It’s also strange to point out that in every other facet of my media consumption, I prefer digital copy. I’d go so far to say I hate discs. Music, movie and game discs are unnecessary clutter in my already crap cluttered living space. I see no reason, with present technology, why I need to have a hard copy of every movie, song and game I incorporate into my entertainment routine. Some may say that digital storage without hard copy is a risk. I guess so, although many places provide cloud storage these days and in the event of a major disaster, the last thing I’m worried about is my movie collection. There is no reason to cry about my cracked Resident Evil disc when there are zombies walking down the street for example. So why are eBooks different? For one, I can read a book without electricity. Kindles need to charge, CD’s require a CD player, same for disc movies and video games require a computer or console. A television is also required for both movies and games. I can pick up a book, no matter what is going on, and read it.

I do see the convenience of eBooks. It’s perfectly reasonable to see why someone who travels would want a Kindle or iPad. Maybe I just want to see some balance? Right now there are two teams (if I may use horrible, fascist Twilight terminology) you are either team Paper Book or team eBook. These two groups dislike one another. Paper book fans see themselves as the old sages, here to protect us from ourselves and preserve our history. They believe eBook reader to be smelly, hairy, hippies. eBookers see themselves as cutting edge futurists, ushering in a new age of human advancement. They liken Paper Bookers to geriatric codgers who hate change, youth and solid foods. Is either group wrong or right to think this way? Do they think this way or am I just full of crap? What about this? Why can’t publishing companies put a code in their books that provides a free download of the book in digital format for whatever eReader you prefer? This way I can have my paper, but also have the convenience of digital for travel. That idea probably presents more problems than solutions.

So why do I dislike eBooks? I think it’s a complicated combination of all the above factors. Let me start with the soul. Yes, soul. That book I just finished has a soul. What if page 142 was funny or sad or thought provoking so I dog eared it for later? Maybe the inside cover has an inscription from who ever gave me the book, or even the author who wrote it. I have several books with cracked binding because I’ve gone back to read them again and again. A good book has more of a soul than an eReader ever will. Piles of books do not bother me, they make me happy. The thought that my children may never go to a library depresses me. That’s why I plan to have my own library room if/when I have the finances to see it done. While CDs and DVDs and Blu-rays and games gather dust and take up space, my books become decorations on the shelves; cherished as much as the countless stuffed frogs The Wife has gathered over the years or the Christmas Nativity set or the Lego Mini figs. I’ve never felt this way about the DVD copy of The Matrix on the shelf that I’ve watched maybe twice.

Many eBook readers are also eBook pushers. They won’t be happy until everyone reads only via eReader. If you like your eReader, cool, good for you. Don’t try to convert me. If I see a good reason to start using eBooks, I’ll ask your opinion. Until that time, lay off. Some of you make me intentionally dislike eBooks, not because I loathe the books themselves, but you as heralds of them. It’s like certain sports teams, I don’t dislike the institution nearly as much as the annoying fans who try to convince you their team is the best no matter what. There is a place in this world for both books and eBooks. My fear, and ultimately my core reason for aversion to eBooks is the very real possibility that eBooks will lead to the downfall of print books.

First published in January 2012 on Daniel’s blog DUMP.

(Photo credit:  Krypto on Flickr – reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.)

Yesterday on Vulpes Libris, as part of our EBook Fortnight, Moira reviewed ‘Jerome’s Angel’ by Richard Ommanney. 

Richard is an experienced TV writer who created and wrote four sitcoms for BBC TV, Thames TV, and LWT, many episodes for Dutch TV, and several episodes of ‘The Bill‘ for TalkbackThames.  He runs a script consultancy – ComedyScriptAid.com – and has written two stage plays. ‘Jerome’s Angel’ is his debut novel and Moira caught up with him to talk about his career path to date and why he decided to take the e-publishing route.

VL:  Looking at your career to date, you have a more than decent track record as a scriptwriter – “Three Up, Two Down”, Maureen Lipman’s “All at Number 20″, episodes of “The Bill” …  I’m always interested in how people ended up doing what they do, because life seldom plays out as we intend - and I suspect that a lot of people reading are interested in scriptwriting themselves, so my first question is: how did you start and was it planned or accidental?

