strange and random happenstance

That Summer by Lauren Willig
ARC Provided by the Publisher
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: June 3rd, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Julia Conley has inherited a house in England. A house on Herne Hill has been left to her by an unknown great-aunt. Julia and her father left England when she was six and her mother was killed in a car crash. Since her life in New York hasn't been going that well lately as one of the many unemployed, she decides to go to England and spend a few months sorting out the house and hopefully sorting out her life. For Julia who has viewed her family as just her and her father she finds it hard to come to gripes with the fact that this was where her mother came from and she still has family here with a few cousins, who of course feel slighted with great-aunt Regina's will. The more time Julia spends in the house the more she wishes she had been given the chance to know her great-aunt.

For Regina might have held the key to a lovely Pre-Raphaelite painting in one of the rooms of the house, which has a matching painting hidden deep at the back of one of the cupboards. Why was the one painting displayed and the other hidden? Who is this artist Gavin Thorne? Going back to 1849 we learn about the painter Gavin Thorne and his muse, Imogen Grantham, who happened to be the mistress of the house on Herne Hill and married to a wealthy and significantly older collector who was occasionally visited by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who doted on his historical relics. Yet why hide the painting? What connection does this painter and this wife have to Julia? More importantly, after 160 years can Julia find out?

Sometimes life is staggering in it's synchronicity. The very day that I received That Summer in the mail my Great-Aunt Vicki died. My family got the call that she had passed in her sleep and that the rest of the family was to descend on Madison to take care of her estate. My Great-Aunt was the last of the older generation, being preceded in death by all my Grandparents and even an Uncle. While sadly I have never been bequeathed a mysterious house, because she was the last of that generation I have gotten quite used to clearing out ancestral homes, my Grandparents farm having accumulated over a hundred years worth of ephemera, with sadly not a rare painting or a secret stash of cash in sight, but a random piano being used as a tool bench and much mouse effluvia. As I spent the following weeks sifting through the rooms of her house, picking what to keep and what to give away, I couldn't help but think of all the things I don't know about my family and where I come from. There is a strong ancestry bug that my family has, but I have not yet been bitten, and there's a part of me that keeps thinking, better now before it's too late.

The detritus is all we have left of our family's history. Random paintings around the house, Aunt so and so painted this, Cousin so and so did that one; just what if the painting was something more? What if the painting was a closely guarded secret that would unlock some mystery about yourself? The search for your own identity is caught up in the past, in where you come from. While Julia's search for what happened in her own past with her mother as well as to her ancestor's is something that might be uncommon, the search is something we can all identify with. Lauren has tapped into something deep within everyone, a longing to know where they're from in order to find out where they belong. This gives us a strong connection to the characters, we are on their journey with them and I wouldn't want it any other way.

While the time slip genre is nothing new, Lauren is able to create a more accessible story then some authors who mire their books in overly flowery details and descriptions that go on for so many pages you lose the thread of the story. This isn't to say the writing is sparse, it's exactly what it needs to be to conjure this world, no more and no less. Though there is a part of me that wishes at some time in the future Lauren would go all out and write a doorstop of a novel. Yet in Lauren's time slip she is able to capture the best of all worlds, with a little Kate Morton, a little Somewhere in Time, a nod to Du Maurier's Rebecca, a Keats Bridget Jones call out with a wink to Nancy Mitford's silly season. There are also echoes of Victorian literature, from Imogen's marriage mirroring Dorthea's in Middlemarch, to Gavin bringing a little of the John Thornton vibe from North and South. Yet these homages aren't derivative, they give us a touchstone for the time period but then become so distinctly their own story that while you remember the connections at the back of your mind they are inconsequential as the story takes on a life of it's own.

As for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, I will admit that this subject matter is what made me swoon when I heard over a year ago about Lauren's next planned stand alone. I think that I have adequately covered my love of them in previous posts and writings, but I will say that even in the BBC production of Desperate Romantics, they have always been a band apart. Outsiders who verged on Gods in their ways of self aggrandising each other and mythologizing their lives and works. They were Romantics in every sense of the word, demanding the capital letter "R". Yet Lauren brought them down off their pedestals. Packed into the snug sitting room on Herne Hill we see a human Rossetti with his schemes and ideas and his future spiraling out before him. The ways the Brotherhood sought out collectors of antiquities to give an authenticity to their paintings adds a realism to them and their works.

These men aren't Gods, no matter how many posters in English classrooms and dorm rooms might say otherwise, they are men. They have loved and lost and with Gavin we have a true romantic hero that is swoonworthy. And like all good writing, this one aspect of the book, the Brotherhood, it doesn't overpower the story, it compliments it, it strengthens and adds to it. You will fall into this book and even if you are just a fraction of a romantic the Pre-Raphaelite's were you will find yourself falling in love with both couples in the different time periods. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did, and if you're coming into this book from Lauren's Pink Carnation series, there are a few gems hidden in the book, but like these painters who would hide the Brotherhood's initials in their paintings, you might have to have a keen eye to spot them.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bridget Jones, Daphne Du Maurier, Desperate Romantics, Kate Morton, Lauren Willig, Middlemarch, Nancy Mitford, North and South, Pink Carnation, Pre-Raphaelite, Rebecca, Somewhere in Time, That Summer

That Summer by Lauren Willig
ARC Provided by the Publisher
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: June 3rd, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Julia Conley has inherited a house in England. A house on Herne Hill has been left to her by an unknown great-aunt. Julia and her father left England when she was six and her mother was killed in a car crash. Since her life in New York hasn't been going that well lately as one of the many unemployed, she decides to go to England and spend a few months sorting out the house and hopefully sorting out her life. For Julia who has viewed her family as just her and her father she finds it hard to come to gripes with the fact that this was where her mother came from and she still has family here with a few cousins, who of course feel slighted with great-aunt Regina's will. The more time Julia spends in the house the more she wishes she had been given the chance to know her great-aunt.

