R.P. Nathan's Blog: #100BooksThatMadeMeAWriter
April 27, 2022
#100BTMMAW 3: The Moonstone
Although it's a cracking story about a fabulous stolen jewel it’s really the structure of the novel which grabbed me when I first read it. The multiple narrators with a bookending structure is perfect.
And the range of narrators – drawn not just from gentry but the lower classes too – means the novel feels thoroughly modern. The characters are 3-dimensional. You truly feel for the people involved in the twists and turns of the theft of the jewel. And the ones who could have just played a procedural role like Sergeant Cuff or the tragic Rosanna Spearman are some of the most delicately and sympathetically drawn.
But it's still a plot driven novel; and the plot is great. It has an exotically stolen jewel and a vengeful cadre determined to get it back; a well-handled love story with tragic consequence; a proper detective-led investigation with re-enactments of the crime and sleepwalking. Sleepwalking!
It was my principal inspiration when I came to write my own treasure hunt novel, A Richer Dust Concealed, in my mid-30s. And even though the working title for that book was The Name of the Beach – a nod to other inspirations by Eco and Garland – it was to The Moonstone that I was really paying homage.
Wilkie Collins is my mum's favourite author – though she prefers The Woman in White. It was popular in Sri Lanka when she was growing up, her education in Colombo pivoting around the fulcrum of Independence and so still dominated by British classics. I'm not sure exactly when she read it but I'm guessing during wartime, which for Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) meant Japanese bombing raids and the Royal Navy being stationed in the deep water harbour at Trincomalee.
I enjoyed The Woman in White but it's a little melodramatic for my tastes. And it hasn't got any treasure in it.
And the range of narrators – drawn not just from gentry but the lower classes too – means the novel feels thoroughly modern. The characters are 3-dimensional. You truly feel for the people involved in the twists and turns of the theft of the jewel. And the ones who could have just played a procedural role like Sergeant Cuff or the tragic Rosanna Spearman are some of the most delicately and sympathetically drawn.
But it's still a plot driven novel; and the plot is great. It has an exotically stolen jewel and a vengeful cadre determined to get it back; a well-handled love story with tragic consequence; a proper detective-led investigation with re-enactments of the crime and sleepwalking. Sleepwalking!
It was my principal inspiration when I came to write my own treasure hunt novel, A Richer Dust Concealed, in my mid-30s. And even though the working title for that book was The Name of the Beach – a nod to other inspirations by Eco and Garland – it was to The Moonstone that I was really paying homage.
Wilkie Collins is my mum's favourite author – though she prefers The Woman in White. It was popular in Sri Lanka when she was growing up, her education in Colombo pivoting around the fulcrum of Independence and so still dominated by British classics. I'm not sure exactly when she read it but I'm guessing during wartime, which for Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) meant Japanese bombing raids and the Royal Navy being stationed in the deep water harbour at Trincomalee.
I enjoyed The Woman in White but it's a little melodramatic for my tastes. And it hasn't got any treasure in it.
#100BTMMAW 2: The Silmarillion
More than The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings this is the ultimate Tolkien. The sheer scope of it – covering creation myth, fallen angels, (Middle) earthly paradise and ruination, the coming of man and divine intervention – is breathtaking.
It tells the story of the Silmarils, two jewels fashioned by the gods of such wondrous beauty that they cause a rupture in the heavens and the fate of all creation becomes bound up in them.
Unfinished at Tolkien's death it was assembled from the author's notes by his son. But this isn't a mere directory of events. There are real characters to be followed here and the elves especially are the stars of the show. Immortal, exquisite yet fierce, their endless lives trace the fate of Middle Earth. The weariness they feel as the years pass is brilliantly captured; and when an immortal is killed it is even more heartbreaking. The sacrifice Finrod Felagund makes giving his life to save mortal Beren from a wolf is devastating.
I read and re-read this book as a teenager. The language is lyrical, almost biblical in places, and it became as firmly embedded in my mind as more traditional belief structures.
The events of the two more famous of Tolkien's novels are covered in just a few pages in The Silmarillion - and that in itself is hauntingly resonant. The events we live through, catcylsmic and all-consuming though they are right now - war, disaster, pandemic - will all pass soon enough; in no more than the blink of an eye in fact. They're just lines in history books waiting to be written. The Silmarillion is such a book, and though it is the essence of fantasy, it always feels utterly human.
It tells the story of the Silmarils, two jewels fashioned by the gods of such wondrous beauty that they cause a rupture in the heavens and the fate of all creation becomes bound up in them.
