections.

For me, there were three parts of this book: the genealogy, Peter’s childhood/boyhood, and Peter’s early adulthood. (Will there be a sequel about the rest of Peter’s adulthood? One hopes so!) One disappointment about the section on Peter’s childhood/boyhood, is that one hears the voice of Peter himself too infrequently. I know that Peter would have pungent comments about many of the events which are reported.

The section on Peter’s early adulthood, with particular emphasis on his war-time experiences makes fascinating reading, and his voice is there.

David Hutt is clearly a very talented researcher and writer. I am certainly ready for the sequel!

Peter is a very clever man with a pungent, ironical sense of humor.  Faced with any controversy, he will come straight to the point.  For me, it was quite interesting to read about the environment in which he grew up, because it gave me a sense of how the character I know came to be.  Briefly, in the past, he has talked about his experiences in France during the Second World War, but this biography includes some episodes of which I had known nothing (including how he captured a German general and obtained the surrender of a German platoon without firing a shot!)

I’m afraid that the chances of a sequel are fairly slim.  The Boy Who Wore White Stockings ends just before Peter met Barbara. I suspect that David Hutt doesn’t want to stand between Peter and Barbara in writing about what happened next

Writing Skills

This is a post which I put on the Blogging Authors’ website a couple of weeks ago:

Having read plenty of good and bad literature, written five novels, observing myself as a writer, and thinking about the craft of writing, I have formed some opinions about the skills that good writers have.  Not all the skills below are mine; some are still aspirational.  But, I’ve progressed (somewhat painfully at times) from being a story-teller to an award-winning author.

First of all, a writer has to enjoy writing.  Writing is a lonely, unsociable business – perhaps best suited to introverts, and it isn’t always fun, but one has a special feeling of creative accomplishment when a passage seems just right.  Though, of course, one can feel pretty frustrated when one can’t seem to get it right.  On balance, one should enjoy the work.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but one has to have a good command of the language in which one is writing: grammar, vocabulary, syntax, spelling.  I think that, by definition, good writing is good literature which makes the most effective use of language.

I know that there are some writers who don’t bother to plan a novel: they have the whole thing in their heads at the start.  That wouldn’t work for me.  I have to create a time line, define the characters, their personalities, strengths and vulnerabilities, their interactions.  If there is a message I’d like the reader to take away, I have to plan how I’m going to let him or her find it.  Then there are settings and events; some of them should be surprising to keep the reader’s attention.  And the whole package has to be completely believable to the reader, even if the synopsis sounds a little far-fetched.

A fertile imagination is essential to a writer of fiction, and it comes into play at every stage of the writing.  The plan, the characters, the principal events should all be imaginative.  The descriptions of particular events and characters’ actions should be slightly unexpected.  It is the unexpected which keeps the reader’s interest.  A novel where every turn of events is predictable is boring.  But at the same time, the unexpected must be credible: if it’s not, the reader loses interest.  I use a technique I call ‘leap-frogging’ to build up to what would otherwise be an incredible event.  For example, in my latest novel, there a catastrophic fire in which several hundred people are killed.  But before that catastrophe, there is a related fire in which only four people are killed, and before that, there are major concerns about safety violations.

The writer has to have real empathy with his characters – even the evil characters.  As one writes, one has to feel what his/her character is feeling.  Not just imagining the feeling, but actually feeling it.  If one actually feels it, one can describe it more accurately.  I remember that recently, my wife came home from work, and found me sitting at my PC with tears running down my cheeks.  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Henry’s son was just killed,” I explained.

Finally, I think the author needs to think about leaving the reader with multiple levels of messages.  If one thinks about examples from great literature, it is seldom just about human nature; there may also be sociological, philosophical, and religious messages, as well.  One has to plan the development of those messages so that the reader gradually picks them up.  Gradual assimilation is far more effective than being told at the end, “And the moral of this story is . . .”

Instilling a Need to Read

In the Daily Telegraph, about 10 days ago, there was an article by Jonathan Douglas, Director of the National Literacy Trust (literacytrust.org.uk), a “charity that transforms lives through literacy”.  The first two sentences in the article caught my eye: “Reading for pleasure at the age of 15 is a strong factor in determining future social mobility.  Indeed it has been revealed as the most important indicator of the future success of the child.”  This finding is the result of research carried  out by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.  The research examined education and reading as factors in promoting social mobility.

