JANUARY 2004

NEWSLETTER 8

Happy New Year to all readers of this newsletter. I was going to wait till the end of January to write another newsletter, but I wanted to tell everyone that I have at last finished my second adult novel. That’s the good news. The bad new is: I still don’t have a title, though I am growing attached to 'HESTER'S STORY' which is the provisional name for the book. Now the tenterhooks go into action, as I wait for everyone to read it and tell me what they think.

I also wanted to write about my trip to France in some detail, so I thought I’d do that before getting down to the children’s book I am supposed to have finished by the end of last year. See Work in Progress for what that is all about.

Trip to France

In December, I travelled to France for three days, to speak (along with Rose Marie…see below) to students who are training to be teachers of English. I had a marvellous time, and before I go any further, I’d like to thank everyone who made my trip so enjoyable. Rose Marie Vassallo, who translates my children’s books, was instrumental in setting up the trip, and she came to meet me in Paris. We took the train to Roche-sur-Yon where her car was waiting. This car deserves a paragraph to itself, but I’ll content myself with saying that Rose Marie has customised it in the most delightful way by painting mottoes and pictures all over it. She can recognize it in any car park at a thousand paces, and it’s a thing of beauty and a joy forever. She drove me everywhere I needed to go and we shared the sessions with the students in a very satisfactory way, I think. Rose Marie was a super companion and the whole trip would have been worth it just to meet her at last. We talked the hind legs off several donkeys as we va va voomed (if two ladies ‘d’un certain âge’ can vavavoom) through the beautiful French countryside on the ‘péripheriques’ and motorways. The two Françoises in Nantes, and Frédérique in Laval, with her husband René, who got up early on the Thursday morning to drive me to the railway station were also the soul of hospitality and kindness, and in Roche-sur-Yon it was good to meet John who’s an Englishman who’s been teaching in France for more than twenty years. Vive l’entente cordiale, I say.

In Nantes, we had lunch with the two Françoises at restaurant called La Belle Equipe, looking out on the river. The puff pastry square filled with a mushroom mixture was delicious and so was the crème brulée. After our talks in the afternoon we went to dinner with Françoise C in her beautiful house and Françoise K brought along a ‘cake aux olives’ which is just what it sounds like: an olive cake and absolutely mouth-watering it was too. It was also good to meet Françoise C’s husband and her two delightful sons.

It’s very hard to go to France without talking about the excellence of the food. They really are very good at it, not only in restaurants and private houses, but everywhere. For example, Rose Marie and I ate on the train on the way to Roche-sur-Yon. I had a pasta dish in the dining-car that was microwaved for me and it was very good indeed. It came with a bread roll that tasted like proper bread and a little square of Le Président butter. At the IUFM (the teacher training college) in Nantes, I had what was a canteen meal but not like any canteen meal I’ve ever eaten in this country. On my way home, I had a couple of pancakes and a cup of coffee at the Gare du Nord and that too was quite fantastic.

Top culinary spot, and also top hotel spot goes to A la Bonne Auberge which is where we stayed while we were in Laval. Our rooms were beautiful. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant with Frédérique and René and that was a meal I won’t quickly forget. The hotel has a proper chef and everything was out of this world. For example, the cauliflower soup (Potage Dubarry) was amazing. The home made sorbets were divine..oh, I could go on and on. Anyone who’s in Laval ought to go along there and try the menu for themselves. Laval is a pleasant place to visit, and has a river running through it, which is always a bonus for any town.

The other thing the French are brilliant at is trains. Eurostar (UK side too!) is superb and I would heartily recommend it. The TGV is extraordinary. The non-TGV train which took us from Gare Montparnasse to Roche-sur-Yon was also wonderful: clean, fast, well-designed and above all, punctual to the minute. Every single train I took was not even a single minute late. I have no explanation of why our neighbours’ railways should be so excellent when ours are, to say the least, patchy except that they are nationalized. But it was a real treat to travel on them. And I wasn’t surprised to be 40 minutes late at Stockport on the way home… ho hum. Still, I’m not complaining. However lovely Abroad is, (and it often is) I’m always happy to be back in the UK and most of all, back home.

Work in progress

Now that the adult novel is out of the way for a while, I’m rushing to catch up with Linda Newbery and Ann Turnbull, who have written their stories for the Historical House series, which is going to be published by Usborne. These books are set at different times, but the house in which the protagonists live remains the same through the ages. Linda and Ann have written great stories and I will be hard-pressed to live up to their standard, but I’m going to start trying now. The books are short, so I hope it won’t take me too long to finish. When I’ve done that, there is some work I have to do on ITHAKA, which has been delayed for nearly a year now. I can’t wait to get back to that.

