Art and Literature – Nastasya Parker

The Deal-Breaker

This Week’s Bit of String: An empowering walk to work

After a not-entirely-fun Bank Holiday weekend, I set off to work Tuesday morning with a mix of Mika, sea shanties, and Noah Kahan playing on my earbuds.

Exams start in less than a week, equating to hours of sitting next to my SEN student while she attempts to answer papers designed for only half the population to pass. In a month, my parents will move out of their home after 37 years, a huge task which I can’t help with from overseas, but in my house I’m clearing out my son’s things and some of my own. During the long weekend, I spent hours going through school notebooks, birthday cards, crafts, story drafts, sheet music, and a few tiny little outfits and stuffed toys. I feel wrung-out.

I’m also doing lots of agent research, and the book I started over the weekend, Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, was not proving enjoyable. I’ve heard her name a lot, and literary agents mention her.

But this book is full of dense, page-long paragraphs cataloging every thought the characters have, and the minute actions of their daily routines. Also the characters are of the relatively privileged, but miserable ilk.

While I walked to work that morning, I thought: What if I just didn’t read the remaining 300 pages of Intermezzo?

And I knew it was the right choice because beyond relief, I felt liberated (which is hopefully how I will also feel, instead of mournful, when boxes of Bear’s old things go to the charity shops). I felt MIGHTY.

There’s a lot I can’t control. But I AM a loving mother who’s just recycled half her precious child’s finger paintings and 95% of their schoolwork. I frequently scythe through passages of my short stories and chapters of novels to make them more readable. I am capable of ruthlessness and this was an opportune, low-risk situation in which to wield it.

A Rare Relinquishment

I’ve only left one unfinished book in recent years, and that was Murikami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. It had one of those male narrators who thinks everything is about sex and all girls want to sleep with him. Not a lot seemed to be happening, and I decided to use my time better.

*Is this the sort of display that will impress an agent?*

During my education, I read plenty of classics and plenty of books about unfortunate souls. From Hawthorne’s the Scarlet Letter and Bronte’s Jane Eyre, to James Joyce’s Dubliners and Kafka’s entire oeuvre, I put in the time and have relished the majority of those works.

But here I am, looking through agents’ requirements and all the preachy advice. At every step, writers are told to “Show, don’t tell” and to cut everything not indispensable to the plot. Where then does Ms. Rooney come off narrating (through her prematurely midlife-crisisy characters) every single thought in these interminable paragraphs with no differentiation for dialogue?

Nope, I was done. A couple weeks ago, I read a fun “romantic” genre novel to enjoy myself, and there are plenty of literary books I can enjoy too. If they, you know, have a plot heading somewhere at a decent pace.

Part of the Job

My target is to read 3 books this month, and I still can fit them in. After my fateful decision on my walk to work, and then the manic workday, I visited the town library and checked out an Anne Tyler novel. I’ve loved what I read of her before. She’s brilliant at “showing.” She’ll describe a character’s physical appearance in a pithy way that reveals their life philosophy as well. Yes, sometimes in her books she’ll walk you through each step of a protagonist’s actions as they execute a task, but she’ll do it in a revealing way. There’s a Raymond Carver-esque quality to it.

It’s also useful for me to read another Anne Tyler novel because I have been citing her family sagas as a comparison title to The Gospel of Eve. So, it’s research as well.

*The great bit of the long weekend: we celebrated our 22nd anniversary with an evening walk to a local garden centre to eat pasties, drink ciders, and listen to live music.*

There’s no doubt that reading is an important part of a writer’s work. It’s good for everyone to read a range of stories, but at more taxing stages in our lives/ creative endeavours, it’s best perhaps if reading doesn’t feel like a chore.

As fatigue accumulates and I feel often on the verge of tears, I’m working on fewer writing projects at a time to focus on querying, and I’m prioritising exercise and fresh air. I will take a week off from the clearing-out project too because there’s only so much ruthlessness I can stand.

Maybe if I’d picked up Rooney’s book at another time–perhaps when my child was still right here, running around me and telling me stuff–then I wouldn’t have minded it so much, and would have persevered. For now, Intermezzo has joined the ranks of the many books I’ll be donating to the charity shops.

What are your deal-breakers with a book? How far do you think we should push ourselves in our reading?

Labels: Friend or Foe?

This Week’s Bit of String: A heart-wrenching question

In a back corner of the school library, I’ve begun daily reading sessions with one of our Year 10 SEN boys. There are multiple clues in the book he’s reading that the narrator has autism. I asked him what he noticed about that, and he responded by asking what autism means.

*Paths are important, but sometimes it’s nice to stray from them…*

Then he asked, “Does that disability help them get good grades?”

He is very concerned with criteria of success. He considers career paths based on how much money they might provide. And he assesses circumstances by how they might affect one’s grades and prospects.

He worried, “Do I have a disability? Or am I just stupid?”

It’s heartbreaking to see students who, despite various strengths, feel so defined by their struggles that they long for the justification a diagnosis provides.

Judging a Book by Its Genre

Labels are useful because they give our brains an easy path to follow. We think, “Ah, something is this, therefore I know what to do with it.”

If a student has learning difficulties, we might provide literacy and numeracy support. If someone is neurodivergent, we’ll ensure they have spaces available to re-regulate when routine is disrupted.

Book publishers and, one assumes, readers alike appreciate genre labels because they give us an inkling what to expect. Is the read going to be gritty or cosy? Genres can help with that.

