"Why Should I Read...?"

The Book of Dreams
Jack Vance, 1980

For the first time, "Why Should I Read...?" revisits an author, the peerless Jack Vance. I make no apology for this; Vance could easily support forty entries. In our first visit, we looked at his masterpiece of high fantasy, Lyonesse: The Book of Dreams, another work of Vance's rich later period, is an example of his sf. I don't propose today to revisit my earlier analysis of Vance's excellences--instead, I'll let the work speak for itself.

The Book of Dreams is the final work of Vance's "Demon Princes" series, in which the hero Kirth Gersen tracks down and kills the five galactic crime-lords who killed his parents. It sounds pretty grim stuff, an Elizabethan revenger's tragedy set in the far future; but that reckons without Vance's characteristic humour, and his interest in the societies in which his protagonist finds himself. Most Vance novels have an interaction between the protagonist and a local functionary: in this case, Gersen is staying at the prestigious Penwipers Hotel as he tracks down the elusive 'Howard Alan Treesong':

The porters moved swiftly around the room, adjusting the placement of furniture, wiping surfaces with their scented cloths, then departed, swiftly and quietly, as if they had merged into the shadows. The chief porter said: “Sir, the valet will attend you at once to assist with your wardrobe. The water is already drawn for your bath.” He bowed and prepared to leave.
“One moment,” said Gersen. “Is there a key to the door?”
The chief porter smiled benignly. “Sir, you need not fear intrusion at Penwipers.”
“Possibly not. But, for instance, suppose I were a jewel merchant carrying a parcel of gems, and a thief wished to rob me. He need merely saunter to my room, open the door and divest me of my wealth.”
The chief porter, still smiling, shook his head. “Sir, such a terrible thing could never happen here. It would simply not be tolerated. Your valuables are quite safe.”
“I don’t carry any valuables,” said Gersen. “I merely suggested a possibility.”
“The inconceivable, sir, is rarely possible.”
“I am totally reassured,” said Gersen.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He drew back as Gersen extended his hand. “The staff is adequately paid, sir. We prefer to accept no gratuities.” He inclined his head crisply and departed.

—The Book of Dreams, Chapter 3

I'm not even going to explain why this is wonderful. If you don't see it, I don't think I can tell you. Our brains are just differently wired up. The only clue I can give is that it's not just the quality of the writing; it's also the context. Can you think of another science-fiction writer who would try to deploy something of this sort in an adventure story? It's the kind of passage which helps us to understand why one of the 20th century's greatest science fiction writers cites his own favourite author as P.G. Wodehouse.

How has it influenced me?
This one's simple. One day I'd like to write a passage this good--and be able to repeat the trick, as Vance does in every novel after about 1960.

Lessons for the aspiring writer

• read the passage a couple more times; you'll find the lessons
  
• look particularly at the dialogue tags and adverbs
  

Breaking the Rules

Jim Crace's The Pesthouse rejects all the advice given to aspiring writers--but does he make the risk work?

In our last blog entry, I set out my current reading list before plunging in to what fellow writers seemed to agree was the most promising choice, Jim Crace's The Pesthouse. It's not a long book, and already I've had the chance to read and digest.

The Pesthouse is part of the long tradition of post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction, the brand of speculative fiction most likely to find a mainstream audience (think, for instance, of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale). Technology, and even the memory of technology, are long gone from America as the unlikely couple of Franklin and Margaret pick their way to the east coast through famine, pestilence and marauding robber bands. The Pesthouse is a self-consciously mythical journey, the journey east deliberately reversing the western spread of the original European settlers.

Many of readers of ::Acquired Taste are themselves writers. You will all have heard the 'rules' (and almost certainly questioned their validity). Show don't tell. Reveal character through dialogue. Tell us what characters do, not what they're like. Crace knows these rules better than the rest of us: The Pesthouse is his ninth novel. So, in choosing to ignore 'the rules of fiction', he's making a deliberate artistic choice.

The most obvious of these choices, and the biggest risk, is to all but dispense with dialogue. In a novel of over 300 pages, there are perhaps five pages of it, half of that in a conversation between one of the protagonists and a minor character. Crace has foregone the most common, and most useful, way of conveying information, and to replace it, he simply tells us what the main characters are thinking, and why they act the way they do. It's an extraordinary decision, and not one I would dare take in my own (unusually dialogue-intensive) fiction.