RO:  I always wanted to be a writer.  From an early age I wrote short stories and poems.  In history exams at school I even made up fictitious quotes from historians to make it look as if I’d done an impressive amount of research.  But I couldn’t see a way to make writing a career. Any writer starting out now has many opportunities that simply weren’t available back then.  For instance, theatres like the Royal Court have young writer schemes, from which successful playwrights have emerged.  For aspiring TV writers there’s the BBC Writers Academy. Many universities have creative writing courses for wannabe novelists and screenwriters.  But in the late sixties there were no such opportunities.  So I decided to try my luck as an actor and went to drama school, where the undoubted star of my class was Zoë Wanamaker.  Sadly, unlike Zoë, I had minimal acting talent.  But one day the principal of the school – a very musical guy – asked our class to write new lyrics to the Lorenz Hart classic We’ll have Manhattan, which has very intricate rhymes.  What this had to do with acting was never explained, but I tackled the assignment with enthusiasm.  The next day I found most of my classmates had been defeated by the task.  But I’d found it easy and fun, and for one brief shining moment I was the star. Later that year I was watching a TV show that was full of short sketches called quickies. I was intrigued to see a long list of writers when the credits rolled.  I noted the name of the producer, and suggested to a friend that we write some quickies and send them in.  Out of the ten we submitted, three were bought. We then submitted ten even better ones, all of which were rejected. So it was a confusing learning curve. But that was the first money I earned as a writer.

VL:  And then you progressed to writing sitcoms?

RO:  After leaving drama school I worked as an actor for a few years. I played small parts on television, spent a year in the West End in a ropey comedy, and three months in Holland being shot at by Nazis in the Arnhem epic A Bridge Too Far. My swansong was at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow with a cast that included fellow unknowns like Pierce Brosnan and Ciaran Hinds. During those years I wrote several sitcom pilots which were rejected. Any aspiring writer should understand that, in addition to Word or Final Draft software, they’ll need a skin as thick as a rhino’s to deal with rejection. Finally the BBC commissioned the first series of Three Up Two Down on the strength of my pilot script. In those days the BBC didn’t bother with focus groups, and simply relied on the Head of Comedy’s instincts. When Three Up Two Down was broadcast it topped the ratings, and I was on my way. I had further commissions from Thames TV and LWT. Then I spent five frustrating months in Los Angeles working on a US version of Three Up Two Down for CBS which was comprehensively wrecked by the enforced inclusion of triplets, and became Five Up Two Down.   When the demand for sitcoms waned in the UK I wrote for Dutch TV, albeit in English.  Then I switched to drama, and wrote eight episodes of the police series The Bill.  I found the script process on The Bill quite dispiriting on a creative level.  A lot of talented writers on that show were constantly demoralized by forces beyond their control.  By the time I left there were huge pressures that could have been avoided if more understanding of the writing process had been shown at an executive level.  Easily the best part of that experience was socializing with other writers, because writing tends to be a very solitary process.

VL:  So what prompted the move from scriptwriter to novelist ?

RO:  Unlike screenwriting, I knew that a novel would give me control of my words. When I write a script I imagine exactly how it should look and sound. But I’ve learnt the hard way that expecting one’s vision to reach the screen intact is an impossible dream.  The best directors and actors deliver everything one could hope for. But some directors are so useless they shouldn’t be allowed near a camera. And some actors don’t learn their lines accurately, so often miss essential subtleties.  So the way one’s script transfers to the screen is basically a nerve-wracking lottery. I’m in contact with many TV writers on an internet forum, and some of their horror stories chime with my own experiences. When I sat down to write Jerome’s Angel I knew one thing for sure. Anyone reading it would be reading exactly what I wrote. If my novel didn’t work I’d have absolutely no one to blame but myself.

VL:  Had the idea for Jerome’s Angel been gestating for a while, or did something trigger it?  A light bulb moment?

RO:  I just knew I had a novel in me somewhere. And I relished the prospect of having complete creative freedom. A novel can be internalised in a way that screen or theatre writing can’t be, so one can describe the thoughts of characters. But I had no fixed idea what my novel would be about. So I followed the advice about writer’s block that I offer to aspiring writers on my website ComedyScriptAid.com and just started writing. I set myself a target of 800 words a day. I had no idea where it would lead at first, and that was an exciting part of the process, because the characters began to take over. I wanted Jerome’s Angel to be both funny and serious, dealing with themes of love and loss, and I hope it’s achieved that. I’ve certainly had some wonderful feedback.