Labels can be limiting too, though. That happens for students with disabilities and in a more minor way, can happen with books. We tell ourselves we’d never dream of reading something from that genre.

*I loved this book. Don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it.*

Since I’m in a couple of critique groups, I send work to different writers every month or two. I read all sorts of pieces that come to me, and I comb through each with a view toward maximising potential, and provide detailed feedback. But every now and then, I receive a comment on my work saying, “I don’t usually read this genre, so I can’t comment.”

This happens to the opening of my novel retelling the Creation myth from Eve’s point of view. I think of it as Commercial Fiction, a sort of catch-all. Madeline Miller’s Circe was a massive hit after all, Disney has been re-filming the Percy Jackson series, Margaret Atwood and AS Byatt and Stephen Fry have all retold myths with great success.

But maybe some people dismiss it immediately as fantasy, or women’s fiction. I should work up my courage and ask the next person, “What genre do you think it is, exactly?”

“What Do I Have?”

Somewhat like my student anxiously asking, “What do I have?” while I showed him his EHCP to explain that he’s not, in fact, stupid, I do rather wish someone could just tell me what genre my book is instead of me trying to work it out. When querying agents, there’s no room for a mistake; they won’t give you a second chance.

But it is a bit rubbish, the genre system. Lots of books combine elements. Last week, I participated in the Women Writers Network discussion on women writers who blend genres, while this week, I’ve interviewed Lindz McLeod. She’s an incredibly hard-working writer covering speculative fiction, short stories tinged with horror, and also dabbling in retelling versions of Jane Austen. Truly, her imagination seems limitless and her appeal should be, too.

Stephen King has said that every book is a mystery. I agree with that. And even books without romance have relationships.

*Now I want to visit all the crumbling stately homes and eat all the cheesecakes.*

After my busy Easter break with the emotional roller coaster of traveling to the US and back, I returned to work. During the first couple weeks, I had a few writing commitments including the interview, while at my day job we gear up toward GCSE exams. I needed a fun and “easy” read so I picked a Milly Johnson book out of my TBR shelf. Her books are classed as Romantic Fiction so I hadn’t gone out of my way to read one before.

The Perfectly Imperfect Woman was the perfect read for me that week. A rollicking pace; clever, piquant descriptions; a well-rounded, super-relatable protagonist more on a journey to come to terms with a torturous past than to find romance. Oh, and there was cheesecake, and great big mysterious manor houses. There were multitudes contained within the genre label.

The idea of being “perfectly imperfect” is resonant to many of us, I suspect, and it’s the kind of attitude I want to foster in students. While understanding there will always be struggles, to work out the purposes worth struggling for, and the right support.

Do you have any theories or assumptions about genre fiction? What’s a book that impressed you from a genre you don’t usually read?

The Wow Factor

This Week’s Bit of String: First fireworks

When my little Bear was 2.5 years old, my best friend and I took them to the 4th of July fireworks in the biggest local town. The Outing Club rocketed the fireworks from their ski slope over the surrounding valley, and we were running late as ever so were just trotting down the opposite hill when they started.

The colourful explosions put a skip into Bear’s step. They cried, “Wow! Oh, wow!”

I don’t think I’d ever heard them say that before. Such excitement is to be cherished and never forgotten, and fully warrants the nearly-taboo exclamation points.

Like the time after school once, a few years later when we were settled in the UK. Bear and I were walking back from town, they were maybe 6 years old, and a harvest moon rose, big and yellow. Bear stopped in the middle of recounting some kind of ds game or Star Wars scene to me, and broke into applause for the glorious natural phenomenon.

It’s so important to put ourselves in the way of moments that produce this type of reaction, even if it’s a daily event like the moonrise. We mustn’t lose our capacity to be impressed.

During half-term this week, I’ve mostly been working on writing and reading and weeding and cleaning. But I did abscond for a day and take the train to Bristol for a good wander. I climbed Brandon Hill and Cabot Tower to look out over the city, had a roasted white hot chocolate from Mrs. Potts chocolate house, and mooched around Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. Plenty of Wow Factor there, from Assyrian tablets to ichthyosaur bones to all kinds of crystals and then more paintings and artefacts.

I could have stood for ages in front of James Tissot’s oil painting Les Adiuex (The Farewells) from 1871. The detail of the woman’s lace gloves! The clasped hands and the faces agonised by separation. But, there were other gallery visitors and it’s only fair they should see the painting as well.

Vacationing

When I was out and about in Bristol, there were lots of families trying to keep entertained there. Two siblings behind me on the train really liked the Arriva Train Care centre near Temple Meads station, with its sidings flanked by giant car wash brushes.

“That is so cool,” they kept saying.

And as I wandered at Bristol Harbour, I heard excited young people mistake the boats for the Titanic. At Millennium Square a boy on a scooter, maybe already in the early years of secondary school, freely told his friend, “I love these fountains.”

I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to hear kids enjoy themselves. At work we’re becoming pretty rundown. The students are so unmotivated and in a few cases, unpleasant. That said, my experience is mostly within the special needs area. Many of our students truly struggle, and exams ask almost too much from them.

*Obie, however, is ready to try being a writer and a scholar.*

Other students will experience school differently. On the last day before the break, quite a few of our statemented kids were out (there’s one boy in Year 10 who is marked “ill” on the last day of every single term—intriguing, no?) so I ended up in a top-set year 10 English class.

