‘The first time I saw Jenny Caddas she was taking a swarm of bees.’ It’s a great feeling when you fall in love with a book on the first page, or even the first line, and that’s what happened to me with The Physic Garden by Catherine Czerkawska. The voice is that of William Lang, … Continue reading The Physic Garden: too good to dissect
Writing a character is always a leap of the imagination, so is it any more of one to take on a member of the opposite sex? Maybe not, and I certainly haven’t had a problem with creating and speaking for the odd romantic hero, but many years ago when I first read The Ginger Tree by … Continue reading Man writes woman: The Ginger Tree
Recently there have been quite a few novels that have taken real life stories as their inspiration but Naomi Wood’s Mrs Hemingway is one of the few I’ve come across that has delivered the satisfaction of a convincing and well-crafted fiction along with the feeling of reading about events that did or could have taken … Continue reading Mrs Hemingway – at last, great biographical fiction
Last week someone – not a writer -asked how my current novel is going, and I tried to explain that I knew what events were going to take place, but was still struggling to write the rest of it. Oh, she said, so you know what will happen, you’re just padding it out? Well I … Continue reading In praise of padding (the good kind)
Rose Tremain’s Restoration is possibly my favourite historical novel of all time, putting the endearingly flawed Robert Merivel at the centre of an era we all think we know a lot about and teaching us so much more about it. If there was an image that stayed with me it was of Merivel in his plague doctor’s garb, showing … Continue reading Merivel – history serving fiction
Ali Bacon, Author 