I suppose many parents who read the article would readily agree with this conclusion.  Douglas said that the research distinguished between different motivations for reading: whether the reading is the result of parental carrots and sticks, or whether it is entirely voluntary.  The research suggested that those who read for their own pleasure have a desire to “engage with stories, texts and learning.  Reading for pleasure therefore reveals a predisposition not just to literature, but to the sort of lifelong learning that explains increased social mobility.”

Douglas goes on to talk about different formats for reading.  By way of example he points out that emails typically use different language than a written letter.  He says, “Analysis so far on the  impact of digital literature is that it can play an important role in building core literary skills, but there is an ongoing debate about whether it conveys the same benefits as reading a physical book.  Initial research in the Unites States would appear to suggest that it doesn’t.”

Douglas points out that there are differences between boys and girls in terms of their reading for pleasure.  “In Britain, girls read more and have  more positive attitudes to reading than boys.  This is not a universal phenomenon. In India, by contrast, it is the other way around, though that may have more to do with questions of gender and access to society.  In Britain, it is about gender and attitude.  The reluctance of boys to read for pleasure seems more social than biological.”  A recent study by the National Literacy Trust found that reading for pleasure was not something that “boys wanted to be seen doing.”

Douglas argues that reading for pleasure will result only from teenagers having access to books that interest them. “If that means car manuals or books about football for boys, then so be it.”

On the subject of classical vs. modern young adult fiction, Douglas says, “There is a balance to be struck, and this goes to the heart of the current debate about whether a canon of classics needs to be imposed on teenage students in our schools.  Some say that this proposal is wrong and the way to get them reading for pleasure is to give them complete freedom to choose.  Others say that without a knowledge of the classics, they are being failed by the education system because the will miss out not only on great literature, but also on a vital part of their own cultural identity and heritage.”

What is your view?

Happy Endings

My wife and I had some good friends over for dinner on Saturday.  They asked me to tell them about my latest novel Sable Shadow and The Presence – as yet unpublished.  I ran through a synopsis of the novel and explained the key messages.  They listened attentively, and when I finished, Barbara said, “I’m glad it has a happy ending.”

I said, “Well, it’s not exactly a happy ending, but it did turn out a lot better than the key character might have expected.

“Barbara said, “It seems to be the fashion in fiction these days that every novel has to end in tragedy or at least in a down beat conclusion.”

I don’t know whether it’s true that fiction is in a depressed mode nowadays, but I know I couldn’t write a novel that ended badly for the characters.  In the first place, literature is supposed to be thought-provoking and entertaining.  For me, tragedies are not entertaining, and the only thoughts tragedies provoke are gloom and doom.  So, I don’t do outright tragedy. Yes, bad things happen to some of the characters (sometimes as a result of their own doing), but I give them the chance to make at least a partial recovery.  I think the average reader is more interested in the how and why of the recovery than s/he is in the tragedy itself.  We all know that tragedies happen; what we’d like to know is how people recover from them.  My view on writing about tragedy is probably influenced by my attitude toward life.  I’ve had my share of hard knocks, but I’ve managed (with God’s help) to get past the knocks, and I think that most people can do the same.  For example, a friend of mine referred me to a YouTube video of a man who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident.  He had been a very keen golfer.  Now, he’s back playing what looks like very good golf standing on only one leg.  It’s amazing that he can keep his balance while swinging his driver on one leg!

If I look back over my novels, Fishing in Foreign Seas could have ended very badly for Jamie, who is the lead character.  He could have lost his wife and his job.  He did lose the big order which he thought would make of break his career, but his wife forgave him, and his career was actually boosted by his efforts to win the order.

In Sin & Contrition, none of the six characters had their lives unfold as they had hoped and expected.  But, when I interviewed each of them at the end, they all felt – to varying degrees – that the good aspects of their lives outweighed the bad.

Efraim’s Eye ended rather badly for Efraim, the terrorist, but, so far, no readers have really lamented this.  Paul thought he would lose Sarah, the woman he intended to marry, but when he gave up Naomi, he was able to get Sarah back.  Naomi gave up Paul and her job, but she got the kind of life she really wanted in Israel.

In The Iranian Scorpion, Robert was condemned to die by hanging is a prison in eastern Iran, but at the end we find him planning a trip to Dubai with his girlfriend.

I suppose I am what you might call an incorrigible optimist.

Marathons

My son and his family came to London this past weekend.  We had a very pleasant family reunion, and he ran the marathon.  His time was 3 hours and 19 minutes, which I think is a pretty good time, considering that he’s 43 – about twice the age of the leading marathoners.  It was a beautiful day, and he enjoyed the run.  He said that one distinctive feature of the London marathon is the huge turn-out of a very supportive crowd: “There was hardly any place where the crowd wasn’t shoulder-to-shoulder on both sides, cheering encouragement!”

