A Woman's Choice - Annie Thomas - Author Guest Post

I am very pleased to welcome Annie Thomas, author of the novel A Woman's Choice, to the blog today and to share with you her brilliant guest post, below, discussing historical fiction. 

Who wants to see history in a great historical novel?

by author Annie Thomas

What is it that separates a magnificent historical novel from the rest?

The answer lies not in superb writing, compelling plot, characters we can believe in, and a book that reveals some truth about the human condition – although all of that is of course a pre-requisite for magnificence.

It’s the history.  The history that we don’t notice but which we absorb with every word we read.

We recognise that the world we have entered is entirely authentic, while remaining unconscious of the research that made it that way.  This is not about accuracy of historical detail – right food, right clothes, right transport - that just has to be a given.  It is about understanding that the past is not always a foreign country, as L.P Hartley believed in ‘The Go-Between’. Sometimes they may do things differently there, but there are also times when they behave and think very much as we do.

It is the history that gives us the social and political context, the public landscape in which lives are lived. Historical fiction brings us vicarious experience; we can read about the impact of anti-German rhetoric and prejudice in early 20thC America on the lives of individuals we have come to know and care about, for example. It tells us something about the human capacity for bigotry, while the ways our characters respond to that tells us something about the strength of friendship.

Anne Fine, UK Children’s Laureate in 2002, described ‘The Seeing Stone’, Kevin Crossley-Holland’s wonderful historical novel, published for children but read by all ages, like this:  “a world so real that you can run your fingertips over its walls, feel its morning frost bite at your throat, and remember the people who lived there for a lifetime.”

What a testimonial.

As a relatively new writer, I know the temptation to expose rather than conceal the research.  So many hours are spent reading and thinking, making notes and making connections between the imaginary world and the real one.

Sometimes I have come across a contemporaneous description of an incident or place, and instantly seen my characters there. I know just what they would have said and done, and have even written whole chapters of many hundred words to add texture and credibility by putting them there.   It is a hard learned discipline to go back over the draft; recognising the slowing of pace, or the inconsequential diversion, and cut, and cut again, until the story is released to flow again as it should.

However, it is also undoubtedly true, that sometimes the research helps to shape the narrative.  In my own novel, set in New York, the books and newspaper accounts about the lives of emigrants at the turn of the century, (particularly women), became translated into the lives of my characters.  Sometimes they even helpfully provided the inspiration for a pivotal moment in the plot.

Philippa Gregory has described the period when Jean Plaidy, Anya Seton and Georgette Heyer were at their peak as a ‘golden age’ of historical fiction.  She is now herself part of a group of contemporary writers which could rightfully claim to be leading a new golden age.  Others include Elizabeth Chadwick and Hilary Mantel, and now Eleanor Catton.  All have very different styles and approaches.  All have that necessary lightness of touch, that deft ability to interweave narrative and context that creates the best in both popular and literary historical fiction.  All are wonderful storytellers, but never at the expense of the history, so we come away even more enriched by our reading.

As a reader I want to feel enthralled and fulfilled.  I want to unconsciously absorb a perspective about the times and the humanity - and to do that through the imaginative leap of seeing through the eyes of another person.

As a writer of popular rather than literary fiction, I want to get it right, to be a good historian – and then to conceal that scholarship with creativity and an absorbing read. Popular fiction may not bring readers a profound truth.  But it can bring insight, perspective, and a measure of understanding, in a cracking good story.

