Book Review: The Comedienne by V.G Lee

The Comedienne is a rather episodic book about Joanie Littler, a woman who struggles through a selection of unequal relationships before inventing a lover to allow her back into the world. From her days caring for her mother - who disapproves of her first lesbian relationship - to finally 'breaking up' with Freddy and opening the door to new possibilities, The Comedienne covers two decades in Joanie's life.

This is a genuinely funny novel in places and I laughed out loud a few times. The conversational first-person tone of the narrative is pretty engrossing and the characters really do spring from the pages. At the beginning, Lee depicts the intense irritation that living with a parent as an adult can induce. Her mother's interference in her relationship with Susan leads to one of my favourite moments of the book and it involves slippers.

All the imaginary girlfriend stuff was amusing to start with but, I have to say, by the end I was wondering why Joanie had carried it on so long, considering how little she got out of the whole thing. It allowed for on-going humorous and tricky situations but condemned her to the loneliness she was hoping to avoid by inventing a girlfriend and gaining access to couples' dinner parties. It left me a bit ambivalent.

The episodic nature meant that some scenes were included while others weren't. I was rather disappointed that we got a full depiction of Joanie attending one old woman's funeral but not her own mother's. I felt like I wanted the circularity of that in the novel as a reader. Similarly, I wasn't sure about the ending for opposite reasons. All that said, I enjoyed it for the amusing book it was and I'll know what not to do next time I invent an imaginary girlfriend.

Book Review: The Incredulity of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

Despite owning all the Father Brown stories, I'm taking my time reading them because I enjoy them so much. You can find my reviews of Innocence and Wisdom here and here but Incredulity is the third collection and feels as though it goes in a slightly different direction.

Location plays a big part in these stories with Father Brown encountering different cultures and, significantly, several of them are set in America. I like these explorations and it's amusing how Father Brown is never a fish out of water - he blends into the background of any community.

I enjoyed all the stories in this collection. However, some are more enjoyable than others, of course. 'The Resurrection of Father Brown' is the first story and begins with the cleric's death. It's a charming little story, made all the more enjoyable by his irritation at becoming a celebrity. 'The Arrow of Heaven' deals with the murder of a millionaire, a circumstance that 'is, for some reason, treated as a sort of calamity'. Chesterton, naturally, then proceeds to include three dead millionaires in his story. In 'The Oracle of the Dog' I was tickled by the resolution and the peculiar murder of Warren Wynd in 'The Miracle of Moon Crescent' had me completely perplexed for a time. While I enjoyed the sensory details and depictions in 'The Curse of the Golden Cross', that might've been the weakest story in terms of progression, for me anyway. 'The Dagger with Wings' is one of the more atmospheric pieces, although I was slightly disappointed with the ending, probably on grounds of personal preference.

The final two stories in the collection are my favourites. 'The Doom of the Darnaways' takes the old trope of a decaying British manor with a foreign heir and creates a memorable story revolving around a photograph. In that story, the last lines are typical of Father Brown and, perhaps, that's why I enjoyed it so much. Lastly, 'The Ghost of Gideon Wise' really kept me on my toes with an atmospheric look at the murders of another three millionaires. That Chesterton still has the ability to startle me after three volumes of Father Brown stories is delightful.

These are gentle mysteries that visit the hard edges of humanity. If that sounds like a contradiction then that's probably because you're unfamiliar with the central character. There are lengthy dialogue digressions which won't appeal to all but I like being made to think as well as follow a mystery to its conclusion. I'll ration myself again before I read the fourth collection, The Secret of Father Brown.

Quite a Week

To say last week was interesting would be a bit of an understatement. I'm used to the ups and downs that life (and my anxiety problems) tend to throw at me but I rarely have as many blips, bumps and jumps in one short period as I did last week.

My Monday began with computer problems and rapidly escalated with some frustrating family stuff. I escaped to my writing haunt and had a burst of inspiration about the direction of my WIP (I wrote about that here). By the time I got home I was all energised then there was some more family stuff that triggered this response:

In the last half an hour I got inspired and optimistic. Then someone dropped a house on my head. Back to square one.

— Dr Lucy Brown (@CharmedLassie) November 23, 2015

On Tuesday I had the delight of a few hours to myself then it all fell apart again. Normality ensued as I dragged myself in the rain to get some shopping whilst having a mini panic attack. However, as I was walking home I received a text from a Yorkshire First colleague of mine about the meeting later that night and I was back in positive mode. That meeting was excellent and I came away as energised politically as I had been in the creative sense the day before:

One thing I do appreciate about the meetings, though, is that I morph into a confident human being who can hold a conversation.

— Dr Lucy Brown (@CharmedLassie) November 24, 2015

For me, that's pretty successful. So, despite a concerted effort by some people in my life to bring me down, I prolonged my positive mood into Wednesday - then the fun really started when I went to co-working at my writing haunt. Hearing "that's not a customer, that's Lucy, she's part of the furniture" set things up nicely along with an epic breakfast. I was in the writing zone anyway but getting an email confirming that I'd won third prize in the latest Fabula Press competition set me singing in public. That story will be published at some point so I'll let you know when it's available but it's one I'm very proud of.

