Lights!

T’is winter in Britain: T’is the season of darkness.

At 4 pm, just when my children come blinking out of school, darkness envelops London.

So I’ve brought out my big guns: my ropes upon ropes of sparkling white Christmas lights.

I’ve strung them around the kitchen cabinets, down the banister, over the fireplace, entwined with the fichus.

Enough, says my husband, you’ll either electrocute us or burn down the house. Not to mention global frying.

But the darkness is now lit. And I am less crabby. For there is nothing so crabby as the crabbiness that falls around 4 pm.

There is mystery and solace and wonder in light.

I sit in my living room with the twinkling and I feel about as cozy as you can without having fur and whiskers.

In the kitchen, my children sit at the table, tongues pressed between their teeth as they draw Christmas cards.

My smugness is as thick as eggnog.

Here are my favorite quotes about light:

You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.  Arlo Guthrie

Treat your friends as you do your pictures; and place them in the best light.  Jennie Jerome Churchill

Do you realize that if it weren’t for Edison we’d be watching TV by candlelight? Al Boliska

photo by casmium (flickr)

Run over By Tiger Woods

I’m dying. I’m definitely dying.

My children came down last week with a horrible bug: listless, pale, head ache, cough. My daughter sounded like a constipated seal, Poor thing.

We don’t know for sure whether it was swine flu. A virus with a bit of cachet. The doctors don’t take swabs now so we are left guessing.

But I suspect I’ve got it and I’m dying.

Snorting, sniffling, aching, kvetching to be more precise.

I feel like I’ve been run over by Tiger Woods.

My husband is washing his hands like mad in a futile attempt not to succumb.

Good luck.

I feel we should have a red cross splashed across our door. Stay away!

So nothing fascinating to report, except for…have I mentioned how awful I feel?

I’m going back to bed….

photo by Shanubi (flickr)

Herding Cats

The problem with being a novelist is that I often don’t have strict enough deadlines. The problem with living in London is that my children’s school trips are hard to resist.

I’ve been on two in the last two weeks. The first to the Globe Theatre where it was a thrill to stand on its stage and mouth lines from Romeo and Juliet.

This afternoon I just came back from the Cabinet War Rooms, an amazing museum of all things Winston Churchill. Imagine having lived a life of such event and historical significance. One of the most moving things was the footage of his state funeral as a whole city stood silent in homage of the man.

There is a huge interactive table where every day of his life is accounted for historically. And if you happen to place your finger on a date of all around significance the table lights up. My daughter and her partner touched November 11, 1918 and the whole table bloomed with red poppies.

Our job as parent helpers is to help the teacher navigate the children’s way on public transportation. Today we took the bus and tube. Keeping track of almost 30 children on a very busy London tube is highly entertaining. I love watching the eyes of the other passengers widen with horror as our crowd troops noisily in. We then made our way past Westminster and St. James Park. It truly is like herding cats.

But I love going on school trips. I’ve known these children for seven years now. Ever since they all began together at the tender age of three. They are now ten: full of themselves, irreverent, and very funny, definitely products of a childhood in London.

And I am always amazed at how much they have to say to each other after all these years. This year 6 is their last in primary school. I will miss them all.

Famous Blue Raincoat

Leonard Cohen’s song, Famous Blue Raincoat, is one of my favorite pieces of writing.

I first heard it sung by Jennifer Warne and so spent a huge amount of time trying to wrap my head around the lyrics, finally coming up with a convoluted lesbian triangle. Actually I thought Jane was her daughter and she was writing to her ex-husband. It reminded me of an old boyfriend who was mad about the desert. We used to camp in Joshua tree and walk along the moonlit landscape which looked to me like Mars.

Now I’m fairly certain it’s about a man whose best friend had an affair with his wife, Jane.

Of course I could be mistaken.

But what’s important for me is that it’s richer and more complex than most novels I’ve read.

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came home she was nobody’s wife.

Most people (including me) would write several hundred pages just to say the same thing.

Essentially it’s a whole novel wrapped up in a song. I love the beginning. You can almost hear the rain slicked streets of New York where he’s writing the letter.

It’s four in the morning, the end of December,
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better.
New York is cold but I like where I’m living,
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening…

You can feel the desert wind where his friend now lives.

I hear you’re building your little house deep in the desert.

You can see Jane in bed, having come back to him.

Well, I see Jane’s awake,
She sends her regards.

You can feel his anger and his pain, trying to forgive this friend who so betrayed him. You can recognize their personalities, their relationship, their dreams.

All in just 31 lines.

Anyway. I found this version of Leonard Cohen singing it on Youtube with lyrics. And I have to ask:

Tell me, did you ever go clear…?

photo by robotography (flickr)

House Mad

Hi, my name is Nina and I’m a houseaholic.

Instead of writing, I procrastinate my time away surfing property sites dreaming of a life I can not afford. Not by a long shot. Oh, yes, I occasionally scroll around my price range but the choice is so pathetic I much prefer to double the maximum price and drool.

My children are used to my obsession. The first thing I do on any of our travels is pick up the local paper and pour over the property listings. My husband ignores me.

My poor children used to jump up and down with anticipation at the thought of living in a chateau in France. Or a cottage in Dorset. Or a winery in Australia. Or a ranch in Montana…

But years have gone by and I haven’t quite managed to make enough money to buy a porcelain toilet in said chateau, cottage, winery or ranch.

So they’ve started to ignore me as well.

But I love my property sites. So I thought I’d share with you an incredible house I saw on Findaproperty.com. I can’t decide whether it’s fabulous or awful. You tell me. It’s in Hampshire and is on the market for £2,250,000.

I know. Too hilarious.

I’m also an avid fan of housepricecrash.co.uk which as far as I can tell consists of a coffee klatch of male doomsayers waiting for the UK housing market to crash or for the world to end (whichever comes first). They are alternatingly vicious and supportive. I feel quite bonded with these men (with their funny monikers: cynicalsoothsayer, paranoia blue, crunchy, flashman, growler) even though I have never posted. What would I write besides ‘Oh, no, what shall we do?’ ‘What is to become of us????’

Is there an emoticon for wringing your hands?

The other day they all broke into French and I laughed so hard I abandoned all hope of getting any work done.

photo by Climate Patrol (flickr)

Books that have influenced me

Books that have influenced my writing:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
World According to Garp by John Irving
The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

After I first wrote this list I noticed something glaring: how few were written by women.

Where’s Edith Wharton whose House of Mirth shaped my first novel?
What about Doris Lessing? I remember clutching The Golden Notebook as I ran through the rain-streaked streets of Paris. I doubt I understood half of what she was writing about at the time but I knew enough not to let the book out of my sight.
And Fay Weldon who showed me that writing can be punchy and clever and short.
As did the brilliant Marie Darrieussecq whose Pig Tales is electrifying.

Why didn’t I think of their books when I first drew up my list?

Is it because they are women and therefore part of me? That the experiences they wrote about are so internalized that it would be like putting my own books up there?

Or is it because when I was growing up and thinking about becoming a writer, I read what was considered the best literature at that time and that was said to be by men.

And I continued that tradition on my own blog!

So having cleared my head, here is my additional list of books that shaped me:

The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Short stories by Isak Dinesen
Every single one of Mary Renault’s books

Old habits die hard.

photo by Liz Henry (flickr)

Searching for my character

I have been searching for my character. And I think I finally found her.

Often I write first and then do my research afterwards. Similarly I had created this character in my mind first and had even written a scene where my protagonist discovers her in the last room of paintings at Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath.

So yesterday, my children and I went to Kenwood to find her. Kenwood House is treasure, filled with paintings by Rembrandt, Turner, Reynolds, Gainsborough and Vermeer. We eagerly walked from room to room, staring up at the paintings, searching for a girl about 11, 12 years old with a wild look in her eye.

