Cathy Forde: A month of unusual books

I’m glad that January is over. I normally am, as it always feels like such a long, dragged-out month, cold and dull. The best thing about it is noticing the days stretch a little longer, a sign that Spring is not too far away.

This year, of course, it wasn’t just cold but utterly Baltic, with pavements like treacherous skating rinks. I’m glad January is over because it has taken the Big Freeze with it, but I’m also glad because it’s been the busiest New Year I can ever remember, and I was beginning to get confused about what I was meant to be doing every day.

The first week I spent in development at National Theatre of Scotland headquarters in Glasgow, shaping my play Empty into the version that the public will see in March. With a team headed by Vicky Featherstone, my director, and including Stage Manager, Sound Technician, Literary Manager, Publicity Staff, Lighting Supervisor, Costume Manager, not mention the actors, we worked all day, and then I went home and rewrote all the changes we had made into my script, some evenings working till midnight.

Not being used to fourteen hour shifts it’s no wonder I came down with the worst cold virus I have had for many, many years. It forced me to cancel my first ever school visit a couple of weeks ago which is why I’m unable to report on my Writer in Residence session in Dundee. I wouldn’t have been welcome anyway, not at the rate I was going through tissues and sneezing.

As well as developing my play and editing the script before it is published by Methuen, I have filmed my next podcast for Scottish Book Trust which is online now and is about Soundtracks and the role music can play in inspiring stories. Myself and the Scottish Book Trust team have been thinking of all the songs we know that tell stories. Can you think of any?

I’ve also emailed and filmed some of my favourite writers to ask them how they tackle the endings of their books. That was really interesting and you’ll be able to see the results on March’s podcast. As it’s my last podcast, it’s going to be about endings.

Speaking of writers, I have read three very unusual books this month.

I love novels about characters who settled in America and pioneered its early development, so the first, Serena, by Ron Rash is right up my street. The Serena of the title is a singular, ambitious woman who leaves Boston to partner her new husband, a timber magnate from the mountains North Carolina. Serena’s story is riveting (this dame locks herself into a barn and tames and  trains an eagle for goodness sakes!), and it hooked me, but the weird thing about this novel is that the writer’s style felt too clunky and overdone  for the story. I kept wishing that someone like Joseph O’Connor or Colm Toibin had come up with idea. I’ve never thought that before about any book I have read.

My second book is a kind of journal, by the wonderful Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. It’s called What I Talk About When I Talk about Running and I bought it for my husband’s Christmas thinking he would never read it. But he did, and he loved it, although he kept laughing out loud and telling me that Murakami’s little quirks of personality and obsessions reminded him of me. (Not in a good way.) This book is an easy, fluid read. A bit like going for a long, effortless jog on a lovely day. Although it’s about Murakami’s obsession with running, it is also about writing and how writers write, and I really identified with it because I run as well as write and feel the two activities compliment each other. The book has made such an impression on me that I am trying to keep to Murakami’s exercise schedule of two days on, one day off with an average of six miles each run (which is another reason why I probably came down with the cold from hell). It's hard!

My final book is probably one the strangest I have ever read. I don’t even quite know how to describe Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan. It is a kind of folk tale/fairy story rendered in an incredibly rich and vibrant olde-worlde language which just zings with colour and life. Yet the novel explores the most brutal of sexual experiences, and is cruel and shocking throughout. It is so beautifully written, yet I don’t quite know whether I would recommend it to anyone as a good read.

See. Told you I had three unusual books to talk about.  

Technology has – unfortunately – this afternoon foiled my first ever Glow session in which I was supposed to be on a live video link to about twelve secondary schools up and down the country. There they all were, primed with questions to ask me and an evil gremlin sabotaged the weblink. In the end I still managed, through the magic of Twitter, to hook up with a couple of schools. For about half an hour (of what should have been a two-hour session) I answered brilliant questions from the pupils who could see me online. By the way, if I’d known about the video-link I’d have hired a beautiful double to lip-synch my answers. I thought I was just going to be typing, didn’t think anyone was actually going to SEE me. So sorry, viewers.

There were also plenty of fantastic questions at my SBT session at Irvine Royal Academy in Ayrshire yesterday. About 150 pupils perched on those benches I remember sadistic gym teachers making me do horrible exercises on when I was at school – things like hopping along the narrow bit on one leg etc. I hope my audience didn’t think listening to me was a horrible exercise because I had good fun!

- Cathy

Other News:

Australian author AG Taylor was with us at Scottish Book Trust this week to launch his debut novel, the sci-fi adventure Meteorite Strike. We'll have more on the event later, but for now watch this snippet of him telling us his thoughts on his favourite superhero, and a little sci-fi movie you may have heard of: