a gallimaufry

on Kate Clanchy

The unfortunate Kate Clanchy has been in the news again this week. Clanchy’s publisher, Picador, announced they would no longer be publishing or distributing her work. They had ‘parted company by mutual agreement’. I haven’t seen any comment from Clanchy about this and without any further information, it is hard to know the reasoning behind it. This has not stopped people assuming that it is a cowardly dumping of the writer as cover for Picador’s failures to address its own shortcomings in the saga, which it may well be. The result is that not only will Clanchy’s memoir be ‘cancelled’, so too will a forthcoming collection of poetry written by the pupils at her school that she was editing. Everyone loses.

‘Being cancelled’ is a term that is used to cover a wide range of actions, from losing your job to simply having someone dare to disagree with you. Pressure to ‘cancel’ someone in the most serious interpretation of its meaning – to silence them by removing their ability to speak publicly, or to take away their job or position – is often used in an aggressive manner by people who lack power, and sometimes in a disingenuous manner by powerful people to shore up their power and shut down criticism. While the people who make the ultimate decision to ‘cancel’ someone are those in a more powerful position – the employer, Twitter, etc.

The Kate Clanchy story, painful as it must be to many of those who are or were involved in it, is worth rehashing because it is such an interesting example of how ‘cancelling’ is framed. The topic is so emotive it is hard to be dispassionate about it. It is important because if we all carry on like this, we will end in a culture where many people will no longer dare to speak out and it is minorities and vulnerable groups who may well most suffer in that situation.

The trouble started innocuously enough, with a review on GoodReads. Someone read Clanchy’s Orwell-Prizewinning book Some Kids I Taught and What they Taught Me and criticised passages within it as containing anti-Semitic and racist tropes, which were quoted. Clanchy reacted by Tweeting to her followers that the review contained made-up quotes and urging them to flag it. This they did, and many people expressed outrage on Twitter and support for Clanchy, including prominent writers such as Philip Pullman.

So far so fair, until someone, a journalist named Monisha Rajesh, actually read the book. The GoodReads quotes were sloppy but pretty much what Clanchy had written. Clanchy conceded the point, but argued her words were taken out of context. Rajesh, plus Professor Sunny Singh and Chimene Suleyman, two other women who criticised Clanchy, were then subjected to a deluge of racist abuse on Twitter. You can read Rajesh’s account of the affair in the Guardian. Clanchy herself also came in for a lot of nasty Tweets, including some I saw suggesting that she was a terrible and even abusive teacher (based on no evidence whatsoever).

Clanchy then apologised fully. I cannot link to her Tweets because – unsurprisingly – she has protected them, but you can read the Guardian article about her apology here. Picador waded in and announced they would work with Clanchy to revise the book and remove the offensive passages. And now, for one reason or another, that work has broken down and Clanchy’s contract has ended.

What to make of all this? The first point is that it was Clanchy who demanded a ‘cancellation’ in the form of censoring a review she disliked and whipping up support on Twitter to have it flagged. Worse, she denied she had written passages that she demonstrably had. Her critics had taken issue with her language and been entirely within their rights to do so; instead they were abused and shouted down. In this exchange, Clanchy, with her 40,000 supporters, many of them famous, was the more powerful and used her power.

But it was Picador, not Clanchy or her critics, who in the end actually did the ‘cancelling’. They chose to revise Clanchy’s work, with her, an unnecessary overreaction for most of the people involved in the controversy. Yet they had allowed the problematic language to slip through their editorial filters. As Rajesh rightly pointed out in her piece for the Guardian, publishing lacks diversity, being overwhelmingly white and middle class. A more diverse publisher might not have missed this, and then, when faced with criticism, might have reacted more moderately.

Because everyone has strong views on racism and on freedom of speech, this story has tended to be flattened out and trimmed to fit the preconceptions of the person discussing it. Clanchy made a mistake, a bad one, but she apologised for it and tried to make amends. That should count for something and should be respected. In notable contrast, the Jewish community forgave and supported the cricketer Azim Rafeeq, after he apologised for his anti-Semitic comments and committed to learning about the discrimination Jews face.

Unfortunately, some people are unforgiving. If you rootle about on Twitter, you can find people who have decided on no other evidence that Clanchy is a dreadful person, and unfit to teach or publish. (There is certainly evidence that she inspired and is regarded with affection by many of her pupils.)

More widely, the story has frequently been reported not as a news article but to bolster an opinion piece, with the bits sheared off that do not fit with the writer’s argument. These have tended to present Clanchy as a martyr to the woke mob in order to present free speech as under threat from people who complain about racist or sexist language and demand disproportionate punishment.

Debates about free speech are very emotive; using a distorted version of this story as handy ammunition for your position on it only stokes the anger and denies the complexities. If you look down to the comments on the Unherd article, you will see that already people are unfairly blaming Rajesh and Clanchy’s critics for Picador’s actions. The anger against people complaining about racism is stoked, and it becomes that much harder for people of colour to dare speak up and criticise texts. At the same time, if like Picador you don’t engage with criticism but just wipe out anything that anyone might consider offensive, it will become more attractive to stick with ‘safe’ books that won’t attract any controversy. On this occasion, we may well have lost out on Clanchy’s anthology of her students’ poetry. In the long term, we may lose out on so much more.

 

afghanistan: some things we can do

Like pretty much everyone else with access to the media, I’ve been watching the appalling events in Afghanistan unfold, both astonished and disgusted. My heart goes out to the Afghan people, utterly betrayed by Western governments. How could we leave them like this? How could we abandon thousands of people who helped us, leave them to a horrible fate at the hands of the Taliban and others? The stories that have appeared in the papers, of journalists, translators, musicians, children and women, are heartbreaking.

In times like this, as individual citizens, it may feel as if we are powerless to help but there are practical things we can do. Local groups in Britain are rallying to support Afghans who have been evacuated to their neighbourhoods and are appealing for donations of clothes, sanitary products etc. This Guardian article provides links including one for Care4Calais, a charity working with refugees arriving in the country, which detail how you can donate goods, money or your time as a volunteer. The British Red Cross is working with Afghan refugees arriving in the UK and is appealing for donations. You might also consider offering a spare room for a few weeks if you have one, via Refugees at Home.

To support those still trapped in Afghanistan, you could donate to any of the international agencies working there, such as Unicef or Save the Children. For information about local Afghan agencies and networks, there is also a Twitter thread here by Sahdya Darr of Open Rights Group which lists ways you can help, including supporting education for girls.

A group of human rights lawyers, international development experts and women's rights activists have set up an advisory group called Action for Afghanistan to help get more people who are at risk out of Afghanistan; they are asking for people to sign their petition and write to their MPs.

If you know of any other ways we can do something to help Afghans, please add it in the comments! This is just what I have been able to pick up so it’s hardly extensive. Thank you!

is a writer obligated to give readers the pleasures they expect?

In the comments on last Monday’s post on The Flint Anchor, Lory asked this excellent question:

‘Is a writer obligated to give readers the pleasures they expect?’

I have many Thoughts about this, which I couldn’t really cram into a reply to her there; instead, I’ll bore you with them here. As Sir Humphrey might say, ‘Well, yes and no.’

(Constantin Hansen, The Artist’s Sisters Signe and Henriette Reading a Book, 1826; Statens Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Denmark; found here)

A writer is of course not obliged to anyone in their writing, they are completely free. I am still pottering about writing my second attempt at a children’s book and I am doing whatever I please. I cannot say, however, that the results so far are anything I’d want anyone else to read. The characters are weak and keep shifting about, they mess up the vague plot I am trying to follow, or I change my mind, or I realise there’s a massive hole in it, or it gets just dreadfully boring. If a reader bought it from a bookshop or borrowed it from a library, they would be appalled.

Therefore, I would argue that a writer does have to fulfil a few obligations if they expect readers to read their work. And I termed those obligations as ‘pleasures’ – not perhaps the best word to use. However, I do believe that a novel, like any work of art, should provide a form of pleasure to at least some of its readers; and by ‘pleasure’ I mean it should provide some sort of aesthetic, emotional, intellectual or even educational satisfaction. And when you slide a book off a shelf and open it, you do so in expectation of one of those forms of satisfaction.

That satisfaction might take the form of characters who feel ‘real’ to you, it might be a delight in the language the writer has used, it might be in the recognition that the writer has expressed something true about the world, it might be an eagerness to find out what happens next, it might be learning about life in sixteenth-century Florence... When you read a novel that provides you with no form of satisfaction on any of these levels, you feel that the novel is ‘bad’ or ‘poorly written’. And this is what I mean by ‘pleasure’, ill-chosen as the word is.