So how does Crace get away with it? His main weapon is the sheer beauty of his prose. If you can write with the muscular lyricism Crace commands you can probably make your shopping list into compelling reading. And the lack of dialogue is curiously appropriate to the story: it's a quiet book about a quiet place. America is huge, and empty. The survivors are concentrating on staying alive, and mistrustful of their neighbours. When people do get together, there's a wary truce as they tell their life stories over a shared meal. The Pesthouse can be seen as an extended version of one of the stories, a story told and not shown.

Crace also has a facility for the creation of place. The decayed, toxic America with its ruined highways and towns beyond the inhabitants' memory or understanding is realised with stark clarity. Occasionally we'll see a bizarre institution from the new America. The Finger Baptists, a luddite sect whose arms have atrophied because they believe using their hands is the devil's work, would not be out of place in Jack Vance. The ships on the east coast, taking a select few to Europe, are sail-powered, and the careful reader can infer that it's not just America which has sunk into a dark age.

But Crace's choices are not without cost. Because most of the action takes place inside characters' heads, or through a distant third-person narration, the story can be uninvolving at times. Franklin and Margaret sometimes feel more like archetypes than individuals. That's entirely appropriate for mythic tale that Crace is telling, but it takes a risk in terms of reader involvement. What we lose is perhaps best illustrated by thinking about The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood is also a stylist of unusual talent, but she puts us in the action, rather than above it. Tastes will vary, but for me at least, The Pesthouse is an ambitious work which falls just short of the first rank of dystopian fiction.

What Shall I Read?

I have a problem which I share with many writers: too much on the 'to read' pile. Indeed, I doubt that anyone who doesn't have that problem is really a writer at all. Reading is part of the nutrition which we all need to create the kind of links and cross-fertilisations that lead to satisfying fiction.

That said, my reading pile is worse than usual at the moment, something I blame in large measure on my fellow MNWer David Isaak, whose blog spews an endless stream of things which simply demand to be read. His current series on books about writing promises to continue the trend: Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit was full of good sound practical advice, retailed in the style I call 'American Smartmouth'. A treat from start to finish.

So what's on my reading pile at the moment? I confine myself to books I have in the house, ready to pick up, and which I haven't yet read (re-reading is important too, but would make my current decision far too difficult. How could I justify not picking up Pride and Prejudice or Emphyrio once more?).

1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow
Alex Zamoyski
The title says it all. For anyone with even a glancing interest in 19th century history, this can only be a fascinating topic. Sometimes history books are let down by the prose, but Zamoyski's work has drawn many plaudits. Surely this will be good!

The Gentle Axe
R.N. Morris
Maintaining the 19th century Russian theme, MNW stalwart Roger Morris takes Porfiry Petrovich, the detective from Crime and Punishment, and gives him a new case to solve. I've not yet read any of Morris' work, but I'm looking forward to trying this one.

A Quiet Belief in Angels
R.J. Ellory
A 'Richard and Judy' choice, I picked it up on a 'buy one, get one free' offer with Regeneration (see below). It's set squarely in the 'literary thriller' genre which is very popular at the moment--and doesn't always work for me. Probably one for my summer holidays.

Regeneration
Pat Barker
I've been meaning to read this World War One story for years. Now I can. Penguin have had the excellent idea of returning to their classic cover design for certain of their books--and when the classic design is this good, why not?

The only problem is, the cover doesn't look right on a new book. Orange Penguins should be smashed to buggery, like my copy of My Cousin Rachel.

How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction
ed. J. Williamson
As recommended by MNW's other fantasist, Matt Curran. No more need be said, and my fingers twitch every time I see the volume. This one won't be on the pile for long.

Pesthouse
Jim Crace
This dystopian vision of a post-apocalyptic America was not just recommended but given to me by Will, my editor. Because Crace has a sigificant reputation as a mainstream writer, he can get away with writing fantasy and seeing it published by prestige imprint like Picador. I've not read Crace before and I'm looking forward to this one.

Lord of Light/The Amber Chronicles
Roger Zelazny
As recommended by David Isaak, these stories come from one of the premier stylists of SF's Golden Age. Somehow I've got to 40 without reading any of his longer fiction. This needs to change!

