Best of the year, with salt, 2007

Book of the year
Miranda July ' No One Belongs Here More Than You'
I am a little surprised that this is my book of the year but it undoubtedly is. It is a collection that has stayed with me, the characters and voice resonating long after. I believe one of my initial criticisms was that the voice of the characters was always the same voice, but now I think of it as being so strong that I'm not sure it matters.

Film of the year
Miranda July 'Me and You and Everyone We Know'
So, I was inspired by her short stories to look out her film, and it's a good'un! The voice is the same as that of her stories, and yeah, for sure, it's a quirky film, but brilliant too. Where July succeeds so well is in showing what is beneath the surface of people. She highlights the odd, the askew, the searching and yearning of folk. The film is romantic, but peppered with disturbing comedy. And who is the star of the film? Why, it's none other than July herself. She is an artist/writer/director of undoubted talent. And she's beautiful too. Sigh.

Most tediously hyped book of the year
Ian McEwan 'On Chesil Beach'
I am sooooooooo sick of selling this book. It has been in every promotion, every display, every magazine, every window, on every table, in every paper. Yes, Ian McEwan has a book out, some other people do too, not that you'd know, what with all the fucking piles of Chesil Beach everywhere. Enough already!

Sleb of the year
In the heat/perez world of sleb only one has stood out like a shiny beacon of loveliness, and I have fallen a little in love with her, so it gives me great pleasure to name Alesha Dixon my sleb of the year. She was inspirational on Strictly as she played out her Cinderella will go the ball story. She looked gorgeous, danced amazingly, bounced and screamed and wiggled and smiled. She exuded positivity and the ethos of hard work and integrity. Viewers all over the country delighted at the thought of love rat Harvey weeping into his hands as he saw what he had lost.

TV of the year
For froth you couldn't beat Strictly come dancing. And I'm not ashamed to admit shedding a tear or two of joy at the final! But televisual event of the year has to be the Sopranos finale. I'm still wondering what the fade to black was! It was a superb ending to an intelligent show blessed with the most fantastic cast.

Game of the year
Has to be Scrabulous on Facebook. Thanks to the makers for updating Scrabble and bringing the joy back without any of the tedious sitting and waiting for an opponent to make a move.


Once more with feeling...

Happy new year

x

End of year reflections.

I have always been a sucker for a blank page, ooh preferably in a brand new notebook, lovely. A morning is good, a fresh week is better, a new year is glorious, just full of hope. I am forever full of the same resolutions that I first made as a girl: lose weight, exercise, write more, be a better person. Not much change there. This year has been all right though, I have made progress in my writing if not my weight/exercise/being a nicer person wish. And actually, screw the nicer person thang, I am nice, and a little fucked off with people taking advantage of that!

So, good things have happened with my writing this year, and I can go into the next knowing that some people like my words. I am aiming to finish my novel by the end of 2008, it is a huge goal, and I want to focus and pour heart and soul into it.

I have learnt a fair bit too:

Other writers can be the most generous, warm, supportive, nurturing people. (They can also be destructive, bitchy, thoughtless, harsh and argumentative. So many egos! )

I have begun working with The Fiction Workhouse, and it has been ACE!

I wrote something that I knew wasn't working, and I showed it to the people I work with on-line at The Workhouse. They critiqued it so thoughtfully and shone light on its flaws, it really brought home to me how solitary it has been, sitting here, typing away, trying to create stories with real depth and meaning. I am not a lonely writer any more, thanks to them. There's a place I can go for inspiration, advice, critiques, help with craft etc. (Hark, is that the Cheers theme tune I hear starting up?) Anyway, it has been an illuminating experience being part of this team. I look forward to working hard with them in 2008.

The benefit doesn't just come from sharing my work. By reading and critiquing others stories I get to learn more about what works for me, what doesn't, why and so on...Invaluable.

Through The Workhouse I have discovered Flash Fiction. It was entirely alien to me before this year, and now I find it exhilarating and wonderful. I am still learning the requisite skills, but whoo, it's fun and a great way to spark out new ideas and learn how to hone prose so that each word matters.

