On Shelley, secrets and weaving fact with fiction in ‘A Treacherous Likeness’….

One of my favourite reads of 2012 was Tom All Alone’s by Lynn Shepherd. The grim realities of Victorian Britain were brought to life for a 21st century audience and the fictional worlds of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins (often considered to be the ‘fathers’ of the modern detective novel) were re-imagined and developed to take us into much darker regions of the Victorian psyche.

Lynn Shepherd writes literary crime fiction with the emphasis on the ‘literary’ and as we prepare to meet detective Charles Maddox again, in her new novel A Treacherous Likeness I am delighted to say Lynn agreed to take the time to answer a few questions for No Wriggling.

1. We first met the private detective Charles Maddox in Tom All Alone’s and on my second reading of that book the complexities of his character and his relationships really struck me. Did you have a clear idea of him before you started writing, or does he develop as you plot and write the stories?

Lynn Shepherd

I think my mental picture of him has definitely got richer and deeper the more I’ve written about him. In a strange way I’ve got to know him in the same way as I would if he was a real person, in that he came to me first in terms of what we can see from the outside – his intelligence, his stubbornness, his courage, but also his reserve and his privacy. The more I’ve written about him the more I’ve explored him from the inside, finding the causes of that reserve, and the secrets of his past. I certainly didn’t have all that written down and ready to go when I began Tom-All-Alone’s.

2. A Treacherous Likeness is a fictional explanation of some of those mysteries that still surround Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary, who led lives tangled with many other great thinkers and writers of the early 19th century. Why did you choose them as the subject of the novel?

I’ve been fascinated by the Shelleys for years, but it was reading Richard Holmes’ wonderful biography of Shelley, The Pursuit, that really brought it home to me that I could turn their lives into a novel. And after that I read Miranda Seymour’s life of Mary, and the letters and journals that still survive, some of which have been tantalisingly censored by having pages ripped out, whether by the Shelleys themselves, or much later, by their meddling daughter-in-law, Jane. It’s such fantastically rich and dark material. In fact I suspect many of my readers will be surprised how much of A Treacherous Likeness is based on fact, not fiction.

3. As you know I am intrigued and inspired by another famous Romantic poet, John Keats. I know how ‘picky’ I am if someone tries to fictionalise his life. How much research have you had to do to ensure you can maintain a fast paced, believable plot and still satisfy the adoring Shelley reader?

As you might know, I have a PhD in literature and I was lucky enough to lecture at Oxford as well, so there is a bit of the academic in me, and I decided right at the beginning that if I was going to do this at all, I was going to do it properly. I certainly wanted to be as faithful as possible to the facts. I hate it when dramatisations or fictionalisations take short cuts with history, or change or exclude characters or events just to suit their own plots (the recent TV series The Tudors was a terrible example). I was determined not to do that, but it did make my task all the more difficult. It was much easier working with a work of classic fiction, as I did in Murder at Mansfield Park and Tom-All-Alone’s, because there I could pick and choose from the source material, keeping what I wanted, and rejecting what I didn’t. With the Shelleys’ lives I couldn’t do that, so yes, it was a huge challenge to find an approach to the plot that would keep the tension but also remain true to the facts as far as we know them. Having a flashback structure was the main way I did that, but technically it’s certainly the hardest thing I’ve done.

4. Tom All Alone’s and A Treacherous Likeness are full of darkness, terror and deceit and your descriptions of Victorian London are chilling. Have you always been intrigued by the Gothic?

Funnily enough I’ve only started to think of my books in terms of the Gothic quite recently. I definitely didn’t make a conscious intention to write in that genre, or position my books there. But having said that, I have read a lot of the original Gothic novels, such as Mrs Radcliffe’s The Italian, or Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, so perhaps they have been simmering in my head all these years and are now seeping out! I do love trying to create an unsettling atmosphere, especially one of uncertainty and foreboding, and plot-wise I think we’re all hard-wired to want to unearth secrets and solve mysteries, so that’s a pleasure I definitely want my reader to have. It’s what keeps me turning the pages when I read a good book myself.

5. As an author you are clearly there in the text, commenting on the story and comparing responses to those of a 21st century audience. I found it original and refreshing, marking the story out from other titles set in Victorian England, but isn’t that a risky and difficult device to maintain?

