I’m delighted to be giving space on the Patteran Pages today to Fiona Robyn, whose novel The Letters has just been published by Snow Books.
I took delivery of a copy of The Letters a couple of weeks back and pondered the cover in some trepidation. Design values in paperback presentation have developed in quality greatly over the past few decades and, by and large, genuine attempts are made to represent something of the essence of the book in graphic depiction on the cover. So when I saw a willowy brunette in diaphanous red heading east off the end of a jetty, I wondered what I was in for.
I needn’t have worried. Neither chick-lit nor aga-saga, neither bodice-ripper nor Mills and Boon followed on. Instead I found myself drawn into a wonderfully idiosyncratic account of the awkward but endearing Violet Ackerman’s attempts to make her way in a decidedly non-standard Sussex village on the coast to which she has recently moved following a mighty row with her lover, Tom. Whilst on the surface we are presented with a familiar Home Counties setting and the plot context of a familiar angst-ridden middle class, middle-aged woman, nothing follows the well-trodden path.
For a start, there is Violet herself. She is an engaging mixture of the tough and independent and the vulnerable and confused. She is defiant about her spikiness and awkwardness in the presence of others’ emotional difficulties, but at the same time touchingly troubled by the difficulties she has in making conventional connections, not least with her own children. Violet’s own mother Vera provides some provenance for this disengagement. Vera was competent at all the practical components of motherhood and negotiated an endless round of dressing, bathing, and rolling pushchairs through the park...but (Violet) can’t remember any physical affection between the two of them. Fiona Robyn is particularly good at representing family dynamics - with dysfunction passing down the line through Violet - and invoking the Larkin principle concerning the legacy of parental damage.
But for all her maladroit dealings with the world, Violet is easy to like. In fact, we identify with her because of that very cut-the-crap impatience. Her face screws up and looks sideways at Sue, and Violet feels a stab of impatience. She really is quite a child. Violet has never been any good with these weepy types. Some people seemed able to be patient with them, indulge their inflated, over-dramatised feelings. Violet has a switch inside her which goes from ‘tolerant’ to ‘intolerant’ in a second. Sometimes she thinks she uses up most of her energy simply keeping back what she’d like to say back...
It is the truth in character throughout the novel that refreshes and distinguishes. And when the letters begin mysteriously to arrive, depicting the experiences of young mother Elizabeth in a mother and baby home in 1959, a counterpoint is set up between the correspondent’s own disengagement with the patterns and protocols of an earlier time and Violet’s sense of alienation within her own circumstances. In this disequilibrium between the conventional and familiar and Violet’s own canted perception of how things are and how they might be that much of the novel’s success lies. Personal taste, maybe, but for me it is this location of the strangeness within the apparently mundane, the outré that lurks behind the ordinary, that beguiles every time. If it works for you, I recommend unconditionally The Letters by Fiona Robyn as a fine example of the canon. Go buy!
...
As one who has tried valiantly to reach beyond the encapsulation of the poem and the snapshot of the short story and failed ignominiously, I was intrigued to know by what guidelines Fiona approached the writing of a novel. Citing Somerset Maugham, I put a couple of questions to her.
DJ: Somerset Maugham said: “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” If he’s right, do you know what they might be?
FR: I would never presume to know how anyone else should write their novels, but here are three of my ‘rules’, which have got me through my first three novels:
1. Get the novel written. This is easier said than done - I have to coax myself through the first draft, which is always difficult, and protect the whole thing from any feedback until I've done all I think I can do. I also have to bribe myself to my desk every morning.
2. Write YOUR novel. I write because I want to make people happy or make people think, but I'm not interested in changing something (e.g. a sad ending) because it would make it more 'accessible' - I only want to change things if I think it would make it a better novel and if it would be more 'true' to my characters.
3. Look after yourself. Writing is a funny business - both the process itself and the whole getting-published bit - and I hope I'll be able to be a better writer over time if I pay attention to what I need. This might be reminding myself why I do it, trying not to get sucked in by wanting to be popular, licking my wounds after some critical feedback... or taking a complete break from writing to get on with my vegetable patch.
DJ: Somerset Maugham also said – and in the absence of the source, I paraphrase very loosely – that it is easier to write an effective novel than a well-crafted poem. You write in both media. What do you think?
FR: Hmm - I suppose we could talk for days about what an effective novel or a well-crafted poem IS. I do think that you can get away with more in a novel - there are so many words, and if we get swept up by the narrative or become fond of a character, we're less likely to complain about a badly constructed sentence or a weak metaphor. In a poem, every word (and the placing of every word) counts. For me, poems are a way of distilling experience into something concentrated, and so the poet must be happy for people to look at them with a magnifying glass.
Full details of how and where to buy The Letters, and of Fiona's forthcoming publications, and of her blogs (to which she posts fine poetry), can be found via her website.