Some of these pleasures – the emotional ones, I’d say – are more easily evoked in the reader. Bestsellers tend to provide them: excitement, fear, identification with the characters. Others are harder to discern or are those that many readers don’t enjoy. We might here think of the difference between Riders and The Waves, both of which offer pleasure to readers but of different sorts, reflected in their respective sales figures.

The ‘expectation’ of such a pleasure is not unreasonable in a reader, and so to that extent I would answer, yes, the writer does have an obligation here. But this is one interpretation of Lory’s question and it’s not I think what she meant by it. (I could be wrong! Lory – tell me!) She is, I believe, thinking of readers’ expectations in terms of dictating how that pleasure is delivered. And to that I would answer, with her, ‘No’.

Does a novel have to have characters who feel ‘real’ to you? No. Nor does it have to have characters who are likeable or admirable. It doesn’t have to be moral or tell you how to live. It doesn’t have to have a compelling plot, or beautiful writing, or strike you at a deep emotional level. A reader might expect or hope for or want these elements, and might be annoyed if they didn’t find them in a novel – but that might well be a failure of reading. We don’t read Agatha Christie for complex characterisation; we don’t read James Joyce for unicorns; we don’t read Tolstoy for laughs.

There are plenty of writers, like Sylvia Townsend Warner, who choose to subvert expectations in their work. This may upset some readers. It can lead to novels which are challenging, not easy to read, but it can create exciting fiction. A ‘good’ writer does this while retaining some element of pleasure, even if some or perhaps many readers do not notice it: a ‘bad’ writer makes a mess. A ‘good’ reader, in my opinion, tries to approach every book with an open mind and let the book show them how to read it. (This doesn’t mean we should all ‘enjoy’ every novel published but if we want to pass an informed judgement on it we should be alert to ‘pleasures’ that we may not personally enjoy.)

Here’s an example of the difference between the expectations a writer should satisfy and the expectations a writer should not. You want to read a detective novel, you’re in the mood for it. Detective novels have certain conventions, the most obvious being: there’s a crime and the detective solves it. You, an avid reader of detective fiction, understand these conventions.

The novel proceeds in the usual way, crime, detective, but then, at the end – the author doesn’t tell you who the murderer was! You’re outraged! But that’s the point. Now you’re thinking about why you’re outraged, you’re re-evaluating what you’ve just read... The novelist has subverted your expectations but in a way that causes you to question them, to re-categorise the novel not as a whodunnit but as something else... It’s a form of satisfaction.

Now you pick up a second detective novel. The writing is ridden with clichés, the characters are stereotypes and the reason for the crime implausible – the whole thing is silly. On no level are you satisfied. This book has abided by the conventions, the expectations of a detective novel, but it has failed to deliver any form of satisfaction.

What do you think? How would you answer the question?

And many thanks to Lory, for posing it.

it's not often i weep with rage

Like many British people I have spent much of the foregoing weekend incandescent with a fury I did not know I possessed. Not because Dominic Cummings and his family broke the rules about quarantine and lockdown. But because of the reaction of the British government which, in order to preserve one of its unelected advisers from ever having to humble himself sufficiently to admit an error, has destroyed its own regulations which had done so much to preserve life and health, cast aspersions on the veracity of the Durham police force and gaslighted (gaslit?) the nation on what following the guidance meant. Most unforgivably of all, it has taken the sacrifices of many ordinary people and told them that if they had been cleverer and better people, they need not have made them at all.

The outlines of the story are known by everyone, the detail to no one – except probably the Cummings family. If you include the disingenuous account of their self-isolating period which his wife Mary Wakefield wrote in The Spectator before the story broke, the Cummings camp has provided at least three conflicting accounts of it all, and failed to address any of the central questions: did they really have no friends, family or colleagues in London who could have supported them? Could Cummings’s sister not have driven down to London if both parents had become seriously unwell? If this was all within the regulations, why was it kept secret and why did they claim that the police had not been in contact with them?

So at first glance this is a fairly typical story of political hypocrisy. Why has this been so viscerally upsetting?

First there is the anger that one would feel at any story of this nature: someone powerful has done wrong and has faced no consequences. There is one law for them, and another for us. But that’s not it.

Then there’s rage at the insult of the government basically telling us that we had all misunderstood the laws and guidance and we were allowed to do this all along. But that’s not it.