Morbo: The Story of Spanish Football
Phil Ball
Over the past fifteen years, football has finally acquired a literature to rival cricket's. David Winner's offbeat but revealing Brilliant Orange, a history of Dutch football, keeps company with David Foot's more straightforward but equally intelligent Italian chronicle Calcio. The best football books are about much more than football: the world's most popular sport is a revealing prism through which to write social history. In Spain, with the eternal rivalry between Real Madrid (once Franco's house team) and Barcelona, the focal point for Catalan nationalism, one can argue that football is the county's social history. Among the fiction I'd like to write one day--for now, at the bottom of the list--is a history of a fictional European country told through its football. If nothing else, the idea is original...

* * *

So, which of these should I read next? To deflate any possible narrative tension, I should say that I've already decided--but what would you read?

Macmillan New Writing focus

Testament
Alis Hawkins

I'm in danger of becoming the kind of reviewer I despise, singing the praises of my own coterie of Macmillan New Writers to the point where the reader despairs of any kind of objectivity. The risk of attracting adverse comment, however, is entirely worthwhile in if it allows me to draw your attention to Testament, the January MNW offering.

Yesterday I quoted with approval David Isaak's assessment of MNW novels as 'the teensiest bit outside the standard categories'. Testament is an interesting illustration of the view, all the more so because on the surface it doesn't seem to be true. The timeslip novel--two narratives, one historical and one contemporary--is very popular at the moment. Kate Mosse's two recent novels, Labyrinth and Sepulchre, are recent bestsellers in the genre.

No doubt MNW's marketers were delighted to have a novel to promote which occupies the territory as solidly as Testament. One narrative is set in the 14th century, the other the 21st, and the unifying feature is Kineton and Dacre College, under construction in the first strand, and under threat in the second. So far, this seems a genre staple. What makes the book unusual is the stories Hawkins chooses to tell in each strand. The plot of the historical section is centred around a master mason's struggle to build an architecturally-revolutionary new college; the contemporary narrative centres on that college's efforts to resist takeover by a brash younger rival. We are not in 'arcane secrets passed down the centuries' here, which is a refreshing change.

Given the rather unusual nature of the plot, I won't give too much away. Birth and rebirth are major themes of the novel; both for the college itself, and for the main female characters in each narrative. Hawkins is as comfortable with the political machinations--medieval and current--as she is with the emotional dramas of the characters' lives. And her portrait of Toby, the disabled child so disgusting to the 14th century world, is a melancholy and moving one which stays in the mind after the covers are closed.

The danger all writers of timeslips face is the risk that the reader will find one narrative strand more interesting than the other, fatally unbalancing their reading experience. Testament is the most successful timeslip novel I've read in terms of keeping the present-day narrative as fresh and absorbing as the historical one. It's a difficult technical act to pull off, and almost invisible when it succeeds--so it's worth drawing attention to here. Hawkins is hugely gifted in the creation of character, and her lead females in both stories are so powerfully rendered that the reader is fully anchored in their world, not left waiting for the next change of scene.

Testament will, I suspect, be marketed as a "woman's book". Pigeonholing books by gender is never very helpful (after all, I want women to read The Dog of the North, even though fantasy is a traditionally masculine genre). "Women's fiction", in particular, has pejorative undertones, suggesting either frothy vapidity or issue-driven sentimentality; and in any event, the book really does have much broader appeal. Yes, the the central characters are female, and both stories turn on women's yearning for children and the unexpected consequences of those yearnings; but Hawkins is a profoundly humane writer. Her eloquent message of tolerance, and the importance of liberal values, is articulated in prose of crisp purity and emotional power: all readers of discrimination--even men--will enjoy it.

"Introducing an outstanding new voice in fantasy fiction"

Many visitors to ::Acquired Taste will be seasoned readers of fantasy, and thus keen to read "an outstanding new voice". Even more so, perhaps, when they learn that the book in question is "an exquisitely written tale of loyalty and treachery, heroism and cowardice, homeland and exile, set in a brilliantly imagined and utterly spellbinding world". Hey, who wouldn't to read that?