They were reviewing GCSE war poems they first learned last year, so I took a small group to go over “Kamikaze” by Beatrice Garland. It tells the story of a Japanese pilot who was supposed to commit kamikaze. But he changes his mind, and goes home instead. He chooses life, and his family can never forgive him. His neighbours and his wife, ultimately his children, refuse to speak to him again because of this dishonour.

I read the poem to a group of 4 students I’d never met. The last lines go: “And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered/ which had been the better way to die.”

The boy next to me said, “Wow. That was really—wow. You know?”

Rejuvenation

It’s just nice to share that reaction sometimes.

Although I always have some kind of deadlines and a long to-do list, the half-term week off from my day job at school is lovely because I can do it all with a bit less rush. I can pretend that writing is my main work.

Sometimes, a lack of spare time can make us more productive. We are aware of our limits so we optimise any opportunity to write. A sudden extra helping of free time, as at half-term, might make us more reckless and we squander some of that time. There’s truth in that.

On the other hand, not being rushed can give us some creative freedom. I might enjoy writing more when I don’t have a million other chores hanging over my head, just as those poor kids on half-term can go out and enjoy themselves.

And maybe, when we all return to school tomorrow, those of us who sought and were privileged to find inspiration will have some new energy and tolerance so we can keep trying to pass it on. When I climbed Brandon Hill in Bristol, the views from the tower were pretty great, but so too were the crocuses close to the ground. It reminded me there’s excitement and beauty to be found all over—maybe we just need a little break.

What makes you say “Wow?”

2025 Reading Round-Up

With minimal ado, here are my favourite books out of all I read this year. These are truly the 10 best of my best, because there were a few more which I rated with the full 5 stars.

What were your favourite reads this year? Have you read any of these books yet? I know I’m a bit late to the party on some, and I’d love to hear what you thought if you read some of these before.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

An epic tale of an Army nurse in the Vietnam War. She also has to cope with re-entering civilian life, particularly challenging with her upper-class family. They serve as a contrast to the strong, unconditional friendships she formed with other Army nurses. Truly an eye-opening read.

“Time and friendship had done exactly as promised: pain and grief had grown soft and malleable in her hands, almost pliable.”

The Lives of the Dead by Fiona McKay

I joined a book group specifically reading novellas-in-flash. It’s been exciting to explore, and I found this one particularly powerful. Each very short chapter is a mini-story, alternating between episodes in a new wife/ mum’s suffocating life, and stunningly retold fairy tales.

“It’s the kindness that does her in, that releases her long-held tears, that leaves her to walk back, red-eyed, along the line of women when she’s done; kindness, the essential vitamin missing from her supplements, the one she didn’t know she was lacking.”

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

I love ensemble pieces, where a quirky range of characters are thrown together. In this case, it’s at an apartment viewing which then goes wrong due to a desperate, bungled burglary. It’s funny and warm, the sort of thing to help survive a Scandinavian-level winter.

“Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of; the moment we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken.”

Love lay down beside me and we wept by Helen Murray Taylor

I know Helen from the Women Writers Network, so I have been looking forward to her mental health memoir for years. She focuses on when she was sectioned in Glasgow following a breakdown. Helen reveals the contradictions we might hold in our minds at our lowest point and still she invites you in with humour.

“Trying to describe love was like trying to stroke Schrodinger’s cat.”

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

I love Lehane’s books, especially his snappy dialogue. This novel is set in Boston just after WWI and deals with racism, poverty, immigration, labour rights, and even the tragedy of the Boston Molasses flood. It made me appreciate that the USA has come through incredibly tense times before, and we may yet make it.

“Time and again what was renounced as treasonous was merely a man standing before a crowd and demanding he be treated as a man.”

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Short and searingly beautiful, this Booker Prize winner is a wondrous read. It takes us through one day in the lives of six astronauts on the International Space Station, describing the many juxtapositions of what they see below on their various orbiting paths, and lyrically weaves in the astronauts’ backgrounds and aspirations.

“He has an idea that if you could get far enough away from the earth you’d be able to understand it—to see it with your own eyes as an object, a small blue dot, a cosmic and mysterious thing. Not to understand its mystery, but to understand it is mysterious. To see it as a mathematical swarm. To see the solidity fall away from it.”

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

A great book about totalitarianism and war, with breathtaking depth of character. Both protagonists were so incredibly rich in background and passion for their interests, Marie-Laure with her Verne books and her understanding of how to get around without her sight, Werner and his machines and radios.

“She feels the great granite fist, sunk deep into the earth’s crust, on which Saint-Malo sits, and the ocean teething at it from all four sides…She hears the bones of dead whales stir the leagues below, their marrow offering a century of food for cities of creatures who will live their whole lives and never once see a photon sent from the sun.”

Home Bird by Fran Hill

*A reading verandah! Found on a* *walk in small town New Hampshire.*

If you’ve read Fran’s Substack–and you really should–you’ll know she excels at writing humour. But I love her detail selection even more. Her plots advance quickly through the specifics her narrator includes, bringing out the nuances of relationships and recreating the period of her novels.

“She knocked on my door, saying, ‘There’s Bakewell tart going spare,’ but I said, ‘It’s not the only one,’ and she left me alone.”

Still Life by Sarah Winman

A true feast of a book, celebrating art and travel and food but most of all friendship, the abiding kind that’s more like true love. After World War II, an unlikely band of Londoners, united only by happening to drink at the same pub, move to Florence and discover worlds both old and new.