One must not be too reliant on the opinions of others though. I was told that something I had written wasn't right, and yet when I read it again and again it was exactly what I meant and I submitted it as it was, with hope, and had a significant success with it. This showed me that sometimes other people won't magically know what is 'good'. Perhaps they excel in a different style or area. I must trust me.

I have read a lot this year. Although looking at the reviews here you wouldn't know that. I made a choice not to write reviews of books that I had nothing good to say about. It was a hard call. I am a stickler for honesty, what's the point of a wishy washy review? I'd rather read some real vitriol. Hmmm. But, as a writer I know how devastated I am by criticism, and the idea that a precious publication could be trashed by an unknown blogger makes me uncomfortable. I am such a grumpy reader though, hard to impress, hence the lack of reviews!

I have been reviewing for other people too. Pulp net asked me to review some books for them, which has been brilliant, and I have reviewed for The Short Review. In the new year I will be reviewing for the Waterstone's magazine as well. Anyone else want a book reviewed? Just holler!

I was commisioned to write a piece on being a part time writer too, which was a fascinating change for me. I really enjoyed writing non-fiction, and getting paid for it too made me feel very professional!

There's some other stuff that is happening, but until it actually does I don't want to say for fear of, I dunno, fucking it up somehow.

Anyway, I am going into 2008 so much more of a writer than I was coming into 2007, which can only be a jolly good thing!

I'm planning a best of 2007 round up in the next day or so, but just in case I don't get round to it:


Happy new year to you all

The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

I was not a huge fan of The Lovely Bones. In fact I was disappointed by it. I don't recall much, except that I thought it a very strong idea that was let down by the execution. So, yes, what do I know, it continues to sell strongly, although I can't understand how as surely by now everyone in the country has a copy!
Alice Sebold seems rather fabulous though. I read an interview with her recently that was the determining factor in me wanting to give The Almost Moon a go despite having not rated TLB's highly.

The Almost Moon begins with the line 'When all is said and done, killing my mother came quite easily.' So, no messing about, here is the meat of the novel; a woman kills her mother. Then we follow the next 24 hours, as we stay with the narrator, Helen, and hear her thoughts, her flashbacks and watch her past unfold. There is a sense of cool detachment that reminds me of Lionel Shriver in 'We need to talk about Kevin'. And they do have a similar core I think, In WNTTAK the main character struggles with her feelings for her son, here in TAM the central character struggles with her feelings for her mother. When all is done though I am left thinking, oh, so the mum had mental health issues, as did the dad, as does the daughter. Oh. And any sympathy that arises quickly dissipates when not only does Helen kill her mother but then hacks off her long plait and stuffs it into her bag, then goes to fuck her best friends son, coldly and mechanically. It becomes hard to care for her, although perhaps I did a little.

There is a smattering of therapy speak, and some of the motifs are a little heavy handed. This is a flaw I found irritating, oh look she is wearing her mother's slip and her father carved wooden people and her ex husband sculpts with ice and dirt whist she strips as an artists model and so on. Argh!

I have to assume that as intelligent and honest and sparkly as Sebold seems to me in interviews, I am just not going to 'get' her fiction in a meaningful way. I'm sure I'll be selling this book for years to come though.

Female role models who smell like this...

There has always been a severe lack of female role models I think. There are writers I admire, but they are not role models, not people I aspire to be. When I was young and feisty I couldn't find females to admire in that way, and I still can't. I loved Sylvia Plath but y'know, I wouldn't choose to be her, Margaret Thatcher was a 'strong' woman, but ugh, she still makes me shudder, Courtney Love is fierce and gorgeous and writes poetic lyrics that I heart, but she's still a fuck up. I picked men as my heroes: Billy Bragg, Henry Rollins, Steven Page. (Funny how they are all singers.) Men with principles and humour, a mix of communication and passion and honesty. There were no women doing the same.

I am an adult now, and Rollins seems misogynistic and misguided, Bragg remains a wonder, as does Steven Page. I look around and still can't see where the strong, smart women are.

