Today on the blog I'm pleased to welcome historical novelist, Harriet Steel, talking about the
inspiration for her latest book, City of
Dreams.
Guest post by author Harriet Steel
Many authors have found inspiration in sensory experiences.
The example that most readily spring to mind is that of Marcel Proust and his
famous Madeleine, but a piece of music, a waft of scent, the feel of a
wave-smoothed pebble or the touch of a hand might also spark off an idea that
grows into a novel or a short story. For me, paintings have often provided
inspiration and this was the case with my recently published novel, City of
Dreams. It's set in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century and
tells the story of Anna, a young Russian girl, who comes to Paris with her new
French husband, Emile Daubigny. She's thrilled to be in the most fashionable
city on earth, but when Daubigny turns out to be a rogue and abandons her, she
has to cope with a very different life from the one she had looked forward to
with such joy.
The names that come to mind in the art of the
time are well known - Manet, Renoir and Monet to mention the most famous.
Manet's harsh realism certainly had a place in City of Dreams,
although Monet's beautiful pictures were less influential. His water lilies and
haystacks are a marvellous subject for his magnificent explorations of colour
and light, but I suspect their private lives are a little lacking in interest.
No, it
was his contemporary, Auguste Renoir, whose work really fired my imagination.
His work is sometimes dismissed as, 'chocolate boxy' but look closer - there's
so much more to it than that. Renoir's paintings, with their lush brushwork and
limpid, sensuous colours, aren't just beautiful, they're full of stories too
and bursting with life.
A glamorous woman with her beau
in the box at the opera looks pensive, as if she's not really enjoying herself.
A girl gazes wistfully out of the picture plane in The Moulin de la Galette,
The young men in The Boating Party,
show off their muscles while a smooth, dandified young man whispers in his girl's
ear. Who are they all? What are their stories?
City of Dreams is
available from Amazon in paperback or Kindle formats.
Visit Harriet’s Amazon Author
Page http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harriet-Steel/e/B00845TT0U
for details of her other books, and her blog https://harrietsteel.blogspot.com/
for articles on history and interviews with a variety of guests, including
bestselling author, Joanne Harris (Chocolat)
and Margaret Mountford (The Apprentice)
on her other life as an academic specialising in Greek papyri.