I guess that’s something we all keep striving to achieve.

~~~~~

About the author...

Annie Thomas is a British writer, and the author of ‘A Woman’s Choice’.  Brought up in London, after a degree in English and History she now works in an English university, and lives in a rural converted Victorian converted pub where rumour has it that Tolkein and C.S.Lewis once stopped for a beer on one of their many walks together.

www.anniethomasbooks.com

About the novel...

Set in the vibrancy of early twentieth century New York, the story follows the young emigrant Clara and the people she meets on the way, through tenement living and sweatshop labour to success. But as the horror of World War One in Europe threatens to engulf America, Clara learns that personal lives cannot be lived apart from public events, and finds that the people she has loved, and who love her, are not always what they seem. All the incidents in ‘A Woman’s Choice’ are based on what really happened to many thousands of emigrant families. It is a compelling saga of friendship, love and ambition.

Amazon/AWomansChoice

The Keeper of Secrets - Julie Thomas - Guest post and extract

I am very pleased to welcome author Julie Thomas to my blog today, with a guest post and an extract from her novel, The Keeper of Secrets

One Thing Leads to Another

by Julie Thomas

My journey began on a summer’s day in 1998 when I was fact checking a film script I’d written called “The Price of Redemption.” It was about a movie star called Matthew Price, a widower who was saved from a drunken rampage by a journalist researching a missing Albrecht Dŭrer painting. He agreed to help her find the painting and return it to the descendants of the original Jewish owners.

The file of clippings I’d checked out from the Auckland Public Library included a magazine article about looted musical instruments. It was a long article, detailing many examples of precious instruments taken by the Nazis during World War Two. I read about Beethoven’s piano and manuscripts, Stradivari violins and Amati violas. Then I came to the part about the missing 1742 Guarneri del Gesú violin and something fired a dart deep in my imagination.

That article led me to a book about Bartolomeo Giuseppe Antonio Guarneri, del Gesù, and why his violins are so special, why they are so rare that the musical world mourns the loss of every one. I knew from the very beginning that the story would revolve around the Holocaust and the taking of possessions and lives from people who had done no wrong. One survivor story led to the next and gradually I found my characters, fathers who were blind to the impending danger, sons who fled and made it across the Swiss border to safety, males sent to concentration camps and women who joined the resistance, such as it was.

But the Holocaust was only half the story and the fall of Berlin in May 1945 led to the invasion by the Allies and the claiming of war loot. The quarter of Berlin where much of the illegal contraband was hidden was ‘liberated’ by the Red Army. So my German music major ran headfirst into the soldiers of General Vladimir Valentino. This led to a whole new subject for research, Stalinist Russia. I found so many stories of fear and persecution, paranoia and retribution. The character of Koyla was based on a real Zampolit (Political Officer) who wrote a letter to his beloved Great Father Stalin and condemned his whole family as traitors because they wanted to stay in the city and not move to a collective farm.

This is a story about possession being nine-tenths of the law, unless you stole it. Everyone has secrets and the violin has more than most, everyone has a ‘stake’, a case for retaining, or claiming, this most precious of musical instruments. Throughout this long history of researching, writing, re-writing, self-publishing and then discovery by HarperCollins USA… one thing has led to another.

Extract:

“Number!” he barked.

Simon scrambled to his feet, aware that his hat was on the ground beside him.

“8467291, sir” he recited quickly, his eyes averted.

“What is that?”

                  The man was almost beside him, holding out one large hand. Reluctantly Simon handed over the violin and bow. The guard examined it carefully.

“Where did you get it? You may speak.”

“It was made….a worker in the camp, he was a violin maker, sir.”

“Did you steal it?”

“No. He…. Made it for me, sir.”

“You were a musician?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pick up your hat. This way, now!”

Simon grabbed his hat and ran in the direction the guard was pointing. Somewhere inside him iron fingers of terror had gripped him, but the thought roaring through his head was, Who will look after Papa when I’m dead? The guard marched him into a small square building next to the SS officers’ quarters. He took a key from the pocket of his uniform and unlocked the heavy padlock on the latch.

“In here!”

Simon stepped uncertainly inside. It was one single room, lie by a central lightbulb and full of brown cardboard boxes. From floor to ceiling on all four sides were stacks of boxes. The guard shut the door behind them.

Published by HarperCollinsUSA

About the novel:

The story follows a priceless violin across generations—from WWII to Stalinist Russia to the gilded international concert halls of today—and reveals the loss, love, and secrets of the families who owned it. In 1939 Berlin, 14-year-old Simon Horowitz’s world is stirred by his father's 1742 Guarneri del Gesu violin. When Nazis march across Europe and Simon is sent to Dachau, he finds unexpected kindness, and a chance to live. In the present day, orchestra conductor Rafael Gomez finds himself inspired by Daniel Horowitz, a 14-year-old violin virtuoso who refuses to play. When Rafael learns that the boy's family once owned a precious violin believed to have been lost forever, Rafael seizes the power of history and discovers a family story like no other.

About the author:

Julie started writing at the age of eight, stories about pre-revolutionary Russian princesses who rode troikas through the snow. She has worked in the media for over 25 years, radio, TV and film. She has written three novels and seven feature film scripts. In 2011 she sold her house in Auckland and moved two hours south to Cambridge, a glorious English style village, not unlike St Mary Mede. She shares her house with a highly intelligent and manipulative, but affectionate cat, Chloe, and is passionate about music, cooking and sport. She writes from the heart about subjects that she feels passionate about and her motto is "To dream of the person you could be is to waste the person you are." And also, "It was a brave man who ate the first oyster." (from goodreads)

Visit the author's blog here to find out more. 

Extract provided by author

Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright: Much-Loved Poems You Half-Remeber - Ana Sampson

This is a beautifully presented volume comprising a selection of poetry billed as the much-loved poems we half-remember from school days and childhood, and it is divided into eight sections of poems, under different general headings or themes including love, death, childhood, and the natural world. There is a very useful and entertaining section at the back of the book with a short little snippet of information about each poet and poem, which is a very nice inclusion, and tempts the reader to go off and discover more about any favourites featured here. The index is also very helpful; as well as listing the poets, you can quickly find the poem you are searching for by title, first line or well-known lines.


This is a lovely selection to dip into and enjoy at leisure. It will make a good addition to any book or poetry lovers’ home, and would be an ideal gift. It’s a nice size with a pleasing variety of verse from different eras, with the inclusion both of some very well-known poems and others a little lesser so. I was particularly pleased by the inclusion of one of my all-time favourites, Dylan Thomas’ wonderful poem on childhood, ‘Fern Hill’, and three by John Donne including ‘Sonnet 10: Death, Be Not Proud’, both of which took me drifting back to my A-level English Literature days.