Germaine Greer of course. This woman who speaks with such assurance that she can make me believe almost anything. Who else?

Anyway, I think the situation is far worse for girls today than it was for me. At least I had, I dunno, Toyah and Cyndi Lauper and Siouxsie Sioux showing that women didn't have to be page 3 stunnahs. I sound like such an old bag I know, but today I went into Superdrug, and there were all these celebrity scents piled high for the last minute Christmas rush: Kate Moss, Britney Spears, Katie Price. I couldn't help but wonder who would want to smell like them, and why? Who could possibly envy them or wish to be more like them?

I love Bluebell by Penhaligon's myself, even after I found out that it's the queen's favourite, but I wouldn't have bought it if it was called Her Majesty, or even Germaine! Dumb arse world.

Christmas customers part II.

Argh.
Work was really shit today. Relentless and tedious and full of rude people barking words at me like:
'TV magicians.'
'Survival'
'Cookery'
Usually at Christmas time there is an energy, a buzz that comes from the busyness, and people smile and are a wee bit chatty and cheery. Not this year. So many grumpy people.

'My girlfriend likes books, I dunno, she likes romance, what shall I get her?'
'My mum likes Catherine Cookson, what's like that?'
'My dad likes historical fiction, what have you got?'
'My mate loves Dan Brown, what's similar?'
'Have you got Kerry Katona's biography?'
And so I dutifully fetch them whatever utter shite it is that they think their loved one wants, and they snatch it up and leave, and I sigh and wish that people read what I want them to!
Actually, there was a quote in Time Out this week from a chef, and he said something like 'Good taste is not subjective, it's what I have', and it made me chuckle, because yeah, actually, me too! :)

Krazy khristmas kustomers

So it's the season eh?
The time of year when people who generally avoid bookshops get asked to buy a book as a gift and find themselves baffled by the sheer volume of stock. We have five floors of books organised by subject matter, and yes, sometimes it is confusing.
Poetry? Sure, it's next to parenting, obviously!
An atlas? Hmm, would that be with geography on second, travel and maps on third, or reference on fourth?

Yesterday I was asked for Kerry Katona's novel. My colleague refused to believe such a thing existed, saying that surely it was in biography, but no, Ms Katona is named as the author of a, cough, novel.
The customer was a youngish woman, and she said that she knew it would be under 'K', but that's she's not good enough with her alphabet to be able to know where K would come. Which is too obvious a joke, and you know, let's say she is someone who doesn't read much but that Kerry putting her name to a book encourages her to read, so, it's a good thing really and we should stop being so fucking snobby. I did bite my lip and try not to smile.
Anyway, even though the computer said that we had six copies I couldn't find them at first. This was because the lovely man who runs fiction had hidden them under a table. (He denied that they were hidden, because, as he said, I did find them eventually.)
My colleague turned to me after the customer had left and said 'That must really piss you off, you're a writer and yet someone like Kerry Katona has a novel published, just like that.' I said yeah, and then we got busy and I didn't think about it much, but it occurs to me now that whilst I think it is utterly stupid to give book deals to people who can't write and don't write, who instead employ other people to cobble something together for them, I am not pissed off by it. It's up to us to decide if that is the sort of book we want to read, and it is simply not something I would aspire to at all. Perhaps Kerry did write this book, or maybe she dictated the 'story' to someone who merely polished the grammar and so on, or possibly she just allowed her name to be used. Whatever. It's not a book I would want my name on, it's not a book I would want to read. But some people do want to, and my question then is why?

Why?

I get that it is fascinating to read a sleb biography, and as I understand it (not being one who gives a shit about it) Kerry's story is as grim and bleak as any one of the misery memoirs that are so prevalent. But who the fuck then needs to read a fictionalised account?

Baffled.

Reviews

This months edition of the fabulous Short Review is now 'live'. And you can read my review of Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction by Alison MacLeod over there:
http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews/15moderntalesofattraction.htm
plus reviews of many other delicious collections.