VL:  It’s a lovely book – it really is. I don’t think I’ve ever read another quite like it. Did you intend all along to publish it as an ebook, or was that in fact ‘Plan B’, if you couldn’t interest a publisher?

RO:  Most publishers will only consider submissions if they come via an agent, and unfortunately my agent only deals with screenwriting. So no publisher has been approached yet. But obviously I would like Jerome’s Angel to be published some day. When I heard about Kindle publishing it seemed like a great opportunity to test the water. I’m flattered by your comment that you’ve never read another book quite like it. But that may prove a problem in marketing terms where catch-all labels like Romcom, Vampires, Thriller, Chick Lit etc are preferred. But I guess Romcom would be the label that comes closest. Jerome’s Angel is, above all, about the power of love and everyone’s need for it. A huge advantage of ebooks is that potential readers can read the first couple of chapters for free. If they’re not hooked on Jerome’s journey by then, or his mother’s, they never will be.

VL:  If I had to choose just one label for it, it would definitely be “Romance” – but not in the Mills and Boon sense. No alpha male for one thing and, heaven forfend, middle-aged people as well as the young and beautiful looking for love. I particularly liked the way my perceptions of Jerome’s mother and Mungo altered, by degrees, as the book progressed. That was beautifully done. Given that you initially had no idea what it was about or where it was going (which is an interesting way of writing a book …) were you surprised by the way some of the characters evolved?

RO:  Yes I was. Mungo’s story arc is a good example of how a character can develop in a direction it wouldn’t necessarily have done if I’d plotted the novel before I started. And that’s what is so interesting about writing organically. Even though they were characters I’d invented they could still surprise me. When I stated earlier that I had no idea what the book would be about I should have qualified that by saying that I always had the character of Jerome firmly established in my imagination. I knew exactly who he was. But that’s all I knew. I had no idea what the plot would be, or who he’d end up with. I had a vague notion of his mum Hortense, and her ghastly dog Dorothy, but had no other characters in mind. However, as Jerome began his journey and the plot began to twist and turn, other characters emerged, and their lives began to intersect. There are many characters in the novel, and almost all of them have their own story. But I had no idea who any of them were until Jerome or Hortense met them.

VL:  I suspect that quite of lot of people reading this are considering embarking on the ebook route themselves. How simple or otherwise did you find it? And have you any advice to offer in the way of dos and don’ts, born of personal experience?

RO:  The Kindle Publishing website offers all the technical advice you need about formatting your book in such a way that it can be uploaded. I found it reasonably simple and I’m not exactly a technical genius. By far the most difficult part of the process is actually publicizing your book once it’s been uploaded so that people know about it. Sadly I’m better at writing than marketing, so Jerome’s Angel is a fairly well-kept secret at the moment. But hopefully that will change.

VL:  I hear that over and over again from my writer friends – that publicizing their books is the toughest part of the whole process. The internet in general and social media in particular have made publicizing books physically easier of course, with sites like Facebook, Twitter and indeed blogs like this one being the natural partners of and conduits for ebooks – but you have to know how to use them properly, and put yourself about a bit without being obnoxious and pushy. Having a website helps, too. It’s a fairly steep learning curve if you’re new to it all …

RO:  I’m not comfortable being pushy on social media, although I certainly tweeted the link to Jerome’s Angel when I first published it, and also mentioned it on Facebook (as did several friends). After a month or so I tweeted the information that I’d done a minor revision, and replaced the title page. But that’s been the limit of my promotion efforts. I’m really grateful for your interest in Jerome’s Angel because I know that Vulpes Libris has many followers who will be reading about it for the first time. As I mentioned earlier I have a website called ComedyScriptAid.com and there are samples of my other writing on that, as well as a page from Jerome’s Angel. So that is publicity of sorts I suppose, but only if people know about the website!

VL:  It’s become a tradition on Vulpes to end interviews by asking our guests to name their five favourite books/plays – and give reasons. The floor is yours …

RO:  When I was a boy I read voraciously. But nowadays I read very little fiction, and prefer biographies. From time to time eminent literary figures issue a top ten list of books that everyone should have read before they die. Such lists tend to include names like Dostoevsky and Proust, and invariably give me an inferiority complex because I’ve never read them. But my first choice would be shared by many I suspect.

