Did you know that Winchester Books Festival is organising a Big Book Club Read? On 21st April we’ll be gathering at The ARC in Winchester to discuss Alice Peterson’s novel, The Saturday Place, with Alice in attendance. Bring your whole book club or come on your own – everyone is welcome. I’ll be hosting the event, but I hope that most of the questions will come from the audience, just like a big book club.
‘Upifting, heartwarming and mouth-watering, The Saturday Place is the kind of book we all need now. A tale of friendship and food, it’s bursting with optimism and love. Charming.’ Veronica Henry author of The Secret Beach
‘A tender story of hope, friendship and the power of community.’ – Emily Houghton author of Before I Saw You
‘A warm, wise and really special book… I absolutely loved it.’ – Katy Regan author of Little Big Love
Three perfect strangers who help each other to believe in love again
Holly’s husband died, and she’s lonely. She needs to do something to save herself, quickly. Next thing she knows she’s interviewing for a voluntary cooking job, surprised to be ambushed by a scruffy man who looks like he has a past.
Then Lauren arrives from the homeless shelter. She came to London with nothing but an old train ticket, a teddy bear, and the clothes on her back. With no family, no home, no friends, she doesn’t know what love is. People scare her. She’s terrified of Angus and Holly. At first.
Each of them finds themselves in the Saturday cafe at a time when they need something to grab hold of. It might have to be each other?
We’ll be discussing the book with Alice, including spoilers, so best if you’ve read it first. It’s available from P&G Wells, or there are some book sets available from Winchester library.
Are you currently editing a novel or some non-fiction? In May 2024 I’ll be teaching on an Arvon residential writing week on how to edit fiction and non-fiction, alongside fellow writer, Adam Weymouth. Adam’s first book, Kings of the Yukon, tells the story of his 2000 mile canoe trip down the Yukon River through Canada and Alaska.
From a developmental review to the fine detail of the line edit, from comprehensive rewrites to the final polish, using exercises, readings, discussions and tutorials, we’ll share techniques, tips and best practices which will help you hone your voice, clarify your thoughts and transform your writing. Along the way, we’ll talk about the detail of hitting word-editing counts, creating and working with book maps, and how to break down your edit into manageable tasks. You will leave with a better understanding of how to know what needs changing, and how to know when it’s done. Whether you’re already published or just starting out, this course is for anyone with a draft that they want to bring to its best.
The week includes group teaching, workshops, one-to-ones with the tutors, as well as evening activities, accommodation and all meals. This writing week is held at wonderful house called The Hurst set in beautiful and inspirational grounds in Shropshire.
Arvon residential weeks are immersive, energising, and great fun!
I’m absolutely delighted to be interviewing Alice Winn about her wonderful novel, In Memoriam, in Winchester on Thursday 21st March. In Memoriam is a searing love story between two men with WWI backdrop, and it won the Waterstones Novel of the Year 2023. Alice is over from Brooklyn for the paperback release and is only doing a few dates, so I’m very excited that she’ll be in Hampshire for an early event with Winchester Books Festival.
I’m excited to let you know that I’ve been invited by Quay Words to host a three-day course for emerging writers with a focus on developing characters in your fiction. We’ll be discussing how to create ‘real’ characters on the page, looking at some published examples, workshopping pieces of writing, and doing some writing exercises.
It will take place in Exeter Custom House, Exeter, Devon, 26th to 28th April. The writers are selected via applications, and applications close on 10th March – so be quick! You can find more information about the course, how to apply, and costs here: https://quaywords.org.uk/take-part/hothouse-with-claire-fuller/
I read 90+ books this year, while promoting The Memory of Animals, and finishing a draft of my sixth novel – there’s still lots of editing to do on that though. People often ask how I read so many and whether I read while I’m writing, and my answer is always, if I didn’t I wouldn’t read at all because I’m always writing. And I read while eating breakfast and lunch, I read before I go to sleep, and I usually have a physical book and audio book on the go at the same time. I’m in a book club which I help organise, and although the majority of the books are selected by me, it does push me to read books I wouldn’t necessarily pick up because I’m also thinking about what the other members might enjoy.
