Northern Roots in a Southern Green Room

Mr B here, invading Sam 'The Uncommon' Reader's rightful blogging place, to report on desperate scenes from the Lit Fest Green Room on Sunday evening. Leaving Team B (in the lurch) to bench-press stacks of Gerald Scarfe's absolutely colossal books into happy customer's bags, I took a rare opportunity on Sunday evening to pop down to the Green Room - that happy refuge of incoming and outgoing authors, and of festival team members in various states of collapse after the successful negotiation of 25+ events in a single weekend.


I chose that moment hoping to catch top radio DJ, walking music encyclopedia and author of brilliantly named North/South divide classic, "Pies and Prejudice", Stuart Maconie supping a brew before his event. Armed with a mental list of my not inconsiderable Northern credentials (complete with Bradford wool-milling Grandfather, Reg) I sailed into the room only to find myself in a queue of other wannabe Northerners, headed by Bath Big Read author and Mr B's Emporium favourite (and, I'm proud to say, fan) Jonathan Coe. As Maconie enjoyed a glass of Stout (I'm lying, that would be too good, it was Merlot) I jockeyed for position with the Lit-Fest's superhero organiser-in-chief Zoe Steadman-Milne who, it turns out, was also keen to talk whippets with the great (although actually quite little) man.


But no, Zoe and I were soon united in disappointment though as it became clear that it was taking Coe so long to convince Maconie that he was even a tiny bit Northern that he was going to hog him right up until he was dragged away for his Southern softie soundcheck.


Never fear. I got my Northernness pitch in later on. That's the thing about being a bookseller. Authors can't run away from you when you're having them sign a whopping big pile of books.


Posted by 'Mr B'

Rose George puts the 'log' in 'blog' - A Sunday Summary

Okay. No more Mr 'Sports-fans'. If you'd wanted a celebration of Middlesbrough's exploits you'd be reading the Tees Mouth blog. Today is all about the books and the lovely sunny festival vibes. Also on a point of style, Mr B (here B stands for Boss) kindly advises me that yesterday's post was 'macro'. In response, here's a mere snippet of my Sunday best.

Firstly, the most sprightly of speakers I've seen so far. Dr Ben 'Bad Science' Goldacre is a fierce, frizzy mop of intelligence in a tanktop who is cool and nerdy and righteous (dude). Check out his stuff in the Grauniad, online or, even better, buy his book from Mr B's Emporium. Science or statistics classes across the country are sorely missing the enthusiasm and incision this chap has at his finger-tips. Cue a mile-long line to get autographs - or is that medical advice? - from the goodly doctor.

Shoes of the day? Jonathon Stubbs, Development Officer. Effortlessly brown leather and apparently from a charity shop. Well done.

The Poetry Taxi - winsome undergraduates lure unsuspecting bloggers into the back of a taxi whereupon they unleash a tirade of abuse. 'You're a drawing-pin stuck in my sock,' I was told, 'you're a serious mistake in a nightie.' Oh. I get it. It's a poem by James Fenton. But I saw him speak this morning. He seemed so nice. But here's a pome by Mr Rosen. Now you're talking at my level! (Precisely down behind the dustbin.)

Nod Knowles, Chief Executive, kindly gives me a moment out of his busy schedule to provide you his top tip for the week: Hugh Lupton and Chris Wood, Sunday 8th March in the Guildhall at 5.30pm.

'I know that's going to be brilliant,' Mr Knowles tells me. Unfortunately, 'I know that's sold out,' the website tells me. 'There's something here for everyone,' says Mr Knowles. Quite so. And very generous to give me his thoughts in the middle of a very busy day.

Personally, I'm looking forward to Jon Ronson, Monday at 7.30pm at the Guildhall. Also, at the other end of the week, two events starting at 7.30pm at the Guildhall - New Writing, The Anthology and Focus on Hungary: Anna Szabó and George Szirtes. What is a blogger to do?

One last thing before I sign off then - there is more but it'll have to wait as I'm already rambling on - Rose George talking to Robin McKie about her book, The Big Necessity. It's about poo. It's a serious thing though - were it not for our First World sanitation and sewage systems, we'd all be in the shit. As t'were.

From the outset, Rose George says that she doesn't like toilet humour as she's 'not a 14 year old boy.' Just to say then, as she has previously published a book, this is her number two release. Sorry.