“‘We’re embarking on a world of new language and new systems. A world of stares and misunderstandings and humiliations and we’ll feel every single one of them, boy. But we mustn’t let our inability to know what’s what diminish us. Because it’ll try. We have to remain curious and open.’”

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This book is about the creative process, relationships, grief, negotiating differences in ethnicity and sexuality… oh, and videogames. I loved it so much. The section about the NPC (non-playable character) is the most gorgeous and heartbreaking that I have ever read.

“Memory, you realised long ago, is a game that a healthy-brained person can play all the time, and the game of memory is won or lost on one criterion: Do you leave the formation of memories to happenstance, or do you decide to remember?”

Finding a Door

This Week’s Bit of String: A dark and stormy night

One rainy evening out of several rainy evenings this week, our cat Oberon got restless. He was hanging around the hallway, so I opened the front door in case he wanted to go out.

*It’s all a bit much when you’re a small scaredy cat.*

Named for the prince of the fairies, Obie does have a microchip-activated catflap in our double-glazed back door. It’s complete with fixed metal platforms in and outside the door for him to step up to the opening and then down, most daintily. Whenever possible, though, he naturally prefers a door to be opened for him.

When I opened the front door that night, exposing the wind and rain, Obie hissed immediately. That’s a no, then.

He lives in hope that the front door, actually at the driveway side of our semi-detached house, will reveal a different world from the one he sees out the back door into the garden, or the front windows onto the front garden and the cul-de-sac.

For us humans, opening our own front door rarely brings surprises. We expect most deliveries and don’t receive many guests. With Remembrance Day just passed, I consider the days when a knock at the door could bring devastating news. Now we have much tinier rectangles that do that for us.

Story Portals

Last Saturday, before the sun retired into indefinite hibernation, I spent the day wandering around Stroud for the Book Festival there. I went to Alice Jolly’s book launch for her new novel, The Matchbox Girl. It sounds excellent, a story told by an imagined adolescent neurodivergent girl who collects matchboxes and spends time in the Vienna Children’s Hospital, where she gets to know Dr. Asperger.

Jolly told us about the Children’s Hospital, and its workers who resisted categorising children, viewed each patient as gifted, and simply believed the deficiency lay in adults who hadn’t learned to understand a child’s differences yet.

Mock exams started this week for my poor SEN students, so let me tell you, that sounds pretty awesome.

*Seasonal front door reflections, Woodstock, Vermont*

Unfortunately, The Matchbox Girl is set in 1934 and the ensuing years. So, things didn’t go so well in the lovely Vienna Children’s Hospital after a while. Dr. Asperger was revealed in this century to have collaborated disastrously with the Nazis.

Jolly explained that she was researching Dr. Asperger and the hospital, but didn’t know how to write a novel about it all until she had the idea of the matchbox-collecting Adelheid.

She said, “When writing a novel, you must never go in through the front door. You must find a way in the back.”

This edict pierced me. I’m always seeking to improve my craft and when a talented writer, who teaches Creative Writing at Oxford no less, issues a proclamation about how stories work, I immediately inventory everything I ever wrote. I suspect I’m not the only one?

Anyway, I was thinking, “What is the front door to each of my individual projects, and which is the back? Have I been heavy-handed and just crashed through the front, is that my problem? Why don’t I immediately understand what my novel’s front door is, is that my problem?”

Head and Heart

I meant to submit my novel The Gospel of Eve to more publishers and agents this year. But I was wrapping up an edit and more dauntingly, a synopsis rewrite, when I became so busy with critiques and a new project and work and family, I sort of forgot. That’s a major goal for 2026.

But Eve in herself is like a pre-fabricated back door, isn’t she, relegated as such for millennia? In my new project, I suppose the front door is the whole relentless mess of trying to appear good, while the back door is the comparatively straightforward (but still quite messy) task of fixing up a New England resort and cabins. Each banging cottage door reveals not just the renovations needed inside, but further internal turmoil for the new owners resulting from past relationships.

While at Stroud Book Festival, I also attended an interview with Elif Shafak regarding her latest novel, There are Rivers in the Sky. I’m excited to read this book as well. It spans history through a single drop of rain and incorporates the epic Gilgamesh poem.

Elif Shafak is passionate and graceful, and she spoke about the difference between information, which we have in overabundance; knowledge, which requires sustained commitment; and wisdom, which engages the heart.

I don’t want to worry so much about front doors and back doors and such, so that the heart of my project goes the way of the sun recently, obscured by my deluge of thoughts. It’s been such a long time since I actually started writing a novel from scratch—my Eve novel started as a short story—that I’m constantly questioning myself. Were my previous drafts this rough?

But after receiving very positive feedback about the first 3000 words, I started to feel better. It takes time to find a story’s heart, front door, and back door. Now that I know someone wants to read more, that gives me strength to keep discovering.

Have you been to any literature festivals this year? What great books have you discovered, and what insights did you gain into your own creative work?

Dreaming Spires

This Week’s Bite of String: Noise in an Oxford museum

While I was admiring Japanese cloisonné vases in the Ashmolean this half-term week, a family came along. They had a couple of primary school-aged girls shining cheap little laser torches everywhere. The slightly older of the two girls was quietly singing to herself, but the other was shouting and running around.

“Beatrice!” her parents kept saying in upper middle class tones, ever surprised at unconventional behaviour. “Beatrice, you’re getting silly… Beatrice, we’re in a museum. It can be quiet and peaceful…”

“It CAN be quiet and peaceful,” retorted Beatrice, without slowing down a bit.