“To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee

This is loosely based on the author’s memories of growing up in segregated Alabama in the 1930′s. It deals with racism as perceived through the innocent young eyes of a girl called Scout as her lawyer father risks everything to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. I can’t imagine a more inspirational hero than Atticus Finch.

“Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt

I was very moved by this memoir of McCourt’s miserable Irish Catholic childhood in Limerick between the wars. It’s an unrelentingly tragic tale of extreme poverty, an alcoholic father, a desperate mother, constant illness, and gruesome deaths. What saves readers from slitting their wrists in sympathy is McCourt’s wit and humanity, and the way he rose above it all to seek a better life, which he recounts in the sequel ‘Tis.  I read it on a sunny beach in Thailand which of course added to my middle-class guilt that my childhood had lacked similar deprivations.

“Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” by Peter Biskind

This is based on hundreds of interviews with all the key players, and gives the inside track on the way Hollywood was revolutionised on the cusp of the seventies by films like Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde, and by the new wave of directors like Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, and Altman. It’s a fabulous read for anyone interested in those new wave seventies movies as it recounts the dysfunctional lives and narcotic intake of those who made them.

“Flashman” by George MacDonald Fraser

This was the first in a series of witty books that were, allegedly, the memoirs of the notorious bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, following his expulsion from Rugby school. Flashman accurately describes himself as a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, and a coward. But he’s also a superb horseman, irresistible to women, and engagingly cynical about the most famous politicians and soldiers of the age. The author was a journalist and history buff, and his depiction of historical events is meticulously authentic.

“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson

Lisbeth Salander is a fabulously original character. So many books and movies are formulaic and predictable, but this isn’t.  Originality is something all writers should strive for.  It’s a tragedy that Larsson never lived to enjoy the success of his writing.

VL: Interesting choices … I’ve never tried the Larsson books, having been very much put off by all the hype,  but I think I may have to.  And many, many thumbs up for “To Kill a Mockingbird” – right at the top of my list, too.

It’s been fascinating, Richard.  Thank you very much indeed for finding the time to answer the questions so thoughtfully and comprehensively.  And good luck with ‘Jerome’s Angel’ …

RO:  It’s been my pleasure, Moira. On behalf of myself and Jerome, thank you so much.

~~~:~~~

You can read an extract from Jerome’s Angel HERE and Moira’s review HERE.

“Jerome is determined that the loss of his virginity will be a glorious fusion of hearts and minds that will last a lifetime. Thanks to his appalling mate Colin it’s the opposite. But Jerome clings to the hope that somewhere in the known universe is his soulmate.

He lives with his mother Hortense, whose apparent respectability hides a shocking past. Her neurotic dog appears to be a daughter substitute, and becomes the target for assassination by a retired soldier who lusts after Hortense, and who has a dark secret of his own.

Many lives intersect as Jerome searches for true love. He never knew his father, who died before he was born. But when he finally finds his soulmate, she opens his eyes to a very different truth.“

~~~:~~~

I may be getting old, or I may just read the wrong books, but  it seems to me that it’s currently fashionable to write novels with central characters so unlikeable (or – worse – just plain uninteresting) that you not only don’t care what happens to them you also have absolutely no intention of hanging around to find out.

Once, not so very long ago, it was almost unheard of for me not to finish a book.  Now it’s a depressingly regular occurrence, even when I’m reading supposedly ‘light’ fiction, and as far as the authors are concerned, that’s surely the literary equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.  You can be the most talented, entertaining, witty and incisive writer of your generation, but if no-one actually reads what you write, it’s going to be a really well kept secret.

Enter Jerome’s Angel …

Given Richard Ommanney’s track record as a television scriptwriter, it comes as no surprise that the book is extremely well written and – rare amongst ebooks – almost devoid of typographical errors.  The narrative gallops along at nice brisk pace, the plot goes off at satisfying little tangents from time to time, and it’s a small masterclass in “Show, don’t tell” which should be compulsory reading for all would-be writers.

All of that however would count for nothing if the dramatis personae had come straight out of Central Casting with predictable back stories, hackneyed motivations and cardboard cut-out personalities.  But they didn’t:  if there’s a ‘stock’ character anywhere in this book, I failed to spot it.

Our hero, Jerome Belfrage, inhabits a Middle England that is almost, but not quite, entirely like any leafy suburb in any given town in the Home Counties.  It’s The Archers rewritten by Douglas Adams.  Mad Majors lurk in the shrubbery, deluded lovelorn women-of-a-certain-age use obnoxious small dogs as child substitutes, frustrated local journalists hurtle across town in headlong pursuit of non-existent big stories and Jerome’s tiresomely oikey mates continually turn up at breathtakingly inconvenient moments.

Jerome’s default setting is ‘pessimistic’, which is entirely understandable  given the shape his life is in, but he’s also bright, hard-working and immensely likeable, so when Angie – his Angel – crosses his path in a DIY superstore you’re in there, willing the union to be a match made in heaven.

The meeting, however, is only the beginning of the story and such is the skill with which it’s  written, you really don’t know where or how it’s going to end. Although Jerome’s Angel is unquestionably a romance, I’ve never read one quite like it before. When an almost off-hand comment from Angie sets Jerome off on a search for the father he never knew, we embark on a journey  that will eventually see every major character, and quite a number of the subsidiary characters, morphing before our eyes. Hardly anyone is exactly what they at first seem to be,  and behind their carefully self-constructed facades lie the stories of sad, lonely and regretful people trying to survive in a world that doesn’t care.

It’s a wonderful  piece of story-telling.  Even the minor characters have back stories and well-defined characters and not only are you interested in what happens to everyone, you actually care what happens.  Jerome’s Angel is entertaining, elegiac and tea-down-the-nose funny.  Above all else, however, it’s life-enhancing.  You feel better for having read it – and there aren’t too many books around at the moment you can say THAT about.

~~~:~~~

Jerome’s Angel.  Kindle Edition. 2011. Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.  ASIN: B0052ENKEM.

~~~:~~~

You can read an extract from ‘Jerome’s Angel’ HERE – and don’t forget to join us tomorrow for an interview with the author, Richard Ommanney.

I’ve been a jobbing fiction writer for about twelve years now. When I started out in Y2K, I did what I was told to do: I won or was shortlisted in a good mix of mainstream competitions and then spent a long time hunting down elusive agents and publishers in order to get that supposedly desirable paperback book deal. I came close a couple of times, and once even had an agent for a while but it never happened for me. What paperback deals I did get were with very small publishers who didn’t sell much, and I also self-published a couple of other novels with Lulu, including Thorn in the Flesh, which was longlisted in the 2006 CWA Debut Dagger Awards. Ah, happy memories.

When I started writing seriously I promised myself ten years to make some kind of success of it so about two or three years ago, I gave careful consideration to not writing any more as it was becoming too much effort for very little reward. Then, slowly but surely, I began to get more ebook deals with commercial e-publishers, and actually began to sell my books regularly, if not in large numbers.

What I find very interesting indeed is that now most of my best-selling work is short stories. I think the rise of the e-reader has given a whole new lease of life to writers, such as myself, who happily write short stories as well as novels as we can sell our work individually to a variety of publishers without having to spend years getting a collection together for paperback publication. Readers enjoy short stories more than the mainstream press would have us believe, and they’re getting these stories via e-readers. These days, my stories are published by Amber Allure Press (gay erotic romance), Untreed Reads (literary, lesbian and biblical fiction), Riptide Publishing (gay erotic/literary) and Musa Publishing (gay romance).

Later this year, my first children’s book, The Origami Nun, is being epublished by Karabeth Publishing under my pseudonym Lori Olding, and I’ve just been commissioned to write a gay short story for a specific line at Amber Allure Press which I’m currently working on. So, because of ebooks there are at last other perfectly viable outlets for the overlooked writers amongst us.

And, as you can see, a large part of the joy of being an ebook writer for me is the astonishing opportunity to write for publication in a wide variety of genres. I really hate the thought of sticking to just one type of fiction. I don’t read just one type and never have, so why should I be constrained to write it? I love romance, thrillers, historical fiction, literary fiction, comedy, fantasy and everything I can think of really, except I’m not that keen on graphic horror. On my “now reading” shelf is a gay erotic short story, a Christian book, a romantic comedy, a poetry collection and an historical biography. This is the kind of literary freedom ebooks have given me which I don’t think I’d ever have found in the mainstream paperback press.