As always, remember that Mr B's is the official bookseller for Bath Literature Festival 2009 and if you've seen anything you like, do pop in and say so. Or just come and visit us for a little bookish pampering - we're always pleased to see you.

Sam 'The Uncommon' Reader

Sunday yummy Sunday

In my rush to get on with more pressing matters last night (empty a bottle of wine in front of the footer) I forgot to mention what a large amount of shoulder rubbing and chin wagging I did yesterday. My upper body aches. I did more networking in an hour than a BT engineer gets to in a year (other telecommunication suppliers are available).

Upper and foremost was bright young thing Tracey Wall, a product of the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA. Currently she's freelancing in an ever diminishing sector - in a recession it's always the arts that get it in the neck first, eh - until her magna opus is published. Keep your eyes peeled back for that one.

While you're waiting though, you could do worse than to catch a whiff of the current crop on Wednesday night at the Rondo.

Right. Coffee - Check. iPod - Check. Cardigan - Check (other woolen products are available). Who doesn't love Sundays? I'll see you out there, page-botherers.

Sam 'The Uncommon' Reader

No more sleeps

Good evening, sports fans. And what a balmy evening it was. The skies cleared, the air thickened and you dear Bathonians swarmed like happy mozzies to the Guildhall to feast on literary veins. A-hem.

Yes, today was a treat. Despite an inevitable draw on the cards in the Windies, England have at least produced a batting performance worthy of a national team. Liverpool, bless them, all but gave up the title ghost at the Riverside. Good old pog-faced Southgate. Rugby? Okay. Today we're Scottish. Pass me the Highland Park, old boy! Don't mind if I do. And another? Ho ho.

But hang on. I've got to at least attend one event at the Lit Fest if I'm to write this blog. And so it is that, at 5.30 your time, Mr B's Blogger finds himself not in front of the goggle-box enjoying O'Driscoll's finest, but instead at the Guildhall awaiting an audience with Auschwitz survivor, Thomas Buergenthal, to celebrate the launch of his new book, A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz. It chronicles his youth under the long, dark shadow of the Nazi regime. A sombre first night then, eh.

Well. No. The atmosphere is as warm as the room. Friendly. The familiar voice of Kirsty Lang (something about it reminds me of washing up). And here to the stage is a chipper old chap who joins our Kirsty on the comfy brown leather sofas. He could your grandpa. Genially he describes fleeing to Poland from the family home in what is now Slovakia. Random killings in the ghetto. The visas that would take them to England on the day that Hitler decided he had other ideas for the Buergenthals (on the day the family were due to ship out, the Nazis invadde Poland). And then Auschwitz. Inmate number B2930 at 10 years old. The Angel of Death. The sounds of screaming through the night. Kirsty Lang tells us that although it is primarily a very optimistic book, it frequently moved her to tears. You aint kidding, missus.

But the atmosphere, as I say, is warm. He talks of a personal battle with the Nazis, a 'wonderful game of staying alive.' Chuckles abound from the audience. 'I won and you lost,' he points at Hitler. The broken innocence of a childhood spent avoiding Dr Mengele and starvation produced this bitter sweet view of his formative years.

Recently we've had gushy Kate in the big shiny rendition of The Reader. We've had Daniel Craig as Partisan and Tom Cruise bashin' the Nuzzies. In modern popular fictions, the Jews in Nazi Germany are sweetly victims or they are action heroes in bristling technicolour. But here is a man who was a child, in his mother's words, a lucky child. (The story goes that a fortune teller told her that although bad times were ahead, Thomas would come out the other end okay.) Importantly, the Holocaust is by no means gone from living memory. Before it is resigned to history, or more worryingly, story and myth, personal accounts of this dark moment in humanity are vital to our understanding of what happened, and vital to what Buergenthal admits he pointedly turns his attention away from - Holocaust deniers. 'They're trying to kill us twice,' quoth he. Yes.

Questions from the floor then. Asked what he most enjoyed once free and reunited with his mother, Mr Buergenthal replies resoundingly 'sports!' With no religious instruction available, he was allowed to play football and go running.

Afterwards, Herr B tells me that he'd very much enjoyed Kirsty Lang's interviewing. She'd brought the best out of him, so he says. I'm only glad I wasn't interviewing him. I completely forget to ask him which team he supports.

Mr B's - the official bookseller of the Bath LIterature Festival 2009

If you've liked anything you've seen today, including A Lucky Child, remember that Mr B's can supply all your bibliotherapy needs: http://www.mrbsemporium.com/.

