Woolf Scholar’s Novel Choice

Maggie Humm

‘Without a doubt, Lullaby will be one of the most unsettling, absorbing, un-put-downable novels of 2018,’ according to Professor Maggie Humm.  Intrigued, I invited the internationally acclaimed Woolf scholar to tell me more about Lullaby by Leila Slimani.

It was a delight to receive mail from Maggie Humm, as all her academic books were once crammed into my student rucksack. I am honoured to step aside so that Maggie Humm can challenge us with her review of a novel from a newly-refreshed sub-genre of literary fiction.

Leila Slimani Lullaby

Lullaby Leila Slimani

As Match of the Day might say ‘leave the room if you don’t want to know the result.  Lullaby recounts an apparently simple scenario. Louise, a nanny of indeterminate age, is hired by Paul and Myriam, a successful middle-class Parisian couple, to care for their two children, baby Adam and Mila.  Louise is tiny, with immaculate finger-nails, constantly wearing the Peter Pan collared blouse of the novel’s cover. Soon she transforms her employers’ lives for the better: the children adore her, she unobtrusively cooks, cleans and anticipates all their desires and needs. The kind of woman you’d never spot in a crowd.

In flashback, and through multiple characters’ interactions with Louise, we come to understand and empathise with her past: a loveless childhood, poverty, and domestic and sexual violence. Unusually, and intriguingly, these features are not presented as completely explanatory reasons for her final violent act – the murder of the two children. Myriam and Paul are occasionally caring and thoughtful employers whose actions to some extent compensate for Louise’s past traumas. And their kindness becomes the problem. Louise is desperate to live full-time with Paul and Myriam, to have them ‘adopt’ her. Until she kills.

‘…isolation from other nannies in the park’

Although none of the stories are told in first person we inhabit the minds of differing characters almost in real-time at key turning points: the nanny’s sensual exploration of the apartment where she will kill; her physical disgust with men during sex; her isolation from other nannies in the park; the warmth and beauty of a Greek island holiday with her employers and children. This ‘sticky mess’, as Heiser says, takes over our emotions and our  bodies. We can feel Louise on our skin, even taste what she eats.

Lullaby joins a newly-refreshed sub-genre of literary fiction recreating real-life crime, exemplified by another best-selling French novel Emmanuel Carrère’s The Adversary; combined with a women’s fiction genre of apparently affectless short sentences as in Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton

‘It could be any Western urban capitalist city.’

These novels focus on the gap between what we think we know and what we experience in the diurnal life of the novel – a technique often characterised as metamodernist. That is, novels which deal with structures of feeling after postmodernism. Lullaby appears intensely intimate – narrating the lives of each person in the lead up to murder. But, as a metamodernist novel it also portrays (very subtly) ways of feeling and thinking about contemporary issues: immigration, poverty, homelessness or the threat of homelessness, women’s bodies and misogyny played out in the physical geography of Paris. It could be any Western urban capitalist city.

Lullaby is also a woman’s novel (although not without interest to male readers hopefully). Clothes, jewellery, cooking and meals, women’s physical differences from men, are all as significant as actions, and trigger and shape actions in many cases. For example, Louise takes the children out to dinner one evening hoping that her employers will be able to have sex undisturbed, and produce the new baby that Louise needs to retain her place. The children are disconcerted by being dragged around strange streets to eat and when they return Louise discovers that the wife went early to bed alone. Louise’s ensuing anger (hidden from Myriam and Paul) contributes to the build-up to murder. The significance of meals and fashions were themes of the great modernist writer Virginia Woolf, but what makes Lullaby essentially metamodernist is the way in which Lullaby displaces and undercuts notions of the feeling subject by the continual unknowingness of motive and desire. Rather than arriving at a resounding ending – a Joycean ‘yes she said, yes she said, Yes; or Woolf’s Lily Briscoe’s ‘I have had my vision’ (note the present perfect containment),  Lullaby ends with the reader alongside the female detective, re-enacting the murder. In The Adversary the narrator leaves behind the protagonists, drives back to Paris, deciding ‘that writing this story could only be either a crime or a prayer.’ Lullaby forces the reader to become Louise ‘who takes a knife from the cupboard,’ and to recreate the murder ourselves in our minds.

Without a doubt, Lullaby will be one of the most unsettling, absorbing, un-put-downable novels of 2018.

