August 24th 2023

Book Review:

A Great Deal of Ingenuity,

byRuth Leigh

(Resolute Books)

SO… having read Ruth Leigh’s A Great Deal of Ingenuity (Resolute Books), my review…

This is a very enjoyable read for anyone (probably, but not necessarily) female and from roughly age 17-97), who’s enjoyed Jane Austen’s writing or enjoys historical stories set in the (very) early 19th century. Leigh is a competent observer of social/class niceties and foibles, in her earlier novels, and continues here, as she attempts to get as close as possible to the Austen style. She has also done her research. So, unlike in dramatised adaptations, we are treated (through footnotes) to understanding more of the culture of the time, including various food items and tradiitional ways of handling life (e.g. what was ‘lying-in’ after giving birth? What was ‘white soup’?)

This gives the book an ‘authentic’ feel, which I appreciated. The characters are well drawn, and I enjoyed the ‘below stairs’ ones who commentated on the lives they observed around them, and sometimes the wiley ways of their own behaviour. We learn about soap making, and the pathway from scullery maid to cook, which Jane surely knew next to nothing about, since she didn’t need to do more than write, paint, draw, and decorate bonnets. And, of course, dance and play a decorous ‘instrument’ (the pianoforte!)

We also learn not only about the enomous importance of the marriage market before women’s liberation - an important but amateur activity of older matrons and aunts - and the ways in which a possible future husband’s lifestyle was assessed, as was his suitability class-wise. All this, hinted at by Jane herself in her writing often with wry glances, and an ironic eye, is delighfully employed by Leigh. How it’s done, and with what degree of realism.

One little footnote the writer didn’t add, which I discovered when checking Jane’s dates (she was writing early19th not simply late 18th, century): the line of Leigh runs in the Austen family, through their mother, Cassandra (Leigh) Austen (after whom of course Jane’s sister was named). This is interesting, and the question remains to be answered: has Ruth Leigh of today taken any time yet to check whether she (or her spouse of course) might be a descendent of the Leighs of Jane’s mother’s maiden name? Possibly not a direct line, but through a male descent of one of their mother’s brothers?

I would love to know!

Meanwhile, a lively book, full of humour and observation, a very creditable ‘homage to Jane’! Recommended…

And…currently reading now, The Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie (see orange cover above) Kamila Shamsie, an experienced writer and journalist from Pakistan, writes rather more serious-minded books, defintely women’s lit-fic. I’ve read several of hers before, and despite having a break by reading lighter books decided this new one would be interesting. Set in Karachi (& later, London) it charts the progress of 2 girls through teenage and in the second half middle age… beginning in 1988 with the election of Benezire Bhutto and the promise of democracy…

Book Reviews:

Cuckoo in the Nest, by FranHill & Mrs Porter Calling, by A. J. Pearce…

July 28th - Book Reviews and a blog…

Continuing my commitment to read some uplifting and non-political books, I have 2 to recommend: these are very different but both are a compelling read.

Fran Hill, author of Cuckoo in the Nest*, has experienced foster care herself so writes with inside observation from the point of view of the young person who is placed in an alternative home. The story takes place back in 1976, a heat wave summer, and Jackie age 14 is hardly coping as a carer for her father, who is unable to work due to an accident, and has developed a heavy drinking habit. She must keep house, provide meals, look after herself and get her school work in on time, and sometimes she has been forced to steal food from the supermarket. The school has contacted social services to her relief, and she is placed in what appears to be ‘a normal family’.

When Jackie arrives at the Walls’ house, she soon begins to realise how much hidden emotional chaos is present in other people’s apparently neat, organised lives. Her home isn’t the only ‘dysfunctional’ kind.

Hill writes with good humour, and a dry wit, and never satirises any of the characters, while giving us readers, through a thoughtful and intelligent 14 year old’s eyes, a picture of their dysfunctional side. She also creates friends for Jackie who without making a point of it are kind, and sharing, and supported in their family life. And a girl who was an ‘outsider’ who blossoms as she and Jackie become friends.