Gotta love a girl no more than 6 who’s already dismantling arguments on semantic grounds.

The brief clamour enhanced my experience. I was on a solo overnight trip, and spending the afternoon in the massive Ashmolean with only myself to set the pace was a treat. I’d browse a couple of galleries, then sit and scribble about my finds, then repeat. Favourites were the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian exhibits, complementing the several Nimrud temple panels at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum in my home region of New Hampshire, and examples of Islamic and Indian geometric patterns and art.

There are exhibits predating those civilisations, and it inspires me to see how early humans, too, were compelled to preserve and create beauty. Feeding my brain on such exhibits felt rejuvenating, certainly unlike revising for standardised GCSE exams. But feasting on snippets of real life conversations thrills me, too.

Rest and Change

People like to say, “Change is as good as a rest.” It’s not strictly true; I think change enables us to push ourselves further without rest which we may need. Long-term, it’s possibly not of equal restorative value.

*A little bit of reading time, Worcester Shrub Hill station*

That said, it felt as if changing up my brain’s intake for a day or two rejuvenated me. In addition to visiting the museum, I read Mslexia magazine on the train rides, wandered along the canal in Worcester during a stopover, explored both the busy streets and the tranquil parks of Oxford totalling 43,000 steps in less than 36 hours, and enjoyed a theatre production of Little Women.

Seeing the literary classic on stage was the main purpose of my journey, which I learned about thanks to well-targeted Facebook ads. It was a terrific show, with energy and heart. They made use of birch trees as set pieces, and seeing those made me feel connected to New England from afar.

After the play, I went hunting for ice cream, as is my late-night, post-show wont, and I didn’t go to bed till midnight. But I didn’t leave my hotel for the next day’s explore until 10:30, and that is pretty luxurious for me.

Spending Time Well

So I took a bit of the morning to recuperate, and keep up with my daily scribbles. I have some novel-planning to work on, but I didn’t get to it; didn’t even read much. As usual when I travel, making the most of the experience involves a lot of walking and a fair bit of writing down what I want to remember.

Before visiting Oxford, I’d made an effort to put all my new novel work into a Plotting Table, with columns for each character and rows for each chapter. The Plotting Table is super helpful for seeing where stakes may need to be raised for some characters, and so forth. I wanted to print this out and pore over it on paper while out of the house, undistracted by chores.

But our printer is at least 10 years old and is suffering memory loss. It no longer recognises paper. I’ll be poking pages into it and it insists said pages do not exist. Or it will pick up a sheet of paper (or heck, two or three at once), load it an inch, then suffer a fresh bout of amnesia and say it’s out of paper anyway.

I had to give up on printing my Plotting Table. I had nearly 2 miles to walk to the train station, with my rucksack of overnight necessities, and I couldn’t risk missing the train. Turns out I was a bit busy, anyway.

Like Beatrice at the Museum, I would say vacations CAN be quiet and peaceful—but they certainly don’t have to be. Just this once, I think I struck a decent balance.

Have you given your mind any change lately?

Mythology and Me

This Week’s Bit of String: Candles on a motorbike

At nearly 11 pm on Easter Saturday, the taxi driver from Athens airport told me about the seasonal traditions in Greece.

“From the execution Friday until midnight when it turns to Sunday, many people will not hammer, or cut, eat meat, or do anything with violence. It’s out of respect because of the crucifixion.”

*Inside the Byzantine Panagia Kapnikarea on Easter Sunday*

Then, at midnight, there are fireworks and prayers, before family feasts on Easter Sunday. Freshly arrived in Athens for a city break, my husband and I wandered out at midnight. Down a narrow street we saw the bobbing lights of a candlelit crowd, and we heard the prayers chanted in a nearby Greek Orthodox church. People poured from its marble steps carrying lit tapers—all manner of people: goths, senior citizens… One middle-aged woman came out with a bouquet of 5 lit candles, and climbed behind a man on a motorbike and they rode off.

Not everyone participates, I’m sure. As Iakovos said, “It depends what you desire.”

And of course there’s the other side of the coin, be it Euro or drachma. He told me how much he loves being a driver, especially for tours when he takes people to further ancient sites, such as Delphi or Mount Olympus.

He has particular praise for Mount Olympus. According to him, there’s a spot up there known as the Throne of Zeus, where no wind or snow or rain ever strike, as if it’s divinely protected.

“It makes you think they really knew something,” he says of the ancient Greeks.

Building a Religion

How we interpret such things and act upon them does, as he said earlier, depend on our desire. How often do we believe something we really don’t want to?

When we first learned about Greek myths in school, I was in 8th grade. That’s a lot older than British students learn about them, and maybe for that reason, I did not enjoy the subject. To me, the gods seemed selfish, not to mention cruel and misogynistic. My opinion hasn’t changed much on that, to be honest. I had to read lots of ancient Greek play in high school and college, and I like the genre of modern retellings, but the original stories don’t appeal much to me apart from being cultural references.

*Gorgeous weathering on these pillars from Hadrian’s Library*

I do think myths have huge value in what they might tell us about the people who believed, maybe even created them. What does it say about people that they would make sacrifices from their own, struggling lives to such seemingly callous deities?

What we found breathtaking in Athens were the monuments made by people. The stunning Propylaea, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Porch of the Maidens alongside the Erechtheion. How incredible that parts of the Pantheon still stand after almost 2500 years of invasions and natural disasters. And the beautiful little Byzantine church the Panagia Kapnikarea, nearly a millennium old. These are marvelous places, designed and built by humans with much toil and cooperation. Yet they make me wonder about a presence even more powerful.

