Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "philip-roth"

Martin Walker’s series of crime novels about the chief of police of a small town in the beautiful Perigord region of France are a delight. When we met at a recent “British Crime Fiction Night” in Darmstadt, Germany, he described the books as “French porn – wine, food, women – in a crime fiction frame.” Certainly Martin’s bon vivant personality matches the playfulness of his fiction (Though he's a Scot by birth, he divides his time between Washington DC and his vineyard in France). But he’s also a former correspondent with The Guardian and his novels have significant undertones of social commentary, as you’ll see from the interview here. By mixing the pleasures of France – the “porn” – with its dark underside, the Bruno novels remind me very much of the terrific Inspector Montalbano series, where the Sicilian setting is the beautiful backdrop to a detective who enjoys a good dinner as much as nabbing the villain. So here’s Martin Walker, the Andrea Camilleri of the Dordogne.

How long did it take you to get published?
Not long at all. My first book, non-fiction, was commissioned. My first Bruno novel sold as soon as my agent offered it.

Would you recommend any books on writing?
No. Just read and read and read and get a feel for what works.

What’s a typical writing day?
There isn’t one, but whether on a plane or a train or at home or in a hotel I try and do at least a thousand words a day.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?
The latest book is ‘The Dark Vineyard,’ third in the Bruno series, which is about fraud in the truffle market in France, which traces back to China and to consequences of France’s 1954 defeat in its failed colonial war in Vietnam. Along the way, it involves militant Greens, a lot of wonderful French food and the complex romantic life of my hero, Bruno. I think it’s my best Bruno novel yet, because he seems to grow as a character with each book and my portrait of modern France gets richer. While writing it, I more than once had that magical experience of a character doing something I had neither planned nor expected, as if Bruno was taking on a life of his own.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.<\a>

The best historical novels are based on some element of real history which has been either neglected or is little known. Philip Sington’s “The Einstein Girl” grows out of the revelation that Albert Einstein had a secret daughter. Sington takes that seed and, with the hand of a true thriller master, builds around it a story of psychiatry and love in the early days of Hitler’s Germany. It's one of the most beautiful and harrowing stories you’ll read. I met Philip, who was born in Cambridge, England, in 1962, on a recent evening in Darmstadt, Germany, where we both read excerpts from our books – in a church, on top of the tombs of the ancient Landgraves of Hesse. After hearing him read, I immediately took up “The Einstein Girl” and was utterly swept away by it. Here Philip discusses his Writing Life:

How long did it take you to get published?
I got a deal with my second book, which I finished about seven years after starting the first. Between the two enterprises there was a bit of a gap, though.

Would you recommend any books on writing?
I never read any books on writing when I was starting out. That was probably a mistake. The best book I’ve seen subsequently is Master Class in Writing Fiction by Adam Sexton (published by McGraw Hill). You’re supposed to read a particular novel before each chapter, which is a good approach.

What’s a typical writing day?
Someone once said that the writing life involves brief intervals of creativity punctuated by long intervals of staring into the fridge. That about sums it up in my case. That said, since becoming a father three years ago, I’ve had to cut down on the fridge time.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?
The Einstein Girl is a historical novel inspired by the relatively recent discovery that Albert Einstein had a daughter in secret. It’s set in 1932, on the eve of the Nazi assumption of power, when Einstein was poised to flee Europe for America, and unfolds as a psychological mystery. I was inspired to write it because, in the course of my researches, I began to see some fascinating parallels between Einstein’s intellectual obsessions and his highly unusual private life.

How much of what you do is:
a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write?
b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with?
c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time?
In sketching out a book I’m guided more by instinct than anything. I think that’s something writers develop over time, and which becomes sharper the more they write. I don’t think I’ve ever adjusted a story because I don’t see it conforming to a model. More likely I’ll adjust it because I don’t find it satisfying or compelling enough.

What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?
Did I mention that when I was fifteen I took it out of my pants and whacked off on the 107 bus from New York?
Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint.
If you are going to indulge in rhetorical questions, make them good ones.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.<\a>

I have observed in this space before that author bios tend to be short on interesting detail and overfull of prize lists. Philip Roth, for example, doesn’t seem to exist, according to his bio. He doesn’t live anywhere, nor was he born. He simply receives prizes. This week I’m reading a very good historical novel by a writer who shall remain nameless. Perhaps it’s best that she remain nameless, because her name exists, according to her bio, only as a receptacle for prizes. Seven prizes are listed, plus four for which she was shortlisted. I note that she was a nominee for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award (I’m told this is a big deal, but the name just smacks of a pub quiz in honor of an old boy who’s always in the snug nursing a pint of bitter and looking half dead). It occurred to me that writers might set up such a prize and award it to themselves. I’ve already won a couple of literary prizes, but had I not done so, I’d invent a prize and bestow it upon myself so that I could refer to myself as a prize-winning author. Now I’ve decided to do the same thing for my colleagues by handing out prizes and, more importantly, incorporating the word “Prestigious” into the name of the prize, assuming that most readers will think this is an adjective to describe the prize rather than part of the prize title itself. This is genuinely more and more important in an age when it’s difficult for many authors to get attention, because newspapers and magazines review fewer books, if any, and conventional media publicity avenues are swallowed whole by the Patricia Cornwells and Salman Rushdies. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be accepting your nominations for the following prize categories. (Note, authors are welcome to nominate themselves. Because that’s the irreverent point. But readers can participate, too.) Please add your nominations to the comments section of the blog and note that I won’t mind if you nominate books that weren’t written in the last year, because most of the books you think are new are really a few years old; who can pay attention to all the new releases, right?

The Prestigious Matt Rees International Prize for a Book I Bought Because It Had a Nice Cover (Kindle readers, please ignore.)

The Prestigious Matt Rees International Prize for a Book I Bought Because It Was Nominated for Prizes But Ended up Wondering What the Judges Were Thinking

The Extremely Prestigious Matt Rees International Prize for the Best Book by Matt Rees This Year

The Prestigious Matt Rees International Prize for the Best Book That’s Kind of Like “The Kite Runner”

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.