Well, hang on a sec... there's a catch. For the "new voice" in question is none other than...Tim Stretton, author of The Dog of the North. And you all had that on your must-buy list anyway--didn't you? Even worse, the literary judgement quoted is hardly objective; it comes from the Macmillan New Writing site and is lifted from the blurb. It hardly qualifies as objective opinion.

And yet... there is an art to writing blurb (beyond getting people to buy the book, which is a given, and which the MNW piece does very well). Good blurb stops short of hyperbole, although a little exaggeration can be winked at. It takes elements which are present in the text, polishes them, and shoots them in a flattering light. The elements the publisher chooses to display in the blurb are significant. And in the case of The Dog of the North, Macmillan have chosen to emphasise my authorial voice--ironically, the very thing which has proved the biggest obstacle for other publishers. But Macmillan are right: the single most distinctive feature of my writing is the authorial voice, and if the book is any sort of success the voice will probably be the main factor.

Lest I be accused of over-promoting my own work (surely a permissible peccancy on my own blog, in any event), I should also note that if you dislike The Dog of the North, it will also, I suspect, be for reasons of voice. The more distinctive a feature in a work of fiction, the harder it is to overlook it if it isn't to your taste.

David Isaak has mentioned elsewhere that the sole unifying feature of the MNW range is "most of them are a little bent, just the teensiest bit outside the standard categories". I think that's right, and what's 'bent' in my work is the coolness and narrative distance I use to tell the story. I'm pleased with the plotting in The Dog of the North, but it's not what makes it an MNW novel.

From July 4th, you will be able to form your own judgement. In the meantime, I can give thanks for having a publicity department which appears to understand the book.

* * *

Bonus marketing quiz - kudos to the reader who can tell me which author has written, according to their publisher, a sexy and irresistible novel to launch a major new fiction brand

Additional credit will be awarded to anyone who can explain what a "fiction brand" is, and how it differs from a "writer".

How To Write... Mystery

A brief look at why all stories are, on some level, mystery stories

Once again, "How To Write..." is about something other than its ostensible title. I've never written a pukka mystery (although I've come close), so my advice is--not for the first time--of dubious value.

On Wednesday, my editor Will gave me the copyeditor's comments on The Dog of the North--another milestone out of the way. The copyeditor had told Will how much enjoyed the book (not always a given) and, even better, said it reminded him of Jack Vance. (Note to flatterers everywhere: this is the biggest compliment you can pay me. It's best when accompanied with familiarity with Vance's work, although even this is not essential...)

The copyeditor's detailed comments were generally straightforward. If the house-style is to write "marketplace" and not "market-place" I'm not going to hang myself over it. But there was one specific comment which was fascinating, even where I didn't agree with it. The Dog of the North is structured around two separate but interlinked narratives which do not converge until the end of the novel. The copyeditor noted that the relationship between the two narratives--particularly the temporal relationship--is not immediately clear, although certain aspects of it can be inferred. I could, he suggested, have made things clearer by a couple of sentences at an early point in the story. And so I could: it would be a very easy change to make.

The copyeditor outlined how the narratives had unfolded in his head, and at which point he had reached the key realisations. And it was exactly the way I had intended it. The novel has a number of key mysteries: one hidden (i.e. I'm doing something in the background I'm not telling you about) and one superficial. The superficial mystery is in making the reader ask: "why are you telling me two stories? how are they related?". And the alert reader, by picking up on the clues, can establish the answer before I tell them. By giving them a little puzzle to solve, I pique their interest and, with any luck, hold their attention.

The Dog of the North is not, in any conventional sense, a mystery novel. It does not stand or fall on how the puzzles in the text are resolved. But it's a mystery in the sense that all novels are mysteries. In all but the most experimental works, "what happens next?" is what keeps us reading. That can be as obvious as "will Poirot catch the murderer?", through "will Hamlet kill Claudius?" right the way through to "will Elizabeth marry Mr Darcy?" If you don't want to know what happens next, the writer hasn't written a story. Note, however, that that question doesn't have to be resolved in the expected way (most murder mysteries work by delivering the expectedly unexpected) or even at all (the ending of Great Expectations is crafted to allow two mutually exclusive readings, and the ending of The Italian Job works only because it doesn't resolve anything). And some endings resolve the central mystery, only to open another (Jack Vance frequently does this, and more recently L.C. Tyler's The Herring Seller's Apprentice closes off one mystery only to open up another).

