CHASE THE WIND - Book review

E.V. Thompson’s second book in his Retallick saga, Chase the Wind, was published in 1977 and won the Best Historical Novelist Award. In the chronological story sense it’s the sequel to Ben Retallick (1980) though clearly the first book in the series was published three years later!

The story is written in the omniscient viewpoint in order to provide the thoughts and actions of assorted characters, and works well, pulling the reader into the saga.

Set mainly in 1840s Cornwall, it begins with young Josh Retallick down the copper mine of Wheal Sharptor – the same mine his father worked in. Ben, aged 35, was reckoned an “old man” by mining standards. ‘It was an era when a miner who had seen his fortieth birthday below ground was something of a rarity’ (p8). They worked hard, digging ‘deep into the bowels of the earth, raising mountains of rubble around their shafts’ (p65).

Josh is being taught to read and write by the local preacher, William Thackeray, a good man who ‘was concerned for the souls of his people... he saw no reason why they should suffer unnecessary hardships in this life in order to enter the same heaven to which their far more comfortable employers were bound’ (p61).

It’s the time of the Corn Laws that created a cost-of-living crisis for the working men and women, a time when unionism was being advocated at great risk to those who espoused it. ‘The shortage of corn had been growing steadily worse throughout England. It had not been helped by the government laws which prevented corn being imported, in a misguided attempt to protect the interests of the farmers’ (p64).

For many years as youngsters, Josh had been a play friend of Miriam Trago, a wild child. But Josh had to put childish play aside as he was going away on an apprenticeship to become a mine-engineer. While on his apprenticeship he befriends Francis Trevithick and is not slow to grasp the nettle of new inventions, always seeking greater efficiency and increased safety.

Miriam is given some advice by the preacher: ‘You must find a man who recognises that a woman is capable of thinking for herself – a rarity in these parts, I’m afraid’ (p130). Before long Miriam was thinking for herself all right – vociferously saddened and angry at the lot of a miner’s wife. If her husband died in a mine, she was cast out of her cottage within a month. Her future might be the poor house or selling herself to drunken miners to feed her children. ‘That’s the system her husband gave his life for’ (p155).

Not all the mine owners are despots; some are considerate with a conscience, and it’s Josh’s fortunate lot that he works for such men. But the odds are still stacked against him and tragedy strikes more than once to contrive the separation of Josh and Miriam before they can truly be together. The preacher becomes a zealot for unionism, though ‘He’s the spoon as does the stirring, not the pot as sits on the fire’ (p349). Betrayal, conflict with the armed forces of the law, love and death, trial and retribution create tension for the reader. The pages fly by as the denouement closes in.

A very satisfying historical novel that puts you there, with believable characters, which impelled me to pick up the next book in the series to find out what happens – Harvest of the Sun.

Ernest Victor Thompson died in 2012, aged 81.

Editorial comment (for the benefit of writers):

‘Where are we?’ he asked as he swung his legs to the ground (p104). This scene is indoors so the ‘ground’ should read the ‘floor’. A common error to be found in a number of books.

‘(Josh and John) galloped past the bridge...’ (p353). Having written several westerns, I have tussled with this ambiguity. Of course the rider isn’t doing the galloping, but the horse is; maybe instead it could read ‘They led their horses in a gallop past the bridge’. A quibble, really; we know what is meant.

THE LOVING SPIRIT - book review

 

Daphne du Maurier’s debut novel, The Living Spirit, published in 1931, is remarkable, the writing is so assured; whether she is writing about sailing on a storm-tossed sailing vessel or travelling through the beautiful countryside of her beloved Cornwall, you’re there. Within 350 pages she covers four generations of a family’s history: Jennifer Coombe (1830-1863); Joseph Coombe (1863-1900); Christopher Coombe (1888-1912); and Jennifer Coombe (1812-1930).

It begins in 1830, with the marriage of Janet Coombe to her second cousin Thomas. It is a good match, and yet Janet hankered for an adventurous life, away from the small harbour town of Plyn. ‘She loved Thomas dearly, but she knew in her soul there was something waiting for her greater than this love for Thomas. Something strong and primitive, lit with everlasting beauty’ (p18). She wanted to stride across the deck of a sailing boat, but felt chained by her sex and the mores of her time.

