About myself: As a novelist I’m crazy for detail. I believe it’s the odd and unexpected aspects of life that bring both characters and story worlds to life. This means that I try to be an observer at all times, keeping alert and using all five – and maybe six – senses. My perfect writing morning begins with a dog walk in the woods or on a beach, say, while keeping my senses sharp to the world around me and listening out for the first whisper of what the day’s writing will bring.
It is set in Britain immediately after World War II, when people – gay, straight, young, and old - are struggling to get back on track with their lives, including their love lives. Because of the turmoil of the times, the number of losses, and the dangerous and peculiar circumstances people find themselves in, sexual mores have become shaken and stirred.
But what happened after the war, in the time of healing and settling down? This novel examines the emotional, romantic, and sexual lives of three characters searching for a way to proceed.
I was struck by this when I read it decades ago, and returned to it while researching. The Humbler Creation, written in the ’60s and set in the ’40s, gives a vivid depiction of that physically and morally shattered and patched-over post-war era.
Maurice, a repressed clergyman, lives with his wife Libby and her widowed sister, Kate, but right from the get-go, there’s the feeling that he and Kate would be better suited. But because of convention, this is not to be, and the frustrated Maurice and Kate seek satisfaction elsewhere. Passion, scandal, and tension ensue.
The characters, the dynamics between them, the sparky dialogue, and the 1940s setting all contribute to making this an addictive read. I was even more riveted the second time around.
Maurice Fisher is a London parish priest in an unfashionable quarter of Kensington. He has a wife whose frigid vanity, shirking of any household or parish duties, and despairing egotism is shrouded-like her beauty-in such pathetic and frightful self-deception that to love her at all becomes one of her husband's greatest private struggles.
Into this desert of duty and self-control, where his external life is a dogged shambles, his inner life dissolving through lack of joy, arrives somebody who awakens him to all-or a great deal-that he has been missing.
Because my father was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Burma in World War II, I expected this book to depress me, and I dreaded reading it. But as one of my characters suffered the same fate, I thought I should at least give it a try. And what a pleasant surprise I got.
Yes, it is grim. Yes, it told me things I’d rather not know about what went on in the jungle prison camps. But it also has a sparkling narrative, and it’s romantic, erotic, moving, and exciting. In short, a great surprise and a wonderful, gripping read.
Forever after, there were for them only two sorts of men: the men who were on the Line, and the rest of humanity, who were not.
In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.
This is a story about the many forms of love and death, of…
I read this while researching my novel and what an eye-opener it turned out to be. It draws on a rich source of resources and the personal testimonies of gay men in the mid-20th century. These are touching and sometimes upsetting as well as illuminating and clearly demonstrate how much more tolerant our culture has become.
I was really moved as well as fascinated and educated by this beautifully put together book.
Drawing on a rich array of source materials including previously unseen, fascinating (and often quite moving) oral histories, archival and news media sources, 'Curing queers' examines the plight of men who were institutionalised in British mental hospitals to receive 'treatment' for homosexuality and transvestism, and the perceptions and actions of the men and women who nursed them. It examines why the majority of the nurses followed orders in administering the treatment - in spite of the zero success-rate in 'straightening out' queer men - but also why a small number surreptitiously defied their superiors by engaging in fascinating subversive behaviours.…
I bought this to research certain social and political aspects of the 1940s, fearing it might be dry, but it’s brilliantly written – one of the few history books I’ve continued to read for pleasure once I’ve gleaned my research.
Not only does it look at political and historical events and include a generous and delicious selection of photographs, but it’s also concerned with popular culture from the bleak post-war period up to the age of skiffle, television, and the beginnings of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
It gives importance to the morals of the time, attitudes to homosexuality, strip clubs, sex outside marriage, etc. It’s earned a permanent home on my bookshelf.
I adore this collection of women’s short stories, all written in the forties and fifties. It gives a great scatter-gun indication of the mood and moral atmosphere of the times.
The mixture contains stories by familiar writers – Daphne du Maurier’s "The Birds" is here – as well as writers who’ve been largely forgotten, like Frances Bellerby, whose delicate story "A Cut Finger" made me cry.
Reading short stories makes a welcome change from the journey of a novel, especially when I’m busy. One a night makes a perfect bedtime treat.
These remarkable short stories from the 1940s and 50s depict women and men caught between the pull of personal desires and profound social change. From a remote peninsula in Cornwall to the drawing rooms of the British Raj, domestic arrangements are rewritten, social customs are revoked and new freedoms are embraced.
Selected and introduced by writer and critic Lucy Scholes, this collection places works from renowned women writers alongside recently rediscovered voices. Suffused with tension and longing, they form a window onto a remarkable era of writing.
Contains: 'The Cut Finger' by Frances Bellerby, 'Summer Night' by Elizabeth Bowen, 'The…
Too often, I find that novelists force the endings of their books in ways that aren’t true to their characters, the stories, or their settings. Often, they do so to provide the Hollywood ending that many readers crave. That always leaves me cold. I love novels whose characters are complex, human, and believable and interact with their setting and the story in ways that do not stretch credulity. This is how I try to approach my own writing and was foremost in my mind as I set out to write my own book.
The Oracle of Spring Garden Road explores the life and singular worldview of “Crazy Eddie,” a brilliant, highly-educated homeless man who panhandles in front of a downtown bank in a coastal town.
Eddie is a local enigma. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to a life on the streets? A dizzying ride between past and present, the novel unravels these mysteries, just as Eddie has decided to return to society after two decades on the streets, with the help of Jane, a woman whose intelligence and integrity rival his own. Will he succeed, or is…
“Crazy Eddie” is a homeless man who inhabits two squares of pavement in front of a bank in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. In this makeshift office, he panhandles and dispenses his peerless wisdom. Well-educated, fiercely intelligent with a passionate interest in philosophy and a profound love of nature, Eddie is an enigma for the locals. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to a life on the streets? Though rumors abound, none capture the unique worldview and singular character that led him to withdraw from the perfidy and corruption of human beings. Just as Eddie has…
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