No more spoilers, but do read the book! It is insightful about those who fall between the cracks in society, and why, and brings to life what it is to have to battle with being ‘older than your years’ in a family which can’t cope. A really lovely book, laced with Jackie’s capacity for humour!

And the foster family Wall’s Dalmatian dog’s name? Spotless!

Mrs Porter Calling by A.J. Pearce**

Here’s another ‘absolute gem’ of a book. Set in London, in the spring of 1943, the story centres around the staff of a woman's magazine,Woman's Friend. The magazine, which is owned by a newspaper magnet, isn't a glamorous publication but is rather aimed at the ordinary mother and housewife who is coping with feeding and clothing a family during the Second World War. Many of these women would also either be in “war work" or would be encouraged to find some.

The staff consist a male editor, Mr Guy Collins, and a varied band of women mostly married, plus the artist Mr Brand, and Mr Newton a retiring personality, who is in charge of advertising. They occupy the top floor of the newspapers’ building in central London. In charge of the women's help page is Emmeline Lake (now the married Mrs Mayhew, with husband Charles at the front somewhere in the world, commanding troops).

These characters have already appeared along with others in AJ Pearce’s two previous novels featuring Emmy’s career from neophyte journalist to her present position as an agony aunt on the Woman's Friend, but I could recommend it also as a stand alone novel, if you have not yet read the first, Dear Mrs Bird. In all three books Pearce taps into history, which she has well researched including reading many women's magazines of the period. She creates a very believable atmosphere whether in the office, at the flat which Emmy shares with her friend Bunty who works at the War Office, and later when things take an unexpected turn and she steps up to the plate.

The dialogue is gently peppered with the slang of the time, and as events pan out the reader is drawn into another world, that of the 1940s with its own structured class system and snobbery. With a war on there was enough to think about at the office, answering letters from women who had noone else to turn to than their weekly magazine’s agony columnist, but when Lord Overton, the newspaper magnet dies, Woman’s Friend is handed a deal of troubles and at home Emmy is called on at a more domestic level.

I would reccomend this well researched fictional account of women in wartime for anyone who loves a bit of fairly recent history, and all who enjoy reading anything un-put-downable with warm and generous characters up against the odds.

Now reading: A Great Deal of Ingenuity by Ruth Leigh

Especially for Jane Austen fans, this imaginary account of the lives of the ‘bit part actors’ of Pride and Prejudice is a delicious romp and a fun read. Again, the writer has done her research - and she delights in using old spellings of the time - such as ‘shew’ for ‘show’ (and ‘sopha’ for - well, sofa!). Writing as close as she can to Austen’s style, she makes this a ‘tribute book’ if such a category exists…

*Cuckoo in the Nest, author Fran Hill, publisher Legend Press, paperback £8.99 (Amazon) Kindle 0.99 also available as an audiobook

**Mrs Porter Calling, author A.J. Pearce, publisher Picador (I read the hardback on pre-order, but Amazon offers an audiobook, or Kindle £8.99, hardback £12.99 )

Clare Weiner 26/07/2023 Clare Weiner 26/07/2023

Words aren’t ’alf slithery things…

Liminality: I stared at this word, wondering whether I’d seen it before, and what it meant. Was it actually a mistake, for something I could imagine: ‘luminality’? Luminality made sense of a kind: the writer probably meant whatever possessed this quality in spades — it illumined, or lit, things, rooms, extremely well.

I then returned to my normal self and understood: liminality was the name of an Easter art exhibition which I’d recently contributed to, about the ‘liminal’ or in-between time between, for example, career or job changes, between taking exams and receiving your degree results, and in this particular case — this Easter exhibition — the Saturday between Good Friday, the Crucifixion, and Easter Sunday, the Resurrection… ‘Liminal’ — a somewhat poetic word — has entered popular use rather recently (it was 11 times more frequent in 2019 than in 1980). What I was reading used its ‘ality’ noun ‘liminality’ (10 times more frequent in 2019 than in 1980).