I guess that’s what art can do, inspire you to believe in something greater, even if it’s just a previously unimagined hope for the future.

Likeability Vs Relatability

Looking down at the city of Athens through the Propylaea above, or through the Roman arches behind the Odeon, we had a stunning view over the chaotic crush of buildings, the worn, aged mountains, and the sea beyond. I imagined ancient people coming up here to sacrifice, worship, or be entertained, and wondered what their view was like. Maybe that was enough to keep them worshipping.

Raised in a Christian family myself, we were always deeply attuned to the suffering that Easter springs from, and I like the Greek orthodox idea of acting on that seriousness by refraining from aggressive activities for a couple of days. Maybe my upbringing contributed to my complete horror and aversion of anything execution-related. I am still mystified how Christians sit with the belief that an innocent deity suffered and died for their sins personally, and don’t constantly agonise over that.

*Getting the right balance… Porch of the Maidens, Erechtheion, Athens*

I once wrote a novel scene between American educators preparing for the 7th grade mythology unit. The Christian teacher describes the Greek gods as “petty and selfish—no better than people.”

On the other hand, he says, “Jesus actually became human, and that’s as accessible as it gets.”

But He never sinned, thinks the teaching assistant. Being human would be a cinch without guilt.

Could it be that ancient Greeks appreciated having dieties with lusts and impulses that reflected their own?

Conveying a religion must be like the constant political tussle over how to best message people. Meet people where they are, or urge them to strive for better? And as writers and creatives, we work to establish that same balance: creating characters who are likeable and also relatable, events that are dramatic and also recognisably everyday. It’s getting that juxtaposition between majestic ancient ruins and the settlements below; the prayers on loudspeaker and the candles on motorbikes. Our ability and taste for this will vary, one might say depending on our desire.

What do you think of the classical myths? Do you find the supernatural accessible?

A Flaw-Finding Mission

This Week’s Bit of String: A 30-year-old reading list

Last week when I couldn’t sleep, I invented a new game: Trying to remember which books we studied each year of high school, back in the mid-1990s. This joins other such spectacular entertainment forms as How Many Second Grade Classmates Can I Remember? and Recall the Layout of All the Holiday Cottages I Used to Clean for a Living.

One of my British secondary school system gripes is the paltry amount of books read for English. Two whole years studying nothing but Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, A Christmas Carol, and 15 war poems is such a drag.

On the other hand, we read quite a few books in our slightly deprived rural American high school. In 9th grade alone, we read Romeo and Juliet, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, and I think some form of The Odyssey. We also read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which I didn’t like much, and Cormier’s The Chocolate War, which I detested. It seemed clear he’d written it, with masturbation references and stupid boy behaviour, to impress his teenage son. Not my demographic.

*“Everyday Use” is about historic quilts–whether to display them, or use them. These quilts are part of the annual show at Billings Farm, Vermont.*

In 10th grade, we read Macbeth, Lord of the Flies (sound familiar?), Old Man and the Sea, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I was not a fan of the latter. We also read a volume of memoir essays and short stories, the first things I loved reading in high school. My favourite was an Alice Walker story, “Everyday Use.”

If we hadn’t been required to read such a broad selection, I might not have connected with any of it. I’m glad I didn’t lose interest, because the curriculum had terrific offerings in our junior and senior years.

I don’t remember what I was reading for fun during the first two years of high school, or if I bothered. I had plenty of homework, and my own made-up story-world I constantly nursed. Maybe that was why I resented certain assigned books. I preferred my own stories, woven around my experiences.

So at 3 in the morning a few days ago, I realised: my adolescent self was a narcissistic reader.

Inconvenient Truths

I see it in a couple of my students. Simon Armitage’s war poem “Remains” is great for spotting narcissistic readers. It’s written clearly in the vernacular, sometimes using collective pronouns which almost make you feel complicit. Most of the chatty girls and fidgeting, shouting-out boys stop and fall under the spell.

But one boy from our Trio of Fortitude has to always be the victimliest victim who ever victimmed, so he slouches through the succinct tale of war, PTSD, and substance abuse. This boy can’t pick up a pen because he has a cut on his finger, or his stomach hurts. He is cross that no one has helped him during class with his homework yet, and he might get a detention because obviously he’s not going to do it in his own time.

Now, as a teen I generally behaved myself in class and did the work, mostly on time. Ish. But I wonder if I had it in for Maya Angelou because at the age of 14 I, too, fancied myself the victimliest victim.

For at least a couple years of my adolescence (I think I got better), I was limited in my ability or desire to truly support other people. I became painfully aware of this years ago. I hadn’t realised that maybe this self-centeredness affected my reading. I just kept assuming the books weren’t very good.

Ready or Not

I’m a big advocate of reading for fun. So I won’t begrudge adolescent me for being self-involved 3 decades ago. If we’re honest with ourselves, we all have phases even as adults when we don’t have the strength to read certain things. It’s useful to remember that’s not the books’ fault.

Against the backdrop of negative news in my native country, I like to read books of plucky individuals banding together. I probably won’t attempt rereading Maya Angelou’s memoir of tribulation at the moment, but I do know now that I actually like some of her poems quite a lot.