For Regina might have held the key to a lovely Pre-Raphaelite painting in one of the rooms of the house, which has a matching painting hidden deep at the back of one of the cupboards. Why was the one painting displayed and the other hidden? Who is this artist Gavin Thorne? Going back to 1849 we learn about the painter Gavin Thorne and his muse, Imogen Grantham, who happened to be the mistress of the house on Herne Hill and married to a wealthy and significantly older collector who was occasionally visited by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who doted on his historical relics. Yet why hide the painting? What connection does this painter and this wife have to Julia? More importantly, after 160 years can Julia find out?

Sometimes life is staggering in it's synchronicity. The very day that I received That Summer in the mail my Great-Aunt Vicki died. My family got the call that she had passed in her sleep and that the rest of the family was to descend on Madison to take care of her estate. My Great-Aunt was the last of the older generation, being preceded in death by all my Grandparents and even an Uncle. While sadly I have never been bequeathed a mysterious house, because she was the last of that generation I have gotten quite used to clearing out ancestral homes, my Grandparents farm having accumulated over a hundred years worth of ephemera, with sadly not a rare painting or a secret stash of cash in sight, but a random piano being used as a tool bench and much mouse effluvia. As I spent the following weeks sifting through the rooms of her house, picking what to keep and what to give away, I couldn't help but think of all the things I don't know about my family and where I come from. There is a strong ancestry bug that my family has, but I have not yet been bitten, and there's a part of me that keeps thinking, better now before it's too late.

The detritus is all we have left of our family's history. Random paintings around the house, Aunt so and so painted this, Cousin so and so did that one; just what if the painting was something more? What if the painting was a closely guarded secret that would unlock some mystery about yourself? The search for your own identity is caught up in the past, in where you come from. While Julia's search for what happened in her own past with her mother as well as to her ancestor's is something that might be uncommon, the search is something we can all identify with. Lauren has tapped into something deep within everyone, a longing to know where they're from in order to find out where they belong. This gives us a strong connection to the characters, we are on their journey with them and I wouldn't want it any other way.

While the time slip genre is nothing new, Lauren is able to create a more accessible story then some authors who mire their books in overly flowery details and descriptions that go on for so many pages you lose the thread of the story. This isn't to say the writing is sparse, it's exactly what it needs to be to conjure this world, no more and no less. Though there is a part of me that wishes at some time in the future Lauren would go all out and write a doorstop of a novel. Yet in Lauren's time slip she is able to capture the best of all worlds, with a little Kate Morton, a little Somewhere in Time, a nod to Du Maurier's Rebecca, a Keats Bridget Jones call out with a wink to Nancy Mitford's silly season. There are also echoes of Victorian literature, from Imogen's marriage mirroring Dorthea's in Middlemarch, to Gavin bringing a little of the John Thornton vibe from North and South. Yet these homages aren't derivative, they give us a touchstone for the time period but then become so distinctly their own story that while you remember the connections at the back of your mind they are inconsequential as the story takes on a life of it's own.

As for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, I will admit that this subject matter is what made me swoon when I heard over a year ago about Lauren's next planned stand alone. I think that I have adequately covered my love of them in previous posts and writings, but I will say that even in the BBC production of Desperate Romantics, they have always been a band apart. Outsiders who verged on Gods in their ways of self aggrandising each other and mythologizing their lives and works. They were Romantics in every sense of the word, demanding the capital letter "R". Yet Lauren brought them down off their pedestals. Packed into the snug sitting room on Herne Hill we see a human Rossetti with his schemes and ideas and his future spiraling out before him. The ways the Brotherhood sought out collectors of antiquities to give an authenticity to their paintings adds a realism to them and their works.

These men aren't Gods, no matter how many posters in English classrooms and dorm rooms might say otherwise, they are men. They have loved and lost and with Gavin we have a true romantic hero that is swoonworthy. And like all good writing, this one aspect of the book, the Brotherhood, it doesn't overpower the story, it compliments it, it strengthens and adds to it. You will fall into this book and even if you are just a fraction of a romantic the Pre-Raphaelite's were you will find yourself falling in love with both couples in the different time periods. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did, and if you're coming into this book from Lauren's Pink Carnation series, there are a few gems hidden in the book, but like these painters who would hide the Brotherhood's initials in their paintings, you might have to have a keen eye to spot them.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Bridget Jones, Daphne Du Maurier, Desperate Romantics, Kate Morton, Lauren Willig, Middlemarch, Nancy Mitford, North and South, Pink Carnation, Pre-Raphaelite, Rebecca, Somewhere in Time, That Summer

Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais by Suzanne Fagence Cooper
Published by: St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: May 1st, 2010
Format: Paperback, 288 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

"Years and years ago, my grandmother took me to an off-off-Broadway play about Effie Ruskin’s love affair with John Everett Millais. It was rather odd viewing for a ten year old, but it stuck with me somehow. I can still remember the red plush seats of the theatre and the Victorian parlor set on stage.

