22 September 2016
Recipe For A Book Club
Meeting author Deborah Lawrenson.
by Lynda Goetz
The book club I set up some 16 years ago is not exactly the most serious you could encounter. Over the years it has evolved from a group of 10 (too many, really) with some carelessly thrown-together ‘nibbles’ and a glass (or two) of wine, through a much-diminished but determined trio of die-hards, before establishing itself, over the last seven or so years, as a group of six, with one former and two new members added to the coven. It is, as you will have gathered from that last description, all female, although very occasionally a husband or partner may join us for the meal or part of the discussion. Some time ago, the food became as important as the books and it is now an opportunity for much-loved old favourites in terms of recipes and daring new experiments. The books vary from quite serious works of literature, both historical and contemporary, to light summer reads, the occasional book of poetry and the odd work of non-fiction or biography. We even read an obscure play once, called rather memorably Rembrandt’s Mirror and written by someone’s former tutor, whose name is less memorable (as far as I’m aware, nothing to do with the novel of the same title published last year by Kim Devereux). The venue depends on whose turn it is to host. Discussion varies from in-depth with dissension to non-focussed and flippant, and (dare I say it) there are not infrequent occasions when a number of the group have not managed to get around to reading the book at all; so, all-in-all, not exactly an earnest tutorial of an evening.
Last week we invited a real live, published author to this very informal event. We have managed this feat once before and, as you have probably already guessed, this is because on each occasion there is some tenuous connection which has made it possible. Last week, on an unbelievably balmy evening in the Home Counties, we enjoyed a delicious al fresco meal and an interesting discussion with an author whose name I had never heard of before one of the group suggested her sister’s friend was prepared to come and talk to us. As a ‘wannabe’ author myself, who has written one and a half unpublished novels and never quite had the courage to pursue the dream in the face of (in the old days) the rejection letters and (nowadays) the complex and unknowable ways of self-promotion by social media, I was impressed by Deborah Lawrenson before I even met her. In the flesh, she was charmingly unpretentious, interesting and entertaining.
The book we had (all) read was 300 Days of Sun, the most recent of Deborah’s eight published novels. This is published by HarperCollins in the United States (as also are her two previous books, The Sea Garden and The Lantern). During the course of the evening Deborah explained that this was because her agent had moved to the US and she had therefore ‘followed’ (only virtually). An agent used to be a pretty indispensable part of getting published, as I discovered years ago with my cookery book. These days, of course, it is possible, if you are lucky, to skip this middleman and publish online before being picked up by a publisher who will get you into print (as for example the famous or infamous 50 Shades of Grey). It transpired that Ms Lawrenson had originally been published years ago, following her time as a journalist on The Daily Mail. Her first novel, Hot Gossip (1994), was inspired by working with Nigel Dempster. This was followed by a sequel Idol Chatter in 1995. These were published by Mandarin (an imprint of Heinemann used for their mass market paperbacks). During the writing of her third book, The Moonbathers, which came out in 1998, Mandarin was sold to Random House and subsumed into their commercial imprint Arrow. However, as Deborah explained to us, and as she says on her website (http://www.deborah-lawrenson.co.uk/info/biography.html), trying to get her fourth book, The Art of Falling, published five years later was like starting from scratch! Eventually this too was published by a branch of Arrow, but only after Deborah had first self-published it in 2003 under her own imprint, Stamp Publishing.
Since The Art of Falling was re-published by Arrow in 2005, Deborah has gone on to write four more novels, all of which have involved historical elements interweaved with a contemporary story and all of which have been set in southern Europe. She has achieved a substantial following and reviews generally tend to be favourable and enthusiastic. Her latest atmospheric book is set in Portugal, and the historical element is provided by a story of murky dealings in wartime Lisbon, written by an American, which it transpires has very real links with the present day mystery of the narrator’s new friend, who is trying to find out what, if any, are his own connections with Portugal. We had an interesting discussion with Deborah about the gestation of the novel; the obvious connections with the McCann tragedy; the wartime situation in Lisbon; and the difficulties and advantages related to writing ‘a novel within a novel’. Clearly Deborah did not feel we had been either too sycophantic or overly critical, as she wrote in her email thanking her hostess “…thank you so much for inviting me and for being quite the loveliest book group I have visited for years! You were all so generous and insightful about 300 Days of Sun, and books and reading in general, that it was sheer pleasure to be able to join in.” She even asked for our hostess’s recipe for ginger ice-cream. So, author and readers happy, and perhaps our recipe for a book group is not too bad after all. I’m not sure I will belatedly overcome my own fear of putting pen to paper to write fiction – it sounds harder than ever to get published! However, if anyone would like a good, easy-to-read, well-written, well-plotted page-turner that evokes the sun-filled days of a Mediterranean summer, then 300 Days of Sun has got the recipe just about right.
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