There’s quite a lot of this adjective-to-noun stuff about in 21st century writing: transformation from adjective to ‘ality’ (or just ‘ity’) noun has become a popular trend. Once ‘spirituality’ seemed to stand alone (in my vocabulary anyway), and wasn’t used that often . Now it’s six times more common than it was in 1980, and we’re all using physicality, musicality, sexuality, positivity, etc. The popularity of adjective-to-noun seems, most likely, to be that it’s a quick description, it saves words, which is especially important for journalists — hence it spreads rapidly through newspapers, magazines, and of course, the on-line versions of these.

And language is a living thing: if we need to bring in a new descriptive word, if we want to emphasise something new or in a new way, we’ll find a word or a way (journalists again, they’re good at activating language and making it swing): think of ‘visceral’, meaning ‘affecting the viscera as the seat of emotion’. This word, appearing in novel writing alongside ‘use all five senses in your descriptions…’ has leapt into popular use — at least among writers, alongside physicality, as writers seek to push the boundaries of evoking feelings and emotions. Visceral’s use has increased threefold in popularity from actually being ‘revived’ from obsolescence in 1949, while ‘viscerality’ is now 33 times more popular.

Using the same scale, ‘physicality’ rose to the amazing level of 40 times as frequent in 2019 compared to 1960, earning its place in our everyday language as hardly a new word/usage… ‘Sexuality’ became ten times more frequent in 2014 than it had been in 1960, probably owing to the emergence of the new meaning ‘sexual identity’.

Another once-obscure word, ‘iteration’ is on the move… Formerly the related forms reiteration and reiterate were familiar, but suddenly, (it seemed to me) that this word had taken off its hat and coat to settle into the vocabulary of ordinary everyday talk. When, how, did it do this? In 1940, ‘iteration’ (not in its negative form) was scoring 0.00002% usage in the overall Google count based on books written in English: by the 21st century its usage reached 0.0005: 25 times commoner. Possibly sneaking its way into more popular use, iteration may’ve used the route of a mathematical iterating, or in reference to computer apps being improved/altered. But now it’s arrived almost as another, more formal, way to describe what we do when we speak or write…particularly if we repeatedly speak or write the same argument…

Now I’ve given you all those figures, you may not, as I have just said to my partner (who is working in another room), that I am ‘having fun’ with this piece — but there’s another two to go… Partner: ‘A person who is linked by marriage to another, a spouse; a member of a couple who live together or are habitual companions; a lover. Now increasingly used in legal and contractual contexts to refer to a member of a couple in a long-standing relationship of any kind, so as to give equal recognition to marriage, cohabitation, same-sex relationships, etc.’ Partner — in all senses, including who you’re in a relationship with — rose from 0.0015% in 1960 to .004% in 2007 (2.4 times).

‘Excited’ is a word which practically died out between about 1820 and 1900, but has leapt happily back, and into adult usage in the 2000s, as it’s apparently become respectable to say one is ‘so excited!’ by, for example, a ‘cover reveal’ of one’s book, the thought of the planned ‘book launch’ in Waterstones, or the forthcoming holiday in the Himalayas. Or whatever floats your boat. It could just be the imminent arrival of a grandchild, since now all ages use ‘excited!’. Contrast 20th century teachers and parents admonishing children ‘don’t get over-excited…’ as if it was a crime… ‘Excited’ was up at 0.005 in 1827 when its meaning was rather different, sank to 0.0008 in 1940, but has now climbed from 0.001% in 2000 to 0.0024% in 2018 (2.4 times as frequent).

Enough: fun, as in ‘I’m having so much fun’ — see above, used in similar context to excited, though not as teacher/parental disapproval. Fun, within bounds, was allowed!

Oh I do so hope you’ve had fun reading this, but are not too over-excited: take deep breathes, listen to some calming music…just take your time for some R and R.

Clare Weiner 30/05/2023 Clare Weiner 30/05/2023

The Baby Group

Thinking about Liminality, I knew I wanted to create something positive to illustrate a time of suspended life and ‘waiting’, and sifting through my thoughts I remembered something from many years ago. Something which I suspect has become rarer -- or doesn’t now exist at all. The Baby Group.

