dead girls don’t cry

I will say upfront that I’m not really a huge fan of ‘urban fantasy’ – that genre which mainly consists of sparky young heroines with tattoos going about their everyday business only to discover that their local cupcake parlour is run by a whimsical faery. Or something. Okay, I may be slightly prejudiced by a particularly awful example of the genre that it was my misfortune to read last year. But even so, fairies and cupcakes and elves and family prophecies and late-blooming magical powers? Not really my thing.

So it may be that I am entirely the wrong person to take on this subject, and perhaps in ‘urban fantasy world’, all of what I am about to say would be considered ridiculous nitpicking about nothing at all.

But.

If someone is dead – I mean, dead – If a character in a story dies and is dead, and the author kind of bangs on about how weird it is to be dead because you don’t have to / don’t want to / actually can’t:

a) sleep

b) eat

c) urinate

d) crave a crafty fag

If this is the basis on which a character is dead, then how the hell can said character have their breath knocked out of them? How can they cut themselves and BLEED? What the whatty-what, people?

I can just about suspend my disbelief to accept that a dead person could still have a body that is a projection of their spirit or a handy visual aid/symbol of their former life. It would be awkward to be dead, yet still be conscious, and unable to walk around and do novelly stuff. I guess I can accept (even if for no other reason than I’m a willing reader and literary convention demands it) that desire and fear and other basic, bodily emotions can survive in a person who no longer has a body with which to feel these things. It’s a bit rubbish, but if an author writes about someone’s spirit continuing and being able to feel emotions and think and stuff, I can go along with it for the sake of the story.

But don’t tell me, Charles de Lint, don’t tell me that a person has no need to eat, drink or do any of the other things that sustain a physical body, and yet that person can still somehow bleed. How is she bleeding? How is her body making fresh red blood, when she no longer eats or drinks? How is she breathless, when she no longer breathes? How does her body heal from the cut? How come she can feel pain, but not hunger? How does she make tears?

And this bleeding thing. It’s not like it was just some throwaway line I could ignore. It was the engine that powered the resolution of the entire plot.

‘The Mystery of Grace’ was certainly not the worst book I’ve ever read. In places it reminded me a bit of Jonathan Carroll’s writing. I kind of liked the sparky heroine with tattoos. And I’ll even admit that there was one hell of a good idea buried in there. But this dead people bleeding thing is just STUPID.

Am I wrong? Obviously not. But feel free to disagree if you can.

 

the city and the city

For some reason, my book love has grown huge again of late. It may simply be a symptom of my gradual return to decent health after a few years of battling with various conditions that left me depressed, depleted and utterly exhausted. My brain has started to work a bit, my neurons are getting sparky, something is going on… and I have more excitement and enthusiasm about reading than I’ve had for years.

At the same time, some of the authors I’ve clung to with fierce loyalty over the years now seem a little… well… Dull. Jejune. Unoriginal. I’ve always read widely and in all genres, but it’s still been difficult at times to find books I really care about. Books that I want to live in and eat and make clothes out of. But right now (thanks to your recommendations) I’ve got a stack of eight new books in front of me and I’m excited about all of them.

One of them is  Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. I have high hopes for this novel, mainly because I just finished reading The City and the City. Which blew my mind. Talk about a book I want to live in! I found it such a startling and remarkable idea, such an extraordinary metaphor for what it is to be human. How we unsee and unhear and unsense that which doesn’t fit comfortably with our understanding. How we live in fear of ‘breaching’ the standards of normal behaviour, going too far. And how almost everything interesting and meaningful in life happens in the interstices, the places inbetween. The setting is the story in this novel, in a very direct way, and if you haven’t read it, I don’t want to give too much away. But you must read it. It is wildly brilliant.

It made me think a lot about setting in story, something I’ve blogged about before. In The City and the City, the story could only happen in that particular setting. In other words, the setting is integral to the plot, characters and narrative, and provides much of the imagery and language of the novel. A genuinely well thought out setting can do all that and more. In this case, it delivers a profoundly satisfying and coherent narrative. Although I felt the novel had some faults, some boundaries it wouldn’t breach, so to speak, it still worked beautifully, meaningfully, on every level. I found myself thinking about it for days, captivated by the oddness of the ideas, and wondering how on earth it would unravel. That was all because of the extraordinary setting (and, of course, Mieville’s great skill and talent at putting it to work.)

