Rebecca Mascull – The Wild Air

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Aviatrixes, Book Review, Early Aviation, Rebecca Mascull, The Wild Air

Hat Trick In Three

With her third novel, the Edwardian set The Wild Air, Rebecca Mascull has done what she did in her two earlier novels – found a way to hook the reader’s heart to that of her central character, so that the reader absolutely cares about their journey, roots for them and, in this case, I was left feeling quite violent towards the prejudice and spite encountered by our quiet, shy, plain protagonist: one with the courage of a lion, hidden beneath the exterior of a mouse.

It is the first decade of the twentieth century. Cordelia (Della) Dobbs is the third daughter of a bitter, retired, theatrical star. Her charismatic father was seriously injured in an automobile accident, and his stage days are over. Della’s older sisters are beauties, one has gone on to success in the theatre, the other has made a good marriage. Her younger brother is favoured and golden. Della is the family mouse within a vibrantly extrovert, flamboyant set. A bit of a disappointment she does not have the pulchritude, the talent, the artistic creativity, the obvious personality, wit or intelligence to shine out in this family where everyone possesses at least one of these gifts.

Della likes quietness. In a family of extroverts where everyone is glittering and shining all together, there is no point in trying to outshine, or be loud enough or flamboyant enough to command attention. Della stays quiet, helpful, useful. But she does have her own talent – practical, kinaesthetic, a listening gift and passion for mechanics : how things work. Unfortunately, the time is not yet ready for female engineers. And, there is something else. Della is fortunate to come under the protective wing of her great-aunt Betty, newly returned from the States to her North East origins. Betty, a plain-speaking, adventurous woman with a similarly ungraceful, unfeminine appearance, had set out, aged 40, with her younger brother, an engineer, to the New World. Betty had married a practical man, and lived happy with him until his death brought her homewards. And Betty was fascinated by the new challenge and daring of flying. She had seen the Wright Brothers. Betty, with her strength, earthiness and willingness to ignore the constructs of graceful, eye-fluttering femininity, instead, to find her own ways towards being a strong person, a strong female person, becomes a mentor and encourager, helping Della to find her own ‘star’. Della is in love with the idea of flying. And female aviatrixes, though rare, are there to be aspirational role models

Hélène Dutrieu, aviatrix, 1911

I have to admit that my surrender to Della was not as ‘upon the instant’ as it had been to her earlier ‘sisters’. Feisty Adeliza Golding, from Mascull’s first book, The Visitors, and the wonderfully intelligent scientist, Dawnay Price, from The Song Of The Sea Maid, eccentric, flamboyant personalities both, had snaffled my interest in their stories from the off.

So, courageous for Mascull to explore this far quieter girl and woman, this introvert. Della proves, though, to be ‘still waters run deep’ She is the person in the corner of the room you don’t notice at a party, the mousy one, until by chance you discover this overlooked one has a wealth of story to tell, and a life of more strangeness and fascination than you could dream of.

One of the many facets of Mascull’s writing, which I admire hugely, is her heart and her kindness. There is tenderness here, a kind of respect for the integrity of her invented characters. She is not someone who seems to force her characters into some structure and shape. More, a sense of the author’s creation revealing themselves. Della, true to her quieter nature, takes time also to reveal herself to the reader – but she is absolutely authentic, both in her quietness and reticence, and in where she soars (literally!) when she discovers where her true North lies.

Lanoe Hawker’s (First World War flying ace) No 1611 Bristol Scout 

I read, a year or so ago, a fictionalised biography of another aviatrix, Beryl Markham. What disturbed me about that book, was that the author had to some extent played fast and loose with the facts of Markham’s life, for her ‘faction’. Something which leaves me with a kind of distaste. It is, I think, another mark of Mascull’s integrity that though she might take specific achievements and stories from the history of real people as a starting point or inspiration for her fictions, she does not mangle the authenticity of real lives for her fiction. Della is not Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson or any other ‘real’ aviatrix, bent into Mascull’s story. Della is Mascull’s genesis, but she grows into her own shape. Something magical happens when an author so clearly ‘listens’ to the arisingness of their creation.

If you want your heroes to be full of ‘flashing eyes, floating hair’ and mesmerise you with their magnetic charisma, Della may not do, but my advice would be, stay patient and wait for her to find herself, to reveal who she is, as she discovers that for herself.

Now, I will not deny that there were some aspects that I struggled with. The book has a prologue, dated 1918, but the sequential story begins in 1909, with Della in her mid-teens so, clearly the First War is going to be a major factor. I will not reveal spoilers of course, but there are sequences of some letters, written by a couple of major characters in the book, which had my disbelief unsuspended, and thinking ‘surely………..this could not have got past the censors’ Mascull is, however, meticulous in research and, for the benefit of the interested reader tells us what is true, and where she might have stretched truth into invention. I was quite startled to discover that whilst of course censors would always do their work on anything which might reveal position, military details etc, there were letters which did get home where soldiers did reveal their fear, grief, and despair to loved ones. Although most letters were much more ‘chipper’ than the writers felt, in order to avoid alarming their loved ones, some were far more honest, and escaped censoring.