(This blog first appeared on“Authors Electric” as my monthly contribution for May 2023…)

I have for a while belonged to a group of artists who occasionally exhibit together in North Wales. For Easter Saturday, the group was invited to produce an exhibition of work illustrating the concept of ‘Liminality’ — the in-between space between one life experience, career, or similar, and another. The artwork was to accompany an afternoon of readings and meditation on Easter Saturday -those who are familiar with the Christian faith will recognize this as the day between Jesus’s crucifixion and death and his rising from the tomb on Easter morning. As we act out the events of the Passion, God, in a sense, is now dead, and the Saturday before Easter Sunday is a holy and breathless day as we await celebrating his Ressurection.

The Baby Group, I discovered with our firstborn arrived, was a lifeline across that liminal space between becoming a Mum and hopefully returning to work and a career. Of being tied into an existence defined by feeding, nappy changing, and, as the baby grew from a newborn to a little person full of curiosity, constant busyness at a few-months-old level. Where to meet others similalry tied! The relief of grown-up conversation!

I made a quick sketch from the memories. We Mums would meet, maybe weekly, in someone’s home, and, provided with an assortment of rugs and baby toys for our children, and mugs of coffee and plates of biscuits for ourselves, would put the world to rights. We also had permission to rant about sleepless nights, colic, endless uninterpretable crying, and to show off at the same time how wonderfully our offspring were developing.

We bonded over these things. It didn’t matter if you were an Oxford academic, an interior designer, a teacher, a bank clerk, a dental hygienist - we were all sailing in the same boat. How we looked forward to the morning the Baby Group met!

And, later as our children began to grow, there was the Baby-sitting Group — exchanging an evening out with another member, paying her by the hour in milk tokens.

Looking back, that culture has all gone — yet back then nobody ever thought their children might be abused by the sitter, or come to any harm. At the age of 14 our daughter joined the ranks of teenage babysitters — paid, I forget how much — but certainly paid some pocket money.

How the good times seem to have gone, and in today’s culture, somehow trust has disappeared, community has vapoursied — along with whatever made for some sort of unspoken rules which, crazily, we thought would keep our little ones safe…

Clare Weiner 03/05/2023 Clare Weiner 03/05/2023

Why write family-based novels?

A family novel may be a warm, cuddly kind of a book. But all families are different – and incredibly so. Open up any household and the configuration of the family is unique. Contrasting families may have radical differences, and once joined by relationships coming in from outside the group, things can get messy. Everyone, ultimately, will have begun in some kind of a family – whether large or small, Bohemian or traditional, cross-cultural, multicultural, single-parent, blended….

Today the news reported the resignation of one of the key developers of AI, or ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Apparently Geoffrey Hinton, (a ‘British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist’ (BBC News May 2nd) had realised that at the current rate of progress, AI could become dangerous to us humans by becoming ‘more intelligent than we are’.

His explanation includes that AI could handle far more information than human brains could possibly manage to contain ‘one brain at a time’, and that if disseminating all that information to every AI throughout the world — well, it would just outwit us – and then what…?

Interesting scary thought. Especially as so far the routines and expectations of “normal life” world still feel distinctly disrupted by the Covid pandemic. And that, especially among, young adults, the taste for “dystopic” novels and movies is distinctly large, maybe driven by fiction such as The Hunger Games, combined with a real apprehension about their future driving their interest in the effects of climate change and preserving the planet. Yet, ironically, students are already using AI for homework and college essays – and in fact, in a small way, many of us writers use programs, such as Grammarly, essentially a type of AI, to check their work.

So why, in this disturbed post-pandemic world, do I persist in writing family based novels? Not crime, not dystopian, not horror or thriller? Looking at what those popular genres have in common, I still choose to write about human interactions.

It may look naive. It may look like writing what will only be read, if at all, by a small number of knitting grannies – though consulting the figures, I discovered that the most popular genre for older people isn’t books by authors such as Maeve Binchey, or Joanna Trollope, it’s crime.