 I noticed no apprehension in the crowd or among the runners for a repeat of the tragedy of the Boston marathon: everyone (except a few tired runners) was having a very good time.  I’m certainly glad that both Tsarnaev brothers were found before they could do more damage.  And I find it hard to understand why someone leaves his home country to find a better life elsewhere, and then, when he’s settled in the new country, he finds so many faults with it that he wants to destroy it.  If he doesn’t like his adopted country, why doesn’t he go back where he came from?  We have the same problem in the UK, where Muslim fanatics leave the Middle East for a better life in the UK.  They become disillusioned and they (strangely) believe that their religion gives them the right to kill people.  I find it encouraging that the Canadian train bombers were turned in by members of the Muslim community – a community which is beginning to recognise its responsibility to police its own members.  I understand that the Tsarnaev brothers were ethnic Chechnyans.  Incidentally, there is a Chechnyan character in Efraim’s Eye who provides Efraim with the high explosive he needs for his attack on the London Eye.

 

All this thinking about marathons got me to reflect on the parallels between running a marathon and writing a novel.  Both activities require a lengthy effort, and some participants never finish.  It would be fair to say that both activities require a fair amount of training or practice.  A few participants win prizes in both cases.  And some people feel their spirits sag at some point during a marathon, and during the creation of a novel.  For many runners, their low point comes at the 15 to 20 mile mark, where they are starting to tire and they recognise that they still have a long way to go.  I have a similar experience when writing a novel: I start out with a burst of enthusiasm, eager to put words on paper.  Toward the middle of a novel, I find it a bit more difficult to motivate myself: there’s a lot more writing to be done.  As I approach the end of a novel, my enthusiasm returns, particularly when I have a clear idea of the conclusion, and I become very productive again – eager to complete the project.  Apart from the facts that running a marathon is a physical activity while writing a novel is largely mental, and that the time frames are quite different, there is one other major difference.  During any given marathon, a runner has only that one opportunity to product a good result during the race.  A novelist, however, can re-run his race many times: changing, correcting, editing, re-writing to produce a better result.

The Hare with Amber Eyes

I’ve just finished reading The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal.  It was highly recommended by my cousin, Peggy, and it won the 2010 Costa Biography Prize and was a Sunday Times best seller.  I dutifully bought a copy and read in during a recent trip to Sicily.  In many ways it is a fascinating book.
The hare in the title is a small ivory netsuke from a collection acquired by the author’s great grandfather’s cousin in Paris in the second half of the 19th century.  Netsuke are small, precious, hand-carved and polished figures of animals and people, made in Japan by skilled craftsmen of ivory or unique hard wood, like boxwood.  The collector, Charles Ephrussi (born 1849), was from an extremely wealthy Jewish family originating in the Ukraine.  The family made their money buying and selling grain from the Ukraine and later in a banking empire.  The story traces the lives and life styles of the family from Odessa in the Ukraine to Paris to Vienna to Tokyo to London (where the author now lives) alongside the collection of 264 netsuke that were passed through the family.  The collection is quite extraordinary in that all 264 pieces of the original collection have survived several transfers between family members, including temporary custody under the mattress of a ladies maid during the Nazi occupation.  The pieces, while extremely valuable as a collection were also very precious to their various custodians.
But it is not the netsuke which take centre stage in this story, which is really about the lives (good times and bad) of the family members.  Particularly fascinating are the descriptions of the life styles in the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century.  They are life styles which we would not recognise today.  For the family, things started to go very wrong with the rise to power of the Nazis.  But post-war, with family members scattered through Europe, America and Japan, lives became stable and even improved.
The book strikes one as a very learned biography.  It is erudite, and colourfully descriptive, with an extensive vocabulary and frequent phrases in French or German.  But it is the descriptions of people’s daily habits, their attitudes, priorities, activities, dress, etc., in the various cities over a period of 15 decades which are most fascinating. 
The family characters are real, but they seem suitably distant and untouchable.  We know them from a distance.  The descriptions of settings and the author’s reflections on what he has learned are sometimes too copious, but I suppose the author wants to immerse us in the results of his very extensive research, from which he, himself, took great pains and satisfaction.  In fact, I find it rather startling that De Waal was able to take two years away from his family (married with three children) and his occupation (world-famous ceramic artist) to do all the necessary research.  But he deserves our thanks for creating a fascinating biography and a literary treat.