I chose to take that authorial stance when I was writing Tom-All-Alone’s, partly as an echo and homage to Dickens, who does the same in Bleak House, and partly because I was inspired by John Fowles’ French Lieutenant’s Woman, which is one of my favourite books and one of the first, if not the first neo-Victorian novel. I love the way Fowles brings a contemporary perspective to bear on his story, and by doing the same in Tom-All-Alone’s I was able to give the reader information and insight in what I hope is an elegant way. It can be risky I suppose, and some readers like it more than others, but it does solve one of the enormous bear-traps of writing historical fiction, which is how to ensure your reader has vital background knowledge without stagey those toe-curling conversations in which one character gives a handy resumé to the other. Personally, I love the viewpoint I take, and it proved even more useful in A Treacherous Likeness, because there were so many more facts I needed to give my reader about the Shelleys, which I couldn’t assume they would already know. I dramatised as much as I could but there were some things – like events in Shelley’s childhood – that I could only convey by talking to the reader directly. I’m taking the same perspective in the book I’m writing now – in fact I don’t think I could now write about Charles Maddox in any other way!

6. Clearly signalled as it was at the end of Tom All Alone’s, was A Treacherous Likeness planned even before you had written the first book?

I’d had the Shelleys in mind for a long time, but I’d been struggling to find a way to turn their story into a workable plot, real life being much messier (and longer) than fiction. Then my agent sold the first draft of Tom-All-Alone’s to Random House in the US, and my editor over there asked to see what I might do for a follow-up. As luck would have it (and it really was amazingly fortunate timing) I had solved my persistent plot conundrum only that very week, so I was able to show her a proper synopsis of the Shelley book. And after that it was an obvious next step to weave a ‘teaser’ about the Shelleys into the final pages of Tom-All-Alone’s.

7. Are you already planning more in the Charles Maddox series? When can his growing band of fans expect the next episode and will it be set in the world of another famous, 19th century figure?

Yes I am! I’m about halfway through the first draft of a fourth book, again featuring both of the Maddoxes. I’m keeping the subject-matter a secret for the time being, but what I can say is that I’m not using biographical material for this one. But other than that, you will have to wait and see!

Tom Hiddleston – perhaps a role as Charles Maddox?!

8. If Charles Maddox were to be televised, who would you imagine might play the part successfully?

I know exactly who it should be! Tom Hiddleston. In fact I have him in my mind’s eye all the time I’m writing. He looks exactly as I imagine Charles. And David Warner for old Maddox. I remember him playing Kurt Wallander’s father in the BBC series, and he gave a very moving portrayal of someone struggling with the early stages of dementia, just as Maddox is. I think he would be perfect. And he has such a wonderful speaking voice too – that slightly more formal delivery which exactly characterises the way old Maddox speaks.

My thanks to Lynn for such a wonderful interview. A Treacherous Likeness is published by Corsair on February 7th. Lynn’s website is www.lynn-shepherd.com, and her Twitter ID is @lynn_shepherd.

Love poems you wish you had written #2 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

This is such an enjoyable series to work on . It is made more poignant for me at the moment as I spend a week away from my husband, ostensibly writing ‘Shell-Shocked Britain’ for Pen and Sword Books. Perhaps, when it comes to the end of September and the manuscript is due to be delivered I will regret spending an hour with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but I don’t think so. I have already written more than 1000 words of my book and this is a gentle break of an hour or so.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806 in Durham, England. Her father made a fortune in Jamaican sugar plantations, buying a 500 acre estate in the Malvern Hills where Elizabeth led a privileged childhood, developing a precocious interest in literature. She was encouraged by Mr Barrett who called her the ‘poet laureate of Hope End’ and she became a devotee of Shakespeare and Milton and a passionate admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft and her ideas.  However, her father suffered financial losses requiring the sale of the house at Hope End and they moved, eventually, to Wimpole Street in London. Elizabeth suffered increasingly poor health after the move. She became reclusive and frail, seeing few people. Her reputation as a writer was, however, already bringing her to public attention and by 1844 she was feted by literary circles and increasingly by the wider public.

Her reputation today is enhanced by the romantic story behind her marriage to fellow poet Robert Browning, who was encouraged to write to her following the publication of her first volume of poetry and whom she first met in 1845. It is one of the most famous courtships in literature. At 39 she considered herself an invalid, and could not believe that Browning, six years her junior and a ‘man of the world’ loved her as much as he said he did.  Over the next two years she worked through her doubts in the series ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’. Browning, though, was genuine in his devotion, marrying her and taking her to Italy.