Family life also reflects social change, sibling rivalry can mirror political and national conflict. Crimes may indeed be committed. Unstable or dysfunctional families create their own mini dystopian world. At present a number of ‘family based’ novels centre on the struggles of failing families and children in care. And others on immigrant families, think Brick Lane** or culture clashes, think An American Marriage. (Or my Baby, Baby and The Labyrinth Year****)

As I read recently on a books and writing based website, “families are as varied as the people who composed them“ (mind juggle website) and in writing about families an author composes character-based tales about the vast and intriguing variations of human behaviour, charting some startling changes in social mores, and demographic, beliefs, attitudes, rebellion and accepted norms, often reflecting how these affect the generations within families.

As for AI, becoming “more intelligent than ours” my own worry is not so much about the quantity of knowledge, but the ignorance of ethics, integrity, and compassion to support or temper the use of that knowledge. Something we can learn about, and chart – or not – within human families.

* BBC Newspage, 2 May 2023

**Monica Ali, 2004

***Tayari Jones, 2019

****Mari Howard, 2013, 2014

Clare Weiner 17/04/2023 Clare Weiner 17/04/2023

Two Book Reviews

Murder in the Highlands: a Sophie Sayers Cozy Mystery by Debbie Young. p/b Boldwood £9.99 / Kindle 2023

A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale p/b 4th Estate 2012

It’s said that writers should read widely. Over Easter, I’ve been reading in two very different genres, but both stories are set in a village and take advantage of the resulting restricted cast of characters.

Cosy mystery, often, if not always, takes place in a lovely quiet village, and is solved by a female protagonist, who is an amateur sleuth. For a writer who has lived in a beautiful Cotswold village for at least half her life, it’s the obvious choice. Author Debbie Young has created a wonderfully wide-eyed young female sleuth, Sophie, a new arrival in her cottage home, and a complete contrast to Miss Marple. And this village boasts something rare – a real bookshop! Quite how Hector, the young man who owns and runs it, made ends meet before Sophie arrived is unclear, but nowadays, she’s not only his shop assistant and girlfriend, but the mind behind developing the tea room – something to entice in the locals and, of course, tourists passing through.

In a village, there is bound to be a set of eccentric characters, and plenty of opportunity for speculation and gossip. In this new story in the Sophie Sayers cosy mysteries series, the reader is only in Wendlebury Barrow long enough to catch up with the gossip. Sophie and Hector are off to Scotland – surely this must mean a ‘secret’ marriage at Gretna Green? But no, to the young couple’s amazement, the trip provides yet another mystery, and a murder, to solve…

I am never quite sure about Hector’s real intentions towards Sophie – so convenient, a partner and innovator in the bookshop – but he is definitely targeted by someone of malicious intent on this trip, as he is carrying with him an old book of poems in Gaelic, a present for Sophie’s mother… ‘Now read on’ – this mystery is solved, but I was left wondering why Sophie’s parents had bought an old hotel when they moved to Inverness?

Both these books entice the reader with a mystery. Patrick Gale’s ‘A Perfectly Good Man’ is set in West Cornwall, an area I know from holidays. It was published in 2012 and evokes a world that now seems much longer ago, reminding the reader of the pre-pandemic world and also reaching back into the earlier lives of the characters in the age before mobile phones and the Internet. With a deft weaving together of multiple lives and many and varied personalities, Gale slowly reveals the cards in his hand. As their paths cross, some more than once, they complete a set of bizarre circumstances.

I had read this novel before, but had forgotten so much about it that this hardly mattered. Gale is always fair-minded towards each player in the narrative, while showing what a diverse collection human beings are, even in a small place like Pendeen. The story explores complex lives and interactions, looking into the reasons we act as we do, and how the life of one of us may impact upon another, sometimes with devastating results.

The title, ‘A Perfectly Good Man’ is interesting. The writer chose to explore the life of a vicar working in an obscure ex-mining village, and by bringing together the circumstances of all the characters not only shows how this one life pans out, but describes the motivations, weaknesses, and strengths of each character to form the overall picture. In this, I could say, the book is like the making of a jigsaw, gradually revealing which pieces go together and how they all form a whole.