I hadn’t realized quite how much it had stuck with me until my editor asked me, after The Ashford Affair, what the next book was going to be, and I found myself burbling, “I want to write a book about a love affair between an unhappily married Victorian woman and a Preraphaelite artist.” My heroine is very different from Effie—and my hero, Gavin Thorne, was based more on William Holman Hunt than on Millais—but Ruskin was certainly a major influence on the character of my heroine’s husband." - Lauren Willig

Effie Grey thought that in marrying the erudite author and art critic John Ruskin that she was entering a life of parties and soirees peopled by the elite of London. Instead this young Scotch girl entered a loveless marriage where she was repeatedly berated and belittled not just by her husband but by her in-laws as well. She suffered through six years of daily horrors but was willing to accept her fate because it was the life she had chosen. But then John Everett Millais showed up in her life. They had once met at a dance years ago, before their lives took different paths, a meeting Millais remembered well. Those paths would converge when Ruskin took Millais under his wing. The two men working together and even vacationing together meant the young Effie and Everett where often thrown together, perhaps by Ruskin's doing, and love soon stirred in their hearts. Effie had the grounds to do something unheard of in Victorian England. Effie could leave Ruskin because their marriage was unconsummated and therefore was not a real marriage at all. With Everett's encouragement, she took this unheard of step to reclaim her life. But in trading one man for another, was Effie able to get what she wanted or was she stifled yet again? 

There are two ways in which this biography could have worked. One would have been to write more in the style of Philippa Gregory and make it a fictionalized biography though as thoroughly based in fact as possible. The other would have been to go more scholarly and linger on details and events. Instead Effie is a book that leaves you wondering why you are reading a book obviously dumbed down for the masses. At times the writing style shifts into a conversational conspiratorial style only to be followed up with dull facts and figures. I just wanted to shake the author and tell her to pick a style, any style. This mishmash of styles gave me extreme dissatisfaction and at times annoyed me to the point of wanting to throw the book. I've read my fair share of art history books and biographies but I don't think I've ever been this bored and frustrated by a book that combines two passions of mine.

At a little over two hundred pages, minus all the appendices, Suzanne Fagence Cooper has written little more then a fleshed out outline for a book. I got no sense of the three people one who this book hinges. In fact, Ruskin, Millais, and Effie, seemed nothing more then cardboard cut outs that occasionally mimicked Victorian stereotypes, but usually remained two dimensional. I'm sorry but two dimensional characters can not, by definition, have passion, so right there the title of the book is wrong. There's a part of me that just wishes to rewrite this whole book. Cooper had unheard of access to documents that have never been seen and the soapy miniseries Desperate Romantics did a better job of making these people flesh and blood in their minimal screen time then a scholar whose life is the Pre-Raphaelites. The fact that the secondary family members and friends were far more interesting then the subjects of the book is a sign that your book isn't working, just so you know for future reference.

But it's not just the writing style that is irksome. The structure of the book is such that I have a feeling I plot out my book reviews more then the author did this book. She relied too much on the gimmickry of using Millais artwork as chapter headings, work that is not included in the book, but more on that later, then bothering to realize her timeline was fucked. There is no way to capture her structure then by saying it's wibbly wobbly timey wimey. I get why Cooper starts out with a little flash forward to Effie leaving Ruskin, because it gives the beginning of the book a thrust, an event, a crisis we are building to. We only cover twenty-seven years in the first eight chapters, most of those concentrating on the six to seven years of Ruskin and Effie together, leaving us five chapters to cover the remaining forty-two years of her life, of which two chapters don't even deal with Effie, the supposed topic of this book. And it's these remaining five chapters I have the most issue with. They jump around and go forwards and backwards over events from different points of view and at different times. I have no freakin' idea of a coherent timeline of events in Effie's life other then she had tons of children. If there was just some through line, some way to sort things out into order instead of writing in such a way that it feels like Cooper forgot to tell part of her story and instead of going back and adding it in in the appropriate spot, she just wrote it into the section of the book she was on even if it made no sense, then I might have at least come to grips with the book.

Adding to the issues of the book making no sense is the fact that Effie and Millais really had too many children, and Effie too many siblings, and couple that with the propensity for using the same names in different branches of the family and you are at sea. Not to mention all the children had nicknames and while Cooper claims she will use the same naming conventions throughout the book, she does not, not that this is a surprise given the grammatical errors and the abysmal mess that is the appendices. I hope she knows there are standards for appendices, you can't sight something differently each time... which ties back in with the naming issues. Effie's eldest daughter is Effie... yep, this wasn't fun, because Cooper would quite often forget to say Effie the younger and so, who knows which Effie was which. There reached a point pretty early on when I realized I didn't care. Also, the multiple Everetts, the eldest son's nickname being Evie, which, when you are reading fast, as you do with books you are growing more and more in hate with and longing for the time when you can write a scathing review, well, it too reads like Effie. But again, what does this all matter. All these people, all their lives, I couldn't care less about any of them as they are portrayed by Cooper.

Now I must finally vent on a personal pet peeve. Graphics! I'll first just state I hate this cover with a passion. You have one of the greatest painters of ALL TIME as your subject and he painted his wife quite often and you have a crappy stock photo of a girl with ill fitting gloves. If there's one thing I learned, Effie loved her clothes and those gloves wouldn't do. Are you trying to appeal to the common demographic who you might lure to see the upcoming movie by making it look not about art? Cause right there, you're pissing me off with underestimating me, but then again, the book was written at such a basic level, perhaps the people who this book appeals to will find it fascinating, ie, not me. Yet this little cover rant isn't my main issue. My main issue is that when you have a book about artwork you MUST include pictures of ALL THE WORK! Yes, there are some pieces featured, but Cooper goes into great detail annoyingly waxing her own views on Millais' work only to not have the work included in the book. You talk about it, we have the right to see it. You can't get printing rights or some other snafu that doesn't let you include the art, you omit that section wherein you tried to color my views of the work with yours. Here's an idea lady, you go off and write your bland pap for the unwashed masses who hope to seem educated in picking up this paltry tome, and I'll avoid you and read fascinating works by real scholars.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Artwork, Desperate Romantics, Effie, John Everett Millais, Lauren Willig, Philippa Gregory, Pre-Raphaelite, Ruskin, Suzanne Fagence Cooper, That Summer, This Summer, Victorian, William Holman Hunt