Manuscript of Talland House is waiting for a front cover

Maggie Humm is an Emeritus Professor, University of East London. An internationally-acclaimed Woolf scholar, the author of 14 books both for an academic and general readership, the last 3 focused on Woolf and the arts, the topic of Talland House – her debut novel. Talland House was shortlisted for the Impress and Fresher Fiction prizes 2017 (as Who Killed Mrs. Ramsay?). A short story ‘Cult Love’ was ‘highly commended’ by the National Association of Writers’ Groups (2018).

Maggie Humm’s debut novel Talland House was shortlisted for the Impress and Fresher fiction prizes 2017 (as Who Killed Mrs. Ramsay?).

Talland House will be released soon.  Maggie’s manuscript is waiting for a front cover but even the manuscript looks tempting.  Maggie will send a photo of her book in a handbag when it is available.

In the meantime, here is an overview of the novel:

Talland House   

The Royal Academy, London 1919. Lily Briscoe has a painting displayed. She’s put her student life in picturesque St. Ives behind her: her friend and substitute mother Mrs. Ramsay disliked Lily’s portrait of her it seemed; Louis Grier, her tutor, didn’t seduce her as she’d hoped. Ten years on she’s been a suffragette, a nurse in WWI, and now a successful artist. But then Louis appears at the exhibition. He tells Lily that Mrs. Ramsay died suddenly and Lily has to investigate. And she realizes that she still loves Louis.

 

Please see all my guests’ posts at My Guests and my blog and website at jessiecahalin.com.

 

All Aboard the Runaway Creative Train: The Year of the Handbag

In March, I discovered my husband had published my manuscript on Amazon. Clutching the lilac handbag, I went into a bit of a panic.  The delete button on my laptop did not remove the book from Amazon. There was no chocolate in the house, so I ignored him by reading a book.   Little did I know, he’d presented me with a ticket to begin a creative writing journey via social media.

While waiting to board the creative train, I watched YouTube footage about how to engage in social media. I wish I had known about Neetsmarketing rather than shouting at the lovely people who were trying to explain.  Fortunately,  there was light at the end of the tunnel, Sue Moorcroft was the first person to accept my friend request on Twitter.    Her response to my book review and ideas to promote ‘Just for the Holidays’ lit the creative spark, and she helped me to understand Twitter. The sound of the whistle jolted the pistons in my imagination.

Once I had boarded the creative train, some wonderful people waved me off. The first review request came from Angela Petch.   Her reaction to my review of ‘Now and Then in Tuscany’ fuelled the creative enthusiasm and the train started to increase pace.  She also agreed to join me in a whacky race to meet up with Sue Moorcroft’s character, in France.  Angela introduced me to Patricia Feinberg Stoner and Rosemary Noble.  Rosemary ‘Ranter’s Wharf’ made me rant on behalf of my ancestors. Patricia’s book is funniest book I have ever read about becoming an accidental expat, in France. It was a great day when Patricia sent me her ‘Rude Book of Limericks’, and I realised she had quoted me on her front cover.

I crashed into the inspirational Diane Need, in the Midlands, when my creative ideas were heading in all directions.  Diane’s heart-warming, fun novel was a great read on the journey.  Jan Ellis asked me to review one of her books and sent me a book parcel, and this was the ticket to my new collection of books. Jan is currently writing a blog post about the contents of her handbag, and I know it will be amusing.

On my creative journey abroad, I stopped off to meet Patricia Furstenberg. She took me on a magical journey back to my childhood through her children’s books.  She is also my Twitter guru and is Queen of the Hashtags.  At her stop, Patricia introduced me to Jennifer from ‘Jennieration’.  Jen is a ‘fearless thinker’ who delights in language, culture and creativity. Jen’s daughter, Ella, is the youngest author in my Handbag Gallery, and she wrote a wonderfully creative guest post.

While speeding along the tracks of creativity, I met Carol Cooper.  And I was thrilled when she came up with the idea of interviewing the interviewer.  She looked inside my handbag and made me reflect on my journey. Angela Petch also asked me questions about the editing journey.  At this point, I reached a bit of a crossroads, I had neglected my writing.  The blogging train had been gaining speed and getting out of control.  I decided to get off at the next stop and visit my book again.

Locked in my study, in ‘Editingland’, I couldn’t resist interacting with Wendy Clarke.  I stopped over at ‘Silent Night’ to present an extract, and found Wendy incredibly supportive.  She featured me in her blog, and wrote a generous blog post about how to use software to market a book.  What a wonderful stopover!  I would never have found out about this if I had not boarded the creative train via social media.