I dragged my father to a couple of stops on the Artwalk that night, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and picked up a couple of souvenirs below), then came home for a celebratory singalong. Treating myself after every bit of success is proving to be very pleasant and reminds me that I'm probably not completely rubbish.

On Thursday I was meant to be having a freelance meeting but that turned into a six-hour meeting interspersed with checking on a poorly six-year niece. Making her smile was more important than any work, though some of that got done as well. The night ending with me tipping a bucket of filthy water over my legs wasn't the best thing that could've happened however. My trainers still stink.

Then Friday... Well, I'd just sat down to lunch when I heard that my grandmother had fallen face-first out of her chair at her residential home and was bleeding quite badly. They called an ambulance and, while the details of what happened that day aren't something I should share on a public forum, suffice to say there'll be a complaint going in to the NHS about the treatment. Fortunately, she's going to be okay, even if she looks like someone ran her over and she's got a broken cheekbone. At 92, she should really know better than to chuck herself over the room like that. It certainly gave us all a scare and, as a consequence, I spent the weekend hibernating and watching tennis. Britain winning the Davis Cup was the appropriate end to a wacky week.

I'm drowning in work this week and my priorities are all over the place. A little stability and time to work without the bumps and jumps would be a good idea. Then again, I did rather enjoy last Wednesday immensely. I'd better write some more short stories, huh?

Peril of Naming a Walk-On Character

I've written a bit recently about attacking the fourth draft of my WIP 'Max' (by recently, I mean Friday!). Funny how just when you think you're on track with a project it decides to surprise you all over again. You see, this one follows a mother and a daughter (from the perspective of the daughter and the mother's lover) and I'd pretty much accepted the fact that the interactions that needed fixing in this draft were the ones involving the lover. Apparently not.

I was in my writing haunt yesterday afternoon warming through with caffeine and clutching my editing rock for inspiration (don't ask) while I was reading the detailed notes for the rewrite of chapter eight. The location needed to have greater significance so I began wondering why my character chose that cafe out of all the others and a waiter trots into the scene. Fine, I thought, let's give him a name. Big mistake.

As soon as I named him and he started talking to my viewpoint character, I liked him. Disaster. The love interest for this character is a little bit square and boring and, ultimately, they don't end up together. But this guy... Well, he comes from a completely different background, he's cheeky and he has connections with her past that the other lad doesn't understand. In short, he's perfect for her and, what's more, it fits the overall narrative of the parallel plot of the mother.

Now, I may be stuffing a new character into my novel for no reason. I may have to extract him from the fifth draft with tweezers. However, I think it's definitely worth a shot. It's going to mean some exceedingly careful consideration of the rest of the novel. To be fair, though, that was already necessary anyway. The extensive notes I marked up for the fourth draft aren't obsolete as much as complementary to the notes I'm keeping in my head about new directions and backgrounds. What I really need is to get this written down. And, in the meantime, Ed's here to stay. As is my editing rock.

Television Review: River

It's been a long time since I published a television review on the blog. In fact, checking back through the list, the last one was Happy Valley in June last year. I suppose it's only right that my review this time should be the outstanding hit of 2015, while Happy Valley was undoubtedly the 2014 equivalent.

River begins as a typical crime drama. There are two officers in a car, vastly different in personality but very at ease with each other. It turns into a chase with a suspect that results in the young man jumping from a balcony. Then, ten minutes in, the twist emerges and you realise this isn't your typical crime drama with a love story thrown in for good measure: it's so much better than that.

The twist is that DI River (Stellan Skarsgård) is talking to a manifestation of his dead partner DS 'Stevie' Stevenson (Nicola Walker) as he attempts to find the person who brutally gunned her down in the middle of the street. From childhood, River has struggled with these manifestations, a recurrent one being the nineteenth-century poisoner Thomas Cream (Eddie Marsan). River is quick to point out to his therapist Rosa Fallows (Georgina Rich) that these aren't ghosts he sees and this is evident in the narrative - Stevie never gives River fresh information that aids the case but we see her reacting to the secrets he uncovers about her life in a way that says more about him than her. It's exquisitely clever and, from the pen of Abi Morgan who also wrote The Hour, I expected nothing less. 

At the heart of River is an eccentric man trying desperately to solve the murder of one of the few people in the world who he ever allowed himself to be close to (though not close enough). It's a love story about closing the chapter with Stevie but it's also about him opening up to other people in his life such as Rosa, DCI Chrissie Read (Lesley Manville) and DS Ira King (Adeel Akhtar). While the twists and turns of the actual murder investigation held my interest, the focus on River himself was far more riveting and the entire cast is phenomenal.