So, here are my and Tim’s favourite books of the year. We share two: Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter, and The Dry Heart by Natalie Ginzburg. One of mine was an audio book (Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens) so I’ve mocked up a physical copy. I also set myself a rule of only one book by each author because I read several books by Carys Davies and Sue Miller this year, and I could easily have all of these in my top ten, but then there wouldn’t have been such a wide selection.
All of these books can be bought from my list on Bookshop.org, which will support UK independent bookshops.
Let me know if you’ve read any and which catch your eye.
Crying on the M25. Not very safe, but I was listening to the ending of The Great Believers and I couldn’t help it. So good. So good I went out and bought a physical copy so that I can more easily go back to it. The novel begins with Nico’s funeral in Chicago in 1985. He has died of AIDS his younger sister, Fiona and his friends – including Yale – are devastated. We follow Yale through his work acquiring art for a gallery and his relationships as those around him die, and his friendship with Fiona. And thirty years later we follow Fiona’s trip to Paris to try and find her estranged daughter. I guess underlying all of this story (and brilliant writing) is the question of how much responsibility we have for keeping alive the memory of those who have died. Highly recommended.
Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter
Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter
This book hits a sweet spot that I just love in fiction: beautifully written and with a little bit of mystery and darkness. Theresa and Jackie are neighbours and best friends. They go to dieting cub together, their families socialise together, two of their children are in a relationship, and Jackie is having an affair with Theresa’s husband. And then Theresa is found murdered on the floor of her garage. Yes, there is some tension over who did it, but really this is a literary novel (told brilliantly through many different voices) about the consequences of that terrible event.
Lessons by Ian McEwan
Lessons is the story of the life of Roland Baines, cash poor, house rich, part-time bar pianist, looking back to when he was eleven and went to boarding school, moving forward into his seventies, and sometimes sideways into other people’s lives. And throughout there is comment on the times Roland is living through. The novel is ambitious, sweeping, and wonderful. Roland and all the people who come and go in his life have filled my head for several days as I read voraciously during any spare moment. I hope they will stay for longer. Roland has three significant women in his life: his piano teacher, Miriam, his ex-wife Alissa, and his second wife, Daphne. There is a reckoning to be done with all of them, although the last is really not her fault (there is a brilliant scene where he fights over her ashes with a junior minister on a bridge in Yorkshire and loses). Miriam seduces Roland when he is only fourteen and changes the course of his life. Alissa walks out on him and their eight month old baby, and becomes a famous and successful novelist. McEwan clearly draws much on his own life with this novel (North Africa, boarding school, discovered brother) but as Alissa says, everything is fair game. I liked how McEwan plays with this, and I also love the questions he raises around a woman leaving a husband and baby in order to create a masterpiece. It doesn’t happen often, is it worth it?
And Claire’s next 7
Family Pictures by Sue Miller
Family Pictures is topped and tailed by the first person voice of Nina looking back on her childhood and adolescence in a family with six siblings and two parents. One of the siblings is severely autistic and this has repercussions for everyone. The middle sections of the book is told from the POV of various members of the family in third person (including Nina). It doesn’t really have a strong narrative thread but doesn’t suffer from that lack. I absolutely loved it and was fully immersed in this family and their lives. (This novel isn’t available in the UK, so you might need to source a second hand copy)
All That is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay
It’s ten years since Landay’s previous novel, Defending Jacob was published and here is his next brilliant book. A mother of three children disappears one day and the police suspect her husband of foul play, and gradually two of the children come to believe the same, creating huge fractures in the family. The novel is divided into four sections from different points of view. I wasn’t sure what Landay was up to with the second section. it’s a bit of a risk but has a very clever pay-off. This is an absolutely compelling read with the perfect blend of nuanced and affecting writing and being a real page-turner. Highly recommended.
Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
Oh, I loved this poignant, slow-moving, funny, tender, gem of a book. I listened to it as an audiobook read exquisitely by Ell Porter. The story is narrated by Blanca, a ghost who died in the fifteenth century when she was fourteen. Four hundred years later she is still haunting the same charterhouse near a Mallorcan village when the French author George Sand arrives with her two children and Chopin. Blanca falls in love with George, and is able to inhabit all the characters’ heads and read their history and see their future. It has to be said that not a lot happens, but it’s full of beautiful unrequited yearning, yet written in contemporary English (which really worked). We also get to hear Blanca’s story and how she came to die. Don’t read this if you want a traditional pacey scary ghost story, but do read it if you want wonderful writing, brilliant characters, and a bittersweet ending that will stay with you.