Good night for now - Match Of The Day calls.

Sam 'The Uncommon' Reader

Two more sleeps until the Bath Literature Festival 2009!

Now boys and girls, I'm sure you're as excited as I am in knowing that this year's Literature Festival is nearly upon us. As of this Saturday, we'll be keeping you up to date DAILY with a super-dooper blog written lovingly by our very own friend Sam, so keep-a-readin' to make sure you're on top of it all. It's mayhem here at the Emporium; we're printing, carting, reading, writing, drawing, cutting - not to mention sweating, bleeding and crying to deliver you the best festival yet.

In the last few days before it all kicks off I thought I'd cease all the rushing, have a cup of tea and tell you what's going down over the next few days of "debate, discovery, passion and inspiration." One of Saturday's highlights sure to set your ears aflame is the Big Bath Read and who have they got talking? Only tip-top titan-of-an-author Jonathan Coe! He'll be at the Guildhall between 4 and 5 discussing his most recent novel The Rain Before it Falls (sponsored by Mr B's and our friends at the soon-to-open Jika Jika Cafe). Not only can you listen and join in the hearty debate, but the following day you can hear the music that inspired the title, Flautist Theo Travis, playing to extracts of the novel at 4:30pm.

Sunday also brings many a literary delicacy for you to enjoy. If you fancy a bit of demonic, Dali-esque satire, then come along and see political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and admire the work from Monsters: How George Bush Saved the World and Other Tall Stories. Inspired by greed, hypocrisy, power and arrogance, Scarfe tells the tales of Bill Clinton (and how he Did Not Have Sex With That Woman) Margaret Thatcher and John Major in a mad lampoon-athon of a book.

Monday's offerings include not only Chinese Poetry and an extensive workshop on how to edit your own writing for publication (listen up all Creative Writing Students!) but also, at 7:30pm the Guildhall, award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker and all round hilariously witty man, Jon Ronson. He'll be reading from his side-splittingly funny new book, What I do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness. As a fan, with his old Guardian column ripped out and stashed in an old trunk, I can recommend this event wholeheartedly. Also, you might be interested to know that his previous black comedy offering, Men Who Stare at Goats - a romp of a read about conspiracy in Iraq - is being made into a Hollywood movie, starring none other than Ewan Mcgregor, Jeff Bridges and George Clooney!

Right, where are we? Tuesday. Yes. Well, Tuesday provides us with a fascinating talk by Yasmin Hai and Ziauddin Sardar, authors of Balti Britain: A Journey Through the British Asian Experience and The Making of Mr. Hai's Daughter, respectively. An absolute plethora of culture and identity, wit and religion not to be missed.

Anyway, enough yapping from me. If that all sounded pretty peachy to get you started, then keep clicking on trusty Sam's blog to stay in the know for all 9 days of Lit Fest. See you at the Festival and please do comment at will with your festival experiences and comments. We'd love to hear from you!

Mr & Mrs B's Battle of the Classics

Mr & Mrs B's Battle of the Translated Classics - Andric vs Alain-Fournier

Coming up with a reading strategy is always fun in the New Year but when you are a bookshop owner it presents a real challenge. Where to start with book group books, advance reading copies, brand new, fab looking titles, kids' books etc....and by the end of the year we never seem to have read enough of the classics. So this year, we have a new "classics with a twist"plan. In between the regular book group reads and contemporary titles, we (i.e. Mr & Mrs B) will each read a classic translated fiction title starting with surname "A" and working down the alphabet. And we'll let you know what we thought of them - warts and all - right HERE.

Ivo Andric vs Alain-Fournier

First up for Mr B was Ivo Andric "The Bridge over the Drina"

(Harvill, £10.99. Originally Published in 1945 in Serbo-Croat).

In 25 words: Stone bridge built by C16 Turkish Grand Vezir stands witness to 350 years of Balkan upheaval in fascinating history lesson cum epic multi-character novel.

In more than 25 words: This incredible novel is splattered with eye-opening (and often head-losing) stories illustrating the tension between Bosnians and Serbs and the Turks and then Austro-Hungarians that ruled over them during the second half of the last millenium. A biographical novel of a bridge built at the town of Visegrad by a Bosnian-born Grand Vezir in memory of his last journey from his homeland from which he was plucked by the Turks as a young boy.