So I've got two flippant pieces of advice for anyone who wants to know how to write a mystery. The first: write any story. Job done--you've written a mystery. Secondly, if you want to write a 'mystery' in the narrower genre sense: read The Herring Seller's Apprentice. It uses, and subverts, just about every trick in the book. If you can't see how it's done after that, you're beyond help.

"Why Should I Read...?"

Full Time
Tony Cascarino/Paul Kimmage, 2001

For the first time, "Why Should I Read..." looks at biography--or is it autobiography? The question "whose book is this?" is central in this case. Full Time tells the story of Tony Cascarino, a professional footballer of star (but not superstar) status. Cascarino has since moved into a second incarnation as journalist and pundit. In neither of these latter careers does he appear a reflective or articulate man; yet Full Time is one of the most introspective and precise insights into the life of a professional sportsman. A paradox? No, because at this point enter Kimmage, Cascarino's ghost writer.

Paul Kimmage was also a professional sportsman--a journeyman cyclist good enough to finish the Tour de France--who became notorious for his first book A Rough Ride, a bleak account of his journey into disillusionment with the sport he loved. Kimmage clearly is both reflective and articulate, and his skill as a ghostwriter is not just to capture Cascarino's thoughts, but to prompt the kind of introspection necessary to make a wonderful book about an ordinary career.

Cascarino does not emerge as a particularly likeable character: his serial infidelities, gambling and occasional loutishness are not an appealing combination. Here again, Kimmage is to be commended, firstly for avoiding becoming too close to his subject, and secondly for extracting such honesty. If, in the end, the reader ends up with a grudging admiration for Cascarino, it's because of this honesty: he does not try to avoid responsibility for his misbehaviour, and he admits with almost masochistic relish his failings as a human being. It's hard to avoid the feeling that there's something expiatory in his frankness.

This makes the book sound like therapy, which it isn't. For anyone interested in football--or indeed 'elite' performers in any field--there are fascinating insights. One of the most absorbing facets is the self-doubt which dogged Cascarino throughout his career. Those of us who are writers will know all about the nagging critical voices which can so undermine confidence. For a footballer, particularly a forward, where instant and accurate responses are essential, these negative thoughts can be career-destroying. At least writers have these crises in private, and can solve them at their own pace.

Full Time is a magnificent achievement, a sporting biography which casts aside the usual platitudes and vacuousness to explore the psychology of the professional footballer. More of the credit is due to Kimmage than Cascarino, I suspect; it's an unusually concrete expression of 'what a writer does'. Cascarino provided the raw material, the conversation which formed the basis of the text: but it was Kimmage who organised the material, arranged the revelations for maximum effect, drew out insights and linkages, and imposed the pattern and order to make 'art' out of what otherwise would have been saloon-bar reminiscences.

Even if you don't like football--that's 'soccer', American readers!--Full Time is a perceptive character study, a powerful exercise in viewpoint, and an illustration of how the writer can interpret and enhance experience.

How has it influenced me?
It's unlikely I will ever write a sports biography (although I am open to offers). Full Time, situated at the confluence between biography, autobiography, reportage and fiction, represents for me the touchstone for how they should be written. If we see Cascarino as Kimmage's fictional construct, a flawed hero, then he inhabits the same kind of anti-hero space as Beauceron, the protagonist of The Dog of the North (although I like to imagine Beauceron has a bit more composure in front of goal).

Lessons for the aspiring writer

• ghost-writing can be an honourable occupation
• an unlikeable person can still be a sympathetic protagonist
• the writer can be found in his interpretation of the events on the page, not the events themselves
  

How To Write... Sex Scenes

The first in an occasional series considering various technical aspects of our literary craft

My headline for today has, I suspect, lured you here under false pretences. I've only ever written one sex scene, and that of a very indirect sort. It's not a branch of literature, in general, that I admire. This arises not from prudishness but from a perception that such scenes very rarely add anything--beyond risibility--to the reader's immersion in the fictional world.

The first question the writer needs to ask is "do I really need a sex scene at all?" The writer is creating a construct, an imaginary world, by choosing which details to set in front of the reader, and which to omit, or imply. Introducing a sex scene is therefore a conscious choice by the writer. There are many ways of conveying to the reader that characters are in a sexual relationship; there's no need to depict the act unless it adds something to the reader's experience.