‘… the peace of God was unknown to her, and that she came nearer to it amongst the wild things in the woods and fields, or on the rocks by the water’s edge, than she did with her own folk in Plyn. Only glimpses of peace came her way, streaks of clarity in unawakened moments that assured her of its existence and of the certainty that one day she would hold the secret for her own’ (p32).

And: ‘… the rest of her stole from the warm, cheerful room, and the dear kindly faces, and fled away, away she knew not whither, beyond the quiet hills and the happy harbour of Plyn, through the seas and the sky – away to the untrodden air, and the nameless stars’ (p34).

This longing for she knew not what persisted until she absconded from a Christmas attendance at the local church and instead was drawn to the ancient castle ruins overlooking the sea. ‘She leant against the Castle ruins with the sea at her feet, and the light of the moon on her face. Then she closed her eyes, and the jumbled thoughts fled from her mind, her tired body seemed to slip away from her, and she was possessed with the strange power and clarity of the moon itself’ (p37).

It is here, as if experiencing an out-of-body and out-of-time revelation, when she encounters the man from the future, her son. This episode is eerie and moving. And its haunting sequel can be read on p187. Thus, finally, after giving birth to Samuel and Mary, what she had waited for occurred. Her son Joseph was born: ‘And when Janet held her wailing baby to her breast, with his wild dark eyes and his black hair, she knew that nothing in the whole world mattered but this, that he for whom she had been waiting had come at last’ (p51). While she continued to be a loving wife and mother, there was something other binding her to Joseph, ‘a love that held the rare quality of immortality’ (p66).

Janet had three more children, Herbert, Philip and Elizabeth, and of these three Philip proved to be the darkest, most spiteful individual who blighted the lives of others in the family.

Joseph’s wife gave birth to four children: Christopher, Albert, Charles and Katherine. And Christopher fathered three – Harold, Willie and Jennifer.

Both Joseph and Christopher’s lives are seriously damaged by the thoroughly unpleasant Philip’s scheming. The family is displaced to London while Jennifer is a child; these days are well told, displaying the young girl’s burgeoning character and self-reliance. Jennifer seems to have inherited Janet’s restlessness and affinity for the sea. ‘She could not imagine a world without the sea, it was something of her own that belonged to her, that could never be changed, that came into her dreams at nights and disturbed her not, bringing only security and peace’ (p258).

Du Maurier’s descriptions are always so visual, whether about nature or people, such as Jennifer’s grandmother: ‘Slowly she came into the room swaying from side to side, her great breasts heaving beneath her black dress, her white hair piled high on her head like a huge nest. As she moved she grunted to herself, and it took her nearly three minutes before she was seated in her chair, her bad foot on a cushion, and the Bible open before her’ (p264).

Though somewhat grotesque, several scenes involving her grandmother are highly amusing as she frequently misinterprets meanings or miss-hears words – see pp290-291, for example.

The book’s title is taken from one of Emily Bronte’s poems – and is echoed here:

Janet – Joseph – Christopher – Jennifer, all bound together in some strange and thwarted love for one another, handing down this strain of restlessness and suffering, this intolerable longing for beauty and freedom… bound by countless links that none could break, uniting in one another the living presence of a wise and loving spirit’ (p309).

A powerful saga – and an emotional one, too.

Editorial comment

Du Maurier isn’t the only writer who does this: telling you of a dramatic happening and then goes on to detail the actual incident, thereby destroying any surprise, shock or suspense. Sometimes, it may simply be a misplaced afterthought, as this example suggests. On p206: ‘… Christopher made the acquaintance of a young man of his own age, who seemed friendly, and the pair spent their free time together…’ Then on p207: ‘His friend, Harry Frisk, was waiting for him…’ The friend’s name should have been introduced when he was first mentioned, not almost a half-page later. Blame the editor.

BEN RETALLICK - Book review

 

The first of E.V. Thompson’s nine book historical saga, Ben Retallick, was published in 1980. It begins in Cornwall in March 1818. The title character is fifteen and has just survived the flooding of the tin mine where he worked. His father Pearson, 37, also a miner, is suffering from years of working underground mining tin: ‘I’ve spent too many years following tin lodes, Ben. I carry a part of every one of them inside me now.’ In short, he’s finished; the tin in his blood and lungs.  Ben makes the acquaintance of Jesse Henna, a young girl and neighbour. There appears to be a mystery involving Jesse’s mother Maude and the local landowner Sir John Vincent. We will learn the answer in good time. However, when Sir John’s Colman inherits the manor house and land, he casts out the Hennas and encourages his game-keeper Reuben Holyoak to wed Jesse. Colman is not a pleasant man.