I took delivery of a copy of The Letters a couple of weeks back and pondered the cover in some trepidation. Design values in paperback presentation have developed in quality greatly over the past few decades and, by and large, genuine attempts are made to represent something of the essence of the book in graphic depiction on the cover. So when I saw a willowy brunette in diaphanous red heading east off the end of a jetty, I wondered what I was in for.
I needn’t have worried. Neither chick-lit nor aga-saga, neither bodice-ripper nor Mills and Boon followed on. Instead I found myself drawn into a wonderfully idiosyncratic account of the awkward but endearing Violet Ackerman’s attempts to make her way in a decidedly non-standard Sussex village on the coast to which she has recently moved following a mighty row with her lover, Tom. Whilst on the surface we are presented with a familiar Home Counties setting and the plot context of a familiar angst-ridden middle class, middle-aged woman, nothing follows the well-trodden path.
For a start, there is Violet herself. She is an engaging mixture of the tough and independent and the vulnerable and confused. She is defiant about her spikiness and awkwardness in the presence of others’ emotional difficulties, but at the same time touchingly troubled by the difficulties she has in making conventional connections, not least with her own children. Violet’s own mother Vera provides some provenance for this disengagement. Vera was competent at all the practical components of motherhood and negotiated an endless round of dressing, bathing, and rolling pushchairs through the park...but (Violet) can’t remember any physical affection between the two of them. Fiona Robyn is particularly good at representing family dynamics - with dysfunction passing down the line through Violet - and invoking the Larkin principle concerning the legacy of parental damage.
But for all her maladroit dealings with the world, Violet is easy to like. In fact, we identify with her because of that very cut-the-crap impatience. Her face screws up and looks sideways at Sue, and Violet feels a stab of impatience. She really is quite a child. Violet has never been any good with these weepy types. Some people seemed able to be patient with them, indulge their inflated, over-dramatised feelings. Violet has a switch inside her which goes from ‘tolerant’ to ‘intolerant’ in a second. Sometimes she thinks she uses up most of her energy simply keeping back what she’d like to say back...
It is the truth in character throughout the novel that refreshes and distinguishes. And when the letters begin mysteriously to arrive, depicting the experiences of young mother Elizabeth in a mother and baby home in 1959, a counterpoint is set up between the correspondent’s own disengagement with the patterns and protocols of an earlier time and Violet’s sense of alienation within her own circumstances. In this disequilibrium between the conventional and familiar and Violet’s own canted perception of how things are and how they might be that much of the novel’s success lies. Personal taste, maybe, but for me it is this location of the strangeness within the apparently mundane, the outré that lurks behind the ordinary, that beguiles every time. If it works for you, I recommend unconditionally The Letters by Fiona Robyn as a fine example of the canon. Go buy!
...
As one who has tried valiantly to reach beyond the encapsulation of the poem and the snapshot of the short story and failed ignominiously, I was intrigued to know by what guidelines Fiona approached the writing of a novel. Citing Somerset Maugham, I put a couple of questions to her.
DJ: Somerset Maugham said: “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” If he’s right, do you know what they might be?
FR: I would never presume to know how anyone else should write their novels, but here are three of my ‘rules’, which have got me through my first three novels:
1. Get the novel written. This is easier said than done - I have to coax myself through the first draft, which is always difficult, and protect the whole thing from any feedback until I've done all I think I can do. I also have to bribe myself to my desk every morning.
2. Write YOUR novel. I write because I want to make people happy or make people think, but I'm not interested in changing something (e.g. a sad ending) because it would make it more 'accessible' - I only want to change things if I think it would make it a better novel and if it would be more 'true' to my characters.
3. Look after yourself. Writing is a funny business - both the process itself and the whole getting-published bit - and I hope I'll be able to be a better writer over time if I pay attention to what I need. This might be reminding myself why I do it, trying not to get sucked in by wanting to be popular, licking my wounds after some critical feedback... or taking a complete break from writing to get on with my vegetable patch.
DJ: Somerset Maugham also said – and in the absence of the source, I paraphrase very loosely – that it is easier to write an effective novel than a well-crafted poem. You write in both media. What do you think?
FR: Hmm - I suppose we could talk for days about what an effective novel or a well-crafted poem IS. I do think that you can get away with more in a novel - there are so many words, and if we get swept up by the narrative or become fond of a character, we're less likely to complain about a badly constructed sentence or a weak metaphor. In a poem, every word (and the placing of every word) counts. For me, poems are a way of distilling experience into something concentrated, and so the poet must be happy for people to look at them with a magnifying glass.
...
Full details of how and where to buy The Letters, and of Fiona's forthcoming publications, and of her blogs (to which she posts fine poetry), can be found via her website.