Beginning with the long and bloody construction of the bridge and then moving fitfully forward through 350 years, Andric introduces us to an endless stream of sometimes loveable, sometimes roguish Visegrad residents (often cleverly linking back to their descendents who we may have encountered in previous chapters). The bridge often looms large in the stories - a Turkish bride leaps from it to avoid marriage; a comically-described gambler loses his biggest bet (and possibly his marbles) on it; the new governing forces of the Austro-Hungarian empire are met by the town's elders for the first time on it; drunks teeter across its parapet and innumerable people end up impaled, beheaded or even pinned-by-the-ear to it.

Through these vignettes of life in Visegrad and on its stone bridge across the Drina, you gradully gain an understanding of the region's tumultous history right up to the outbreak of WW1 following the Archduke's assassination in relatively nearby Sarajevo. For me the most remarkable aspect of the novel is the multitude of perspectives that Andric gives you on the momentous events taking place in the big and scary world outside Visegrad, as he shows us those events through the eyes of Turks, Serbs, Bosnians and Austrians and Jews, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Moslems.

Andric won the Nobel Prize for this novel and it really wider recongition as a genuine C20 classic here in the UK.

- v. -

First choice for Mrs B was Henri Alain-Fournier "The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)"

(Penguin, £8.99. Originally published in 1913 in French).

Among the reviews which paper our downstairs toilet at Mr B's is an article all about this book which few English people seem to have heard of, but which to French people is as famous as "Great Expectations" is to us British. It is billed as one of the defining coming-of-age stories of French literature and the introduction draws parallels with The Great Gatsby. Every time I visit the toilet I am reminded of it and, bring half-French, feel it my duty to give it a go. felt it remiss of me not to have read it and was excited at the prospect.

The narrator is a teenage schoolboy in a French provincial town at the end of 19th Century. His routine life is turned upside down with the arrival at the school of the charismatic, larger than life Augustin Meulnes. The "Great Meaulnes" disappears one evening, returning a few days later telling of a mysterious, candlelit wedding party in a crumbling estate, with costumed guests and an impossibly beautiful girl. As Meaulnes tries to reconstruct a way back to the dreamy lost estate, he manages to alienate his schoolmates and then the visit of a strange gypsy and his friend lead to some sinister goings-on.

I won't give away any more of the plot here. It is a story of nostalgic longing for the past. On the one hand, Meaulnes' yearning to relive his magical experience means he can't move on with his life. On the other hand, he is desperate to escape his adolescence, with all its emotional constraints.

It is an intriguing read which I enjoyed immensely although I must say I think I came at it with my expectations perhaps too high. The atmosphere he creates around the lost estate and the sense of wistful longing I found superb. However it lacked the intensity of other French novels I have read. Although I found it a good translation, perhaps it is a book which should be read in the original if at all possible since its strength lies in the prose and not the plot.

Ask the Author - James Long

Mr B's Marvellous Monday Book Group was packed out at the last meeting to discuss the intriguing "Ferney". The author James Long was then kind enough to take time out of writing the sequel (you heard it here first!) to answer some of our group's questions. Thank you, James.

Mr B - Many book group members didn’t find the character Ferney particularly likeable. Some people thought that maybe he should have stepped up to the plate and killed himself at the point that Gally was murdered rather than be now pressuring her into a future suicide to synchronise their life spans. Do you think that’s fair or do you feel more sympathetically towards Ferney now your creation is complete?

James - He's an old curmudgeon. Wouldn't you be? I would hate to be sentenced to limitless lives. He's not nearly as generous minded as Gally which is perhaps another reason why he needs her so much. She is the only thing that makes life bearable. Of course, at that point he doesn't know she has been murdered for sure and goes on hoping. I might come back to that. See below. You are about to meet him as a young man.

Mr B - How did the writing/planning process begin for “Ferney”, was it with the relationship between the characters or the historical ideas?

James - See below. It started with the house. I wrote a version of the story, put it away for many years then rewrote it completely. In that time, Ferney had grown into a character who always inhabited a corner of my mind. I didn't know the full, remarkable history of Penselwood until I began to research it the second time around.

Mr B - The group were intrigued by the strong focus on the location of Penselwood and wondered first whether the house itself is really there and secondly whether there was really a Constable painting of Penselwood.