Holyoak is unaware of the attraction Ben and Jesse share. ‘In the darkness of the night, with only the stars to bear witness, Ben and Jesse had consummated their love, and Jesse had crossed the threshold of womanhood’ (p100).

Times were hard in those days, and people suffered real grinding poverty, and Thompson reflects this well. All the ingredients are here: suicide, press gang abductions, still-born birth, mob anger, fishermen and tin miners at odds, the imposition of cruel law, death on the gallows, drunken domestic violence, blighted love, poignant deaths, kind-hearted neighbours and social commentary that never dominates the story and characters.

The second volume is Chase the Wind (which surprisingly was published in 1977!).   

The Stranger from the Sea - Book review

 

The eighth Poldark novel by Winston Graham, The Stranger from the Sea was published in 1981. It begins in 1810, ten years after the previous novel, The Angry Tide (published in 1977).

The Angry Tide ended on a philosophical note from Ross Poldark’s wife Demelza, debating on the inevitable end we all must face: ‘The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn’t exist yet. That’s tomorrow. It’s only now that can ever be… We can’t ask more…’ (p612) [In a way, it’s echoing Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlett in Gone With the Wind – ‘Tomorrow is another day’]. So I thought it seemed a good place to leave the Poldark saga for a while, even though I had the rest of the series on my shelf.

Now, some many years later I’ve taken up the saga again from where I left off with The Stranger from the Sea.

Even after such a long absence, I soon became familiar with the characters again, though they have naturally aged, including their children: Jeremy is now nineteen and Clowance is sixteen. Bella was born in 1802, after the previous book ended. George Warleggan is an MP, as is Ross, but their paths have rarely crossed in the last ten years. George’s son Valentine is sixteen. Ross’s cousin Geoffrey Charles is twenty-six and serving with Wellington in Portugal. Ross is presently in Portugal as well, on a fact-finding mission to observe the progress against Bonaparte. Here, he meets Geoffrey Charles and reminiscences: ‘... he was loath to move, to wrench at the ribbon of memories that were running through his brain.’ (p40)

Jud and Prudie Paynter are in their seventies now, no longer in the Poldark household, and still at loggerheads. Jud’s still saying ‘Tedn right. Tedn proper.’ This time his displeasure concerns a duck and her newly hatched ducklings making a mess on their floor. As it happens, there were too many eggs for the mother to cover to hatch, so Prudie stuck three eggs in her cleavage to help them along, which meant Jud had to keep his distance for fear of cracking the eggs. Maybe that’s why he was complaining! (p271)

Both Jeremy and Clowance are at that age where their hearts are being tested by attachments. Demelza can recall being ‘in the grip of the same overpowering emotion. Perhaps it was just stirring in them, a sea dragon moving as yet sluggishly in the depths of the pool. But once roused it would not sleep again. It would not sleep until old age – sometimes, from what she’d heard people say, not altogether even then. But in youth an over-mastering impulse which knew no barrier of reason. An emotion causing half the trouble of the world, and half the joy.’ (p280)

Clowance has at least two suitors. Ben is a local lad, the second is Stephen Carrington, mysteriously washed ashore almost dead, rescued by Jeremy. Dr Dwight Enys brought to mind a Cornish saying: ‘Save a stranger from the sea/And he will turn your enemee.’ (p429) The love complications will not be settled in this book, however.

At this time King George is having fewer and fewer bouts of lucidity and Westminster is in turmoil as the king is incapable of signing anything. Moves are afoot to put the Prince of Wales in the monarch’s stead. Ross is vouchsafed an audience with the prince to report on the state of war in Portugal. ‘The Prince of Wales at last rose from his chair. It was a major upheaval and peculiarly uncoordinated, large areas of bulk levering themselves up in unrelated effort. One could even imagine all the joints jutting out, the utter indignity of a fall. But presently it was achieved and he was upright, heavily breathing, began to pace the room, his thin shoes slip-slop, slip-slop.’ (p133)

Occasionally, an interesting historical snippet is dropped in: ‘A steeplechase… is a form of obstacle race. Over hedges, streams, gates… always keeping the church steeple in view.’ (p63)

At other times there’ll be an amusing observation: ‘The older footman, who always seemed to have wrinkled stockings, let him in.’ (p345)

