Talking About The Miniaturist

Talking About The Miniaturist

Me and Jessie Burton

What a great evening I had last when I went with one of Lotus Book Club’s avid readers to listen to Jessie Burton talk about her exciting debut novel The Miniaturist. I picked the book up in my local independent book shop Lindum Books a few weeks ago. I picked it up because it was displayed well, but also because it looked intriguing. There was an element of mystery as well as a historical setting, plus a cover with a vintage bird cage on and since I had a bird cage tattoo I am attracted to them all the time. I had read the book before the evening and loved it so I was very eager to hear about how it was written and as a very amateur writer I am always interested in the process.

Jessie’s ability to tell stories means she is immediately engaging and natural with an audience. In her potted biography we learned she had a drama background and that definitely came across in her reading of the novel and during a humorous and lovely question and answer session. Jessie’s inspiration was a beautiful cabinet house in The Riijksmuseum, Amsterdam belonging to Petronella Oortman. The house is made up of 9 rooms that are so ornate and richly furnished that it cost as much as a real house. This fact and the sheer beauty of the piece piqued Jessie’s interest so much that she built her novel around it. Spending only ten days in Amsterdam but doing plenty of reading and researching, writing started using the name of Petronella Oortman but reimagining her as a new young wife entering Amsterdam for the first time. Nella needs to make a good marriage to support her family and marries business man Johannes Brandt who owns an incredible house in the wealthiest district of Amsterdam, but when Nella arrives she is greeted by an open door and Johannes Brandt’s sharp tongued sister Marin. Johannes buys Nella a cabinet house, an exact replica of the grand house they live in and based on the one in the Riijksmuseum.  Jessie did a reading of an early chapter entitled The Gift where Nella, disturbed by the fact she rarely sees Johannes in the day or at night, explores the house and starts to ask questions of Marin. It is a chapter where we see the beginning of an interesting tension between the two very different women and as Nella explores the house we start to see a major theme of the novel developing too; the conflict between interior and exterior worlds.

The questions began with one about research and how Jessie had gained her expertise in 17^th Century Dutch culture. The audience also wanted to know how long the research process had been before she started writing. Jessie did most of her research the old fashioned way, by reading and writing in a piecemeal way (This amateur was pleased to know that writing while researching is ok).  She shone some light into the publishing process that is not as simple as getting an agent and then getting a publishing deal. There were 17 edits and 3 different drafts of the whole novel during the process and several different endings including one where every character had a happy outcome that was vetoed by her friends. One of the terms she used was to ‘write out’ something I was very interested in as a writing therapist where I am constantly using exercises to write out emotions and past experiences. She was referring to it as her writing process of working things out as she went along; there was no single moment where she sat down to write and it was all worked out with plot, characters and ending. 

I learned an enormous amount about the culture the novel was set in and there were some interesting parallels with Lincolnshire. Jessie felt that the people of Amsterdam were in the strange position of having built their own land by draining the area using canals and dykes. This was very pertinent to me because my ancestors on my father’s side were Dutch and came over to implement the same system of land drainage here in Lincolnshire. Jessie talked about the tension between the immense wealth of the city and the people’s Calvinist principles as well as the interesting roles of women in the city who often married later than their European counterparts and worked in business with their husbands. She was also interested in their liberality in that area but their barbarity in others, such as the practice of drowning homosexuals with a millstone round their necks. The African character, Otto, was discussed in his historical context; apparently wealthy merchant’s coats of arms were decorated with black faces as well as buildings in Amsterdam -probably a nod towards the city’s involvement with the slave trade. Otto would never have received the magnanimity he enjoys in the Brandt household anywhere outside. One of the most interesting ideas to me was the exploration of interior and exterior worlds. The grand house has rooms that are lavishly decorated, but they are mainly to the front of the house where they can be seen from the street or where they are seen by visitors. Similarly, Nella’s cabinet house is a condensed version of the home but only contains the best rooms and it takes the miniaturist’s pieces to highlight the similar difference between what the character’s show and what remains hidden. The revelations of these character’s private rooms and their private lives is what makes the novel so compelling.

I cannot recommend this novel enough. It combines intelligent research and just the type of relationship tensions, secrets and surprises to keep you reading. There will be a certain character that will grab you and Jessie admitted to having a soft spot for Marin who comes across as abrupt and harsh, but does have incredible depths beneath the icy exterior. The miniaturist of the title is a shadowy figure who has more insight into the characters than anyone else but only ever appears in glimpses despite Nella’s efforts to find her. This was intentional and although Jessie was asked whether she was planning to write a sequel there are none at present. Jessie is writing a second novel and is finding that a completely different experience because  she has less time and is under more scrutiny since The Miniaturist ended up in an 11 publisher auction and there are rumours of film rights being obtained. The new novel is provisionally titled Belonging and is set across two times; the Spanish Civil War and 1960s London. I would like to thank Jessie for the great evening we had and I know I am not the only one looking forward to the next novel. For now I am placing The Miniaturist on my Purple Lotus list because of the mystical and spiritual character of the miniaturist who knows all but cannot be seen.

The Book That Made Me Cry

The Book That Made Me Cry

It is hard for a book to make me laugh out loud just as it is hard for a book to bring me to tears. To start where yesterday ended I have to mention again the novel One Day and here there will be a SPOILER ALERT! When I reached the line in the book ‘then Emma Mayhew dies and everything she thought or felt dies with her’ I burst into noisy sobs. I was literally shocked and felt a sudden hit of grief for the loss of this wonderful woman.  I have lost my partner and we all wish for more time, but even with all this in mind I think the writer is incredibly skilful. He elicits a pure grief reaction because of the instantaneous nature of her death with absolutely no warning but also because the novel has always been made up of two narrative voices and Emma’s narrative absence is total; from that point on we only hear Dex’s story and we miss her as much as he does. One Day is an incredibly romantic and beautiful book, probably more meaningful because I had my own Dexter; a friend I was really in love with. We are now just friends and it works that way, but my 18 year old self would never have imagined that day would come. Another reason I love it so much is that my own husband died just 7 years ago from a secondary infection when he was severely ill with primary progressive Multiple Sclerosis. His death was nowhere near as instantaneous as Emma’s in the novel, but that moment when he died cleaved a distinct before and after into my existence. Even if you are expecting it the moment of death is an epic shock and probably what I feared most about his illness. I was scared of the person I would be when he was gone. How would I survive? How would I cope? David Nicholl’s handled his character’s death just right in that her absence was haunting. What I felt most betrayed by was the complete loss of connection. The silence was almost a presence in the room. I had been betrayed by my romantic novels that had led me to expect a Cathy and Heathcliff type of connection that would remain after death. The biggest shock was the complete sense of nothing. Just like Emma Mayhew he simply did not exist. I knew Dexter’s despair so the way he coped with the aftermath of Emma’s death was particularly touching. If you have been on the same journey as a book’s character it makes it all the more poignant.

Another more recent novel that did the same thing was The Fault in our Stars. I know it was very American and written to be a tearjerker, but it worked on this reader and I’m not a teenager. Hazel has cancer but it has been halted by a clinical drug trial and she is in the strange limbo of dying but not yet. I thought the therapy group in the church was written brilliantly and the cynical commentary from Hazel and her friend who is losing his sight because of cancer is spot on. I felt at home with this type of gallow’s humour because it is the way I talk with other people who have Multiple Sclerosis just like me. We are in a similar state of not knowing whether we are sick or disabled, especially those of us with the relapsing remitting form of the condition. At group Hazel meets a boy called Augustus and he reminded me so much of my husband; full of cheeky self-confidence and cocky humour. When I met my husband he was very sure of the relationship straight away whereas I was a little scared of my immediate connection with him and hung back a little.

Realising I was scared, he backed off a little while letting me know it was okay because he knew we were meant to be together. Augustus is a little bit like this with Hazel who he constantly refers to as Hazel Grace. Augustus knows from the start that they meant to be together and her struggling against it is futile; their relationship is inevitable and since they are both so sick, what is the point in wasting time. My husband and I wasted no time. He asked me to marry him after two weeks and I thought about but eventually gave in; when I say ‘eventually’ it must have been a matter of days because we were married within 8 weeks of meeting face to face, and after 6 months of writing to each other. Hazel and Augustus have similar limitations but the relationship doesn’t become physical until their trip to Amsterdam. Hazel loves a book about a girl with cancer and the author is in Amsterdam. It is a book that has a similar effect on her that One Day had on me because it ends mid-sentence when the girl dies and is unable to continue her story; it is clever and infuriating in equal measure. Although Hazel loves the ending because it is real, she is also annoyed by it and has lots of questions about the other characters. When Augustus reads the book he is similarly enthralled and annoyed by the ending and on Hazel’s behalf starts an email correspondence with the book’s author in Amsterdam. The author’s assistant invites them to visit him, but they can’t take him up on it because Hazel’s parents can’t afford the trip. Augustus suggests using her ‘wish’ from the foundation that grants terminally ill children their last wish. Sadly and ironically Hazel expected to die years before and had used her wish when she was 13 to go to Disneyland. Hazel is ashamed to admit the cliché and Augustus cynically takes the piss out of her. Yet, he has a secret plan because Augustus did not use his wish and wants to use it to grand Hazel hers.

 I will not spoil the ending of the novel because it is still quite new, the film is in cinemas and not everyone has seen it but suffice to say I was in bits. It is an ending both expected and unexpected and the author writes this business of dying with realism even though this is a romantic novel. I cried immediately as I realised what was coming and then carried on until the end. It is a novel so bittersweet and I guess my own experiences fed into how much I enjoyed it. Last week my friend and I went to the cinema to see the film. I knew what was coming but still cried like a baby and when the lights came up I turned to apologise to my friend for the stifled sobbing and all the snot. My friend had tiny red eyes and couldn't even speak. As we were gathering our thoughts an elderly couple walked past and the man stopped. ‘That’s the most emotional film I've

 seen in years’ he said as he clutched his handkerchief.

The Most Memorable Picnic

I never read the Famous Five because I was more of a Magic Faraway Tree Blyton reader; picnics were always going to come second to a magic tree, a man named Moonface and different weird lands in every chapter. Even so I am aware of their famous picnics with their lashing of ginger beer because they have loomed so large in the public consciousness and because of the Comic Strip film! However, because I didn't read them personally, I can’t say it is my most memorable literary picnic. Two immediately come to mind in my adult reading, one from the early 19^th Century and one from a more recent novel.

Austen’s novel Emma is about a popular, chatty young woman who likes to match-make, but is seriously stupid when it comes to her own love life. She takes a girl called Harriet under her wing and starts the

process of ‘gentrifying’ her. Emma puts to Harriet that she shouldn't have a local farmer as her sweetheart, but should instead focus her affections on their local vicar Mr. Elton. Harriet obeys her friend, and transfers her affections while Emma tries everything she can to throw them together. Sadly, Emma’s efforts come to nothing when she is left alone with Mr. Elton and he reveals that he has been spending more time with the friends because he likes Emma. This kicks off a series of twists and turns within a small circle including Emma’s family and her brother-in-law and childhood friend Mr. Knightley, her nanny and her new husband Mr. Churchill, Mr. Elton, and other acquaintances. The picnic mentioned in the novel is a turning point where Emma starts to question her talents as a match-maker and also her own affections. The group make their way to Box Hill for a picnic and the view, and include among their party the young Frank Churchill who has been spending time with Emma, as well as an elderly lady from the village Miss Bates. Emma has always been kind and visited Miss Bates to take her produce from their garden. Miss Bates is a fussy, talkative older lady who has once been of Emma’s class but has been brought low in life. Their including her in the party is something of an act of charity. A game is proposed where people are to be asked to come up with one interesting thing and one very dull thing indeed. Miss Bates says she is sure to think of something dull, and Emma quickly jumps in to say that it will be hard because Miss Bates will be restricted to only one. Miss Bates feels the slight and becomes very embarrassed. Mr. Knightley gives Emma a talking to and tells her she should be more respectful of Miss Bates because others will follow her lead and do the same. He tells her she has behaved badly and this is the novel’s turning point. Emma reflects on why Mr. Knightley’s good opinion matters on her and then she realises she has feelings for him beyond friendship. Film adaptations of Emma show an idyllic picnic on the side of a hill with servants carrying chairs and hampers and the guests digging into strawberries and other delights. Although this is the first picnic that came to mind it is not the most memorable.