A sex scene can be justified, it seems to me, for one or all of the following reasons:

• the relationship depicted is the central point of the novel
• the scene is revelatory of one or both (or more--orgies are within the scope of the discussion) of the participants' characters
• it provides an emotional counterpoint to events immediately before or after the scene
• it provides comic relief

Let's assume that you've decided that your story does need a sex scene. Your next choice is the kind of language you are going to use. Do you prefer euphemisms and oblique metaphors? Does the sea pound against the shore? Is your heroine carried along on a surging tide? (This approach frequently deploys nautical imagery). This method will at least avoid offending your grandmother, but if you want sidle up to your sex scene in such a peripheral manner, why have it at all?

At the other end of the scale, do you prefer anatomical precision? There is a comparatively limited gamut of what can be put where, and in what sequence, but at least this tactic avoids coyness.

Analysts of the sex scene will be interested in how the author chooses to refer to what Jack Vance called "the frontal member". From this one choice, the tone of the rest of the scene will follow. The choices are (with variants, of course):

He, Him
As in "she felt him inside her, a pulsing warmth etc etc etc". Under this approach man and member are one, indistinguishable and indivisible. The point of the scene may be to demonstrate precisely that fact about the protagonist's character, but more usually it's a default setting for the writer who's keen to display sex on the page without the indelicacy of listing the anatomy involved.

Penis
Medical terminology is occasionally used to avoid the oblique obscurity above. Unless the writer is trying to convey a clinical and emotionless coupling this is unlikely to be successful.

Cock
Slang terms--there are of course others--are often used to convey an earthy immediacy, and can deliver anatomical precision with emotional intensity. The main danger here is that the language is so alien to the voice of the rest of the story as to jar.

There is an annual 'Bad Sex Award' "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it". In this latter aim it appears not to have succeeded--indeed there is a perverse kudos to winning it--but it does illustrate that a bad sex scene stands out with priapic prominence from its surroundings in the way that, say, a bad fight scene would not. Your sex scene may be fully justified in its context, but if you can't write a good one, you are still setting yourself up for an embarrassing failure.

In creating the illusion of a fully realised fictional world in the reader's mind, the writer is making a series of choices about the scenes to present. Your reader will fill in any gaps you choose to leave. When considering a sex scene, more than anywhere else, you should ask yourself whether you can do a better job than your reader's imagination before reaching for the literary Viagra.

"Why Should I Read...?"

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
J.K. Rowling, 2007

I had long resisted reading Harry Potter. That wasn't because they were children's books, but because they were so hyped. I am naturally resistant to reading anything which is forced down my throat, and often disappointed by books which are touted as spectaculars. Harry Potter was therefore an acquaintance I was not keen to make. Set against this, though, was the fact that the books were fantasies which had picked up a mainstream audience, and so of professional interest to me.

In the end, I'm glad I held off reading them as long as I did, because in the end I was able to read them one after another, without having to wait a year between each book. Reading them in this way reinforced the consistency of Rowling's vision, and for a month I lived in her world. I've chosen the last book in the series as "Why Should I Read...?" not because it's the best of them (although it's close), but because to get that far, you'd have to have read the other six - so it's seven for the price of one.

The criticisms of the books are well-known, and in most cases misconceived. The later books are supposedly "too long". While Rowling tends to the verbose at times--and the proliferation of adverbs can irritate--they are tightly plotted, both within and between individual novels. The writer she most reminds me of is Dickens: in her ability to create comic grotesques, in the fierce morality of her voice and her mastery of the long, complex plot, the comparison is not inapposite. Modern readers, queuing for days outside the bookshops in the way nineteenth century readers thronged the dockside for the latest Dickens instalment, clearly agree.