In addition, as a super-keen reader, I also welcome the rise of the ebook. Not as a replacement for the paperback, but as a marvellous addition to the family. After all, TV hasn’t replaced cinema, and computers don’t mean people no longer need pens – there’s a place for all these riches in our lives, and paperbacks and ebooks are no different. They’re not in competition with each other, but are instead complementary to each other – long live them both! That said, I must admit that my eyesight rejoices in the fact that I can make the font of an ebook larger (thank goodness) and my bank balance rejoices in the relative cheapness of ebooks. My husband is also very happy indeed that my holiday book packing is now only one Kindle, and he no longer has to pay extra for taking my huge numbers of paperbacks abroad in a stuffed-to-the-brim suitcase …

So for me, and speaking both as a writer and a reader, ebooks are a blessing and a delight. Anything that gives more opportunities to hard-working good quality writers and widens the choices of book formats available to readers gets my vote. Happy e-reading to all.

[Anne is a part-time writer and full-time reader, originally from Essex and now living in Surrey. Her latest ebook is literary paranormal short story, The Gift of the Snow, published by Untreed Reads.]

Jackie was given a Nook for her birthday last year and often clutches it to herself with affection.

EBOOK FORTNIGHT:  WEEK ONE

It’s finally here.  After months of talking, planning and eventually getting stuck in and actually doing  our Ebook-themed Fortnight has finally arrived.

We’ve tried to come at the subject from as many angles as we can … but we’re sure you can think of many more, and so – as always – we’re relying on you to be part of the event: commenting, arguing and just being your usual cantankerous selves …

—:oOo:—

Jackie opens ebook Fortnight  Monday  with a consideration of  the pros & cons of ebooks.

On Tuesday  Anne confesses that ebooks saved her life and is happy to tell the tale.

On Wednesday, Moira reviews Jerome’s Angel – the debut novel of television script writer and script consultant Richard Ommanney. who will be with us in person (well, virtually in person …) on Thursday to tell us why he made the move from script-writing to novels, how surprised he was at the direction some of his characters took and why he decided to take the digital route.

And finally, on Friday the tone changes when -  to close our  first week – Daniel Roush tells us why he hates ebooks …

(Photo credit:  sirwiseowl on Flickr – reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.)

Let me read you part of the author’s biography on the back over of a 1949 Penguin edition of an Ann Bridge novel:

‘Ann Bridge is perhaps the best-known pseudonym in her own generation of writers. She is the wife of a distinguished member of the Diplomatic Service; but although she is old enough to have a grown-up family, her novels speak more for the present than for the older generations. A keen climber, she became the youngest member of the Alpine Club at the age of 19, with sixteen first-class ascents to her credit. She is a great gardener; she has an interest in and knowledge of archaeology rare in her sex; and she has deep learning in her own craft of writing.’

How does that make you feel about the featured writer? Someone you’d rush to chat to at a cocktail party? Someone you want to read? Frankly, it brings out my inner Marxist, because this is what that blurb says to me:

‘Ann Bridge has to be best at something but it’s clearly not writing. She’s privileged and titled. She thinks she’s admired by readers of her children’s generation and she’s snooty about readers of her own age. Her early climbing exploits are clung to pathetically, as if she’d done nothing as admirable since. She’s a terrific bore about ruins. She thinks she’s a great writer.’

Here is a description of the heroine, Lady Kilmichael, from that novel, Illyrian Spring (1935):

‘As a wife of a brilliant and successful economist, and as mother of three children now rising twenty and capable of arranging their own lives she felt she had failed, or rather finished her task in the home. As the artist – Grace Stanway – to the world she was well-known and successful in her own right, a point which her family had always slightly resented.‘

I see a certain similarity already between author and character, but let’s allow that for now. Lady Kilmichael’s resentment is dwelt on, at length, for some pages, and no member of her family is allowed to evade the hurt accusation that they simply did not appreciate this delicious, talented, selfless, beautiful artist in their midst. Lady K is also unpleasantly bitchy, in a diffident, ladylike way, about Mrs Barum, the woman she fancies her husband is seeing more than he should.