Forthcoming publications

On February 5th, David Fickling Books will publish my novel OTHER ECHOES in hardback. It’s a very autobiographical book, in which a girl of seventeen at an English boarding-school not a million miles from the one I attended (Roedean) tells the story of what happened to her when she was eight years old and living in Jesselton, North Borneo. It has a wonderful cover by Chris Corr and I hope very much that people will enjoy it as it’s very close to my heart. The plot is entirely made up, but every single physical detail is true, right down to the story that the heroine, Flora, writes for a competition in the local newspaper. I wrote the same story and I won the same Parker pen-and-pencil set that she does. She is also just as big a drip as I was. I’m very much hoping this will be a crossover book, because I cannot say exactly what age it might be suitable for. My advice is: try it and see.

On March 4th, (World Book Day) the paperback of FACING THE LIGHT is published Orion have planned a big campaign and advertisements may appear on the Underground in London and also along the sides of some buses. I can’t wait for that. It should be available to buy in a bookshop near you. The cover image is gorgeous, I think, and the hope is that no one will be able to resist picking it up.

Events

In February, I’m talking to students at Eccles College on February 6th and on February 18th, I’m going to talk to Carmel Wizo’s North Manchester Branch.

In March, I’m appearing at the Bath Festival on Friday March 5th, along with my daughter, Sophie Hannah. There is a strand in the Festival where parent-and-child writers appear together which seems a very good idea.

On March 18th at 7.30 p.m I’m speaking at Braintree Library as part of the Essex Festival.

On March 28th I’m appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival. My event takes place at 2.00 p.m. in the Oxford Union and is a panel discussion chaired by Nicolette Jones of the Sunday Times. Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo will be the others on the panel. Book early as every event with those two in it gets sold out at once!

All three of these events are going to be wonderful, I think, and I’m thrilled to have been invited to do them.

In April I’m one of the speakers at the Federation of Children’s Books Groups Conference in Birmingham, but I’ll give more details of this in the next newsletter.

Books read

On the trains to France and back I read two excellent thrillers. The first has just won a Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger. It’s called Half-broken Things by Morag Joss. It reminded me of Ruth Rendell’s A Fatal Inversion but is very original as well. The setting, characters, and above all the narrative voice is most assured and it’s a book you cannot put down. Perfect for a long train journey. She’s super writer and one to watch. The other book was Reginald Hill’s Death’s Jest Book which is a Dalziel and Pascoe novel. Nuff said. I’m a huge fan both of the novels and the TV series with Warren Clarke.

For Christmas, I was given Zoe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal which is terrific, though I’m not altogether sure that it deserved a Booker shortlisting. The narrative voice here, again, is what lifts it out of the commonplace, and it’s full of wit and sharp observation, especially of schools. It’s often very funny and there are passages where you just wince with embarrassment. My one problem with it was: I couldn’t quite understand what it was about the young boy that so entranced a teacher who ought to have known better. I was never persuaded of his beauty or sexiness.

Two chick-lit books next. I firmly believe that it’s how you do something that counts and both these are excellent examples of a genre that gives a lot of people a lot of pleasure.

Elegance by Katherine Tessaro is a gorgeously-produced hardback with a marker ribbon and a silver cover. It’s very well written and has many original aspects. Lovely!

Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes had me in stitches. Anyone who wants to know all there is to know about young New Yorkers who live for designer everything: this is the book for you, but for everyone else, just enjoy the humour. It’s great and will be appearing shortly. I read it in proof and loved it.

A beautiful Christmas present from my USA editor was The Mrs. Dalloway Reader edited by Francine Prose. Recommended for all lovers of Woolf ‘s book and the movie of ‘The Hours.’

One of my favourite books of last year, which I read just before Christmas, was When We were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. To say it’s about a family is not doing it justice. Just read it and see why I liked it so much. She’s a writer I’ve been fond of since the early Seventies and I don’t like everything she does, but when she’s good, she’s very, very good and this is amazing.

I’ve just read a proof copy of Susan Hill’s thriller (the first in a trilogy) called The Various Haunts of Men. It’s all you would expect from such a fine writer and I’ll write more about it when it appears in June, but everyone who enjoys her work has a treat in store. She has also started her own weblog ( http://www.susanhill.blogspot.com/)

It’s been a good year for children’s books.Ann Turnbull’s No Shame, No Fear’ (Walker); Jan Mark’s Stratford Boys (Hodder) and most recently a very Gothic and atmospheric book called The Moth Diaries ( Faber) by Rachel Klein, were some of the highlights of recent weeks.

I’m about to read Jan Mark’s latest book in proof form. It’s called Useful Idiots and is set in 2255. She is someone whose books I always look forward to and this is being published by David Fickling Books in March. Watch this space for my opinion next time.

Happy Reading. I’ll be putting up another newsletter at the end of March.

Adèle Geras

Stop Press! On Thursday March 25th at 7.30pm, I am appearing at Simply Books in Bramhall to launch the paperback of my novel FACING THE LIGHT. Tickets are available from the shop. Email: enquiries@simplybooks.info