As most of you know by now I have a deep abiding love for Lauren Willig's writing. For a fan this is an exciting time in her writing career. With last year's The Ashford Affair she officially branched out from her Pink Carnation series, which is sadly winding down, and has started to write stand-alones. That Summer is her new stand-alone which is coming out this summer (get the theme month title eh?) I have to say, if she wanted to hook me more then Kenya, choosing the Pre-Raphaelites was a sure way to do it. Everyone knows who the Pre-Raphaelites are even if they aren't aware of it. I remember back in high school my English classroom had the ubiquitous Pre-Raphaelite posters on the back bulletin board. There was Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee's La Belle Dame Sans Merci and John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott. They never removed these posters in the four years I had classes in that room on and off. There's just something so magical about these paintings, the way they convey such detail and meaning to the written word that it captures the cross pollination of artistic mediums that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood embraced and made me want to learn more versus those people who just slap the posters up on their walls. 

When I was in undergrad getting a BS in Art there was a plethora of Art History courses that were required which I took to with great zeal, even adding in such classes as German Architecture: The Modern Movements, which oddly ties into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Because the classes covered such a wide range of time, literally from Ancient Egypt to Picasso, there wasn't as much time to dwell on each subject as I would have liked. What was interesting though is that later when I took my German Architecture Class so many of the ideologies of these German artists harked back to the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood believe in craftsmanship, romanticism, spiritualism, nature, ideas, and never forget that signature jawline. They believed in elevating art for the people while there was always the irony that they spent so much time and effort on their art that it wasn't the common man but the wealthy who could afford their work, much like the Arts and Crafts movement, but more on that later. The German's believed in this craftsmanship and this love that was put into every aspect of the work with amazing attention to detail, which Frank Lloyd Wright would later use, going so far as to design the clothes that the inhabitants of his houses wore. If you have ever had the honor to see some of the Brotherhood's work, they made the frames that houses the paintings because it was the only way to truly view the art. They were Victorian Renaissance men that were both craftsmen and artists.

A few years back the Pre-Raphaelites got a little buzz again off the BBC Miniseries, Desperate Romantics, which I hope Lauren has finally watched after much urging on my part. While the series plays fast and loose with facts, making it in essence "Victorian Entourage," it once again ignited my interest in these artists. It didn't hurt having Aidan Turner playing Dante Gabriel Rossetti is all I'll say on that. At the same time the Art Institute of Chicago did a fascinating exhibition called Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago. The synchronicity of the exhibition's timing was eerily awesome for me. Because any way you look at it the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Arts and Crafts are connected movements with John Ruskin and Williams Morris being figureheads in both. The centerpiece of the exhibit was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix. But the exhibit had innumerable sketches and paintings and even house plans that gave such insight into the movements that I just wanted to learn more. Therefore this month is all about learning more. To delve into Lauren's research material, to read what inspired her, to find out the origins of That Summer and get special insights into why this world called out to her and me. And in another wonderful twist of fate, the MET is having a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition opening this month and thankfully lasting until I go to New York in August called The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design. I'm positive they did this just to coincide with That Summer.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Aidan Turner, Art History, Beata Beatrix, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Desperate Romantics, John William Waterhouse, Lauren Willig, Pink Carnation, Pre-Raphaelite, That Summer, The Ashford Affair, This Summer

I shall now interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (ie, Golden Summer) for a very special reason. Today I am the blog stop for the official virtual Lauren Willig tour (be sure to check out the rest of the stops too). That is correct, gentle readers, a blog tour for that most wonderful of books, The Ashford Affair. As you may recall, I spent April devoting my blog to Lauren Willig's first stand alone novel, The Ashford Affair, which I gather you all liked seeing as my blog analytics tell me that it was my second highest ever for hits in a single month. Personally, I know exactly why, Lauren is awesome. Also, it makes sense to have a little Lauren oasis during my Golden Summer... it was because of reading The Ashford Affair that I got on my 1920s kick, first with Mitfords then with mysteries, and eventually I ended up devoting the summer to 1920s whodunits. A nice progression of events and reading I must say. But let me tarry no longer, I reached out to you, my readers and asked what do you want to know from Lauren. Of course I slipped in one or two of my own questions, but I couldn't help it. Without further ado, I bring you Lauren.

Question: Seeing as The Ashford Affair is set in Kenya during the ‘Happy Valley’ days, if you were to have a dinner party with the Happy Valley Set, who would you invite? Might you leave Isak Dinesen off the guest list?

Answer: Yes, let’s leave Isak Dinesen at home! After reading up on that crowd, you do get the impression that she wasn’t quite the sympathetic character she was made out to be in the movie version of Out of Africa (although she did have some provocation). You get the sense that when people heard she was on her way, there was a muttered, “Quick, Karin’s coming—out the back door!”

Bror Blixen’s second wife, Cockie, on the other hand, sounds like she’d be fun to have around. We’d have to have Beryl Markham and Denys Finch-Hatton, of course: adventurers with stories to tell. And no Happy Valley party would be complete without Idina and Joss Hay, who, for all their hedonism, were both well-read, charismatic characters.