But I couldn’t find her. We passed through three times. I was drooping with disappointment. I was facing having to completely delete one of my favorite scenes. We moved on to the gift shop and were idly looking through books and postcards when my eyes lit up.

There she was. In a postcard.

The problem had been that I was looking for someone slightly older. I realized that the painting was going to be the girl as she was before the whole story started.

I asked my daughter to run back through the house to find her. And there she was in the exactly same room I had written in my scene.

She smile down as if to say, You got me!

photo by sara b. (flickr)

I’m back, sort of….

Yes, I’ve been remiss. I came back from Australia over a month ago and haven’t been blogging.

And yes, life—work, children, parents–has gotten in the way. As it should.

But some of it has to with not knowing where to begin again.

Our trip to the north of Western Australia was wonderful. We went camping in Karijini National Park where the earth spectacularly red and forms a gorgeous contrast against the azure sky, the smooth white bark of the trees and the scrubby green bush.

Our campsite was peaceful and remote. At night the Southern Cross blazed in the black sky and a young dingo wandered through, nosing around for scraps. And the bottle of Shiraz each night was…bliss.

Next stop was Coral Bay where the reef stretches just off the beach. All you have to do is wade through the turquoise waters and sink down and swim as if in an aquarium. I held my seven year old son’s hand and watched the locals float by: snapper, clown fish, electric eels, sting rays, lion fish and turtles the size of our lawnmower.

Of course, I was still on London hyper mode and, being so used to everyone wanting to do the exact same thing as I want to do at the exact same time, I arrived at the beach in a sweat.

I rushed up to the man at the boat hiring shack in a tizzy. He was leaning against the counter, his hair dried salty white and stiff, his smile cracked and serene.

I pointed at the lone kayak by the hut. “I’d like to hire that kayak. But I don’t want to hire it now because it’s going to take 15 minutes for us to set up on the beach. Then about 5 minutes to walk back here. So I want it in 20 minutes. Alright?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“So you’re not going to rent it to anyone else, right? I’m reserving it, OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure? Do you want me to pay for it now? I can do that,” I said, pulling out the cash.

By this time the man was looking at my husband with that look that signals between them, Is she always like this?

“No worries,” he said. “Too easy, mate. Too easy.”

It took me a while to slow down.

Now, I’m finding it hard to crank back up.

photo by iansand (flickr)

Book Club Queen

The good thing about being a writer is that sometimes when you’re on holiday things happen. Like a review of Believe Me and an interview with the Book Club Queen.

I personally think that internet book reviewers should be given a medal. In a time when it is very difficult to get any sort of publicity they keep the fires burning. Book Club Queen’s site is impressive: interviews, reviews and general news. The amount of work she does must be exhausting. So please take this time to clap with me.

Here’s the review.

Here’s the interview.

It’s been a grand holiday in Western Australia. We went camping in Karijini National Park which is a vast rugged wilderness. We swam in the magnificent cold gorges, letting the warm waterfalls temper the chill. We turned red from the gorgeous iron ore dirt. At night, we camped in the bush and had a young dingo sniffing around at dinner time looking for scraps. And the stars, oh my stars: Orion, the Southern Cross, the Milky Way, all burning bright in an endless black sky.

Next stop was Coral Bay: a pristine, near secluded beach where all we had to do to snorkle was wade through the turquoise water to the deeper blue and look down to find ourselves nose to nose with turtles, sting rays (eek!) , lion fish, parrot fish, pink snapper and beautiful swirls of coral. 

Right now we’re having a lovely stay in Bunbury with my husband’s parents. My daughter is learning to knit and my son is becoming a demon Scrabble player.

At the end of the week, we’re off down south to Margaret River to the wine country. This will be fun….

Oh, and am I getting any writing done? Um….not really.

Gone Surfing

In Australia, on holiday……