Unfinished at Tolkien's death it was assembled from the author's notes by his son. But this isn't a mere directory of events. There are real characters to be followed here and the elves especially are the stars of the show. Immortal, exquisite yet fierce, their endless lives trace the fate of Middle Earth. The weariness they feel as the years pass is brilliantly captured; and when an immortal is killed it is even more heartbreaking. The sacrifice Finrod Felagund makes giving his life to save mortal Beren from a wolf is devastating.
I read and re-read this book as a teenager. The language is lyrical, almost biblical in places, and it became as firmly embedded in my mind as more traditional belief structures.
The events of the two more famous of Tolkien's novels are covered in just a few pages in The Silmarillion - and that in itself is hauntingly resonant. The events we live through, catcylsmic and all-consuming though they are right now - war, disaster, pandemic - will all pass soon enough; in no more than the blink of an eye in fact. They're just lines in history books waiting to be written. The Silmarillion is such a book, and though it is the essence of fantasy, it always feels utterly human.
April 10, 2021
#100BTMMAW 01: Swallows And Amazons by Arthur Ransome
Swallows and Amazons
Where to start? Let's start here. The classic 1930 story of four children holidaying in the Lake District and, to an Asian kid growing up in 1970s London, almost impossibly exotic.
John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker sail a dinghy called Swallow, camp on an island, and meet pirates (other children), Nancy and Peggy Blackett – the Amazons. They have camp fires and eat cool stuff like pemmican (corned beef) and buttered eggs (scrambled, apparently) and drink grog (ginger beer) from stone bottles. There's a thunderstorm in the middle of the novel which is incredibly atmospheric, and the rivalry and eventual friendship with the Blacketts and the contests they have with one another for sailing supremacy are simply wonderful.
To me, the whole book was like an instruction manual for adventure. I tried to teach myself (unsuccessfully) to swim using the author's illustrations of Roger doing likewise. To this day my speech is peppered with nautical terms. I know what a centreboard is and I can tie a reef knot.
I didn't go on many summer holidays as a kid – and certainly not under canvas – so when I had children of my own I was desperate to take them camping. And that first night we spent under blue ripstop nylon in my early 30s was as vivid as my 8-year old self could have possibly hoped.
It's the only book which I paid my own children to read in the hope that they would love it as much as I had. They didn't of course. They have their own touchstones and, given the period setting, they found it hard to make out what was imagined by the Swallows and what were actual events.
But for me that was the whole point: a blurring of reality and fantasy that allowed a suburban 70s 2nd-generation immigrant to share the experience of four children from the 1930s. It is without doubt the single most influential book I have ever read and certainly one of the #100BooksThatMadeMeAWriter. And though I have yet to go sailing, I have dreamt of the water ever since.
Where to start? Let's start here. The classic 1930 story of four children holidaying in the Lake District and, to an Asian kid growing up in 1970s London, almost impossibly exotic.
John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker sail a dinghy called Swallow, camp on an island, and meet pirates (other children), Nancy and Peggy Blackett – the Amazons. They have camp fires and eat cool stuff like pemmican (corned beef) and buttered eggs (scrambled, apparently) and drink grog (ginger beer) from stone bottles. There's a thunderstorm in the middle of the novel which is incredibly atmospheric, and the rivalry and eventual friendship with the Blacketts and the contests they have with one another for sailing supremacy are simply wonderful.
To me, the whole book was like an instruction manual for adventure. I tried to teach myself (unsuccessfully) to swim using the author's illustrations of Roger doing likewise. To this day my speech is peppered with nautical terms. I know what a centreboard is and I can tie a reef knot.
I didn't go on many summer holidays as a kid – and certainly not under canvas – so when I had children of my own I was desperate to take them camping. And that first night we spent under blue ripstop nylon in my early 30s was as vivid as my 8-year old self could have possibly hoped.
It's the only book which I paid my own children to read in the hope that they would love it as much as I had. They didn't of course. They have their own touchstones and, given the period setting, they found it hard to make out what was imagined by the Swallows and what were actual events.
But for me that was the whole point: a blurring of reality and fantasy that allowed a suburban 70s 2nd-generation immigrant to share the experience of four children from the 1930s. It is without doubt the single most influential book I have ever read and certainly one of the #100BooksThatMadeMeAWriter. And though I have yet to go sailing, I have dreamt of the water ever since.
#100BooksThatMadeMeAWriter
Turns out I always wanted to be a writer. But I didn't know it when I was a child. I just loved books. I loved the world they could create. I loved the places they could take me to. Naturally some had
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