A very intriguing and enjoyable read, complex and satisfying.

Clare Weiner 06/03/2023 Clare Weiner 06/03/2023

Decluttering — anyone?

‘De-cluttering’ - as throwing out once-loved possessions is now called - is not really, as they say, my bag. That is, our home is set about with all kinds of delightful objects, all much loved: books (in bookcases, more than ten, now I stop to count), and ornaments, cushions (great fun to throw around if you’re a visiting grandchild), paintings, pot plants, and of course, not forgetting, The Cat. None of these is ‘clutter’ except, perhaps,The Cat when he insists on sharing the screen and ‘helping’ with a Zoom call.

However, the delight when something precious suddenly moves from one category - necessary research - to another - old information never again needed! Having just spent an hour or so browsing through super-stuffed lever-arch files, casting a last look over wonderfully informative scientific articles and sociological comment pieces on lifestyle today, it’s possible to say of nearly all these that they’ll not be needed again! Once much loved, treasured, indeed printed-out from journals, websites, and on-line versions of special interest groups, can be taken out and dumped into the recycling bin. And likewise, such excitement earlier in the month, when it became obvious that my old Social and Political Science course-books are now wildly out of date, and if wanted by anyone at all browsing in a charity shop, it would be for history of thought rather than the current state of politics or the Welfare State.

Research was totally fascinating, especially exploring the basics of scientific facts I needed to weave into a mystery, and the backgrounds of my fictional characters. Now, though, shall I ever read these articles again? What liberation that they now really can all go! Freeing up shelves! The Mullins Family Saga (I know, if I’d planned it as a saga, a 3-part work, I’d have assigned these guys a more literary-sounding surname - Marchpayne, or Sayers, or even Hannay - well maybe not) but a more literary, beguiling name. As it is, the rather ordinary-sounding Mullins family is now travelling beyond where I shall observe their further antics, while hopefully entering the imaginations of increasing numbers of readers.

I wonder how stories, and characters, wander into the thoughts of other writers - particularly I sometimes wonder about the very beginnings of a book in the head of a crime writers, or a cosy mystery writers. Do they, rather than meeting imaginary people in their heads meet, rather, plot twists, mysterious happenings, or shocking discoveries? Then add the characters?There was for me one day, -way back in about 2001, when Jenny Guthrie entered my life: as a small, precocious child, torn away from her London pre-prep by her parents’ divorce, and dumped instead in a village school in far west Cornwall. Her Dad had taken off to a new post at CALTEC, leaving his wife, a GP, to raise the kids alone. She had moved to rural Cornwall, to the damp cottage they’d bought to convert into a lovely holiday home… and met an art teacher from Essex with a young daughter… And so, the saga was born.

As followers of this blog may recall, that whole part of Jenny’s childhood ended up being de-cluttered at the editing stage - but of course, in my character Jenny’s experience, it remains a real part of her growing years, and her character formation: the determination to do well at the local comprehensive, the precious place at Cambridge to read Natural Sciences, and the seduction of meeting a similarly ambitious young male Mullins. Together they form a (possibly formidable) team. Hence my research - hence the clutter of lever arch files, information from University prospectuses to narrowboats to Dolly the cloned sheep, to how genetics works (or doesn’t) and how it might be helped along, and much beside.

And, how immersed the writer can become in such information! Just as those us who write historical fiction must travel back, in imagination, fingers dancing over the keys in reality while inside their head they occupy a coracle rowed close to shore by fifth century monks, an early train puffing its way along the tracks, London to Dundee in a matter of hours not days, a worried civil servant observing the Fire of London, a desperate young woman lost on the Yorkshire moors, an Egyptian builder calculating the dimensions of the first pyramid, or a passenger ship becalmed in the Pacific. What details are necessary we read up, we learn, we work with, crafting a tale.

Until information becomes clutter, and then, recycling… and so, all passion spent hopefully, someone else’s clutter, a book on the bedside table, or on the commute to work…