Then there’s the horror at the wider implications of the defence: how the guidance be enforced any longer? Which could lead to people taking greater risks and a resurgence of infection rates. That is extremely dangerous. But even that is not quite it.

It is because the government has said that Cummings’ decision was not just understandable, it was right. He followed his instincts and cared for his child without thought for the greater good, and that was morally admirable.

All over Britain, people have been making very difficult moral decisions. Ill parents have locked themselves in with young children and had a hellish time. People have supported friends and family struggling with mental health issues and loneliness, but have not been able to sit with them in the dark hours and give them a hug when they cried. People have not visited family members, who have died. We have watched others suffer. We have all felt the same instincts to love and protect that Cummings has done, but we have suppressed them – not because of the rules but because we believed it was for the greater good, to get the virus under control, to protect others, strangers even. And the cost of that has been a feeling of guilt, that lurks always at the back of our minds. Perhaps we were wrong? Perhaps we should have gone?

The government has basically told us that we are right to feel guilty because we should have gone.

On Twitter yesterday, I came across a man whose mother lived in Ayr; she had become very ill, he worried should he break the rules and go and see her, how ill was she? and then she died. Alone. He wrote: ‘I don’t hate Dominic Cummings. I hate myself.’

what to do what to do?

That was, inadvertently, a long break. Sorry!

In addition to having a lot of work at this time of year, I’ve found the British political shenanigans enormously stressful. Boris! Pro-rogation! Court! Brexit! Elections! I’ve been self-medicating with the owl cross-stitch cushion cover I started during an earlier Brexit drama (to my surprise I discover that I started it earlier this year, I thought I had been stabbing away at it since 2017, what a loooong time ago March seems) and lots of children’s books. In particular, thank God for Joan Aiken (although my rereading of the Wolves series was cut short by my inability to find my copy of Night Birds on Nantucket). I’ve also reread His Dark Materials, and that was fun too.

But now I am wrestling with how to vote. I’m voting in a seat which isn’t marginal but could swing, and I feel that this is an enormously important election: as so many others have said, when it comes to Brexit, the climate and the state of health and social services, this really is crunch time.

(From Punch magazine, 1859; found here)

It should be all hands on deck to obstruct a government that has disregarded and abused Parliamentary democracy and shamelessly lied and misled people while leaving thousands in terrible poverty. But it should also be all hands on deck to prevent a party which has a problem with institutional anti-semitism from achieving power. It is so frustrating that that’s the choice most of us face. Because if I don’t vote for the party with the anti-semitism problem, the morally bankrupt other party will get in. But if I do, I feel as if I am betraying a lot of people and telling them that they are less important than the groups of people imperilled by the morally bankrupt party. And I can’t afford to vote with my conscience, because other, more attractive parties don’t seem to have the faintest hope of winning in this constituency and thus I feel I’d be ‘throwing away my vote’.

I don’t believe there’s a ‘correct’ answer to this and I think we just have to do what we think is best, if only we can work out for ourselves what that is and live with the consequences. Feeling morally grubby seems to be one at least of those consequences. At the moment I am inclining to ignore the leadership and pay attention to my local candidate, who seems very impressive and has assured me that she will fight anti-semitism in her party. But I keep dithering. And I have to post my vote back soon.

British friends, I hope your voting choices are easier!

(If you are curious about tactical voting, this is the most useful article about it I’ve found.)

I think I may have recourse to the new Frances Hardinge next...

whither the monarchy

obviously this is not the most important question at the moment but I do wonder what is the point of having a monarch if she can’t swathe herself in ermine and crowns, leap on a white charger, gallop into the House and revoke Article 50 with a swish of her sword while shouting ‘One’s had enough of this balderdash!’ I expect she regrets not beating old Johnson over the head with her handbag when she had the chance

the last week of brexit?

Of all the Big Dramatic Weeks we’ve had so far with Brexit, this next one may prove to be the Biggest and Most Dramatic. Although the logical action, since Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement, No Deal and a Second Referendum have all been rejected, would be to revoke Article 60 as being the last option left, logic packed up her bags and departed Westminster some time ago along with her good friend common sense.