I think that setting is a rather under-appreciated element of storytelling, and one that we ignore at our peril. I am inspired to try a story that depends on its setting for every aspect of plot, character and language. It’s something I’ve got close to before, but this time I will be making sure that the story is a direct product of the setting – something that could only happen then and there.

What about you? What are you reading at the moment, and what is it teaching you about your own writing/art/life?

and how does that make you feel?

Of all the books people have raved to me about recently, the only one I really enjoyed was The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. What a great book that is! I like it a lot. A few years ago I wote a story called ‘Fucking Narnia’ that was pretty much based on the same idea, of adults from this world somehow accessing Narnia, and having to deal with it, as adults. My story really didn’t work (shame, because obviously it had a great title), but The Magicians would have blown it out of the water anyway, because it has such a well-realised setting, with proper characters and insane plotlines, which are nonetheless completely plausible within the logic of the world(s). I think the real genius of it was the way Grossman did the Harry Potter/Narnia mash-up thing. It’s the kind of story that could have been really-diculous, but ends up being just perfect.

(That reminds me of something Michel Gondry said about making art. It was something along the lines of, ‘you know you’ve got a good idea when it feels somewhat ridiculous.’ Furnish me with the actual quote, anyone? He said it in the DVD extras for The Science of Sleep, a film with the most beautiful fluffy animation and lovely multi-lingual appeal.)

Two of the other books that have been the subject of rave reviews lately are 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, and A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan.

1Q84, as I have written about here, I found extremely bland and, whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was boring, I would say it was flat and completely forgettable. For me, it had none of the impact of Murakami’s earlier work, none of the mysterious other-wordliness (despite being set in an actual Other World), and none of the emotional connection I’d been hoping for.

I finished A Visit from the Goon Squad last night, and was pretty disappointed with that, too. It’s well-written, no doubt about that. It’s very well written, indeed, so you hardly notice it flowing by. But again, it made very little impact on me. I felt that I’d seen it all before. Specifically, it reminded me of A M Homes’ writing, which, to be fair, I’d liked a lot a few years ago, but which now strikes me as a bit too self-consciously ‘literary’.

I mean, what’s wrong with a linear chronology, and one or two characters that you care about? That you feel something for? What is the purpose of writing, if not to connect you to other worlds and other people? For me, if a novel or story doesn’t provide that emotional connection, then I don’t care how clever or well written it is – it has failed in the fundamental task of all literature. One of my favourite writers of all time is Philip K Dick, because all his stories connect you emotionally to the rest of the world – to the universe – to PKD’s own messed-up head, if nothing else. Frightening, disturbing, even funny – but they never leave you feeling flat. Another writer I love is Rikki Ducornet. Her novel Gazelle is one of the most stunning books I have ever read. It made me feel a thousand things, stirred up memories and desires, and connected me to a place inside my own self, where I finally understood something (a particular, personal thing) more deeply than I ever had before.

Of course, this ’emotional connection’ is a subjective experience, and I’m sure I can find hundreds of people who were deeply moved by books that left me feeling nothing. To me, though, it all comes down to the characters. A novel doesn’t have to have a linear plot, but I do think a book has a better chance of connecting with a reader if it has strong characters, precise language, and concerns itself with fundamental conflicts of the human heart. Love, fear, death, betrayal, regret, pain.  Sometimes writers seem to forget this. They get lost in their quest to be brilliant, and end up producing convoluted books that don’t seem anything like storytelling to me.

When I was seventeen, I read The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles for the first time. I remember I stayed up until three a.m. finishing it, and when it was finished, I cried and held it to my heart. I felt bereft that the story was over. The characters and the conflicts they embodied seemed very real and powerful to me. I wanted to keep reading it forever.

It’s not often that I feel that way about a book these days, but I still long to encounter characters I believe in, who I care about, and who seem real to me. That is more important to me than making some clever statement about the state of politics or post-modern anxieties or the world after 9-11. I want to read books that make me feel something. That’s why, for me, The Magicians is a far better book than 1Q84.

What books have you enjoyed recently? What would you recommend to this jaded reader?

the fridayness of things

Bonjour! C’est la fin de semaine and that’s about all the French I can manage at this time on a Friday afternoon.

Managed to work out the voice recorder on my phone, and dictated notes and thoughts as I walked to work. Quite a lot of useless ramblings but now at least I can listen back and sort out any good ideas. I got a few funny looks as I was walking past people saying things like ‘It’s very important that she dies now,’ and ‘maybe I should just kill them all.’

Have nearly finished 1Q84, and will report back soon. It’s definitely too long though. I reckon he could have cut it by at least one book. But I guess if I were a bestselling and widely admired author, I might come to believe that people really wanted to know my every last insight into the world and characters of my story. Which perhaps they do. I don’t, but that’s just me.

Finally, I have been thinking about how lovely and elegant the Present Perfect is. But why don’t we call it the Present Retrospective? I would like it even more then.

Voila! À demain!

 

half-face illness

A bits and pieces sort of post this morning.  Brain is not cooperating fully and is demanding eggs and fruitcake.

Working on novel yesterday – not the ‘finished’ draft, but the half-written novel I abandoned in order to write the other novel. I was so incredibly stuck with it when I gave it up, and couldn’t see anything worthwhile in it at all. A few months later and I have somehow once again found the thread of story and interest in it. The lesson I’m taking from this is that sometimes, you just need to back off from things for a while. If something isn’t working, maybe it just needs time.

Also I’m happy to say that finishing a draft of my other novel has given me the confidence to believe that I can finish a draft of this novel. And I hope it will be a somewhat cleaner draft, although that might be wishing for too much.

Finished reading Book 2 of 1Q84 last night. I think I’ll finish Book 3 before I pass comment, but there were a couple of things I found hugely disappointing and definitely want to blog about.

I am still lurgified, but now I have this weird, half-face illness, in which half my face is ill (running nose, swollen glands, headache, earache) and the other half of my face is totally fine. Bored of being ill now.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something more interesting to say for myself. Am off to get breakfast and write more stuff.

unnecessary wafflage

I abandoned writing yesterday in order to start reading 1Q84, which I am enjoying so far. It doesn’t have the immediacy and instant ahhh of his other novels (except for After Dark, which I loathed), but then again it is a MASSIVE book. I know this probably makes me sound shallow, but I do prefer a smaller novel. Under 100K suits me fine. Does this particular story need 900+ pages? Perhaps. But already I am seeing bits I think would benefit from the red pencil treatment.

However, I am reserving judgement until I get a bit further in. Perhaps those flabby bits of meandering detail will turn out to be vitally important to the plot.

Some writers overwrite, some underwrite. I am definitely one of the latter. I assume it must be easier to cut stuff out rather than try to shoehorn it in later on, when I’ve already found some elegantly economic way of saying what I mean – regardless of the fact that it’s so elliptical no one else has a chance of working out what I’m saying. Maybe blogging will help in that regard – I don’t seem to have any problem typing on and on and on…

Do you write too much or not enough? Do you suspect all long novels of self-indulgence and unnecessary wafflage? Discuss!

stuff and things

Wrote 400 words of a new short story yesterday. (Go me!)

After the thoughtful discussions here and on facebook yesterday about settings in fiction, I found myself having a very clear idea of when and where these new characters were. It’s interesting to remind myself that the very fact of writing about a place adds an element of fiction to a realistic setting. This can play out in lots of ways. For example, in my story ‘A Rose is Rose’, I had the same setting twice – once as a fictionalised version of a real place, and then as a highly stylised fictionalised version of the same place, where the added fictional elements came from the imagination of the character in the ‘realistic’ setting.

Setting is endlessly interesting and, in my opinion, central to storytelling of all kinds.

I am currently reading ‘Baba Yaga Laid an Egg’, by Dubravka Ugrešić, which is not as good as I want it to be. But maybe I’m being a bit unfair – I’m waiting for my copy of 1Q84 to arrive, which I think is going to be awesome, and  I’m just passing time with this book until it arrives.

Am still lurgified. Dog is depressed because of the fireworks every night. I’m thinking about buying an early bird membership for WFC 2013 in Brighton.  Going to try to get a bit further with my new story today.

Until tomorrow, then!