The Weaning by Hannah Vincent
How did this novel not win all the prizes when it was published in 2018? Half way through I was punched in the gut, and gasping, had to be comforted by a hug from #librarianhusband. (I hope you know the wonder of a hug after book-related trauma.) The writing is clean and crisp – which I know is difficult to do – it was easy to forget I was reading. Bobbi is a childminder for Marcel, with two teenage children of her own (they are so perfectly written in all their grumpiness), as well as occasionally looking after Jade, the daughter of a couple who attend Life Skills classes. Bobbi begins a relationship with her neighbour while all the time also trying to keep him at bay. I’m not going to tell you what made me gasp and cry (of course – you have the read the book), but it wasn’t what I was expecting. (It’s not one of ‘those’ nanny books.) Highly recommended. (Buy direct from the publisher)
Cheri by Jo Ann Beard
Cheri jumped straight onto my top books of the year as soon as I read it, except is it a book, or a novella, or even a short story? Is it fiction or biography or narrative non-fiction? Who cares, it’s amazing. Cheri is about the final days of a woman’s life. She’s dying from cancer and her two adult daughters have come to stay to look after her. It’s very short – 76 pages- but has everything – life, death, memory, love. I cried. A lot. Thanks to Julie Myerson for the recommendation.
Clear by Carys Davies
In the 1840s newly married John, a poor clergyman, leaves his wife Mary behind to take a job which involves travelling to a remote Scottish island where he must ‘clear’ the single remaining inhabitant, Ivar, whom the landowner is going to replace with sheep. Soon after his arrival, John has an accident and is found unconscious by Ivar who despite their lack of a common language cares for him and the two form a bond. This is a wonderfully tender love story to the land, a disappeared way of life and human relationships. I loved it. And if you haven’t read Davies’ novel, West I urge you to read that too. Highly recommended.
The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginsburg
This is the first Ginzburg I’ve read and why have I waited so long? The Dry Heart (translated from Italian by Frances Frenaye) is written in a very spare, factual style that is never cold. It was first published in 1947 but feels so contemporary. The young female narrator tells us on the first page that she has shot her husband between the eyes with the revolver she took from his desk drawer. She goes out for a coffee and time spirals back to what brought her to this position. A lonely young woman, she falls in love with the idea of Alberto as much as the man himself, and from the start the marriage is not a good one. The books in only 108 page long but contains a whole world and a whole life.
Tim’s Top Reads of 2023
Tim’s Top 3 (in no order)
Those People Behind Us by Mary Camarillo
I read Mary Camarillo’s previous novel ‘The Lockhart Women’ this year too. I loved them both but rules dictate that I can only have 1 in my top 10. All Camarillo’s characters are real, funny, annoying and complicated all at once. This one is set in 2017 in a sunny suburb of LA with a cast of characters who pass in and out of each other’s lives and daily business. It felt as though I was reading lots of Raymond Carver short stories all at once, which is perfect if you run out of Raymond Carver stories. Housing crisis, social status, 2017-Trump landscape all the rest too.
What You Need From The Night by Laurent Petitmangin
A very tense, very short, and heartbreaking novel translated from French. ‘What You Need From The Night’ reads like a new Dardenne Brothers film, which is always a place I want to be. A thoroughly immersive slice of family reality and heartache set in a damp and grey corner of northeast France. Ultimately, a bit of a downer. Perfect!
The Archive of Feelings by Peter Stamm
I love everything Peter Stamm has ever written. He’s my hero. In his latest novel, the paths of childhood sweethearts head off in very different directions. Reflection, angst, regret and hope in not quite equal measure. Just brilliant
This interview about The Memory of Animals with Mark Reynolds was first published in Bookanista in April 2023.
The novel opens like a kind of lockdown fever dream. When and where did you conceive it, and what were the first lines you wrote?