Or a fanciful description that works: ‘… a fire declared its will to live by sending up thin spirals of smoke.’ (p345)

As ever, Ross doesn’t hold back on his opinions. ‘People who brag of their ancestors are like root vegetables. All their importance is underground.’ (p361)

At this time new inventions were arising. ‘In Ayrshire there is a man called Macadam using new methods.’ (p423) And one of the landed gentry is extolling the near-future that will transform the country. Steam engines and other inventions will create prosperity: ‘… the ordinary man, the working man, the farm boy who has left home to work in the factories – they will all have some share in this prosperity… the level will rise. Not only the level to which people live but the level at which people expert to live. We are on the brink of a new world.’ (p481) In short, in time, the industrial revolution will improve the lot of man- and womankind throughout the world.

It’s good to be transported back to this time, to this family and to Cornwall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book review - The Japanese Girl

Winston Graham is one of my many favourite authors. I first encountered him with the paperback Marnie (1961), and then discovered his Poldark novels (the first published in 1945). Side by side with these, I read a number of his suspense and historical novels, too. The Japanese Girl (1971) seems to be his only collection of short stories; their publication dates range from 1947 to 1971, though there is no indication when each individual tale was published.  

It’s a mixed bag, and not all of the fourteen were successful for me; yet it’s definitely a worthwhile read. According to Graham, ‘The Japanese Girl’ stemmed from a chance meeting with a Japanese girl in a train to Brighton. The story indeed begins in this manner, with Jack the narrator smitten by her: ‘You couldn’t call her good-looking but just something about her appealed to me and made me feel queer, and God knows I’m no womaniser…’ (p8)  He is married, though the relationship has gone sour; his wife Hettie ‘was like a may-fly or something, beautiful for a day.’ (p10)

The narrator works as an assistant cashier for a big London dock firm. Boring job, a boring life, really. He engineered another chance meeting with the Japanese girl and invited her to join him for a drink in a ‘quite nice pub… She didn’t say no, and that’s how it all began’ (p12) He embarked on an affair with Yodi, the Japanese girl. As time went on, they dreamed of running away together, travelling abroad. But for that they needed plenty of money. He decided to rob the firm, small sums each week, to build up a nest-egg. She agrees to help him. Inevitably, it doesn’t quite work out.

‘The Medici Ear-ring’ is another first-person story, with the narrator being an impecunious painter. One of his models was Lucille, who ‘had the colouring I like: autumn-tinted hair and short-sighted sleepy eyes with umber depths to them.’ Lucille was the daughter of a friend, Bob who enjoyed showing off an ancient ear-ring his family had acquired. Then, one night, during a card game of chance where money was lost, the ear-ring goes missing. The mystery tried the friendship of all those present. A twist ending; possibly an early foray into the realm of the unreliable narrator concept.

‘Cotty’s Cove’ is set in Cornwall, possibly in the Poldark period. Lavinia Cotty was a 35-year-old spinster. When she could get away from caring for her ailing father, she’d spend time in the quite cove and dream of poetry and a little fiction – until she discovered a man washed up on the shingle. An atmospheric tale about unrequited love. The cove can be found on any large-scale map of Perranporth beach, just south of Wheal Vlow adit.

Graham has the pleasant knack of putting the reader in the scene, whether it’s that cove or elsewhere: ‘… the frost has come down like thin icing sugar on branch and brick and flag, and the pools in the dented road are glazing over like the eyes of a man dying.’ (p80) Or this: ‘The bay windows spread wide like an alderman’s waistcoat.’ (p76)  I particularly liked this: ‘Then with sweat crawling all over him like a nest of worms, he jerked ahead.’ (p86)

‘At the Chalet Lartrec’ comes of ‘being benighted on the Bernina Pass in the first snow of winter’, Graham says. The narrator, Major Vane, a British officer attached to UNESCO found himself caught in a snow-storm. ‘The clouds were lowering all around like elephants’ bellies…’ (p99) He had to get out often so he could clear the windscreen: ‘The snow was soft in my face, like walking into a flight of cold wet moths…’ (p100) He creates eeriness with few words: ‘There was no one about, and the wind whistled through the slit between the houses like an errand boy with bad teeth.’ (p100) He obtains shelter at the chalet Lartrec, where he learns of his host’s recent past in the uprising of Hungary in 1956. Another fine twist in this tale, too.