One of the most popular of the long series starts ‘How do I love thee? let me count the ways’, (Sonnet XLIII) but that is not the one I have chosen to include in this series. I most admire Sonnet XIV, where Elizabeth speaks to her love of her concerns that he adores her only for those reasons that can most easily fade – her smile, her way of speaking or for pity (as she says, being loved could make her so happy that ‘A creature might forget to weep, who bore/Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!’) It has a simple message  - love me for love’s own sake and then love will endure.

Sonnets from the Portuguese XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only.  Do not say
“I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—
For these things in themselves, Belovëd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so.  Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was frail, suffering from ill-health that has defied proper diagnosis but which was almost certainly exacerbated by the use of opiates to ease her discomfort. But the romantic story survives to the end of her life, in 1861, when she died in the arms of her husband,  ‘smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl’s. … Her last word was—… ‘Beautiful’

Love poems you wish you had written #1 – David Constantine

I do have to mention, as I begin this post, that I was inspired by the wonderful David J Bauman over at The Dad Poet. We both love poetry and he has a wonderful reading voice – I was lucky enough to have him read one of my own poems, Life Force, included in Dandelions and Bad Hair Days.

Anyway, as we approach St Valentine’s Day I thought I would, with his permission, pinch his idea and post some poems that I wish I had written.

There are many classic love poems, often read at weddings, which move us and which are truly beautiful. But I think it is very hard to get love poetry ‘right’ as we live ever further into the 21st Century and life seems to take us away from expressing our feelings eloquently to those we love. Text speak is not designed to involve deep thought, or send a pleasant shiver down the spine. An email just doesn’t compare to the joy of a handwritten note and Valentine’s Day cards are just as likely to refer to ‘willies’ and ‘boobs’ as to hearts and flowers.

So I am full of admiration for contemporary poets who can express universal feelings of love, disappointment, longing and lust in language with which we can all identify.

In the past I have posted on Carol Ann Duffy’s Words Wide Night, one of my favourite poems of longing and Thom Gunn’s The Hug, which is an embrace in words. These are two of the poems I would have included in this series; but this exercise has encouraged me to read more widely in my collections of poetry to discover more fabulous poems of the heart.

So #1 is As our bloods separate by David Constantine, a poet born in Salford, Lancashire in 1944.

 

 

As our bloods separate the clock resumes,
I hear the wind again as our hearts quieten.
We were a ring: the clock ticked round us
For that time and the wind was deflected

The clock pecks everything to the bone.
The wind enters through the broken eyes.
Of houses and through their wide mouths
And scatters the ashes from the hearth.

Sleep. Do not let go my hand.

I love this for its physicality and its intense sensuality.  ’I hear the wind again as our hearts quieten’ so neatly expresses how the abandonment of all consuming passion creates a world apart for the lovers, they have succeeded in suspending time; but this is then tempered by a sense of what seems to be intense fear and anxiety. The clock ticking is a greedy bird, eating away to the end of everything; the wind is something destructive and inescapable – reaching even to the hearth. The heart of the home. That anxiety needs continued contact. ‘Do not let go my hand’ is so definite, so filled with the need for comfort and protection from the truth of the world outside that room, that the love between these two people becomes something outside reality, a reality which is an eerie, hostile world. It is a world in which none of us can escape the passing of time.

Well that is how I see it anyway. For me it is an intense love poem and although dark, it is romantic in the way it expresses longing and a denial of the reality of the inevitable ‘scattering of ashes’.

What do you think? I am really interested in what others consider ‘love’ poems. Are the best romantic and full of lush imagery? Are they humorous or full of longing? I would really enjoy hearing your selections if you feel like commenting. February can be a cold month so I hope these posts can a warm the cockles of a few hearts.

To find out more about David Constantine see the British Council Literature Matters page.

‘London Snow’ and the joy of a trip to the capital whatever the weather

The Wellcome Library

Last week I went to London and spent three happy hours in The Wellcome Library, taking advantage of their beautiful reading rooms. I was researching shell shock and PTSD to inform Shell Shocked Britain, the book I am writing for Pen and Sword for 2014, and although a trip up on the coach from Wellington only leaves me with three or four hours of concentrated study, I had a very successful afternoon.

