Rose Tremain wins Orange ... HURRAH!

One hundred years ago a great friend told me about Rose Tremain's short stories, and since then I haven't stopped reading her work. She's written at least two collections of short stories and ten novels and today, wonderful writer that she is, Rose Tremain has won the Orange Prize for Fiction with her tenth novel, The Road Home (a wonderful portrait of an eastern European immigrant and his struggles to settle here and, more importantly, to find that place that we all long to call home). Tremain's work has been shortlisted for the Booker and for the Orange before, but this is the first time it has won. I can't think why it hasn't happened before. Her work is brilliant and deserves all the awards.

I've read every novel she has written (she's been writing for more than thirty years), but if you haven't, I recommend Restoration, whose central character, Robert Merivel, physician, transforms himself from King Charles II's idiotic vet (and cuckold) into an empathetic and wise-before-his-time doctor at a Quaker asylum for the insane. This, as Merivel tells what has been revealed to him about the treatment of the insane, had me in tears:

'Madness may be born of many things but yet for all except those who are lunatic from their births there was a Time Before, a time when there was no madness in them ... madness is not a static thing but, just as all things in the world are changeful, so is madness and, like them, may change for the better or for the worse. But we do not ask what were the Footsteps of each case of madness ... and we should try with each one of those in our care to look back into past time and ask them to ... remember how it was to be in the Time Before and what thing or calamity came about to put them into the Sickening Time ... .' And now [out] poured all my ... cures by dancing, my suggestions for story-telling and the playing of music.

Or there's the wonderful Music and Silence set in King Christian IV of Denmark's court (1630) who lives in fear for his life and his country's ruin, and his wife's not-so-secret adultery. He comforts himself with music which is played by his Royal Orchestra in the freezing cellar at Rosenborg, while he listens in his cosy Vinterstue above. Music, he hopes, will create the sublime order he craves but Kirsten, his devious wife, detests music.Or you could try The Colour, which is set in the New Zealand Gold Rush of the mid-19th century (I never knew there was a New Zealand Gold Rush until I read The Colour) - to which Harriet and Joseph Baxter (and his mother) have fled from East Anglia to escape the consequences of something he did ... and to build a new life.
All Tremain's work is peopled with vivid and often strange characters, and will live long after you've read it in your head because of its glorious settings and, above all, its emotional and psychological honesty. She's written seven other novels that I haven't even mentioned, but read her work ... you won't be disappointed.

Here's a big HURRAH for Rose Tremain (and for the friend who told me about her all those years ago).

Favourite authors, at a moment's notice ...

Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book tagged me for this meme, which began on Heather's site, Errant Thoughts. Thank you , Simon ... .

1. Who’s your all-time favourite author, and why?

John Fowles because his use of language is astonishing, glorious, erudite and because it teaches me, without patronising, and because he creates worlds that I never want to leave. Particularly The French Lieutenant's Woman

for its extraordinary story within the story, modern/Victorian novel, double-ending brilliance.

2. Who was your first favourite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favourites?

Lewis Carroll, for all the same reasons as John Fowles, and most particularly Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favourite authors, and why?

Marina Fiorato, see here for her debut novel, The Glassblower of Murano, just published in the UK. An absolute must-read for lovers of Venice, lovers of glass and its extraordinary nature and lovers of mystery and love. Lovers, really.

4. If someone asked you who your favourite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection?

John Fowles, Lewis Carroll, Maggie O'Farrell, Rose Tremain, Jeanette Winterson, Marina Fiorato.

And on a bit of reflection ... Niall Williams, Philip Larkin, George Eliot, the Brontes, Jean Rhys, Michael Ondaatje, Douglas Adams, Khaled Hosseini, Danny Schienmann, one William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Taylor, Rosamund Lehmann and so many more ... but if I listed them all this reflection would go on until tomorow.

I tag these five people to continue this meme, if they feel like it:

Juxtabook
Verbivore (now Incurable Logophilia) - who's on holiday for a little while
Booknotes by Lisa
A Work in Progress
and
Geranium Cat's Bookshelf

and anyone else who'd like to join in ... .

To plan or not to plan a novel?

That is the question.

A writing colleague and I were talking the other day about whether we should or shouldn't plan our novels. I said I felt as I'd heard Rose Tremain say she'd felt: that if she plans, the subsequent writing bores her and if the writing bores her, it will surely bore readers ... .
But I also knew as I spoke that there was a deeper resistance to planning in me and it is this: planning is the rockface, not the romance. Planning is the dangerous hard work from which I might fall off and injure myself (ie, the piece will prove itself to be nothing but piss and wind) and I am afraid that planning will destroy the romance of the words themselves. However I also know that if I write off in any old direction it takes twice (or thrice) as long and I get despondent. My colleague said: Novels and stories should come from deep places, from the soul, should be inspired, ie, romantic, but it's difficult to square that with planning, let alone keeping an eye on the marketplace. (Hurrah, I said to myself .) But she also said: 'But I am coming round to the idea of putting a structure in place, just a little something, for the inspiration to hold onto. It's a bit like letting a climbing flower grow feely but putting a wire in front of it and saying, "This way, I want you here".'I think her analogy brilliant. She is right. I also came up with one of my own: I need the bedrock of planning to provide a solid base for the romance (the soul) of what I write. Serendipitiously I found this, here, when idly searching for 'bedrock and soul':'The substrate here is woodsy humus and soul pockets over bedrock ... ' which says it all, really, even if unintentionally. But I shall leave the last word on planning to one of my favourite writers in my favourite book:

John Fowles wrote this, on pages 85 & 86 of my copy of The French Lieutenant's Woman:

You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons. ... Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world.