‘The Cornish Farm’ is about a property the narrator and his wife purchase. There is talk of a violent history in the farm’s recent past. This too has plenty of atmosphere, as well as humour: ‘… it depressed me to discover the squalor in which so many people live. Or perhaps it is only people who want to sell their houses who live that way. It also depressed me to discover the wickedness of estate agents. After a time one gets tired of being shown into the “well-equipped” kitchen to find it dominated by an enormous stove installed about the year of Gladstone’s wedding and smoking from every crack; then, coughing heartily and with eyes smarting, to be led through a broken glass door into the “conservatory” which in fact is a lean-to shed with a little stove of its own where all the real cooking is done…’ (p125) A tale of mystery and perhaps madness; the reader must decide.

‘The Basket Chair’ is a ghost story – or is it? Julian Whiteleaf had his first coronary when he was staying with his niece Agnes and her husband Roy Paynter. He was careful with his money, despite having been bequeathed a vast sum by one of his psychic society’s patrons. Now, he agreed the couple could look after him and he would pay £5 per week towards his keep. Over time, he noticed strange sounds in the house. The basket chair in his bedroom seemed to move of its own volition and creak ever so slightly; he was convinced he was finally witnessing a psychic event… A clever tale in the Roald Dahl tradition.

‘Jacka’s Fight’ concerns Jacka Fawle who moved from Helston in Cornwall to find his fortune in America; when he had done so, he would send for his wife and children. He was a godly man and scrimped and saved to this end. One day in the early 1890s he made friends with a number of Cornishmen who were promoting a fellow in the boxing ring. Temptation is offered, to make a killing… The culmination of the story is the five pages of the big fight: the upstart contender Fitz against the champion Corbett. The telling is as bruising as the fight itself, full of tension: ‘In the fifth round it appears as if Fitz is done. His lips are swollen, the eye half closed, his nose bleeding, his body crimson all over, part with the blows it has received, part from the blood on Corbett’s gloves…’ (p203) An excellent pugilistic tale.

Finally, there’s ‘But for the Grace of God’, a tale of the Christ just before and after the crucifixion, movingly told by the irreverent yet finally enlightened Jesus Bar-Abbas.

At the book’s publication, the Sunday Times said, ‘Real versatility in setting and background.’ That sums up this collection. If you appreciate short story writing, you should enjoy many of these examples. 

[Coincidence: my birthday is the same as his; he was born forty years earlier. He died in 2003, aged 95].

Blog guest - Michela O'Brien - a strong sense of place

Today, my guest is Michela O’Brien. She is the author of Playing on Cotton Clouds (2012) and A Summer of Love (2013), both published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

Michela was born in Milan, Italy, in... well, let's say some time in the last third of the 20th century. In Milan she grew up, studied, worked as a teacher, made friends and wrote, commending thoughts to page, imagining plots and characters, recording events in her life, noting observations about the world: stories, diaries, letters... In an era before personal computers, Internet, blogs and social networks, it was pen and paper and she still carries a notebook and a pencil with her to sketch ideas on the spot. She moved to England in 1994 and lives at the edge of the beautiful National Park of the New Forest with her husband and two sons.

Her greatest inspirations are ordinary people and real life stories, and her novels and short stories centre on themes of friendship, love, coming of age and self-discovery, human emotions and experiences everyone can relate to. Michela is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Playing on Cotton Clouds

When arty Livy falls for her sister's boyfriend, she knows her dreams are unlikely to come true... Sensitive Seth thinks he has hit the jackpot when the girl of his dreams finally looks his way... While laidback Aidan is every girl's hero.

Fast forward twenty-five years as carefree youth turns into adulthood responsibilities, relationships begin and end, music and fashion change, and life moves on with its successes, failures and heartaches. As the friends grow up, they discover life rarely turns out the way you imagined it at fifteen. The rites of passage through years are eerily familiar to every 1980s teenager in this moving, heartfelt novel.

 

A Summer of Love

Successful artist Jonah Briggs is a man who has made mistakes. Aged just eighteen, he was sent to prison for two years, leaving his family shattered and his first love, Sally, to wait for his return. But at eighteen, two years seem like a lifetime, and some promises are hard to keep. 

When Jonah reappears in her life, Sally finds herself torn between him and Ewan, the young Cornish farmer she has married, divided between loyalty and passion, duty and love. 