Ultimately, while River startled and unsettled me at times, it also made me smile. The final minutes of the first and last episodes are stunning and I'm not ashamed to say I ended this one in tears. It was one heck of a rollercoaster ride over six weeks and I loved it. 

Interlocking Projects

Since I decided to knock NaNo on the head, I've felt a little more in control. Keeping up with an arbitrary word count wasn't for me at the moment and anybody who seeks to rub their 'success' in my face can honestly save their time. At the end of the day, it's better for me to be editing a project that's captured my heart instead of fighting an imaginary battle. I'm just not in the mood for it.

The truth is, there are three things at the moment that are feeding into one another. It's created something of a fire storm in my head - I'm always thinking of one or other of these things and, fortunately for me, they're proving productive.  

The first of these is the novel fourth draft I'm working on - 'Max'. It's amusing in some respects. When I wrote the first draft I remarked that, 'The least said about this one, the better! I didn't want to write it in the first place but I was...compelled.' Thinking about the second draft, I wrote, 'I know how I want the rewrite of this to pan out but the thought of writing it makes me feel queasy.' I finally got round to writing the second draft late last year, adding a second viewpoint and making the 'antagonist' a little more well-rounded. My goal, as I explained, was to delve into the characters: 'The first draft was an exercise in cleansing my mind; now I know more of the characters and I'm ready to create something a little better.' So the second draft twisted things a little and I ended up with a happy ending. The third draft earlier this year removed some secondary characters and replaced them with others who complemented the overall plot. And, once again, my antagonist got a bit nicer. In this fourth draft, she's not quite wearing a halo but it's not far off. I understand her. I understand why she makes some terrible decisions and why she comes across as completely selfish and the work I've done on my protagonist to explain why she reacts the way she does has helped. All in all, I think I'm really getting somewhere with this one. 

My epic fan fic venture is another thing keeping me occupied. Now, I know people have varied opinions about fan fiction but I've always found it keeps my mind focused on writing and I can tell stories I want to for my own personal amusement. If it also helps me unwind then that's no bad thing. This story I'm telling at the moment, though, is one that I've needed to write for a decade and it's consuming me a little - I haven't done a complete word count lately but I suspect we're over the 400,000 word mark. So much for a hobby! However, I'm enjoying writing it and I'm enjoying reading back over it. For me, that's the most important thing. 

The third thing that's feeding into my mental state at the moment is Once Upon a Time. I won't go into details but, for those of you who haven't watched the show, it's a retelling of certain fairytales that has a pretty important 'friendship' going on between two female characters. I'm drowning in fan fic and gifs - again, a hobby, but one that's aiding my productivity on the novel draft and the fan fic.

You see, there's a good reason these three things are coexisting in my life at the moment. All of them have family at their root. I learned during the second draft of 'Max' that it was the integral theme of the novel and that's only strengthened as time's gone by. In the fan fic, it's emerged as the defining theme and, well, Once Upon a Time is meant to be about family, even if it's not always clear that the writers know what they're doing. The novel draft, the fan fic and Once Upon a Time all have two parents (one not blood-related) and a complex familial relationship at the heart of them. And, perhaps, that's why everything's working so well at the moment.

There's no doubt in my mind that writing this fan fic and getting overly involved in Once Upon a Time is helping my novel draft. Call it a waste of valuable time if you want but I don't believe that - you can't write before you've learned the value and cost of a particular story or theme. Slowly, I'm figuring that out. 

Classic Film Review: Angel Face (1952)

Angel Face stars Robert Mitchum as ambulance driver Frank Jessup who becomes embroiled in the schemes of Diane Tremayne (Jean Simmons) after being called out to a report of gas in her stepmother's room. Mrs Tremayne (Barbara O'Neil) is wealthy and supports her stepdaughter and novelist husband Charles (Herbert Marshall) but when Frank's employed as Tremayne family chauffeur, he really doesn't know what he's getting involved in. The cast also includes Mona Freeman and Leon Ames.

From the beginning, this is an atmospheric film and I enjoyed it much more than I expected to. My attitude towards Robert Mitchum swings between love and hate (as other film reviews on this blog attest) but in roles where his usual moody and impassive demeanour work with the plot he excels. Angel Face is one of those films. You never quite know what Frank's thinking and that adds an extra layer to the film. Similarly, Jean Simmons plays the inscrutable Diane to perfection. The shock of the plot comes not from her intentions towards her stepmother but the unexpected consequences.

This one didn't progress as I thought it would, clipping along faster than I'd expected and throwing up a couple of surprises along the way. It was difficult to care about Frank and Diane but that was rather the point and, unlike most films of this ilk, that fed into my enjoyment.

There are some memorable moments, which I won't ruin for you, but I ultimately enjoyed this film a fair bit. Although there isn't exceptional chemistry between the leads, there's a good deal of manipulative chemistry and that's more useful in a film like this. As for the ending... Well, I wouldn't have wanted anything else.