James - Yes, there really is a house. I've moved the location a little to protect it but it is on the outskirts of the village though it is now little more than a ruin. I was taken to it by a friend more than thirty years ago when it still had a roof and I tried to buy it - more or less as described in the book except the extraordinary old lady who owned it would not sell it. The house itself had a feeling about it which inspired the whole story. I go back there from time to time to say hello to it as it moulders away. There is no Constable painting, I'm afraid, but he did spend time in the area. The Constable section is based on his correspondence. We know when he was in the area, what he was doing and what was worrying him at the time. There are a few days when he was at Gillingham when he 'goes missing'. He could have been at Penselwood ...

Mr B - A group member had heard rumour of a sequel. We’d be intrigued to know if that is or has ever been on your mind.

James - Yes. I'm writing it right now. In fact, I shouldn't really be distracting myself by replying to this, but I've done 1,500 words today so far so it makes a good break.

Mr B - If there isn’t going to be a sequel, book group members would love to know whether you think Gally is now going to commit suicide (after the book’s twisty conclusion)? Or is that up to the reader to decide?!

James - Patience. Wait for the sequel.

Mr B - What do you think is in store for you after your own demise? Do you believe, or want to believe, in reincarnation?

James - I am entirely open-minded. I am inclined to believe in a Buddhist type of reincarnation, the variety in which we are all sparks returning to some central energy. If I come back I don't expect to have any direct memories of past lives but I have experienced that in other people just two or three times in ways I find hard to deny

Team B Reads the Bookers - Part 2: Child 44

I wasn't sure about this book at first - it's a little gruesome to start with - but by the end I found it unputdownable. The plot is cleverly constructed to give you tantalising glimpses of the denouement, never quite enough to allow you (or me, at any rate!) to guess what's going to happen but enough to keep you reading.

Set in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the novel focusses on an agent in the State Security department. He is loyal, dedicated and hard-working, an exemplary employee of a cruel and barbaric regime. But events take an unexpected turn... And I won't say any more because I'd hate to spoil it. The backdrop is evocative - gritty and harsh with a distinct lack of human compassion - and the fact that elements of the book are based on actual events is quite scary!

All in all a good thriller which I'd recommend to anyone who likes a well-written, plot-driven novel.

Team B Reads the Bookers - Part 1: Netherland

Hello, hello. As some of us here at Team B are dipping our reading toes into the Booker Prize long list we thought we'd share our views on the contenders here on the Blog of Bloggy Delights. There's no way we'll get through them all before the long list becomes the short list early next month, but what we do read, we'll write about here.

I finished Netherland by Joseph O'Neill last week. Early doors, it was the bookies favourite to scoop the Booker Prize. Not sure if that's still the case. The novel focusses on a Dutch banker named Hans who's living in New York with his English lawyer wife and young son. September 2001 comes and Hans' wife quickly goes...scurrying back to the supposed safety of England with their child.

Left alone in New York with a fragile marriage based on frequent trans-atlantic travel, Hans spends his time moping around his temporary home in the notorious Chelsea Hotel and becoming involved with a cricket team consisting primarily of Pakistanis, Indians and West Indians. One of those cricketers is the enigmatic going-on-weird Chuck Ramkisoon, a West Indian with a bizarre field-of-dreams like vision of creating a cricketing empire in New York.

Hans is gradually drawn into Chuck's dream in what I found to be an annoyingly passive fashion (for a high-earning banker he really did seem to be an easily led character) whilst occasionally remembering to spend some time thinking about rescuing his marriage.

It's a clever novel and one with stacks of atmosphere. It's also one of the best looks at the slow-burn impact of 9/11 on the lives of New Yorkers that I've read. The early chapters on the expat cricketing scene in New York are also excellent. But, overall, for me the book lacked anything to keep me hooked. Hans becomes ever-more self-absorbed and morose and I didn't really care whether what happened to his marriage or to Chuck or to his friendship with Chuck. There was just too much motionless musings by Hans rather than anything really actually happening and even when things weren't happening Hans' musings and the descriptive parts weren't enough to keep me turning the pages particularly enthusiastically.

So that's that. Bear in mind it's a review of something touted as favourite for the Booker Prize so I am thinking about it against high expectations. It's a good novel and at times the writing is superb, but it really didn't do it for me overall. [Nic]

Ask the Author - Bethan Roberts

Mr B's Marvellous Monday Book Group read Bethan Roberts' "The Pools" in July. Bethan was then kind enough to have an e-chat with Mr B to answer some of the questions/comments that were made by book group members. Heaps of thanks to Bethan for giving us some great answers. You can see what she says below and if you'd like to hear more from her about The Pools and her brand new book "The Good Plain Cook" then click here for information on her reading at Mr B's on 11th September, 2008.