*These caged birds were painted on a Glasgow wall, 2019.*

While there are always plenty of reading options to suit any mood and even, I daresay, any impending apocalypse, what to write can be a conundrum. I had this issue during the pandemic as well. When the world is suffering severe pangs, and we don’t know what it will give birth to, how do I bring forth a new big project? If I plot and start a novel referencing the current situation, that’s going to change by the day. If I start penning a contemporary novel without referencing current circumstances, is that callous? Does anyone even want to read more about the present chaos, after exhausting ourselves with the news?

Considering all this, I’m setting my next project in a place I love, and I’ve decided to set it during the first Trump election and administration, 2016-2017. We still had the “Not My President” fig leaf that he’d lost the popular vote, and we thought some people just didn’t realise how greedy and racist and misogynistic and authoritarian he was. This parallels the journey of my characters, as they wrestle with learning that maybe they’re not as kind and upright as they have tried to present themselves.

Which brings me back to my discovery about myself. Recognising our own flaws opens us to appreciating more outside ourselves, and I feel as if starting with my characters’ flaws makes me a little less protective of them, a little more open to the courses their journey can take. They say we should never judge a book by its cover. We shouldn’t judge by our adolescent opinions, either.

Have you encountered any books you ended up really changing your mind about?

Seven Wanders of 2024

Welcome to a new year, fellow adventurers and creatives. Here are my favourite, most inspiring walks from the last journey round the sun. Sometimes the timing of a walk matters almost as much as the place.

Hetty Pegler’s Tump and Bluebell Woods, Gloucestershire

We started a spring Saturday by traipsing through woods near Coaley viewpoint, where fiddleheads unfurled into ferns. Emerged opposite bright yellow rapeseed crops and traversed a clearing to a neolithic burial mound, Hetty Pegler’s Tump (below, centre). You can peek inside the narrow passage leading to chambers of ancient bones. On our way home after lunch in the Cotswold market town of Nailsworth, we lingered in more woodlands with carpets of bluebells in an electric shade of purple.

Oxford

We’ve never spent much time in Oxford—and this is despite me spending a uni term at Oxford Brookes. I remedied that with a sunny June day trip, motivated by an exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum. After viewing sketches by Flemish masters, and finding our way through the ancient statuary to the toilets, we left the enormous museum to explore outside a while.

We walked through the Christ Church College grounds to The Meadow, wandered streets and glimpsed a pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis liked to drink before coming back to the main avenues to view the Bodleian Library and then the Sheldonian Theatre, with rainbow Pride flags in its tower windows and the iconic Emperor Head statues guarding it. A few months later, when I read R.F. Kuang’s Babel, Oxford’s imagery remained fresh in my mind.

Warren, New Hampshire

The population of this small town near the White Mountains peaked in 1860, but we enjoyed our family visit. The Baker River runs behind the houses on one side of the main street, and the Ore Hill Brook behind the houses on the other. A recreational trail shoots through the town as well, directing snowmobilers and bikers and pedestrians straight to the Congregational Church and the massive ballistic missile rocket standing beside it. There’s also an excellent ice cream eatery, complete with friendly porch cat. I enjoyed my early morning walks and met a retired French teacher who comes out every dawn to pick up litter.

Cerne Abbas then Durdle Door, Dorset

We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary near the Jurassic coast in the South of England, and on one of our day trips trekked around Trendle Hill to view the Rude Giant. The path led us below the chalked soles of the180-foot long figure, dug into the slope since the late 17th century at least. We walked up and over the hill, down into the lovely town of Cerne Abbas. Its streets are lined with little streams and footbridges take townsfolk from the roads to their pretty old homes and gardens.

After our stroll there, we drove further to the coast and joined hundreds of tourists, from all nations and races it seemed, to walk down the cliffs to see the magnificent stone arch of Durdle Door. The sight was also enjoyed by a big, blissed-out seal sunning himself on the beach.

Uley, Gloucestershire
This is one of my local walks, a long circuit that comes to about 7 miles. Hilly views, horse pastures, manor estates like gingerbread houses, and old Cotswold buildings in the village of Uley. The walk has been momentous in my writing life in the past, and I reclaimed it for that purpose somewhat this year.

At the end of the summer holidays I hiked to the Prema Gallery and Cafe to start a new short story there, now complete and submitted to competitions. In November I walked through beautiful autumn sunshine to the craft fair to buy a few cards and gifts, and just before Christmas I hiked to the village and sat scribbling new novel ideas in St. Giles church while a few local ladies set up an assembly line of oranges, dolly mixtures, and candles to prepare for the Christingle service.

London: National Theatre to Holborn and Lincoln’s Inn

I love London and its juxtapositions of old and new, native and diverse. Visiting in October half-term to see the excellent West End theatrical production of Dr. Strangelove, we spent the next afternoon on a HiddenCity James Bond-themed quest leading us around west central London.

We crossed Waterloo Bridge from the National Theatre, discovered an art park on a rooftop, and the little green houses, now dwarfed by skyscrapers, that used to be refuges for cabbies. Our clues guided us behind the Courts of Justice and around the London School of Economics campus and Lincoln’s Inn. It included stops at different pubs, welcoming even while stunningly ornate, such as The Princess Louise with its mosaic floors and intricately carved wooden booths, and the majestic Last Judgment, which makes an excellent amaretto sour and has bathroom stalls like confessionals.

The Pinnacle and Post Pond, Lyme, New Hampshire

A New England lake and/ or mountain inevitably makes my annual top wanders. But this one’s special because it’s the lake I grew up on, the summit I grew up under. For years I believed the sun couldn’t truly set unless it was between two hills and reflected over a pond, because that’s how I saw it every day of my childhood.