I’d leave out Alice and Frederic de Janze, though—he’d probably write a depressing book about it, and she might shoot someone.

Question: It seems that every person who settled in Kenya had a need to write a book, from Dinesen to Markham. What do you make of this phenomena?

Answer: Personally, I’m rather grateful for it, since it made my research much easier! It’s a skewed data set, though. When you look at the number of settlers who made their way to Kenya, the memoir writers were actually a fairly small percentage. In fact, that was one complaint that popped up as I was researching the period: that the flamboyant Happy Valley types overshadowed the fact that the bulk of the settlers in the region were hardworking farmers who kept their heads down and their farms running. For every Idina Sackville or Bror Blixen, there were a lot of people just minding their plows, but the gang who boozed it up at the Muthaiga Club left a disproportionately large footprint.

One thing I do find particularly interesting is the tilt, not just towards memoir-writing, but towards fictionalized memoir writing. One of my favorite sources, as I was reading up on the area, was Elspeth Huxley’s Flame Trees of Thika. It’s part memoir, part make believe, just like Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, the real and the fictional woven together in the guise of truth. In terms of physical details of life in Kenya, these books were gold mines, but I think there’s also something very telling in the fact that the line between fact and fiction in the narrative structure gets blurred. It goes to your next question, below, about the mystical lure of Kenya. Those settlers we’ve been talking about built a self-consciously mythologized image of the region and of their own place in it.

Question: What do you think is the mystical lure of Kenya? From English settlers back in the day to books set there, and even television shows like In the Heat of the Sun, what is the obsession with Kenya?

Answer: For the segment of English expats I was writing about, a lot of it had to do with escape and an attempt to rebuild or reclaim a romanticized version of their own past. The Great War had just torn through all levels of society and the old aristocracy was watching their estates become forfeit to death duties and rising costs. In 1919, the British government held a land lottery for plots of land in Kenya (then British East Africa). Larger plots could be purchased for relatively small sums. To the old Etonians who flocked to Kenya, Kenya was both a way to escape the horrors they had seen back in the old world and to rebuild their fortunes.

Some were straight out fortune hunters, hoping to make a killing in coffee or indigo (which generally worked out badly for them), but many harbored a romanticized vision of Africa as somehow untouched and unspoiled, a demi-Eden where a pre-war past could be recreated. That aspect comes out very clearly in their writings—there’s a lot of explicit comparison between the local tribes and medieval feudal societies—and also in their naming of their homes. Joss Hay, the Earl of Errol, one of the key members of the Happy Valley set, calls his plantation Slains: the name of the castle in Scotland his family had lost.

Question: Did your love of coffee make a book set on a coffee plantation inevitable?

Answer: It had less to do with my being a caffeine junkie and more to do with formative years spent watching the Britcom As Time Goes By. As I was writing Ashford, it was a running family joke that I should just call it My Life in Kenya, a la Lionel’s memoir.

Question: You have mentioned that a fair bit of The Ashford Affair set in Kenya was sadly a victim of edits, might we loyal readers someday see these pages as an extra on your blog?

Answer: In the past, I’ve rescued snippets of my Pink Carnation books from the cutting room floor, but those bits were small and discrete scenes. The cuts in Ashford were much more extensive—about a hundred pages set in Kenya in the late 20s and 30s. When I cut those segments, I reworked the rest of the novel to make up for those gaps. I felt like those chapters made sense in their original context in the novel, but they don’t stand on their own as fun little anecdotes, the way the Pink outtakes do. Those deleted chapters also make explicit incidents that, in the reworked version, are deliberately left ambiguous. So, the short answer is, probably not—although I might revisit those chapters at some point and see if there’s anything that can be salvaged for the outtakes section.

I will say that writing Ashford made me nostalgic for the doorstop novels of the 80s, when an author could safely write a thousand page tome. The original plan for Ashford involved a triple narrative—Clemmie, Addie, and Bea—in which we would follow both Addie’s and Bea’s threads right up through World War II. But the fashion right now is for leaner books, so the more ambitious and all-encompassing narrative had to be abandoned.

Question: Ancestry and our roots seem to be a big craze right now, what do you think it is that makes books revolving around family secrets so irresistible? 

Answer: My instinct is that it has something to do with the present being so uncertain. We live in uneasy times. The economy is shot, our sense of opportunity has been shaken; people are facing the prospect of rocky futures and straitened retirements. In those circumstances, there’s something very reassuring to turning to the past, to seeing what our grandparents or great-grandparents managed to struggle through and triumph. When you think of it, the last big era of the family saga and intertwined present/past narratives (Barbara Taylor, Judith Krantz, and so on) was back in the 70s and early 80s, which was another era of economic uncertainty and murky prospects. I think reading these books, especially the ones in which characters manage to fight their way from adversity to prosperity (or, in many cases, from prosperity, through a fall to poverty, and back to prosperity again) provides a sense of encouragement and hope, and that we as readers—in a parallel journey with the modern characters in the books—draw strength and a deeper understanding of our capabilities through comparison with the past.

Question: Now that you have successfully broken the limitations of writing just the Pink Carnation Series, what other stand alones do you see in your future?

Answer: I have another modern/historical hybrid (I’ve been told the au courant term is “time slip”) coming out next year, but since you ask about that below, I’ll skip the thumbnail sketch here.

As to what comes after that, there are three potential plots I’m playing with right now, all, surprisingly, twentieth century: one 1920s, one 1930s, one 1940s. I’m not quite sure which of these plot ideas is going to win out (each has its own particular allure), but, if I have my way, the next stand alone will be purely historical, with no modern component. As much as I’ve enjoyed writing the dual narratives in Ashford and the Victorian Book (aka stand alone #2), my real interest lies in the historical side, and that’s where I’d like to head next.