And then of course, the weather changed and a trip up would have been difficult – delays on the M5 and M4 resulting in time for a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the cafe and little else (you can see where my priorities lie.)

I was born and brought up in London but have spent 25 years of married life away from the city. My husband, also born there, isn’t keen on a day trip, let alone going back to the capital to live. I put this down to his early years in Streatham; living in a big house right near the Common must have been a horrid experience….(you may sense I feel he has little, if no excuse for his continuing antipathy).

The moment I cross the boundary into the familiar suburbs I feel that first excitement; it is a genuine ‘buzz’. I am not so naive as to think that ‘buzz’ wouldn’t eventually become exhausting if I had to make a long commute every day. I had to travel from the northern suburbs into Holborn every day for three years and standing on an open platform – even at the beautiful Arnos Grove Station – was pretty hellish in winter. Readers of my blog might know of my love of poetry; little snippets or whole poems ‘speaking’ for me of an immediate experience. So remembering last week, and realising how different the experience of the City, and indeed Somerset (it is snowing heavily here as I write) is as the snow tumbles down, I give you this poem by Robert Bridges.

For me London Snow brings the city, with all its inequalities, together under a blanket of snow which ‘hides difference’ and makes ‘unevenness even’. Even those living in the darkest spots wake to ‘unaccustomed brightness’. The perfect lines, They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze/Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing; so describe the innocence and thrill children still experience as the snow starts to fall that for a moment I forget what a nuisance it can be, and how frustrating it was to get to college with slush splashed up the back of my tights and three hours ahead of me to sit, damp and cold, in a lecture hall. Those men of Bridges’s poem are for a moment taken away from the toil of the day ahead by the sight of the ‘uncompacted lightness’ of new fallen snow and the charm they are about to break with their heavy boots.

London Snow

By Robert Bridges

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
‘O look at the trees!’ they cried, ‘O look at the trees!’
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

So as I wake up tomorrow morning, perhaps unable to do all those things I had planned for the day, I will not let my first thought be ‘Oh damn it’. I will remember Roberts Bridges and be greeted by its beauty and its charm.

Until I can’t get to the doctors, fail to make my counselling appointment and miss a coffee with my good friend Bethan who is working so hard for Dry January to raise money for Alcohol Concern.

Oh well, it is still a beautiful poem….

Starting as I mean to go on…

Next week I am taking what is, for me anyway, a really significant step. I have to believe it is a step forward and although it is not exactly brave, it is taking all my courage to move further along a path that until now has seemed one which could only lead inexorably to anxiety and unhappiness. It is a path that is meant to lead in quite the opposite direction.

Forgive me for being a little obtuse. Even that word seems designed to obstruct and prevent clear understanding. I am certainly finding this hard to express. Or easier to avoid expressing directly.

Those who know me, or have read a little about me in Dandelions and Bad Hair Days, or on this blog, will know that I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 44 in 2006. I had young children and was terrified but I came through chemotherapy and radiotherapy successfully and have just been told that I can now come off of all the medication that has been keeping the beast at bay. The worst of the risk is past, apparently. No-one will say ‘you are cured’. In Somerset they don’t even say you are ‘all clear’. It is a brave man they say that will claim to have cured cancer. It can still come back but I should, with luck, do well. Good news, move on. How much easier said than done that has been for me.

From a young age I have been faced with illness – not always my own but certainly my father’s. He was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s when I was just starting primary school and I don’t remember him physically well at all. As with many neurological disorders he had good days and bad days and our lives were ruled, understandably, by how he was feeling. But I now know that however ‘good’ the day and however well he felt he would always assume the worst. He had suffered grief and loss in a previous marriage and despite happiness with a new family he felt disaster was never far from his life. It stopped him opening up to us, to love us as he might for fear of losing us as he lost his first family. Who could be surprised at that?

Dad died almost exactly twenty years ago and until I started counselling two years ago I didn’t realise how quickly I had taken over his role; started reading from the same script. The breast cancer confirmed it for me – I was playing a part in a tragedy of my own making. A starring role in my own disaster movie. How could I be one of the lucky ones? After all I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, had breast-fed my children and had just got fit and healthy when I found the lump. I had all the protective factors but no, I wasn’t one of the 9 out of 10 for whom all is well. I was the 1 in 10. Cue song…

But it has gone on too long. Before Christmas I had a scare. Ultrasound and MRI scan eventually confirming that what was on my liver was not the worst it could be, but something benign. Something that is a nuisance but NOT cancer.

This post came to me when I was browsing the Poetry Archive site, as is my wont. I found this poem by Felix Dennis, which I dedicate to my dad. I wish he could have read it.

Not All Things Go Wrong…

by Felix Dennis

Not all things go wrong, and knowing
This, be wary of despair,
As you go through hell — keep going,
Make no brave oasis there.

Through the shadowlands of grieving,
Past the giants, Doubt and Fear,
Heartsick, stunned, and half believing —
Heed no whisper in your ear.

Not all things go wrong — and after
Winter’s famine comes the spring,
Kindness, beauty, children’s laughter —
Joy is ever on the wing.

This is such a simple poem but very real for me as I head into 2013.

So with the thoughts of Felix Dennis in mind, where does it leave my script? My soap opera of a life of anxiety? Well it actually changes nothing. I could think ‘well those good results were this time, there will be others’ and carry on in the same way, crucifying myself with anxiety. Or I could do what I have done and at least take steps to try to break the cycle; write a new ending to the story. Give myself some funny lines and be kind to myself. Write myself the equivalent of a retreat; not from the world but from the knotted workings of my own mind.

I have booked myself onto a Living Well with the Impact of Cancer two-day residential course offered by Penny Brohn Cancer Care in Bristol. I know many men and women go shortly after diagnosis or just after treatment has ended. It has taken me six years to take advantage of the charity’s support and I hope it will make the difference to me that it has to so many others; exploring the meaning of cancer in my life with people who understand the impact of the proverbial ‘journey’. I know now I have become almost phobic about cancer, avoiding friendships with those travelling the same tough road for fear of losing them, being unable to offer the support they need or assuming their experience would be mine. I barely talk about it; hardly ever write about it which is bizarre when one’s every experience could inform one’s writing. Perhaps when I come back I will open up; I will certainly tell you how I get on.

I know it will take commitment and leaving behind all the excuses I have made to myself in the past. I must want to learn how to take care of my mind and body so that instead of taking the path that meanders without purpose to the one thing certain in our lives (death, not taxes – I paid £12 this year) I will work to choose the path that might be new and scary but which offers me not a poor shadow of my old life but a new one. I will try to come to terms with the anger and disappointment and move on.

I will tear up my father’s script and write myself a new one.

Ho Ho Ho – a Happy, healthy Christmas from No Wriggling!

Just a quick post to wish all those who follow my blog and any who just drop by the very merriest of Christmases and the happiest and healthiest of New Years.

This has been a good year on No wriggling. One post alone received over 20,000 views – a record by some way – and I am very grateful for your support of my writing.

This isn’t a review of the year, but 2012 also saw my first book published (called Dandelions and Bad Hair Days- Untangling lives affected by depression and anxiety) by Dotterel Press and another commissioned (Shell Shocked Britain) by Pen and Sword Books. So I can now legitimately call myself a ‘writer’. Thank you!

Anyway I thought I would send you a Christmas message via John Betjeman, who in this poem pretty much sums it up for me.

Mental health guest post: on surviving using self-help strategies….

Editor’s note:  Dandelions and Bad Hair Days has brought me into contact with some really interesting and honest writers and Melanie is definitely one of them. She is a freelance writer, mother and is currently working on her first novel. Recently having been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, she embarked on a mission of self-help, to assist alongside her medication and talking therapies. Her guest post today details some of the methods used by her and others to ease their symptoms during what can be a difficult time of year for many. Do take a look at her own blog over at Molly Doubly-Barrely.

Self Therapies – A holistic approach to mental illness

 A commonly uttered phrase I have been hearing of late is ‘they won’t help you unless you help yourself.’ Of course, my perpetual need to over analyse what people say took over and I have since become fanatical about self management strategies, Googling and reading until my brain aches with information overload. After waiting two weeks for a referral to the Wellbeing team, I had worked myself into a state, my medication had reduced in its effectiveness and I was generally making a hash of life. Then my appointment was cancelled due to staff shortages. Luckily, I had already read up on the experiences of others and I now realise I am not alone in searching desperately for ways to help myself, having been – temporarily – let down by the professionals.