Welcome to the Book Log where you will now find, amongst other things:
Reviews of Books I have enjoyed
Notes on My Current Ideas and Projects
Some thoughts on How I Write, influences, inspiration etc.

EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL and ANOTHER ME by Catherine MacPhail

My appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Monday, as part of the School’s Programme, seemed to go well. I was rather nervous about it beforehand, never having done an event quite of that sort before. The audience were from schools as nearby as Edinburgh itself and from as far away as Inverness-shire. The latter group had assembled for their coach journey at five in the morning in order to arrive on time. That shows remarkable dedication to the cause. My audience all seemed very alert and attentive, despite the early start some of them had made, and I was asked some intriguing questions at the end of the talk.

Most of the school groups who saw my talk were also intending to see Catherine MacPhail’s, later in the afternoon. Catherine MacPhail writes lean, hard-hitting thrillers for young people. Like me, her first novel for children was a Fidler Award winner, the snappily titled RUN ZAN RUN, which won the award in 1993. She has written many more books since then. One of my favourites is ANOTHER ME, a mystery story containing a strong element of the supernatural. Set among echoing, fog-filled streets and alleyways and empty school corridors chiming with ghostly footsteps, the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty is built up unrelentingly, as a girl finds herself stalked by an uncomfortably familiar figure. ANOTHER ME is based on the legend of the doppelganger. The term comes from the German, it literally translates as “double-goer”, and it describes the spirit or ghost of a living person, which has somehow manifested in physical form, usually with the intention of haunting its original. Although not as well known as Gothic staples such as werewolves and vampires, the legend of the doppelganger is nonetheless a tenacious one. The influence of the tale seems to have found its way into one of the plot lines of the current American TV series HEROES, for instance. The legend is rich is in psychological implications, and stories such as the silent German expressionist horror film, THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE, based on the doppelganger legend, end with an inevitable showdown between the central character and their malevolent double. ANOTHER ME is no exception to this rule, and the conclusion to MacPhail’s story is chilling indeed.

Welcome to the Book Log where you will find, amongst other things:
Reviews of Books I have enjoyed
Notes on My Current Ideas and Projects
Some thoughts on How I Write, influences, inspiration etc.

HOME FROM IRELAND AND A VISIT TO EDINBURGH

We have just returned from a holiday in Ireland. We visited Rostellen Woods again, after a ten year absence. These woods, in East Cork, were the influence behind one of the Irish settings in Beast Beneath The Skin (when Sam flees the mob after his disastrous visit to the Cullithin village fete, he seeks sanctuary in a forest based on Rostellen Woods.) The ruined stone buildings are still there, but they are now fenced off, with DANGER – KEEP OUT- signs all over them. But the woods around are as atmospheric as ever, with the tree-trunks covered in ivy and a dense canopy of leaves high above, blocking out the light of day.

I shall be in Edinburgh on Monday, giving a talk on my WORM IN THE BLOOD trilogy as part of the Edinburgh Book Festival’s Schools’ Week. To anyone who’s going along, firstly, commiserations on your return to school (in Scotland, autumn term starts in mid-August) and secondly, I look forward to seeing you at the Book Festival event.

Welcome to the Book Log where you will now find, amongst other things:
Reviews of Books I have enjoyed
Notes on My Current Ideas and Projects
Some thoughts on How I Write

As prompted by suggestions from students at schools I have visited recently, here’s the first in another occasional series that will appear here, amongst the peace and quiet of the Book Log…

How I Write: 1. Keeping a Notebook

After I left school I took an art foundation course and then a degree in fine art. I got into the habit of keeping a sketchbook and carrying it with me wherever I went. I soon extended that to a notebook too, so I could write down thoughts and ideas wherever I happened to be – on the bus, the train, in art galleries, sitting in the park etc. I remember once waiting for the 69 bus, which at that time used to begin its route in North Woolwich by the entrance to the foot tunnel that runs under the Thames, where the free ferry used to cross the river (and perhaps still does). There was a man with a cardboard suitcase in his hand. His face was covered in tiny cuts. Fresh wounds, small but deep. He was in a terrible rage, muttering furiously to himself. The muttering broke out into full-throated angry bellowing every now and then. The focus of his fury was unclear. He paced around with his suitcase in his hand and I kept my eyes on the pavement. I watched a pigeon picking at a mush of squashed chips that had been dumped in the gutter then run over by several buses. It wasn’t a pleasant wait. The man with the suitcase was frightening. The pigeon was disgusting. But writing it all down, when I eventually got to the relative safety of the bus, seemed like the best way to capture the strange edgy spirit of that brief moment in North Woolwich in 1982. I haven’t used the incident directly in any fiction I’ve written. But noting it down, trying to find the best words to describe the essence of waiting for the bus that morning, felt strangely significant, as if I’d taken a small step towards something interesting. As for the man with the suitcase, I never saw him again. His story is not mine to know. The pigeon, however, was a regular at the 69 bus stop.