Question: Can you tell us more about the Victorian ‘Work in Progress’? (Miss Eliza added note, and have you finally watched Desperate Romantics, the Entourage of Victorian England?)

Answer: I have a weakness for what I think of as “house” books. I love books where the heroine inherits—or rents, or house-sits, or otherwise occupies—an old house, the dingier and more history crammed the better. If she can find some sort of mysterious artifact leading to a secret hidden in the house’s past, so much the better. (I blame this on a youth spent devouring Barbara Michaels novels.)

I also have a weakness for the Preraphaelite painters, for their lush compositions, their fascination with mythology, and their brash idealism.

The Victorian Book is a house book with a lost Preraphaelite painting. Basically, it’s my equivalent of chocolate with chocolate in it.

(Note to Miss Eliza: Nope, I still haven’t watched Desperate Romantics—I want to wait until the manuscript is all tied up and copyedited before I watch the show, so I can be sure that I’m not unconsciously letting it influence my portrayal of the painters. I’ve heard that it’s great fun, but not the most accurate.)

Anyway, here’s the thumbnail synopsis of the Victorian Book: it’s 2009 and my modern heroine, a financial analyst, has lost her job in the downturn. She inherits a house from an unknown great aunt in a suburb of London and goes out there to sort it out, with plans to sell. In the clean out process, she discovers not only some rather suspicious cousins and a disturbingly cute antiques shop owner, but also a Preraphaelite painting wrapped in crumbling paper, hidden behind the false back of a wardrobe. Her quest for the painting’s history takes up back to 1849, to the early days of the Preraphaelite movement and the tangled lives of the people who lived in the house back then.

For my Pink readers: the disturbingly cute antiques shop owner is one Nicholas Dorrington. Yes, that Dorrington. I snuck in a descendant of Miles and Henrietta as my (modern) leading man….

Question: Is Dare Me still a possible project?

Answer: Poor Dare Me. A contemporary romance novel that I started writing just for fun two summers ago, Dare Me has been a casualty of my souped-up publication schedule. (For those of you who haven’t seen it, you can find the first six chapters here.

Right now, I’m on a tight, two book a year schedule, which means that projects for which I’m not currently under contract fall by the wayside. That being said, I’m hopeful that I can find some time to work on Dare Me once the eleventh Pink book is safely in to my editor this fall. Now I just need to speed up my work on that Pink book….

Question: Do you usually have a couple in mind and an ending and then build the in-between parts or does the story unfold along the way and do you ever find yourself surprised by where your characters have taken you?

Answer: It varies book by book. Sometimes, I’m caught by a character and just need to follow that character and see where she—or he—goes. That was definitely the case with Miss Gwen in The Passion of the Purple Plumeria. In writing her book, I was primarily interested in seeing how her character unfolded and developed over the course of events. Other times, it will be a quirky historical incident I just need to use (like the underground Irish resistance managing to blow up their own headquarters in The Deception of the Emerald Ring), or a “what if” scenario, such as “what if a modern woman were to discover that nothing about her family was as it seemed?”

For the most part, though, I’d say I’m a character driven writer, which is why my books tend towards the latter scenario you mentioned: I’m constantly surprised by where my characters take me. I’ve learned that I’m best off being flexible and revising my plot plans as the story goes along, since the characters often develop in ways I would never have imagined. It can be nerve-wracking—I never know quite what’s going to happen, which is pretty scary when you’re only a few chapters in and a deadline is looming—but also keeps the writing fresh and exciting.

Question: Which book was the most fun to write and research?

Answer: That would be two different books. The most fun to research? Absolutely The Betrayal of the Blood Lily. I loved learning about the tangled intrigues of the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1804. With a mad ruler, a semi-insane vizier, an all female platoon of soldiers, and wet-nurses turned master of ceremonies, so much of what I was reading fell into my favorite category: when truth is stranger than fiction. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As for the most fun to write…. It would be a toss-up between The Masque of the Black Tulip and The Mischief of the Mistletoe, both of which had more than their fair share of madcap comedy.

Question: Now that the Pink Carnation series is winding down to an extent, do you plan to write more Pink novellas to bring back old characters?

Answer: There are still at least two books to go in the Pink series, Pink XI and Pink XII, so we’re not quite wound up yet. (Pink XI is Sally Fitzhugh’s book, slated to come out in August 2014. Unless something changes, Pink XII should be Jane’s book, presumably 2015, but I don’t have any hard and fast news about that yet.)

I’d love to revisit the older Pink characters with more novellas, but it all depends on timing. Now that I’m on the doubled up writing schedule, there is, sadly, less time to write just-for-fun novellas. On the plus side, it does mean two books a year rather than one; on the down side, fewer extraneous extras.

Question: *Note: stealing this one from Tracy Grant's interview of Deanna Raybourn on her blog: What four book characters (other authors, not yours) would you invite over for dinner and why?

Answer: Lord Peter Wimsey, for his ability to speak glorious nonsense; Elizabeth Peters’s Jacqueline Kirby (as a librarian, she’d have some excellent book recommendations); Jane Austen’s Emma, for all that gossip; and Mr. Rochester, because he smolders so nicely.

Ask me again tomorrow, and you’d probably get a different batch….

Question: What book by another author are you in love with right now?
Can I cheat and name multiple books?

