Swimming Home - Deborah Levy

Kitty Finch is trouble. A beautiful young woman, suffering from depression, she interrupts a family holiday in a French villa. They find her swimming naked in their pool. A double booking leaves her with nowhere to stay, so the wife of the family invites her to stay on with them. Having decided to stop taking her medication, Kitty is clearly unstable.  Her presence unsettles everyone, from the troubled poet Jozef and his poised war correspondent wife, to their adolescent daughter and the gluttonous friend with a penchant for guns.

The reader soon senses danger, but is only as the story unfolds that we realize who is most at risk.

Levy's writing disorientates the reader, just as Kitty's presence disturbs the protagonists of the story. From the very first lines Levy's prose is perceptive and unsettling:

'When Kitty Finch took her hand off the steering wheel and told him she loved him, he no longer knew if she was threatening him or having a conversation.'

Although it's hard to imagine anything beating Hilary Mantel's Bring up the Bodies to the Booker Prize, Swimming Home, with its Freudian depths, should be a strong contender.

The book is noteworthy too for its unusual publishing history. Funded by subscriptions from readers, the book is published by And Other Stories. You can find out more about the ways in which the readers influence the choice of books at http://www.andotherstories.org/

Deborah Levy is appearing at Lancaster Litfest on Sunday 21st October. You can book tickets here.

Lancaster Litfest 2012 - Curate's egg picks

In an ideal world, I would immerse myself in books for a whole week, gliding seamlessly from event to event, and talking all things literary with friends old and new over coffee and cake.

Since I can't possibly enjoy it all, here's my selection from a packed program of events:

Wednesday 17th October - Gothic Young Adult Fiction. After last year's excellent talk on pushing the boundaries in YA fiction, my daughter's really looking forward to this one. With Cliff McNish, Chris Priestley and Celia Rees.

Thursday 18th October - David Constantine (winner of the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award) and Adam Marek read from their short fiction collections.

It's so tempting to spend the whole weekend of 20th/21st enjoying the Poetry Shindig (Saturday) and Prose Shindig (Sunday), but I'm rationing myself to a couple of events each day.

Saturday 20th October - Gillian Clarke & Robert Crawford. Two poets, one Welsh and one Scottish. In At the Source, Clarke writes with great passion about the relationship between language and place so I'm hoping for more of the same.

Saturday 20th October - An Evening with John Hegley, poet, comedian and performer. This is the event chosen by our book group. I've never seen Hegley before, but having watched clips on YouTube I'm looking forward to an entertaining evening.

Sunday 21st October - And Other Stories present: Deborah Levy and Oleg Zaionchkovsky I'm intrigued by And Other Stories' unusual publishing route, involving readers in the publishing process through of a series of readers groups, on-line forums and discussions. Deborah Levy's novel Swimming Home has been short-listed for the Booker Prize. It's a disconcerting book, with some great writing. I'll be posting a review soon.

Sunday 21st October - Jo Baker and Zoe Lambert - The Right to Imagine. Two North West writers talk about the role of war in story telling.

There's too much else going on to mention it all here, but you can find the whole programme on the Lancaster Litfest website.

Lancaster Litfest - first impressions

I've taken a first peek at Lancaster Litfest's 2012 programme. It may just be that I've overdone the caffeine today, but now I'm all aflutter.

It's probably more years than I realise since my first experience of Lancaster Litfest. I heard Wendy Cope read at the Dukes Theatre. I'd never been to a poetry reading before and I wasn't sure what to expect. I felt sure that all female poets must wear scarves. I've even tried wearing a scarf myself, but I still couldn't make my lines scan.  Wendy Cope didn't wear a scarf, but she did look like my grandma and her poetry was warmly received. By the time I saw Carol Ann Duffy in 2010, I was hooked.

Last year our reading group went to hear Carol Birch talk about her Booker short-listed novel, the wonderful Jamrach's Menagerie.  I took my daughter to the discussion of young adult literature and wondered about drawing boundaries in teenage reading, before realizing that the boundaries had been crossed without my even realising.

My brief excursion into creative writing did go some small way to demystifying the art of writing. No longer did I view writers as gifted gods, far above Premiership footballers and Hollywood actors. These were people like you and me. Didn't they have days too when the ideas didn't come, or the words clumped together on the page like lumpy porridge? I was determined not to feel out of place amongst the 'literary types' in both the audience and on the stage.

So this year, in a spirit of adventure, I have put myself forward as a volunteer to promote Lancaster Litfest in the ether and anywhere else where people will listen. I have no idea what this will entail, but I'm hoping it will lead to some interesting experiences and blog posts too.

I've yet to study the Litfest brochure in all its details, but I've already circled the poet Gillian Clarke and Jo Baker, author of The Picture Book, reviewed in my last post. My daughter's eyes lit up at the mention of the  Gothic young adult fiction event, so that's another for the diary.

You can view the Lancaster Litfest brochure here. Let the reading begin!

Jamrach's Menagerie

I'm sitting comfortably with a glass of Pinotage awaiting the Booker Prize announcement.   I must admit to a vested interest here.  Carol Birch, author of Jamrach's Menagerie, lives in Lancaster.  I've just finished her book this evening.  In the course of reading it, I've gone from admiration to horror and travelled from East London to the middle of the Pacific.  I've marvelled at her fantastic imagination.  Just how do you write like that and then turn off your computer and cook dinner?

I'm looking forward to seeing Carol Birch at Lancaster Litfest tomorrow evening.  Just as football fans revere their favourite striker, or others love to celebrity spot, I find myself in awe of writers.  I've seen Wendy Cope and Carol Ann Duffy at previous Litfests and, although I've enjoyed both evenings, I felt a little disappointed at the ordinariness of them.  Surely they should have some special aura of creative genius?  The truth is, of course, that they are really just like us.  They have days too, I imagine, when there's too much to be done to have time to write.  They have days too, perhaps, when they read what they've just written and despair.

Perhaps there's hope for us yet.