Post Pond is smallish, but deep enough to be considered a lake; deep enough to house snapping turtles with shells over a foot in diameter. We stayed in a cabin at Loch Lyme Lodge, the rustic resort where I used to work for the summers, and I watched the sunset from a picnic table up the hill while scribbling in my notebook. My husband and I climbed around on the Pinnacle, the hill behind our cabin, and found fairy castle tree stumps, and milkweed cradles, and fantastic views. I completed the day by swimming the whole length of the lake and back.

This year, I hope to work on a new novel set in a similar location, because really, there’s just no place like home.

Where did your wanders take you this year?

2024 Reading Round-Up

I had some ups and downs in my reading year. My first Didn’t-Finish in a few years (because there wasn’t enough STORY, dammit!) and a couple stretches of 2-4 weeks with no time whatsoever to read. But I always balance those out with a voracious spell after. It feels so good when reading time opens up again, like diving into a cool lake after overheating. Here are my favourites among all I read. I’d love to hear what you think!

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Direct and unobfuscating, McCullers introduces us to various misfits about town, starting with the iconic opening line about the “two mutes, [who were] always together.” The story represents the voiceless in many ways, and emphasises the need to be heard.

“The words which are surely the root of all human grief… ‘I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and left undone those things which I ought to have done. So this cannot truly be the end.’”

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

*Wintry Moomins at Octavia’s Bookshop, Cirencester*

Working at a school, I’m somewhat bombarded with young people’s moods and stories, so I don’t go for too many books written in teen voice. I’m so glad I read this one, though. Lauren, the young narrator of this novel, is incredibly driven, and practical even while being compassionate. I wrote about her more in an earlier blog post because she became a favourite character of mine, and Butler’s take on empathy is an exciting one.

“Show me a more pervasive power than change.”

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

A glimpse into someone forgotten by history, this resonated with me partly because of my Eve novel. It delves deeply into the Duchess of Ferrara’s story, whom Browning alluded to in his poem ‘My Last Duchess.’ We see the plight of women in Renaissance Italy, and also explore a love of art that sets someone apart from the crowd.

“She is absorbed in her work; she is her work; it gives her more satisfaction than anything else she has ever known; it intuits the need, the vacancy within her, and fills it.”

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

I feel as if I’m the last to read this, but in case anyone else has yet to discover this novel: It’s excellent. There was tragedy in it and unfairness that I didn’t expect. I should have though, as the book is about an exceptionally intelligent woman trying to pursue a scientific career in the mid-20th century. Ultimately, the opposition she faces makes her later alliances and triumphs that much more thrilling.

“Their odd, tell-all friendship was the kind that only arises when a wronged person meets someone who’s been similarly wronged and discovers that while it may be the only thing they share, it is more than enough.”

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

It’s got an exciting scifi premise: the world is in danger, so a delegation must be sent to space in search of a fix. Once there, the lone surviving voyager meets someone from another planet, as different as can be. They develop communication with each other, and the results are breathtaking. I’m eager to see the film once it’s out.

“Sometimes, the stuff we all hate ends up being the only way to do things.”

*An artsy trip to the real Oxford, this past summer*

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Another book about art… This became a bit of a theme for me, and I really enjoyed it especially as I attended a couple of art exhibits at the time. Art unlocks emotion, and feeds creativity for our own art of writing. This book is a David Copperfield-style journey through a boy’s misfortunes, uncanny encounters, and striking characters, propelled all the while by a deep, tragedy-induced connection to a single painting.

“Immediately its glow enveloped me, something almost musical, an internal sweetness that was inexplicable beyond a deep, blood-rocking harmony of rightness, the way your heart beat slow and sure when you were with a person you felt safe with and loved.”

Midlife Without a Map by Liz Champion

This book made me laugh the most this year. In addition to being funny, Liz (who also has a brilliant Substack) is incredibly relatable. I love how she doesn’t hold back disclosing her highs and lows. She’ll get swept up in something but be completely honest if it doesn’t work out, and that’s rare and refreshing both online and in literature.

“But now I’m halfway up the mountain, facing hairpin bends and vertical drops with a driver who missed his Formula One calling, I’m wondering if I was ever fit and fearless. Maybe a book by the pool would have been adventurous enough.”

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

A hilarious and heartfelt coming of age story, but also a great look at art and how we respond to it. The main character, Johanna, wants to save her family from poverty, so she becomes a music critic as a teen–a scathing one. Could passionate fandom make her as much money as trashing every band she sees?

“‘I feel like I can see the operating system of the world–and it is unrequited love. That is why everyone’s doing everything. Every book, opera house, moon shot and manifesto is here because someone, somewhere, lit up silently when someone else came into the room, and then quietly burned when they weren’t noticed.’”

Babel by R.F. Kuang

Language and revolution entwine in this speculative novel. In an alternative Oxford, colonial powers rule through silver. Once silver bars are engraved with pairs of translated words, magic imbues them, resulting from the disparity in meaning. The plot follows young trainees in this art of translation, and as readers we join them in their enchantment, and their horror as they recognise the injustice at the heart of the system.

“That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

This novel is about books, about books of lots of stories, and the stories are alive but they must be protected…It’s a stunning work to read, as all the little pieces fit together, reminding us that no story really stands alone. I found it incredibly lovely to sink into the universe of this book.

“We are all stardust and stories.”