The second picnic I remembered is certainly the most memorable and involves another Emma. David Nicholls novel One Day is on most people’s book shelves and obviously has some resonance with all those people. I felt particularly moved by the novel because I also had a Dexter. During my sixth form years (also in the 1990s) I had a boy who was my best friend. Like Emma and Dex we have blown apart and come together over the years, but he is now married to someone else and we know we only work as friends – after a fair bit of heartache!! Emma and Dex though are supposed to be together. Even through his ‘arsehole’ years where he works as a TV producer, dabbles in drugs and binges on women. I love the character of Emma because she’s a Northern working class girl who loves English literature and desperately wants to be a writer – sound like anyone we know? She knows quite early on that she loves Dexter, but it takes him longer to grow up. The scenes in Paris where she is a success as a children’s writer and has a fabulous gamine new look are wonderful because she is finding her feet and then Dexter comes along and finally declares his love. This novel teaches us that if we love someone, we shouldn't waste time because we don’t know how much we've got left. The novel is ‘book-ended’ by two picnics at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. The first is after their graduation when they take a hike up there and start getting to know each other the morning after they almost had a one night stand. They take Irn Bru because champagne might be too

ostentatious. It is a great first date after the night before and those moments as they hike back down and Dex’s parents turn up just at the moment when he might have asked to see her again are so full of tension. The novel follows the construct of being the same day in July every time we meet the pair and the novel ends as Dex and his daughter take the same hike in Edinburgh and picnic on top of the hill. It is moving and I guess that’s why it’s so memorable. It isn't what they eat in the end; it’s why they are there that matters.

Irritating Characters in Novels

The first character that comes to mind when I think of being irritated is obviously Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice. Is there any woman alive who doesn't pity poor Charlotte Lucas who seems to think that her only marriage choice is to take his proposal? We celebrate when Lizzie Bennet refuses him and then to hear that Charlotte has accepted him only 24 hours later is so sad. When we imagine her choices it is a very pragmatic and realistic choice for her, but all I can imagine is being suffocated in a small cottage with him fussing and being ridiculous. The thought of running around to please Lady Catherine De Bourgh and also listening to him sucking up is awful. When Lizzie visits later in the novel, we learn that Charlotte has found a way of living with him by encouraging him to garden and having her own parlour. I would need my own house and would encourage a different hobby – maybe something risky and reckless? I imagine him as a small, stuffy man with slightly greasy hair and a very picky manner. I see him at the table picking with food and reminding me of the scripture at every opportunity. I would commit murder if I had to live with him.

Another irritating character, but in an entirely different way, is the saintly cousin Helen in What Katy Did. I seem to have been brought up with girl’s fiction that involved a character’s period of illness. Of course it is always an illness that teaches something especially for young ladies. Pollyanna has a fall and learns she cannot walk and has to find the meaning in such an awful disability. She has always played ‘The Glad Game’, taught to her by her missionary parents where she has to find the good in every situation. Now she finds it very difficult to understand the lesson in her accident. Similarly Katy has an accident on the garden swing and is unable to walk. She is a very active tomboy of a girl and finds her immobility very difficult. Luckily she has the example of her saintly Cousin Helen. Helen has an illness that means she cannot walk and she has become this ridiculously perfect, religious, patient woman that Katy should be. Helen has found meaning in her illness and uses it to counsel others and be a saintly figure for other young women. She teaches Katy to become a young woman rather than the tomboy she was. Katy’s illness and Helen’s help allow her to be the replacement for her dead mother. Katy becomes a housekeeper and helps her father with the household and the younger children. Helen shows Katy what she should be a quiet, restrained and modest woman rather than the wild tomboy she was. I find this part of the book infuriating. I want to take Helen to the top of a steep hill and let go of her wheelchair. I would like Katy to recover and be the same girl she was, not some facsimile of a saintly walking cliché. It makes me even angrier now that I have my own disability. I want Cousin Helen to drop the odd swear word and be honest about her experience!

Last year I had the most peculiar experience of reading a novel where I hated every single character! I read The Slap for my book group and as it started and worked its way through the different characters points of view I was waiting for someone I could identify or agree with. The book went on and just when I thought I might be getting along with someone they did something that changed my mind. I have never had this reading experience before but I guess it is an honest and realistic way of looking at life. We all have flaws and this novel was consistent with that. There was no one person who stood out as a hero or heroine. I loved the story telling and the moral issue kept all of the reading group talking for hours, but every single character was either irritating or downright hateful!  

The Almighty Caitlin Moran Stops Me Watching Wimbledon!

I spent the weekend with a friend having our ten year reunion of our graduation. My university years came late in life and were very unexpected because in the space of 12 weeks I had met a man, married him, moved over 100 miles away from home and started a university course in English. The women I met there were incredible life-long friends but my teenage years were spent partying, jumping from job to job and travelling from gig to gig. It seemed fitting that I celebrated both exciting parts of my life this weekend by meeting my uni friends and reading Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to be a Girl’ set firmly in the music scene of the 1990s.

This new novel, clearly based on her first years as a music critic was quite simply unputdownable and that isn’t even a word. I rested on Sunday after the big get-together on the Saturday and finished it although I’d only started the night before. Not only did it stop me watching the Wimbledon final; I had forgotten it was on at all! The first night I went to bed late, and worried that my friend would think I was mental as I giggled, guffawed and sniggered under the quilt trying not to disturb my fellow house guests. I was hysterical with laughter at her descriptions of her Irish family as they reminded me a bit of mine and I would have been a similar age at a similar time. We were also a cash strapped family, getting our music and books from the library and I also wanted to be a writer. I didn’t have the nerve and determination that Caitlin Moran had, and I admired her for it. Her mistakes and exploits during this time were funny but also had that cringe-worthy aspect of a teenager being completely out of her depth. Moran also doesn’t pull punches about what it’s like to be a woman; the story of her cystitis bath party is both excruciating (because we all know what it’s like) and hilarious. I was moved by the character’s immediate love for John Kite and her descriptions of the way she feels when she’s with him are beautiful and romantic. It is like she finds her real home because he gets her completely.

I spent an awfully long time trying to imagine who people were by remembering back to the big indie music stars of the 1990s. It reminded me of my own love of Blur, Pulp (who I saw at Alexandra Palace in 1994) and also more obscure choices such as the Milltown Brothers whose EP I played and also my favourite Cocteau Twins album Heaven or Las Vegas. Her descriptions of playing Twin Peaks with her brother was funny and I remembered by own obsession with the series that I used to watch with my best friend Elliot every Tuesday night with chocolate ice-cream and Boaster cookies. The fashion descriptions were also nostalgic for me and I still wear a lot of the same things from my 90s wardrobe such as the Doc Martens, the velvet jackets and the long indie girl skirts.

Caitlin Moran is one of my feminist heroines. She is not frightened of taking some of the most private experiences of being a woman and putting them out there in an honest and ballsy way. This novel was heartwarming, intriguing, nostalgic and completely hilarious. I was sad to finish and immediately wanted to read it all over again. This is a five star book from a five star writer and later on, when I happened to see News at Ten I saw that it had been the Wimbledon final and not only did I realise I’d forgotten, I realised I didn’t care. 

Novels About Food

For a favourite food novel it is hard to choose between my two favourite novels about Chocolate; Like Water for Chocolate and Chocolat. They both have completely different settings and stories but for both food is an integral part of the story. I love the combination of magic and food which both authors manage beautifully in these novels, weaving the magic into everyday life seamlessly.

Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate is set in Mexico and follows Tita and her love for Pedro; unfortunately the family tradition is that the youngest daughter does not marry but looks after the mother for the rest of her life. Knowing that he cannot be with her, Pedro agrees to marry the eldest sister Rosaura because at least then he can keep Tita close by. The heartbroken Tita can do nothing but go along with her mother’s wishes and can only express her emotions through food. I love the scene where Tita is forced to make her sister’s wedding cake and her own heartbreak becomes too much so she weeps as she makes the cake and her tears become an integral ingredient. The guests at Pedro and Rosauro’s wedding love the wonderful cake but then are suddenly reminded of a sorrow they have felt in their own life and they weep too. The reception is filled with weeping guests and Tita’s emotion has expression on what should have been her wedding day. Another wonderful example of food affecting the plot is when Tita makes a quail dish in rose petal sauce which she flavours with her lust for Pedro. When it is eaten the guests become inflamed with lust sleeping with whoever they can find. At the close of the novel as a fire engulfs the ranch, the only thing that survives in the ashes is Tita’s amazing cookbook.

Similarly in Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, magic is the incredible ingredient in the chocolate shop opened by Vianne Rocher in a little Provence village. When Vianne blows into town with her daughter Anouk she transforms the store with beautiful flowers but also incredible chocolates from her mother’s recipes. Vianne’s incredible gift is to know exactly which chocolate is which customer’s favourite and with her cosy little store offering pain au chocolat and hot chocolate throughout the day people start to hang out and enjoy the ambience. This does not go unnoticed; Father Reynaud dislikes the shop opening during Lent and starts to resent Vianne’s easy way with the people he considers his. He starts to notice that some of his congregation are not cutting down during Lent but are actually eating more of what he considers indulgent. During this period some traveller’s moor their barges in the river and start using Vianne’s while they make repairs to their boats. Reynaud preaches against indulgence but it makes no difference to some members of the congregation who continue to flout his rules and regulations. This becomes a war between the two with Reyaud representing the traditional Catholic Church whereas Vianne represents Mother Nature and as they come towards Easter it is a battle between the Christian festival and the pagan festival of Oestre. I love more than anything though the descriptions of the chocolates in the store, how pretty they are and the way Vianne makes them. As Easter comes ever nearer, these descriptions become even more vivid, and her final window display to be unveiled on Easter Sunday sounds mouth-watering. Don’t read unless you’re happy to want a real chocolate fix!

All Time Favourite American Novel

This has to be The Great Gatsby, because it sums up a part of American history for me; that era between WW1 and the Great Depression where fashion, frivolity and fun were the rules of the day. It is both the most  beautiful and sad novel I have read. Jay Gatsby, played beautifully by Leonardo De Caprio in the most recent film, is the last of the great romantics in an era where money and power have more weight than love. He first meets Daisy during WW1 when he is a soldier and she is a southern belle and the world is still romantic. The sepia toned and magnolia scented past no longer exist when we meet the novel and we are in the brash, roaring twenties and our unsuspecting narrator Nick Carroway wants to join this world by becoming a trader and he moves into a tiny bungalow on Long Island. He becomes fascinated with his elusive neighbour Gatsby and the incredible parties he holds, without knowing that Gatsby has long been in love with Nick’s cousin Daisy who lives across the bay. Gatsby stands at the end of his pier and watches the light at the end of Daisy’s dock and feels close to her.

Daisy now lives on the more fashionable side of the bay with her husband Tom Buchanan. Tom is a college jock, old money and successful, and they live in a beautiful home with every luxury. When Nick goes for lunch he is amazed by the beauty of their home but also sees the tension when Tom’s mistress keeps telephoning during the meal. Not long after this Nick also finally meets the elusive Gatsby and the splendour of his parties where everyone from Manhattan drives in to enjoy drinks, dancing and the height of entertainment. Gatsby’s generosity seems boundless and the rumours about what he does range from him being a bootlegger to a spy. The simple fact is the only reason he makes money and the only reason he holds such dazzling parties is that he has been waiting for Daisy to walk through the door. Previously he knew he was unworthy of her rich family background and breeding, so he has spent his entire life trying to be what he thinks Daisy wants but in the meantime she has married someone else.