Instead, it seems almost certain that Theresa May will ask for yet another vote on her WA. Will it pass? Perhaps. Some MPs may choose certainty over further uncertainty, however little they may like the WA. The ERG, who are proving themselves yet again to be not the masterly tacticians they would have us believe, may be realising that this could be their last shot at a ‘hard’ Brexit (hence all that unconvincing waffle about Article 62 of the Vienna Convention). Theresa May is dedicating this weekend to persuading the DUP to back her – who knows what she is promising them, I dread to think. But then again, some MPs may be emboldened by the prospect of a lengthy extension (should the EU grant it) and working towards a cross-party compromise that is more widely palatable to reject the deal again. Then again, if May resigns someone even more inflexible or extreme may replace her. Aaargh! So many games being played...

Whether you are for or against Brexit, it is all pretty stressful, or at least so I find it. The stress is augmented by anger at the cynicism of some MPs, the sheer shoddiness and duplicity. Fellow Brits, how are you coping?

Apart from shouting at screens, I am spending quite a lot of time doing cross-stitch. This is an activity I never would have imagined myself doing. But I am making a cushion cover for my daughter. It is of an owl in the night-time. The design is printed on the canvas and all the wool (enough I hope!) was supplied with the kit, so it’s really so easy that even I can do it. Well, almost, I did absent-mindedly use the wrong colour at one point and have to unpick a lot of it. It seems to hit the same spot as doing a jigsaw puzzle and I find it soothing and addictive.

I am also immersed in an enormous epic fantasy novel, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. There was a lot of hype about this and it has a nice cover. It is also 800 pages long. When I am faced with the prospect of Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees-Mogg, I run away to another world in which there are dragons and magic and I know that the Nameless One and his cohorts will ultimately be defeated by the forces of good.

I recommend both of these to anyone in the same boat as me. Bon courage, mes amis! How are you getting on?

a Brexit rant

I don’t write about politics, despite increasingly feeling tempted to do so, because really the internet is already packed with ill-informed hot-takes on the subject and there is no overwhelming need for me to add mine to them. And I feel a little wary of writing about British politics anyway – even about the excruciatingly horrible Home Office – since I no longer live in the country. However, yesterday I was hardly able to work because of all the news coming out of London and today I find I am still incensed about the whole thing, so I’ve decided to write my piece and then perhaps I’ll delete it, perhaps I’ll post it.

A little background: as a British person living in Belgium I was always going to be inclined to support remaining in the EU but I do generally try to consider the bigger picture when voting and while I can hardly claim to have become terribly well-informed on the UK’s membership of the EU before June 2016 I did decide that while I am not the EU’s greatest fan it was simply in everyone’s best interests – especially Britain’s – to remain a member. And ideologically I prefer working with other countries to isolationism. I thought both campaigns were appalling: Leave was full of fantasy and shoddy deceptions and Remain, though less misleading, tried to intimidate voters rather than enumerate the advantages of EU membership (admittedly, here they would have had to counter years of both government and some parts of the Press blaming the EU for what were in fact domestic decisions).

When Leave won, I was very upset. Like many people, I acknowledged that, since the promise had been made to carry out the results of the referendum whatever they might be, the vote must be honoured. But also like many people, I have watched the Brexit negotiations with increasing horror. At what point do we admit that the project is a disaster? How do we say that we uphold democratic choice when that choice was clearly going to harm so many people?

I have always disliked Theresa May’s politics and I thought she was an appalling Home Secretary. Brexit was always going to be insanely difficult, but she has made very poor decisions throughout, starting with her foolish triggering of Article 50 (for which the MPs who voted for it must share some blame). Be that as it may, within the constraints she was given and those she gave herself, it’s hard to see what better deal she could have negotiated. For instance, it is not possible to leave the Customs Union and end Freedom of Movement yet still uphold the Good Friday Agreement and maintain the integrity of the Union. There has to be a border somewhere.

Brexit has really tested MPs in a way that few other recent issues have. If you believe that leaving the EU is going to be disastrous for the country but your constituents overwhelmingly voted to do so, do you vote according to your beliefs or do you represent the views of your constituents? (And vice versa, for MPs who believe that remaining would be disastrous.) This is a real dilemma which has not been helped by people bandying about words like ‘traitor’. There are MPs who have genuinely tried to do their best. And there are others who have taken no responsibility for the situation and who have bailed out while failing to offer one single practical alternative. That really sticks in my craw. The slew of resignations yesterday was particularly unedifying. Ministers cannot have been surprised by what was put before them, least of all the Brexit Secretary, and it’s hard to believe that their haste to distance themselves from May was not done without at least one eye on their future careers.