Finally, I realised the creative train isn’t out of control.  Sometimes, one shouldn’t worry too much about the final destination, but one does need to interact with others on the journey.  ‘You Can’t Go It Alone’ so I recently asked Angela for support. Angela will talk to me about my editing next year.  My interactions with Adrienne Vaughan and Jan Brigden also gave me a lovely boost on my journey.  Caz Greenham, the children’s author, has convinced me that Eric Seagull exists. I now live inside the creative world with authors. It was lots of laughs with the hilarious Lisa Mary London.  However, it was frightening inside the Dutch woods and the world of Imogen Matthews’s characters.  She is mailing a guest post to Books in Handbag about how she stumbled on a forgotten World War Two.  I will be travelling back in time to the seventeenth century with Anna Belfrage.

Having established my seat on the creative journey, my role as blogger has gained pace in 2017. Thanks to the response of the writing and reading community, I have had a wonderful year. My role as an ‘accidental’ blogger and supporter of writers has pushed me towards an exciting, unknown destination. Each day, I open photos of handbags and develop more interactions with wonderful authors.  Next year, I will launch an initiative for readers with Anne Williams. I hope that many others will hop aboard the new initiative to celebrate reading.

While writing about my journey, Judith Barrow has just tweeted that she has ‘enjoyed being part of the journey’.  The people I have met on my journey have made the whole adventure worthwhile, as I get to peer through the window at their writing world.  Sue Bentley’s friendly comments always make me smile as I head towards my unknown destination.

A big thank you to everyone for supporting my blog – your enthusiasm has fuelled my creativity and put me on track. Have a wonderful Christmas! Best wishes for 2018! Hope you will join me for more adventures in 2018. 

For me, this has been the creative year of the handbag and new friendships!  How can you sum up your year?  The Year of …

 

Please see all my adventures at Handbag Adventures and my blog at jessiecahalin.com.

Forgotten Dutch history concealed in my handbag

Imogen Matthews 

 

Imogen Matthews was born in Rijswijk, Holland, to a Dutch mother and English father, the family moved to England when Imogen was very young.

Imogen contacted me and asked me to review her novel.  She told me that The Hidden Village is an ‘intriguing historical fiction’ based on historical facts that have remained hidden in Holland.  My interest was piqued when she told me that she ‘needed to tell this WW2 story for the people of the hidden village.’  Obviously, the novel is on my Reading List but I wanted to find out more about the author and the book.

I was delighted to welcome Imogen Matthews to my Chat Room.  She is the first author to visit the completed room.  I was a little alarmed when she greeted me with, ‘Dag!’ but explained that it is Dutch for hello.

Imogen came into the Chat Room wearing a navy biker jacket over peach-coloured culottes and strappy navy sandals.  Of course, she had brought an enviable bag for the occasion and it was an elegant mushroom tote bag.

She requested a black Americano and brought some Dutch “koekjes” (biscuit) called “krakelingen” – lovely crisp flaky biscuits topped with sugar and cinnamon.

She said, ‘In Holland, you always get a “koekje” with your coffee and I miss that in England!’

How is Dutch culture different to British culture?

The Dutch have a word “gezellig” that is an emotion we don’t have a word for. So you can make your house “gezellig” by having lots of table lamps and tealights (strictly no overhead lights). A sociable meal with friends and family is also “gezellig”. My mother also used to say it was “gezellig” whenever I used to pop over for coffee. The Danes have stolen a march on this idea with “hygge”, but I can assure you that I’ve been using “gezellig” long before “hygge” became fashionable!

Imogen is an engaging, lively and positive personality and this reassured me that the narrative voice in her book would also be appealing.  It was obvious that her determination has served her well as a writer.  She cares passionately about the hidden Dutch history and this made me want to read on for the sake of the lost voices.

Tell me about The Hidden Village

Set in WW2 Holland, deep in the Veluwe woods, The Hidden Village is a story about survival, hope, despair, and ultimately, love, as a community pulls together to build a purpose-built village to shelter those persecuted by the Germans. The lives of young Sofie, Jan and Liesbeth become entwined with devastating consequences for their futures.

Tempt me with an extract from the novel

“It was the smell of a cigarette that stopped him in his tracks. A man wearing a grey belted coat stepped out from behind the tree. ‘So’, he said, grinding his cigarette with his boot.”

Why did you decide to digress from your usual genre of novel?