Over the course of almost two decades, through meetings and partings, secrets and revelations, and two momentous summers, Jonah will have to confront his past and heal old wounds, while Sally will face the consequences of her choices – whether to follow her conscience or her heart.

My review of Playing on Cotton Clouds

In this superb book about friendship and relationship, we travel with the main characters from 1983 through to 2008, with a poignant flashback to 1980. What's interesting is that the author was born and lived in Italy until 1994, when she moved to England; yet she captures the period prior to her arrival very well indeed.

There are three teenage friends, Aidan, Livy (Olivia) and Seth who meet up at the bridge that crossed the town's river. Even when they move away into the big wide world, the bridge has significance, sometimes in their memories, sometimes when they visit the town again. It links them, it seems. Added to the mix is Livy's sister, Tara. First fumbling with sex and alcohol are depicted, inevitably, with humour and a core of truth. Indeed, truth shines through this book - we believe these people lived, we live with them for the duration of the novel, getting anxious in moments of crisis, becoming pleased in moments of happiness. Life isn't tidy, there are false paths to take, wrong turns to make, and they drift apart, yet return after years, an invisible thread connecting them. `Can you fall in love at thirteen, one rainy afternoon, in an old faded café, and find yourself at twenty-nine, sitting in the fragrant summer sun, feeling as you did then?' The answer, of course, is `yes'. That's the human condition.

Aidan isn't too bright, but he's attractive to women, which is his downfall, yet as one conquest says, `People can't stop loving you, even when they think they have.'

Seth is a little self-centred, wrapped up in his writing, early on suffering from depression (`... in the small hours of the morning, when he felt himself slowly falling and darkness seemed to chase him with cold, invisible fingers'), but with the help of his friends he defeats the Black Dog, though he's always going to be a `half-empty pint' kind of man: `I wasn't interested in collecting stamps, so I went for rejection letters. Fascinating. Some can be perversely creative.' (I have to agree with his praise for Philip K. Dick).

Livy is in love with Seth, but (fool that he is) he's infatuated with her sister, Tara. `Carefully tucked away feelings were scattered around Livy's mind, leaving her with the painful task of picking them up and hiding them again... contemplating old memories as they lay on the floor of her recollection.'

The narrative is from the perspective of these three, and at every stage there's a depth of character and an emotional resonance that rings true. Emotion in a relationship novel has to be felt by the reader, not simply observed - show, not tell, and Michela O'Brien does that brilliantly: she could have written `Livy felt hurt by him' or something similar; instead, she gives us `Her heart had taken a dive into her stomach and she briefly held her breath to fish it out and put it back in its place.' There are several clever allusions, to springs in beds and Jack-in-the-box and feelings like thorns, imbedded in the body, making themselves felt after time, which `he could not tear out without maiming himself.'

There is a birth and a death, both handled with exquisite restraint and all the more powerful and moving for that. This debut novel is excellent, the writing controlled and a delight.

Q&A

Michela, your debut novel has picked up an enviable number of high-scoring reviews on Amazon. How does that feel?

It feels great! I’m still taken aback by the praises the book received. I’m especially moved when people say they loved the characters and that they felt like “real people” and “friends”.

What was the initial inspiration for the book?

The initial idea was to write about a male friendship. I started out with Seth and Aidan and their relationship. It was interesting to explore, as I was doing it from a female perspective, obviously. I then added another element with a male-female friendship between Seth and Livy, another theme that interests me.

Do you find that your characters – say, Livy, Aidan and Seth - have become real people, that you remember them as such? Or are they brief acquaintances who’ve drifted apart since you’ve moved on to meet new characters?

They are definitely very real to me. I feel like they are friends I have come to know well. Both my books span several years and I got to see the characters grow and change from youth into adulthood. I sometimes think it would be nice to revisit them and find out what they’ve been up to. I might very well do so, in the future.

Most debut novels take a long time to gestate. How long did you work on Playing on Cotton Clouds?

If we are talking about the actual writing, it didn’t take very long. About six months. If we are talking about “gestation” and how the story came together… well, I subliminally wrote this novel since I was 19 – and that’s a long time ago! I love choral stories, with different threads and subplots, and wanted to write about a group of friends, how they start together as a unit, and how then life splits their paths. Sometimes they run parallel, sometimes they meet and part and meet again. I actually started this novel many times and never finished it. Finally, I managed to get to the end.

In many ways, second novels are easier, because you’ve learned a lot from the first. (Some feel cursed by the expectations implicit in a second novel after a successful first one). At what stage did you begin A Summer of Love?