I started it in September 2019 as a few pieces of flash fiction about a pandemic, so four months before I heard any mention of an actual pandemic and six months before the UK’s first lockdown. I’ve always loved reading post-apocalyptic novels and so I thought I’d write one. Plus one of my son’s friends told me about Flu Camp, where he’d been part of a flu vaccine trial which involved being isolated in a room in a unit for two weeks.
I do still have the first lines:
In the treatment room I lift up a chair and shove its legs against one of the locked glass cabinets. I expect it to be made of some kind of hard plastic, but it’s glass and it shatters. I wait to see who will come, Kit or Alice, or Marjorie. James is too ill to get out of bed. I should go and check on him, but I don’t. We hadn’t broken into this one because we can see what it contains: bandages, eye-patches, treatment for stubborn earwax and verrucas.
The idea of this was used in a scene in the final book but it was substantially changed, as were Kit, Alice, Marjorie and James!
How would you sum up the book in around 25 words?
Neffy, a 27-year-old marine biologist volunteers for a vaccine trial. Following a bad reaction, she finds herself alone with four strangers in the midst of a pandemic. Plus, octopuses!
This novel was first announced as Body of Water. What brought about the title change?
I’m delighted to let you know that The Memory of Animals has won an AudioFile Earphones Award for the audio book, narrated by actress Genevieve Gaunt. The award is given to truly exceptional titles that excel in narrative voice and style, characterizations, suitability to audio, and enhancement of the text.
This is what AudioFile said:
“Genevieve Gaunt performs this compelling audiobook about a near-future pandemic. Neffy is one of the few people to take the vaccine and survive. Gaunt portrays her in a vulnerable tone and youthful timbre. Gaunt’s crisp English accent works well with this London-based story. The postapocalyptic plot follows Neffy and four other 20-somethings who are surviving in a “biopharm” facility as they come to terms with the ghastly reality outside their doors. Neffy’s story flashes back to the past as she uses a “revisiting” machine to reconnect with her lover and stepbrother. This is an engaging and immersive listen.”
I was lucky enough to be a guest of Penguin and go into the studio when Genevieve was recording it, and I thought she was amazing. There are lots of different accents and voices in the novel, and she gets them all perfect for my ears.
The audio book is available from Audible UK, and Audible US, both with Genevieve narrating.
If you’ve listened to the audio book of The Memory of Animals, let me know!
Claire Fuller Recommends Rumaan Alam, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Others
This article was first published in Lithub on June 9, 2023
Dystopian mysteries or mysterious dystopian novels are mash-ups of two of my favorite genres – especially if you add a dash of literary. And there are surprisingly few around. In September 2019 I thought it would be a good idea to write a dystopian novel about five clinical drug trial volunteers—strangers to each other—stuck inside a London clinic while a deadly pandemic sweeps the world.
In January, February and March 2020, I wasn’t so sure it had been such a good idea, but by then I was some 30,000 words into the novel, and after a short hiatus I continued writing. When I’d finished the first draft, two years or so later, I realized what I’d written was really a locked room mystery rather than a pandemic novel, although I’m okay with readers slotting it into the latter genre.
For me, reading (and writing) pandemic fiction is a safe way of catastrophizing. What’s the absolute worst that can happen? When I know that, then whatever I’m facing is usually not so bad.
And for me, writing novels with a mystery element is what happens during the drafting process, in fact usually I set out thinking, This time, don’t write a mystery! but then it appears once again. My favorite mysteries are ones which don’t provide all the answers but have the reader do some of the work to fill in the gaps, making me have to consider what happens to the characters after I have closed the last page.
So, here is a list of this seemingly limited genre: Mysterian? Dystopery? If you can think of a better title or any more novels that fit the criteria, please let me know.
I’m very excited to be able to let you know the dates and locations I’ll be in North America during June. All links to more information, including event times are available on my Up-coming events page.
I’ll be in conversation with some amazing authors from Catherine Newman (at Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley MA), author of the recently published (and wonderful) novel, We All Want Impossible Things, to Gina Chung, (McNally Jackson, New York) whose debut Sea Change features a Giant Pacific Octopus, and William Landay (Belmont Books, Belmont, MA), author of Defending Jacob and his latest novel, which I loved, All That is Mine I Carry With Me.
I’d love it if you could make it to one of these events, but if you live too far away please do let any bookish friends know about any events close to them.
Claire Fuller 