Unlike George R.R. Martin, Rowling can keep control of her material over the long haul, but like Martin she has a propensity for killing off sympathetic characters. It's this steeliness of vision--her recognition that characters are subordinate to the overarching structure--which pushes her work into the enduring category. When you read the later books, in particular, you have a real sense of peril which most thriller writers can't match. Characters you care about can and will die. And these are children's books! Here again, Rowling is to be commended: she doesn't sanitise her message for a juvenile audience, and a series which starts off with the cosiness of Enid Blyton ends with bloodshed on an epic scale. The way in which the books treat death, not as a plot feature, but as the thematic core of the series, is more mature than most books written for an adult readership. And those readers, sadly most in the US, who denounce the books as apologetics for paganism and witchcraft have missed the point by the largest margin possible. The Harry Potter series is profoundly moral, and in a mainstream Christian way--and, incidentally, retailed with much more humour than those more overt Christian propagandists CS Lewis and Tolkien.

Rowling's series is destined to be regarded as one of the greats of fantasy literature: at once profoundly serious and richly comic, propelled by a spectacular imaginative fertility, these are books which will be read, re-read and loved for generations to come.

How has it influenced me?

I first picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone less than two months ago: it hasn't yet had a chance to influence my writing. But if you see me kill off your favourite character in a future book, you know where I got the idea...

Lessons for the aspiring writer?

• Write what you want to write--if it's good enough, the market will come to you
• The reader will forgive you killing off favourite characters if there's a good reason for it
• Humour and tragedy can, handled skilfully, enhance rather than contradict each other
• You probably don't need that adverb...
  

On the Big Screen

The Kite Runner, 2007

dir: Marc Forster

Last month we looked at the latest film adaptation of I Am Legend, and judged it a qualified success given the long shadow of the book. Yesterday I went to see The Kite Runner, Marc Forster’s treatment of Khalid Hosseini’s bestselling novel. Unlike I Am Legend, I had not read The Kite Runner, and was able to watch it with a mind uncontaminated by the source text.

The film has garnered mixed reviews, but the bad ones can only be from critics who are difficult to please: for me, it was the best film of the year. A haunting coming of age tale, a story of long-delayed redemption, a respectful picture of a middle-eastern culture, The Kite Runner is at once timeless and yet evocative of a particular time and place. A major Hollywood film with more than half the dialogue subtitled would deserve points for bravery even if it had nothing else to commend it, but The Kite Runner has many more points of excellence.

The plot is simple, which need not be a bad thing: two boys from different social backgrounds, Amir and Hassan, grow up as friends in pre-Soviet invasion Kabul; Amir’s cowardice leads to disaster for Hassan, and they grow apart; their lives take different paths and it is only a quarter of a century later that a reconciliation, albeit of an indirect sort, occurs. The relationship between the two boys is captured with marvellous subtlety: their estrangement occurs not because of Hassan’s resentment, for he feels none, but from Amir’s guilt at his behaviour: guilt which leads him to frame Hassan for the theft of a watch. Hassan admits to the crime he has not committed out of loyalty to his friend. It’s a heartbreaking scene.

The performances are uniformly excellent, particularly the two boys and Homayoun Ershadi, who gives a compelling, nuanced portrayal of Amir’s prickly, proud and ultimately noble father. The ending, which I won’t give away, brought sniffles to my cinema companion (who is normally quite hardboiled about these things), as the soaring kites underscore Amir’s redemption.

There are some obvious parallels with Atonement, another recent film of an acclaimed novel: both concern the effect of childhood actions on adult life, and both dramatise the redemptive power of story-telling. Atonement has garnered the critical plaudits, but for me The Kite Runner is a much more satisfying film. Where Atonement is, for this viewer at least, static and emotionally uninvolving (with the plot hinging on a flashy and obvious piece of misdirection), The Kite Runner trusts the characters and plot to generate its emotional power.

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Matt Curran wrote a typically interesting piece over on the MNW blog about the pros and cons of film adaptations from the writer’s perspective. One of the big plusses he mentioned was that, if the film is halfway decent, it will bring more readers to the book. The Kite Runner is a case in point: probably a book I would not have got round to reading, it’s now in the post on its way from play.com. And if I like it, he has another book out too. Now as for Atonement…

I can never sit and watch trailers in the cinema these days without imagining how my stories would translate to the big screen. There’s a hell of fantasy epic to be pulled out of The Dog of the North (nudge to Macmillan’s rights department) even if it has a piece of plot misdirection of the sort I derided in Atonement.

In any event, I think my self-published novel Dragonchaser has the most cinematic potential. It has a relatively simple plot, a small number of main characters, and most of all it has galley races—and how marvellously they could be rendered on screen! A thought for another day…