I hope that MPs will read the text carefully and understand that this is it – this is the deal available for leaving the EU. There is no other deal possible, time has run out. ‘No deal’ is unacceptable. Anyone who thinks it is not unacceptable should first go to Dover and note the space prepared for extra customs checks (hint: there is none) and then go to their nearest hospital, look patients in the eye and convince themselves that the death of that person, when medicines are delayed, is a fair price to pay.

MPs should vote on whether they think that this deal is advantageous or not. If it is not passed, then there should be a second referendum: do we leave the EU with this deal or do we remain. That result should be honoured. (Oh and all British residents in Europe, including those who have lived there longer than fifteen years, should be entitled to a vote this time.) Then ministers should actually pay attention to why many people voted to Leave – because their communities are stagnating and need change and development – and enact policies to help them. This is what I think is the best way forward – though of course, if I read that either David Davies or Dominic Raab has been chosen as prime minister in the next few days, I will be forced to conclude that everyone is an idiot after all.

on why holidays are good

Well, that was more of a break than I’d intended! It seems that even people who only work part-time sometimes need a holiday too, and I’m just back from two weeks of jauntering about England visiting unlucky friends and family and probably leaving a trail of odd articles of dirty laundry behind me. We learnt about the pioneering plastic surgery performed during the Second World War on pilots and aircrew who were badly burned at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead; we marvelled at Viking musical instruments and also a massive Viking poo at the Jorvik Centre in York; we revisited the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, despite the National Trust still a magical place; and we went several times to the Ipswich Museum, where the Egyptian Gallery has inspired my daughter to mummify the next unfortunate pet to die (she has even purchased a small canopic jar for the stomach; I am hoping that I can steer her more in the ship-burial direction, coward as I am).

Before my holiday I was tired, depressed and grappling with the problem I expect most of us deal with, of what is the point of any of this when there is so much misery, cruelty and destruction in the world. How can people bear such suffering as so many do, and how can we bear to witness it and yet do nothing effective to prevent it? Now I feel better but this is because I have distanced myself from it, and that feels wrong somehow, selfish and solipsistic. People who are fleeing war or poverty don’t have the option of taking a holiday, enjoying their garden, reading lovely novels or picnicking with friends. So although I feel happier at the moment, I do not know how to resolve this. Any suggestions gratefully received. :)

Anyway, back to the holiday and cheerier themes. As ever, I forgot to take any photographs. But! I also went a bit wild in the bookshops. For this we can all blame my parents who generously gave me a book token for Waterstone’s. (Although even I cannot blame them for the church-fête and charity-shop acquisitions.) So, I shall show you my haul and am keen to know which ones you have read and what you thought of them...

(The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, by Frances Wilson, because I love the Romantics and I love reading biographies of talented women; The Bedlam Stacks, by Natasha Pulley, because her first novel was fun; The Encyclopaedia of the Dead, by Danilo Kiš, because both Kaggsy and Nicholas Lezard recommended it; Writers as Readers: A Celebration of Virago Modern Classics, because how could I not after reading HeavenAli’s review? Starlings, by Jo Walton, because she seems an interesting writer and short stories are a good way to get to know someone’s work)

(Emily of New Moon, by L.M. Montgomery, because how is it I don’t have a copy of this already? The Storm Keeper’s Island, by Catherine Doyle, which is obviously for my daughter and not at all for me; Peter Pan and Wendy, by J.M. Barrie, this is actually really for my daughter and is illustrated by Mabel Lucie Atwell sentimentally but sweetly)

(Here is the frontispiece from Peter Pan and Wendy, how could I reasonably resist?)

(The Complete Fairy Tales, by Charles Perrault, which is a kind gift from Hayley of Desperate Reader and which I only just managed to prise from my mother’s hands; Folk Tales of the British Isles, edited by Kevin Crossley-Holland, my star score from the Samaritan’s Bookshop at only £2.50, I am still cackling with glee over that one how lucky am I? In the background a dragon made by my daughter is posing nonchalantly)

(And a handful of detective novels, The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edmund Crispin; False Scent and Death at the Dolphin, by Ngaio Marsh; I like to have a little pile of detective novels, children’s books and other easy reads for when I am lazy or tired and I now have definitely enough to keep me going for a while)

That is not all: I have forgotten to photograph another charity-shop purchase, Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman, which I am devouring at the moment. It is lovely. Meanwhile, as if that weren’t enough, I came home to find Theodora Goss’s new novel had arrived, yippee!