Funnily enough, I wrote A Summer of Love first. I sent it out to a few agents and publishers with no joy, so I shelved it and moved to another project, what became Playing on Cotton Clouds. After the latter had been published, I got back to the first novel and edited it, cutting a big bulk of the first draft and rewriting entire sections, until it was in the current form, which led to it being published too.

Excellent approach, to rewrite and rewrite, rather than just send out the MS! Now that you’ve got your second book published, are you writing another novel at present – and if so, can you tell us a little about it?

Yes, the third novel is almost finished and ready for editing. It has the working title of “Finding Paige” and it’s another story focusing on relationships, with an exploration of “timing”, meeting the right person at the wrong time and making what could be the wrong choice.

When you’ve finished your books, do you feel you’d like to see where the characters go next, or do you leave them alone to get on with their lives without your input?

Normally when I reach the end, I’m satisfied with the journey my characters have taken and happy to leave them where they have arrived. So, yes, I tend to let them “get on” on their own. Plus, I’m always thinking about a new project, a new idea. But you never know, one day I might like to revisit some of my characters and take them on a new journey.

How long have you been writing? 

Forever! I started writing stories as soon as I was able to, at about six. More seriously, though, with a look at being published, about 12 years.

What influenced you to start writing?

As I said, it was something I started doing very early on. I just love stories. Hearing stories, reading stories, watching stories… so I started to create my own.

You obviously know Italy well. Do you bring in other foreign places into your fiction?

Yes, I have done. In Playing On Cotton Clouds the actions move between the UK, Italy, Amsterdam and New York. A Summer of Love is based in the UK, switching between London and Cornwall, a county I know well and love. My new novel moves between London, Devon, the South of France and Northern Italy. Some settings like Cornwall, London and Italy, are very familiar to me, others I make up – for example the Midlands town the characters in Playing on Cotton Clouds come from, or the Cornish village to which Jonah belongs in A Summer of Love, are fictitious amalgams of similar towns and villages – and others I get to explore through research using the internet and even Street View! I did that when describing places in New York, a city I never visited.

New York is like you describe in Clouds, like being in a film, it's so familiar! I believe that a sense of place is important in fiction; how do you achieve that?

I share in your belief and as a reader I love books that have a strong sense of place. I treat the settings almost as another character, describing not just its appearance, but the feel it conveys and the influence it has on the characters. Roots and belonging versus a sense of adventure is a recurrent theme in my stories.

How do your family/friends feel about your writing?

They are very proud of what I have achieved, though writing takes a big chunk of my time and that is not always easy on family life.

Do you intend to stick with the personal relationship genre or switch to other genres?

Writing about relationships and emotions is what I like best and I will probably continue in this genre. But I have a few ideas for more “topical” stories and I’d love to dab into historical fiction as well.

A tall order, I know, but what is your favourite book? And why?

That is a hard question to answer! The first novel that made a huge impression on me was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, which I read when I was about 13. It encapsulates everything my writing is about: relationships, families, everyday life against big political and social changes, ordinary people dealing with small and big issues. Jo March was more than a heroine, she became a role model. An independent woman, aspiring to be a writer, who also happened to become a teacher – which I am too. I don’t know if it’s my “favourite” book, but it certainly occupies a special place in my affections.

Other books that made a big impact on me were Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith and Rosso di Sera by Brunella Gasperini, an Italian writer, journalist and feminist that shaped a great deal of the way I write and view the world.

Where do you hope to be in 5 years?

Mainly alive and in good health! I’d like to take my writing career forward and hopefully have my books in more homes!

You’re generous with giving space and time to other authors on your blog. Can you tell us how this came about?

To be honest, they do me a favour writing for my blog as I’m always stuck for ideas! And I’ve had some truly interesting and fascinating entries. How it came about? I just asked “would you like to write a piece for my blog?”

Where can readers find you?

I’m on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michela-Sacchi-OBrien/16450121895

Twitter https://twitter.com/michela_obrien

Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5822651.Michela_O_Brien

and, as you mentioned, on my blog  http://words-in-a-jar.blogspot.co.uk

My books can be found on Amazon

Playing on Cotton Clouds http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playing-on-Cotton-Clouds-ebook/dp/B007WFK3B2

A Summer of Love http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Summer-of-Love-ebook/dp/B00B3MKEQ4