Mr B - We were interested to know whether it was the crux of the plot or the key characters that came first in the writing process. Particularly as The Pools is your first novel, we wondered what drove the writing process for you?

Bethan - I'd like to say it was the characters, as I often bang on to my students about how everything in a story – plot, setting, tone, theme etc – comes from characters. But I have to admit that the plot ― or rather the plot outline ― came first with this book (I don't think the plot has ever come first for anything else I've written, though).

I started with a true story, in fact. When I was nine years old, a boy in a neighbouring village went missing, and about a week later his body was found in one of the flooded gravel pits near his house. According to newspaper reports from the time, he'd been stabbed 20 times in the back by an older boy. It was a horrific incident, one that burned itself onto my memory because it was the first time I became aware that such things happened –children went missing and didn't come back.

I suppose it haunted me for a long time because I found that, when I was studying for an MA in creative writing at Chichester University, I wanted to write about it, to fictionalise it, to imagine the stories around such an event. I suppose it's an attempt to explain something that I find very frightening. I think quite a bit of writing comes from this impulse – the impulse to imagine the worst, and then write about it as a way of kind of 'working out' the fear. As I wrote, I found, though, that the (entirely fictional) characters drove the plot forward, and I got further away from the original true story and deeper into the novel.

Mr B - The character that caused most debate was Howard. I think he was the character that book group members felt they had got to know most closely. Following on from the first question really, was Howard a starting point for you? Did you think your readers would like him or feel sorry for him or do you tend not to guess/concern yourself overly with possible reader reactions?

Bethan - I'm really glad you felt you got to know Howard well. For me, it is Howard's book. Once I had his voice, I had a 'way in' to the novel, so he was a starting point, yes. (I actually tried to write the story from Robert's point of view first, but this didn't work. The story seemed to need to be told from a more oblique angle). The only reader's reaction that I think about when I'm writing is my own (which also includes, of course, the imaginary readers who stand behind me, looking over my shoulder – old teachers, my poet husband, members of my wonderful writing workshop) - I think I'd drive myself a bit mad if I tried to think of anyone else's!

Readers' contrasting reactions to Howard have startled me, though – some seem to find him 'creepy', others feel very sympathetic towards him. I can't really judge him – it's not for me to do that – but I do have a lot of sympathy for Howard, even though his world-view is rather limited, to say the least.

Mr B- Someone in the book group referred to Joanna as a "Tart with a Heart" during the book group discussion, and we then debated whether she really had much of a heart after all. I certainly felt she was borderline amoral in some episodes. How do you feel about her?

Bethan - I'm glad she provoked debate! Again, I don't feel it's the writer's place to judge her. If you judge characters you kill them (it's all right for a reader to do it, but a writer has to cling on to every breath a character takes and nurture them unconditionally…). You just have to try to bring them to life, with all their complexities and contradictions. Joanna is, I would say, very confused. She's at a point in her life where she's got a lot of sexual power and she doesn't really understand the consequences of that power. She doesn't have much self-knowledge yet, I suppose. And neither does Howard, of course.

Mr B - Do you consider the town to be as much a character in the book as the human characters? Many people commented on how well you described the bleak 1980's small-town semi-industrial landscape including the Pools themselves. Did you have to work just as hard in creating the character of the place as of the individuals?

Bethan - Yes. I'm really pleased that people enjoyed the bleak industrial landscape! I enjoyed writing it. Setting is very important for me. Elizabeth Bowen said, "nothing happens nowhere" and I would agree with this. It's impossible to tell a good story without a strong sense of where that story is taking place. Your characters have to act out their story in a particular place, and this place often throws light on who they are and what they are feeling.

Mr B - A word that came up repeatedly when considering the atmosphere of The Pools was "sinister" and "uncomfortable". Would you agree with that and, if so, was it your intention to create that atmosphere?

Bethan - Great! It worked! Yes, absolutely, I was aiming for menace. I was aiming for tension. I was aiming to make the reader uncomfortable enough to want to know what was really going on. I was aiming to write a good tale that would keep them turning the pages, really. I hope it wasn't too relentlessly bleak, though!