The rest of the novel becomes a tragedy as we see Gatsby and Daisy embark upon an affair, despite the wrath of her husband Tom who is carrying on his own affair with Myrtle. Nick is caught between them all because he is embroiled in Nick’s Manhattan high life in his city flat with Myrtle and then he reintroduces Daisy to Gatsby and becomes their confidante and enabler. Whereas Gatsby is still a romantic, Tom Buchanan is a cynic and is careless with the hearts of others. There is no other way for this to end than tragedy for all involved. I love this book because of all the period detail from the 1920s. It conjures a picture very well portrayed for me in Baz Lurhman’s recent film where the sadness is balanced with the joy of love, and the beauty is balanced with decadence and decay. This is a beautiful novel about the origins of one of my favourite places and it never ceases to move me.

My Favourite Novel in Translation

Wow, this is a tough blog to write because although I’ve read a lot of fiction from around the world I honestly don’t know how much of it was written in the author’s native language and then translated. I’m not sure that I own a single book that as a translator as well as an author credited on the title page. This shows a huge gap in my reading that I have to rectify!

Despite this there are so many novels by foreign writers that have affected me deeply. I think first of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart which I read at university. Having grown up in an evangelical church that often throws out missionaries I was appalled by the effect that earlier missionaries had on Nigerian tribes. Okonkwo is a chief amongst the Igbo people and the effect on his home and on him is catastrophic. He strives to show no weakness but after an incident where one of the tribe’s sons is killed Okonkwo and his family go into exile. On his return his home has changed and he gathers a group of men to destroy the Christian church as symbol of what has gone wrong. However this causes the leader of the white government to hold him prisoner for a while. Okonkwo wants his people to return to the animistic religion they originally followed and govern themselves. He feels though, that the other villagers are not really with him and something has irrevocably changed. The white men stop the meeting of war that he organises and he realises that he is a leftover from the past and he becomes despairing and depressed. He kills one of the white men in frustration, and when they come to collect his for court, Okonkwo has committed suicide- forever separating himself from the Igbo people he loves.

I guess the next book that really affected me in the same way was Edwidge Danticat’s first novel Breath, Eyes, Memory. Sophie lives in Haiti with her grandmother and a mother who is estranged from them and lives in the USA. Sophie is a child of rape; her mother was raped by an unknown man but probably one of the tonton macoute who were the henchmen of corrupt president Papa Doc Duvalier. Sophie learns that her mother was subjected to testing by her grandmother – a way of checking that their daughters were still virgins. When Sophie moves to New York with her mother their relationship becomes strained. Her mother has issues with her body that come from her terrible experiences and she doesn’t eat, and tries to bleach her skin to look less dark. When Sophie has a friendship with a musician next door, her mother begins testing her, even though she hated the practice herself. Sophie rebels by using her mother’s spice pestle to break her hymen and her mother assumes she is no longer a virgin and kicks her out. Sophie leaves with Joseph and they marry and have a daughter. Sophie had therapy to overcome the abuse she has experienced from her mother, and returns for a visit to Haiti where it all began. She spends time with her grandmother and aunt, realising that they are all victims of a corrupt regime but also of a misogynistic society where women have historically visited abuse upon their daughters to please men. Sophie’s mother arrives and they understand each other for the first time and reconcile. This book started a love of Haitian history for me and I have read a lot about the country since, and more recently about the corruption in aid relief after the terrible earthquake. I also read other books about similar experiences where women are trying to change a history of abusive behaviour such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage and tribal practices of sexual abuse. It changed my outlook on different parts of the world and the way the Western world responds to crisis

A totally different book and experience came in Carlos Ruis Zafon’s The Shadow of the Window which is definitely a translation from the original Spanish. A boy called Daniel is taken by his father to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Anyone initiated into this secret place is allowed to take just one book from it and must protect it for life. Daniel loves his chosen book The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax and becomes so engrossed that he keeps searching for other books by the author but there are none. He then searches for the author and only finds a man called Lain Coubert, named after a character in the book that just happens to be the devil. We are taken into a story within in a story here, with a doomed love story between Julian and Penelope and Daniel’s search and what effect it has on him. This is a beautiful and mysterious book that draws you in and turns the city of Barcelona into a place you are desperate to explore for yourself.