The beautiful, elegant, Blackburn Monoplane

My other challenge is that The Wild Air is much more ‘Romantic Historical’ than Mascull’s first two books, and romance is more central to the trajectory of the story. One of the genre shelves I never visit in my local library is ‘Romance’ though of course relationships, including romantic relationships, tend to be a crucial part of many if not most of the books I love. There is a very pure, whole relationship which is a central one. Perhaps it is a mark of a certain cynicism in me that felt a little like ‘Mills and Boon’ about that, and I am more comfortable reading relationships which have a dysfunctionality. I needed to lay that cynicism aside, Mascull, as said earlier, is an honest writer, and allows her characters their honesty too. I had been more comfortable with the more intellectual, greater thinking complexity of Adeliza and Dawnay, which inevitably gave a certain – tangle – to their relationships. The central driving relationship in this book is where there is a great expressed emotional honesty happening, and perhaps this leads to a clearer trajectory and clearer mutuality. The conflicts here are conflicts caused externally, not internal conflicts. And, I guess war itself creates a kind of ‘cut to the chase’ intensity.

Mascull is a wonderful crafter of language itself. Now, curiously, I found myself underlining less ‘soaring prose’ in this book than I had in her other two. And, reflecting on this, I think this was also the expression of an authenticity in her writing – Adeliza and Dawnay were both highly expressive characters of brilliance, wit, flamboyance, so of course they are going to express themselves in stunning fashion. Della, as noted is a quiet person. She speaks far more plainly, less elliptically, less in metaphor. So, of course, even though Mascull is ‘third person’ narration, the think through will be through that quieter, more plainly speaking persona :

Della talked aloud to herself. She did that when it was marvellous and she revelled in the complete wonder of flying, the secret joy of it. Or when it was bad. When the mist came down or the wind got up something terrible and she was fighting the weather in order to come back alive

Adeliza and Dawnay would, I’m sure have expressed the above in fizzing expression, I would have been underlining passages of beauty all through. Della does not have that voice. Again, I come back to thinking about Mascull, who, here, does not astound the reader with her own beautiful, poetic, expressive voice – because it would not be Della’s.

Authenticity.

So, having thought through what I mainly loved, and what (and why) I struggled with, I can only raise my 4 ½ stars to 5. Mascull has done it again.

I had one slightly strange thought, an elemental one, as I read this : Mascull’s first creation, Adeliza, found her passion in earth – deaf-blind, it is initially through engagement with what grows – and through ether, the spirit, intangible world. Dawnay connects through water, for Della, that earthed, practical soul, the growth and destiny is airborne. What next……..I do hope not an arsonist!

I was extremely happy to receive an arc, via the publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, shortly before Christmas. A fantastic start to my 2017 reading year

However………as the book will be published on May 4th, I have held back publication of my review till towards the end of April. In fact, this week marks a blog tour of Rebecca Mascull’s book, and I am eagerly looking forward to other bloggers’ impressions. Mascull’s writing always presents possibilities for interested and passionate reader engagement.

I shall be searching out other reviews and they should appear as clickable links in the ‘Catching My Beady Eye’ widget, on the right hand margin

The Wild Air Amazon UK
The Wild Air Amazon USA

(Alas, I have discovered that ‘other’blogging platforms’ don’t easily transfer over to the Post I Like Widget, so you will have to find your way to other reviews yourselves, from the addresses given above!)

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Announcing a blog tour – Rebecca Mascull – The Wild Air

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Blog Tour, Rebecca Mascull, The Wild Air

Rebecca Mascull, an author I much admire, has her third novel out early next month. And, to whet your appetites, there will be a blog tour (me too!)

I shall be eagerly reading other reviews, interviews and so on, and will certainly be featuring them on my Posts I Like widget, but these are the blogs and these are the dates:

Rebecca writes literary historical novels with strong female characters. This one is about an aviatrix, and set prior to, and encompassing, the First World War. She always researches meticulously, so just when you might think ‘surely THIS couldn’t have happened at that time, you will find yourself surprised and educated.  The Wild Air has a much more introverted, central character than the ones from her first two novels, but she is as interesting, layered, unique and entrancing as ‘The Visitors’ Adeliza Golding and Song of the Sea Maid’s Dawnay Price.

It’s Publication Day : Rebecca Mascull – Song of the Sea Maid

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Book Review, Publication Day, Rebecca Mascull, Song of the Sea Maid

Today sees the publication of Rebecca Mascull’s intriguing, enthralling story of a (fictional) female scientist in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Song of The Sea Maid is both a cracking good read, and provokes a lot of thought and useful questions. The link is to my original review and also to a Q + A I did with the author as part of a blog tour this week What is fascinating is that though Mascull’s central character, Dawnay Price, is ‘invention’, there were more women who served as her model, at that time, than one would suppose.