‘She wasn’t a Jewess; only married to a Jew. That was the worst of being an economist, Lady Kilmichael thought – Jews sort of cropped up all round you. No – that was a Nazi way of thinking; she ought not to think that. She must be fair. Only Mrs Barum was really plain; and she was worse than plain, she was rather fat, and hadn’t the wits to realise that fat women ought to wear their clothes very loose, to look at all possible.’

Lady Kilmichael naturally always looks possible. Ann Bridge’s descriptions of her heroine are uncannily like those of Max Beerbohm’s beauty Zuleika Dobson, whose eyes were just too large, and whose waist was just too tiny: only Beerbohm was joking, and Ann Bridge really means it.

‘Her dark clothes were of that distinguished simplicity, so unobtrusive as almost to render the wearer invisible, which well-bred women affect for the street; only her height and slenderness marked her out in any way from any hundred of other well-dressed, quietly good-looking, grey-eyed Englishwomen, with nice complexions and faultless hair.’

She is misunderstood and underappreciated (perhaps her family objected to her fascist tendencies?), so she’s leaving in a humble huff.

‘In a way it is rather a mistake, in such circumstances, to travel by the Simplon Orient Express; but Lady Kilmichael was going to Venice, and she lived in a world which knew no other way of getting to Venice […] When the train pulled out and began to lurch through the south-eastern suburbs of London, she put her paper down with a slightly increased sense of safety, and sat staring out over the chimney-pots of the poor.’

Thank fully the poor do not need to notice, because Lady Kilmichael would never have anything to do with the London poor, though in this novel she delights in mingling graciously with Yugoslav peasants while she paints magnificent floral masterpieces. Ann Bridge herself knows all about the Yugoslav peasantry, and also the language they speak in. She follows ‘the best Yugo-Slav authorities’ on spelling their place-names, we are told in a self-important little Author’s Note at the beginning of the novel. Who in 1935 would know any better, or care?

In Ann Bridge’s world everyone naturally cares about her heroines and the delightful young men they pick up, because no-one else matters. Her novels (I’ve read four, and her autobiography) rely on the reader being content to sink into an uncritical featherbed of upper-class standards of taste and behaviour. Money is available whenever needed, as are delightful pensiones or charming attic apartments festooned with white lilies, when the heroine needs a rustic foreign hideaway where she can practice her Yugo-Slav or her Mandarin on the natives, and generally sort everyone’s lives out. She always fails to see until too late that the delightful young man in each adventure is falling in love with her, and she experiences ecstasies of gentle renunciation as she returns to her chastened and contrite husband and family, because, really, she only ever wanted her family. Lady Kilmichael appears, under different names, in every Ann Bridge novel that I’ve read, but she is most alarmingly present in Facts and Fictions, the Ann Bridge autobiography. It is perfectly obvious from that work that Ann Bridge was a crashing snob, an egotistical bossyboots and the heroine of all her own novels. Others noticed this too: Angela Thirkell satirised Ann Bridge as ‘Mrs Rivers’ in her own Barsetshire novels, as a married Lady Novelist whose novels are always the same, about a middle-aged heroine who has a chaste affair with a younger man before returning to her husband. I expect Ann Bridge talked about this where she thought it would be noticed, in a self-deprecating, ‘well my dear what can one do if one is so well-known? One must put up with the sneers of the lesser artists’ sort of way.

None of this would matter in the slightest if the novels had some life to them, or were written to do more than flatter the ego of their author, if they lived outside the existence of Mary-Ann Sanders, Lady O’Malley (for it is she). They are very readable, she was a fair storyteller in terms of plot, and she could do description and scenery and the purple prose of platonic passion very well. But the egotism, and self-importance, and unquenchable assurance that the standards and tastes and views of the narrative voice were unquestionable, and perfectly correct, stick in the throat. She wrote thirteen novels (1932-71), nine linked detective novels (1956-73), and four volumes of memoirs. They’re probably all the same as each other, so if you’re in the mood for that sort of thing, enjoy!

Kate Macdonald podcasts weekly about books she really, really likes (or gets enraged by) at www.reallylikethisbook.com.