This was a story I felt I had to get down, so when I’d finished I felt pleased I’d told a story that so many people won’t have known anything about.

Imogen Matthews

What do the reviewers say about your novel?

Sensitively written. “From the first chapter you are engaged with the characters and I even found myself warning them when they were due to be raided – OUT LOUD! Sensitively written, with a page-turning plot, this is a wonderful new book from Imogen.” Ms E. Holmes-ievers

I couldn’t put it down. “This skillful blend of fiction within the factual events happening to many at those times, holds you till the end. I couldn’t put it down, nor did I want to until the final page.”  Gilly Cox

Highly recommended. “Though the subject matter is tough, there are lighter moments and the book rattles along at a good pace. The varied cast of characters, especially the younger ones, keeps your interest. Highly recommended.”  Clarky

How did you feel when you had finished writing your book, and did you miss any of the characters?

It left a big hole as I’d spent so long on the book and I realised just how attached I’d become to my characters.

So yes, I miss my characters lots! I miss Sofie’s feistiness and determination not to let her life change by hiding away from the Germans. And I miss her best friend Liesbeth, who sticks by Sofie through thick and thin, even though she also has to make her own big sacrifices. I even miss the enigmatic Henk, the head woodman, who’s instrumental in getting the hidden village built, but struggles with his loyalties. I particularly miss Jan, who’s always getting into scrapes but is only trying to help others and do good. He goes through so much that I just want to give him a big hug and tell him that everything will turn out alright.

It is obvious that you are genuinely attached to your characters and care about them – this always bodes well for the reader.

Who would you like to read your book and why?  This could be another author, someone famous, a friend or a member of your family.  

I’d love Anita Shreve to read my book as I’m a great fan of her writing. She has a great ability to say so much in so few words. Her book Resistance, set in German-occupied Belgium, is brilliant and inspired me when I started working out the plot for my book.

Why should I keep your book in my handbag?

Because it’s so gripping that you won’t want to leave it out of your sight!

What is the last sentence written in your writer’s notebook?

I’ve been writing for years and have notebooks all over the place, so that’s a hard one. I guess it’ll be something along the lines of “to be continued.” That sums up how I feel about writing -I’ve always got something more to say.

What is the biggest challenge for an independent author?

Getting noticed. You have to work really hard to get people to find your book as the competition is increasing all the time. I self-published my first book Run Away by Alex Johnson (my pen name) in 2012 and got a great response quite quickly and lots of reviews. Then in 2014 I published the sequel The Perfume Muse and it was already much harder. For The Hidden Village I was fortunate to find Amsterdam Publishers, who have been enormously helpful in helping to navigate the many pitfalls when launching a book.

What is the best advice that you have received as a writer?

A writing tutor once said that you should write every day, however little and however bad you might think your writing is. She also recommended writing before doing anything else first thing in the morning as it’s so easy to get distracted by other things and then never get down to it. I took her advice to heart and sometimes I only write 100 words a day, but these words do add up and eventually you can see you have written a book. Of course, that’s when the hard work starts, but you’ve built the framework which gives you the confidence to keep going.

Tell me a little more about yourself.

I live with my husband in Oxford and love to go on runs, walks and cycle rides in the beautiful surrounding countryside. I love cooking Moroccan and Middle Eastern inspired food, particularly Ottolenghi and Persiana recipes. A favourite is lovely crumbly tahini cookies.

Tahini Cookies (from Jerusalem) by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamiimi

130g caster sugar

150 unsalted butter, at room temperature

110g light tahini paste

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

25ml double cream (you can sub this with milk)

270g plain flour

1tsp cinnamon

200 degree C/180 degree C Fan/Gas Mark 6

Put sugar and butter in mixer bowl and with a beater attachment work for 1 minute at medium speed. Add tahini, vanilla and cream, then the flour and work for a minute till a dough comes together. Transfer to a work surface and knead till smooth.

Pinch off 20g of dough and roll between your palms into a ball. Squash down onto a baking sheet (no oil necessary) and use the back of a fork to flatten and make a prong pattern. Sprinkle each cookie with cinnamon. Make sure the cookies aren’t too close together as they do spread a bit.

Into the oven for 15-17 minutes till golden brown.

Turn onto a wire rack to cool and try and resist eating them when hot! Yum!

I pressed Imogen to let me have the recipe!

 

Please see all my interviews on My Guests and see my blog at jessiecahalin.com