(There appears to be a Christmas decoration as well as a dragon in the background, oh dear...)

And while I was away, Shiny New Books had their Booker Anniversary Week, to which I contributed short pieces on Troubles, by J.G. Farrell (winner of the Lost Booker), The Sea, by John Banville, and The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. I enjoyed all of them very much but I have to admit my favourite was Troubles. The other reviews are excellent and it forms an interesting if partial survey of changing literary tastes and fashions.

Normal service here will be resuming, in the mean time please do comment with your opinions and advice and I hope that you have been enjoying the summer so far.

the perils of updating classics: Sense & Sensibility and Northanger Abbey

(Illustration from A Memoir of Jane Austen, 1870)

The Austen Project – instigated presumably by HarperCollins, who are publishing its fruits – has commissioned six well-known authors to provide ‘new’ versions of Jane Austen’s novels. Joanna Trollope, Val McDermid, Alexander McCall Smith and Curtis Sittenfield have tackled Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Emma and Pride and Prejudice; the others have not yet been issued. I read Trollope’s Sense & Sensibility a few years ago and have just finished McDermid’s Northanger Abbey and I have to admit I am underwhelmed by both. Not that Trollope and McDermid are poor writers or that the books are not enjoyable, but that their works act as perfect examples of the dangers of updating older novels.

Whether by instruction or choice, both writers have stuck quite closely to the original plot and characters and while they have done their best, the jarring notes this approach produces just highlights how much society has changed in two hundred years. Elinor, Marianne and Catherine are teenagers in these modern versions as well as in the originals, and I struggled to believe that middle-class parents these days would jump for joy at the prospect of their seventeen-year-old daughter getting engaged. The authors also felt constrained to have their characters meet each other face to face, as would have been necessary in Austen’s time, when nowadays surely the telephone would have been employed (a particularly egregious example is Henry Tilney’s panicked overnight drive down to see Cat after he discovers that she’s been thrown out of his father’s house; if you were truly worried that someone had not got home safely why wouldn’t you phone, text or email them first?).

For me, Trollope’s novel worked less well than McDermid’s. Trollope’s characters never struck me as much like modern teenagers – at least McDermid’s Cat Morland made liberal use of her mobile: Trollope was a bit vague about social media – and oddly didn’t seem to have any friends. Elinor is forced to quit her degree in architecture in London because the family are moving to the West Country to downsize. It’s as if student grants and student digs don’t exist, and it’s only at the end of the novel that the family discovers there are universities outside London anyway. While Trollope always writes fluently, her retelling lacked Austen’s sharpness and, far from commenting acutely on modern manners, which might be in the spirit of Austen, she describes a class so upper-upper-middle and so divorced from mainstream society that it was difficult to believe it existed or have much patience with the perceived travails of its characters. However, I did think that Trollope did an extremely good job with Mrs Dashwood, who was convincingly impractical, vague and self-indulgent.

Despite being disappointed with Sense and Sensibility, I had high hopes of Northanger Abbey and overall I felt that this version worked better. McDermid cleverly substitutes Edinburgh during the Festival for Bath during the Season, and this works very well. She also, as Austen did, uses her book to poke sly fun at fiction, in this case literary snobbery, although again she shies away from much social commentary. But like Trollope, where McDermid follows Austen too closely, things go awry. The most marked instance of this is Cat’s love of vampire fiction, and her growing concern that the Tilneys are vampires. McDermid failed utterly to convince me that any seventeen-year-old girl could possibly believe that vampires really exist. It might have worked better had she substituted crime fiction for gothic horror and have Cat fancy General Tilney a serial killer, but even so she would have needed to work harder to build up Cat’s delusion so that the reader could understand if not necessarily share it.

If you are in need of a pleasant and undemanding read, then both of these novels are fine. But what they showed to me is that it’s better to be freer with your material than either Trollope or McDermid felt they could be. Longbourn by Jo Baker, Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (not the film!) and Bride and Prejudice are all more successful works; they don’t seek merely to replicate but to winkle out aspects of Pride and Prejudice that can be used in interesting ways to create something similar but fresh.

Do you know of any good Austen adaptations?