Satisfying the gothic craving in me, I am deeply in love with Simone St. James’s two 1920s-set ghost stories, The Haunting of Maddy Clare and An Inquiry into Love and Death. I love ghost stories and these are particularly well done, just the right sort of prickles on the back of the neck with the Dorothy Sayers-esque 1920s tone.

Moving from windy nights to sunny beaches, the other book I’m in love with right now is Beatriz Williams’s A Hundred Summers, set in an upscale beach enclave in the 1930s as a young woman struggles to deal with her former fiance’s reappearance—as the husband of her former best friend. (Lily and Budgie in A Hundred Summers have a great deal in common with Addie and Bea in Ashford!)

Thanks so much for having me back here, Miss Eliza! It’s always a joy to visit Strange and Random Happenstance.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 3 comments  

Labels: As Time Goes By, Blog Tour, Desperate Romantics, Happy Valley, Kenya, Lauren Willig, Out of Africa, Pink Carnation, Rochester, The Ashford Affair, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, The Flame Trees of Thika

So now to Alex... the man successfully able to supplant Tommy... ah, I think he's a good match for Pen!

Name: Aidan Turner

Dream Character Casting for the Lauren Willig Miniseries: Captain Alex Reid

First Impression: As the oh so sexy second incarnation of Mitchell on Being Human... I'm pretty sure most people stateside didn't get to see the pilot with the Bryan Ferry/Marilyn Manson wanna be vamp. I have to say, for one of the first times ever, thank you for the recast!

Why they'd be the perfect actor for the Lauren Willig Miniseries: He has that harsh, yet extremely pretty exterior that I associate with Alex, but when he finally flashes that smile, oh man... Pen is a goner.

Lasting Impression: He made a good first impression!

What else you've seen them in: A very short cameo in The Tudors and a more substantial role on The Clinic. But it was Being Human that really caught people's attention and then he was unbelievably awesome in Desperate Romantics playing the stormy and fickle Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Can't believe it's them: Look at this picture! He's so little.

Wish they hadn't: Ummm... I don't think I've regretted anything he's done... well, if he'd kill George's girlfriend on Being Human I'd be happy... so let's say, if he doesn't kill her that's something to regret.

Bio: Became the new Sci-fi poster boy very quickly... I think the fans of Buffy and Angel were desperate for another hunk the likes of Spike... plus, we were in pre-mourning for the lose of the 10th Doctor and Battlestar Galactica. It's best to be prepared.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Aidan Turner, Alex Reid, Angel, Being Human, BSG, Buffy, Desperate Romantics, Lauren Willig, Mitchell, Pink Carnation Spotlight, Rossetti, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, The Clinc, The Tudors

So, Masterpiece No Longer Theater announced there Classics line-up today, and it looks solid. Some expected, some known and some surprising. Those who liked Laura Linney will be pleased she's back, being the first host to be asked to return since the relaunch of Masterpiece. So... lets get to the lineup!

First up we have Return to Cranford (January 10-17) followed by Emma (January 24-February 7), as expected. After Emma they're throughing in some previously shown Austen to round out February with Northanger Abbey (February 14) and Persuasion (February 21). Next up we have the new adaptation of The 39 Steps (February 28). While I'm a huge fan of the star, Rupert Penry-Jones I find that this isn't such a "new" show to be showing, mainly because it was released in England in 2008... but alas, the time gap can be great between England and her colonies. Also I think that when Hitchcock does the original, even if it's based on a book like Rebecca, it just shouldn't be remade. Following that we get the two newest Sharpe movies, with Challenge (March 28) and Peril (April 4). Challenge is from 2006! So while we get the newer 2008 installment, I'm thinking most people who follow Sharpe have seen these already, especially cause it aired on BBC America already... Plus it's a hard series to just watch in installments, you need to be a watcher of the whole series to enjoy. Then we get the new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank (April 11), which boats a stellar cast and was made in 2009. The final installment is Small Islands (April 18-25), which hasn't even aired yet anywhere. This looks most promising with the tangled lives of two couples in post war Britain.

So what's my take on the coming season... I'm interested that they chose such a wide gap of time periods, ranging from Regency to Post War Britain... But overall it's not that exciting. Real BBC nuts will be sad that it's not newer material and those who long for the costume drama won't be seeing too many Empire waists but more modern fair. Also, I know this isn't their fault because the BBC has been blamed... no Dickens!?! He's become the mainstay and the reason for PBS's Renaissance and to leave him out seems foolish. What had I hoped to see might be the logical question as to why I'm disappointed? Desperate Romantics for example? The new movies Enid and Gracie? Starring Helena Bonham Carter and Jane Horrocks... They've never shown Fanny Hill yet... perhaps that is too racy... The new Garrow's Law? Land Girls? I could keep listing... but I just have a feeling they'll never listen.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 4:05 PM 3 comments  

Labels: Classics, Desperate Romantics, Emma, Masterpiece Theater, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Return to Cranford, Sharpe's Challenge, Sharpe's Peril, Small Islands, The 39 Steps, The Diary of Anne Frank

Desperate Romantics
Based on the book by Franny Moyle
Release Date: Septmeber 21st, 2009 (Region 2), TBD (Region 1)
Starring: Aidan Turner, Amy Manson, Rafe Spall, Jennine Jacques, Tom Hollander, Zoe Tapper, Samuel Barnett, Timothy West and Sam Crane
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (UK)

This miniseries encapsulating the lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from first laying eyes on Lizzie Siddal to her death was one of the most captivating and energetic adaptations I've seen in recent years. Narrated by the fictitious reporter Fred Walters, we follow the brotherhood of William Holman Hunt (Spall), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Turner) and John Everett Millais (Barnett) as they set out to change the face of art forever. We first encounter them as outcasts trying to break into the Academy, despite the derision of those around them, Dickens himself even being a detractor. But upon finding Lizzie, they all become inspired and realize their best hope is to secure the patronage of John Ruskin, the artist and art critic. As there lives become more and more entwined with lack of inspiration and women troubles they gain more and more prominence in the art world. Their artistic achievements being encapsulated in the mess of their love lives. While each artist is his own character, from the naive child protege Millais, to the spiritually troubled pugilist Hunt, to the womanizing centrifugal force that is Rossetti, it's their friendship that is the driving force of their lives and their art.