The Lotus Book lists contain books from France, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Africa, India and many, many more and they are mainly on the Blue Lotus list which aims to educate and inspire.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Alice Hoffman's latest novel

I have to be honest and say these are the genres I have least experience of and I had to think about them very carefully as I set up Lotus Flower Book Club. I had always thought of these genres as the domain of male readers and asked the advice of my friend Jean because she reads fantasy and sci-fi almost exclusively, but there was nothing she offered me that I could really get into. Then I had a thought about it and realised that actually I do read these genres but because it wasn’t Lord of the Rings, Terry Pratchett or Isaac Asimov I had dismissed them.

Over the last twelve months I’ve had some great reading experiences and when I thought about it a lot of them could be described as fantasy.

 The first one I thought of was Ali Shaw’s beautiful book The Girl with Glass feet which is set on a faux Scandinavian island where our heroine literally has feet that are turning into glass. She is travelling around the island trying to find someone who understands what is happening to her and who can hopefully reverse the effects. The books is so beautifully written that you are immediately drawn into this strange world and the predicament of the girl, so much so that it did not occur to me it was a fantasy. I had a similar experience with Erin Morgenstern’s ‘The Night Circus’ where we are drawn into the world of people who do actual magic. The circus is real, but is embellished with the real magic to make it even more incredible. There is a competition between magicians over who can create the most beautiful illusion and I had accepted this without thinking for a moment that I was reading a fantasy. Another magical novel that had been on my shelves for a long time was Jonathon Strange and Dr. Norrell set in eighteenth century England. It was such a huge book that I’d been avoiding it but I enjoyed The Night Circus so much I thought it was time to give it a go. I was immediately sucked into the story by the initial setting in York Minster where I’d just visited but then by the curious fellow with the silvery hair who seems to be genuine, but has a sinister side and an ability to bewitch. The only men able to challenge his enchantment are Dr Norrell who has put away practising magic, and a new magician called Jonathon Strange. The men start by working together but soon the young apprentice is challenging his master and the spells become more and more incredible as the two try to outdo each other. It was an incredible book and all three I’ve written about were so much fun that I was sorry when they ended.

I spent a week in hospital late last year and a friend brought a book for me to borrow. At university I did a module in Gothic, Grotesque and Monstrous literature which led to my dissertation in disability and difference. During my research I did a lot of reading about freak shows and the book she brought me was Ransom Riggs novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children which is based upon strange photos of curious twins, a baby with a dog’s body and a tiny child inside a light bulb. Riggs has woven an amazing story round these photos and created a wonderful cast of freaks, living in a children’s home and happened upon by one teenage boy on holiday with his Father. What he doesn’t realise is that these particular freaks have special powers and they are living the same day in 1942 over and over again. Miss Peregrine is there to watch over them and our hero has a very special part to play in this, just as his grandfather did generations before.

Finally I read a lot of Alice Hoffman and although some of her fiction is definitely realist there have always been supernatural elements, such as her novel Practical Magic about two sisters who are witches or The Ice Queen about a woman with hit by lightning and the strange effects that has on her physically and mentally. Despite encountering mediums, witches, giants and spirits in Hoffman’s books I never thought of her as fantasy – I saw it more as magic realism. Then I read her latest novel The Museum of Extraordinary Things, set in late 19^th Century Coney Island Hoffman weaves the tale of Coralie Sardie who is born with webbed fingers and the museum where she grows up. Her father runs a museum of the extraordinary or a freak show to most of the visitors. There is a wolf man and a butterfly girl and Coralie herself who is dressed in a tail and becomes a mermaid in a tank. He also wants to drum up interest in the museum by spreading the rumour of strange sea creature swimming in the Hudson River. Hoffman weaves a tale based in a historical time and place and while painting a beautifully realistic picture she inhabits it with magical creatures and their adventures.

It turns out I do read fantasy and within Lotus Flower Book Club these sorts of books can be found on the Purple Lotus list where spiritual and mystical books belong.