The Sisters Brothers

The novel is set in 1851, at the height of the California Gold Rush and is told through the first person narrative of Eli Sisters. Eli and his brother Charlie are professional killers with a nasty reputation and are currently in the pay of a man known only as the Commodore. They have been told to track down a man by the name of Hermann Kermit Warm, extract from him some vital information (by any means necessary) and kill him. This outline may strike many readers as unappealing, but what matters is how deWitt goes about it, the power of his characters and the language he uses. He has a flair for describing the countryside around the Oregon trail, painting it as both ugly, inhospitable and beautiful and as we see things through Eli’s eyes, much depends on his state of mind, how inebriated he is and how much he and Eli are getting on each other’s nerves.

His style merges formality with a spiky humour, which is in keeping with the novel and the relationship between the brothers:

‘Morris is waiting for us in a hotel in San Francisco. He will point Warm out to us and we will be on our way. It’s a good place to kill someone, I have heard. When they are not busy burning the entire town down, they are distracted by its endless rebuilding.’ (p9)

The brothers’ violence, apparent lack of conscience and their appalling reputation as men who will do anything if the pay is enough is at odds with what the reader sees of them. Not only do they have a flair for humour and an appreciation of the absurd, they bicker like small boys, show tenderness towards their horses, and are haplessly prone to accidents. Not far into the book, Eli is nearly killed by a spider bite. It is also Eli who is susceptible to the gentler sex and is often dismayed by how crude and cruel they can be. The brothers’ violence, though extreme, has a context, particularly in the situation that they find themselves in. The establishment of the United States as we would recognise it now was still some way off, the west was being settled, much to the distress and anger of many native American tribes, and perhaps most of all for California, the Gold Rush was well underway, infecting Americans of all backgrounds with the promise of enormous wealth. That so many of them fell for it is hardly surprising. Most of them were the products of the sort of poverty Charles Dickens wrote about. DeWitt doesn’t labour the point, but it is clear that for some people, wealth or the promise of it went to their heads. His vivid depiction of San Francisco includes a scene where a man tells of spending $30 on a meal that would have cost him half a dollar in his home town. When Charlie Sisters describes that as the behaviour of a moron, the man says:

‘ I agree. One hundred percent I agree. And I am happy to welcome you to a town peopled in morons exclusively.’ (p174)

It’s worth mentioning the title of the book. The brothers are the Sisters, which draws attention to their hyper-masculinity, and the fact that they don’t exactly behave like a pair of monks. As brothers go, they are lewd, violent and inclined to self-destructive drunken binges. Charlie seems to be incapable of getting through a day without drinking, copulating and preferably both, much to the somewhat envious chagrin of his sibling.

The climax of the novel is a suitably emotional, high-stakes resolution to the storyline. The brothers’ encounter with Warm is absolutely harrowing, involving devastating loss and pain and ultimately, the possibility of redemption. However, it’s not a saccharine denouement; Charlie and Eli are too flawed and human for that. The way forward, offered by the twist at the end is likely to be as long and hard in its way as anything else the brothers have been through.

The novel doesn’t offer much to those who prefer their fiction to be rich with female characters. They are there and are often strongly drawn, but they aren’t foregrounded. The backdrop of the Gold Rush means that those the brothers encounter on their travels tend to be men; women are there but not as solo travellers. The rather flat depiction of the native Americans the brothers encounter might disappoint some readers. It draws a lot on the tradition of some Western movies – there’s a flavour of cowboys ‘n injuns about it. However, we are seeing things through Eli’s perspective and it’s unlikely that he’s had much experience of non-white Americans. Slavery was still embedded in California at the time and black people had a presence in the Gold Rush, as slaves and freed men and women. However, they are almost invisible in the novel. Having said that, a novel is exactly what deWitt has written. It’s not a history, it’s a character sketch and from that point of view, it works well. It’s readable, moving and is both laugh-aloud funny and terribly sad.

Granta.  London.  2011.  ISBN 978-1-24708-372-2.  Kindle Edition.

Algonquin books of Chapel Hill 2010 190 pp. ISBN 978-1-56512-606-0

Jackie has drawn snails, but none so pleasing as the ones in this book.

Monday- Jackie presents The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, which is simply wonderful.

Wednesday-
Sharon discovers an author writing in the Western genre.

Friday-
Kate MacDonald returns with her first hatchet job for Vulpes Libris: a bracing critique of the works of Ann Bridge.

Photo of wildflowers taken by Jackie in a nearby Ohio suburb.