What I think will really draw and keep the viewers is, that while this is based on a more historical text, there is a vibrancy and humor to the characters. The writing is willing to let you laugh and not bog you down with dusty old lectures on how life was back in the day. There's life in these artists! Some people I see have taken umbrage that this is too sensationalist, not real, but that's not the case. Sure they change things here and there and contract time, but overall the basic facts are correct. Plus they've done a great job on integrating the art into the show with each episode culminating in one piece created. The first three episodes concentrate on Millais' work, spotlighting Christ in the House of His Parents, Ophelia and The Order of Release. The next episode concentrates on Hunt's The Scapegoat, because who doesn't love a painting of a pretty goat? The final two episodes deal with Rossetti's Bocca Baciata and Beata Beatrix. The BBC's website has a great interactive page so you can learn more about the pieces used in the series. I also felt that this was perfect timing for me to watch this because a few weeks ago I went to the Art Institute of Chicago where they are hosting an exhibition on the Arts and Crafts movement, Apostles of Beauty, where they had not only original drawings from the Pre-Raphaelites, but they had Rossetti's Beata Beatrix, the idealization of his dead wife as Dante's Beatrice. To see the art in the flesh but then to see it celebrated in the series was too much to be hoped for.

Of course, not every miniseries is flawless, I have two issues with Desperate Romantics. The first is the music. It was atrocious, skipping from overtly Gothic to Beatles rifs... it was almost as if a madman had done the score, someone with no knowledge of musical time periods who just threw it all together at the last minute. You can have over the top slightly modern music, look to Murray Gold's work on Casanova. This was just shite. The second is the PR on this...it was billed as kind of a Victorian Entourage, or an Entourage with easels, thankfully it's anything but, no matter what the PR department thought. The main reason being Aidan Turner can act, whereas I've never seen any evidence of that fact with Adrian Grenier... I just think that saying that it's like this other thing that is popular but not very good is going to lead people to make unfair comparisons. The joy and exuberance that Aidan Turner lends to Rossetti, or the desperately psychotic stares of Hunt or the sweetness of Millais could never be captured by the actors or the writers of Entourage. I cry fowl! Just because it's fun and enjoyable doesn't mean you have to sell it by comparison to something similar but not quite, it should sell itself. I'm hoping once this hits stateside you'll get to see what I'm saying.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 2:00 AM 4 comments  

Labels: Aidan Turner, Beata Beatrix, Casanova, Desperate Romantics, Entourage, Hunt, Millais, Murray Gold, Pre-Raphaelite, Rafe Spall, Rossetti, Ruskin, Timothy West, Tom Hollander, Zoe Tapper

I'm starting a new recurring post where I'll be spotlighting the actors and actresses I love the most. Some will be well known, others well known to those who frequently watch the BBC like me. But all the best at what they do! I'll discuss where I first saw them, what made them finally memorable to me, taking them out of the ranks of, "you know that actor in part three of that miniseries" to me actually remembering their name and looking for it in upcoming productions. I will also have a, I didn't realize it was them segment, were apon rewatching a series I will have the "by jove" moment where I realize I knew them longer than I thought I did. There will also be the occasional, I wish they hadn't done that, as well as the obligatory bio and what to look forward to. So here goes, the premiere post of "Spotlight!" Which I thought I'd give a Desperate Romantics slant, because that's what I'm immersed in currently.

Name: Rafe Spall

First Impression: One of the two Andy's in Hot Fuzz, cause talking to them is always an uphill battle. Also great sunglasses.

Lasting Impression: George Emerson in Andrew Davies' A Room With a View (watch it if you haven't seen it!)

What else you've seen them in: From The Chatterly Affair to Dracula, to Wide Sargasso Sea to Desperate Romantics, Rafe has made a name for himself in the costume dramas. But his talents aren't just limited to waistcoats and corsets... he's also stared in more modern period pieces, such as the biopic of Frankie Howerd with David Walliams, and the gritty He Kills Coppers. There is also the modern fair of Hot Fuzz and Cracker.

Can't believe it's them: Remember that really chunky no necked employee at Shaun's work in Shaun of the Dead? That was, surprisingly Rafe Spall! I still can't believe that the tall, good looking man who's been a focal point in recent miniseries is the same as that chunky acne ridden teen who gets turned into a zombie!

Wish they hadn't: Kidulthood... not that it's bad, it's just written by my nemesis, Mickey Smith from Doctor Who, aka Noel Clarke.

Bio: Acting must run in his veins, because his father is none other than Peter Pettigrew, Timothy Spall. In fact his father co-stared with him in A Room with a View as his character's father, Mr. Emerson.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 2:31 AM 7 comments  

Labels: A Room with a View, Andrew Davies, David Walliams, Desperate Romantics, Dracula, He Kills Coppers, Hot Fuzz, Noel Clarke, Rafe Spall, Shaun of the Dead, Spotlight, Timothy Spall, Wide Sargasso Sea