Welcome to the Book Log where you will now find, amongst other things:
Reviews of Books I have enjoyed
Notes on My Current Ideas and Projects
Some thoughts on How I Write


A FAVOURITE BOOKSHOP OF MINE (WHERE I ORDERED BURMA BOY BY BIYI BANDELE) AND A LIBRARY THAT NO LONGER EXISTS (WHERE I ONCE READ A BOOK CALLED THE WAR)

Ever since my first book, THE MEMORY PRISONER, was published in 2000, The Bargain Bookshop in Station Road has played host to a signing to help launch each of my titles. North Chingford is where I grew up, though the Bargain Bookshop hadn’t yet opened when I left home. My parents, however, became regular customers. Beverly Tankard, who runs the shop, has been very supportive over the years, and all the staff members are knowledgeable, pleasant and always helpful. The shop is small and packed with books from floor to ceiling. Any book they don’t have on the shelves they will order for you, and it usually arrives within a week.

I bought a book there a couple of weeks ago. BURMA BOY by Biyi Bandele. Although the main character is a fourteen-year-old boy, BURMA BOY is not written as a children’s book (that’s not to say that young people wouldn’t be interested in it, of course). It’s about a group of West African volunteers fighting with the Chindits – an elite long-range jungle penetration force – against the Japanese army in Burma during the Second World War. It follows the trail of an underage volunteer as he is swept into the heart of the action and faces the brutality of jungle warfare. As well as exploring a somewhat neglected area of Second World War history, BURMA BOY is also a story rich in the details of spoken language. The Chindits were very much an international force, including allied soldiers from Europe, America, Australia, Africa and Asia. The cross-mingling of different languages was an inevitable result. Amongst the Africans, there was a form of modified English that was used by the troops as a common military language. For instance, a soldier is called a sojar, while a general is referred to as a janar. In the case of Wingate, the charismatic leader of the Chindits, he was known as the janar. A lieutenant is called a laftanam, a captain a kyaftin, and so on. A sergeant-major is called a samanja, as indeed is an ordinary sergeant. When asked why they make no distinction between these two ranks the sojars say “All sarmanjas are sarmanjas!” This reply typifies the combination of respect and benign disregard generally shown towards the nuances of British military hierarchy. The ending of the book is hard-hitting; the narrative structure is modelled on the random qualities of real events. Nobody in the story gets an ending you could predict.

As I mentioned in the blog entry below, entitled BOMBER BOYS, I have long been fascinated with reading histories and first hand accounts of the World Wars. I have often felt rather guilty about this. There’s something a bit odd about seeking out and reading stories of these terrible events. I’ve never been able to work out exactly why I have this fascination. Now I just have to shrug my shoulders and admit to it. It’s been with me from an early age, that I do know. When I moved from my primary school to the much larger secondary school, I found it, as many people do, a much harsher environment. But one of the good things about Chingford Junior High School (a school that no longer exists - or at least, not in the same form or location) was the fantastic library. I spent many a lunchtime there, reading through their vast collection of folk tales from around the world, or the many books on the Second World War that were housed there. There was one volume I remember in particular, though I’ve never seen it anywhere since. It was a huge book, thick as a dictionary, and was simply called THE WAR. It consisted of hundreds of exerts from other books, all first hand accounts of the conflict of 1939 - 1945, written by the servicemen and civilians that had been involved in or witnessed the events. They were arranged chronologically, and thus mapped out an eye-witness account of the conflict from start to finish. I recall the stark and moving dedication at the front of the book, “To the 37,600,000 who died.” It was here that I first read a description of African soldiers fighting in the jungles of Asia against the Japanese (which is why the title and content of Biyi Bandele’s book caught my eye). It stuck in my mind so deeply that, many years later, I had Adda-Leigh, a character in WORM IN THE BLOOD, relate a story of her African grandfather fighting in the war. I based this snippet partly on the reading I did in the school library when I was twelve.

THE BLOG MUST GO ON

Since the entry (far) below, entitled “THE SILENCE OF THE BLOGS” (an entry that drew from the ether that rarest of events, a comment on this blog) I have made the phrase “Blogs,-what-are-they-good-for?” into something of a recurring theme here. Today I attended a talk by Mark Thorton, of Mostly Books in Abingdon. I’ve never been to that book shop, but it sounds good – Comfy chairs, coffee available, a large children’s book section, plus an unusually extensive bookshelf of poetry books – up to 50 different poets - (this would have suited me around the age of 15, when I very keen on poetry reading, and indeed poetry writing. My own verse, as I recall, was mainly on the theme of bitter self-pity, with occasional cod-biblical references). During Mark's talk – which was aimed at promoting better understanding between authors and independent book sellers – he mentioned blogs. In his view they’re worth the effort. It’s all down to key words, apparently. The way I see it is like this. If I was keen to promote, say, parsnips, I could write a blog in which I mention parsnip-related facts on a regular basis. Parsnip-fanciers the world over, all busily googling the word “parsnip”, would be directed to my site in their hundreds. Soon an on-line community would develop, leading, eventually, to the overthrow of governments and a world ruled by the all-conquering parsnip. That’s the theory anyway. There are, I fear some flaws. Of course, this wasn’t the way Mark Thorton described it. He made it sound quite sensible in fact. So I shall continue with the Book Log. The blog must go on!