A book ‘about stuff’ which is also a compulsive page turner

Not a Q + A with Rebecca, but still part of the blog tour for the book, is a fascinating post which Books By Women, a site devoted to women writers asked her to write about prehistoric woman.

Song of the Sea Maid Amazon UK
Song of the Sea Maid Amazon USA

Author Interview – Rebecca Mascull : Song of the Sea Maid

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Author Interview, Blog Tour, Book Review, Rebecca Mascull, Song of the Sea Maid

I was delighted to get the chance to put various questions to Rebecca Mascull, sparked by her second novel, out this week – Song of The Sea Maid. Astute, long time readers of this blog may note I have only ever done one author interview Q+A before, with Rebecca, about her first book, The Visitors

And as you can see, a couple of her answers drew further comments from me

Keep an eye out – this Q + A is part of  the ‘Song of the Sea Maid Blog Tour, 15^th-21^st June’  I’ll be adding any WordPress ones I find onto my ‘Posts I Like’ sidebar widget

 I would classify both your books as literary fiction with historical settings. Is this your own perception of your writing, as far as you can tell at this time? – it’s a bit of a sneaky question as of course it asks questions about future books which maybe are only nebulous floating ideas at this stage.

I suppose I find it quite difficult to classify my own writing. It does have an historical setting, but that’s largely because I live in the past in my head! I’m obsessed with the past and fascinated by it. When I read books set in the past I’m immediately at home there, whereas I find novels set in present day (and certainly the future) very hard to warm to, however brilliant the writing. So, for me, the historical setting is just a place in which I feel comfortable and also totally engages me. But I don’t have a particular period I’m taken with, or a type of story. I have a few ideas for future books and they’re all quite different from each other in terms of setting and narrative. I think this reflects my butterfly mind, which likes to swoop and dip from one thing to the next. As for whether it’s literary or not, I’ll leave that up to the readers and the critics. For myself, I like to read novels that make me think and I like to write such novels too. But never at the expense of a good storyline and interesting characters, at least that’s what I try to do. Again, I leave it to the reader to decide if I’ve succeeded – or not.

Do you see any kind of cultural parallels between the tail end of the nineteenth century setting of The Visitors, and the Enlightenment Age setting of Song of the Sea Maid?

In terms of researching the C18th, it felt quite different from the late Victorian setting of The Visitors. There were aspects of the late C19th that felt particularly modern, from everyday events like train travel to the idea of our boys going overseas to hot places to fight wars we don’t understand. It appeared to me as if the modern age seemed less distant from the world of The Visitors. But my first readings about the C18th made it feel as if it were a different planet. The texture of everyday life seemed quite alien – it was little things, like all the men sweating under wigs and women wearing no knickers and having to wipe their menstrual blood on their shifts! And the widespread belief in mermaids still permeating institutions like the Gentleman’s Magazine. Yet, once I’d become more accustomed to it, I realised that the seeds of modern life as we know it now seem to be sown in the C18th, such as journalism, coffee houses, Johnson’s English dictionary etc. Of course, when you look at Charles Darwin’s critics and how his theories were received, it feels that science and society hadn’t moved on much, as well as the prevailing attitudes towards women as being a lesser form of human. But what I love about both periods is that they were both tremendously forward-thinking at the same time as battling old prejudices – so the C18th Enlightenment and then the Industrial Revolution are both fascinating times to get to grips with, and look at the rate of social change. And great fun to place characters within that and see how they get on.

(And yes, the comparisons between the Enlightenment Age and the end of the nineteenth, that you drew at the end of that question, are rather what made me feel a kind of similarity – I suppose, I go back to a kind of optimism, too, which I suspect got irretrievably lost after the First War, and, if not then, after Second – something about what mankind was able to do with ‘progress’ and a feeling it was all going to be good)

Whilst I was reading Song of the Sea Maid, and particularly as I deeply thought about it, I was getting strange reminders of George Eliot! What I mean by this, is that she was a writer with a strong moral sense – her characters are people for whom a broad, not a narrow morality is important. A moral humanist view, I suppose. Is she a writer you have a sense of connection with? And/or which writers (modern day or classical) do you feel have had an influence on you – both in terms of what they are writing about, and how they are writing?

Gosh, that’s a massive question and a delightful one. I rate George Eliot very highly as a writer and thinker. A tremendous intellect, to which I aspire as a mouse to a lion. And I love her stories and characters, but to be brutally honest I find her fiction quite dense and not very easy to read. Her style can be absolutely charming and brilliant, like the beginning of Adam Bede where she invites us to see the scene reflected in a drop of ink from her pen – that’s beautiful and brilliant. Yet for me she does wander off in too many asides at times, and I itch to get back to her characters and what they’re doing. It may be sacrilege to say so, but I actually prefer the TV drama versions of her novels in some cases, as they preserve the brilliant wealth of characters and fascinating plots in something like Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda, whereas the novel can be quite hard-going, for me anyway. I really liked Silas Marner the book in that way, as it’s quite short! And sticks more to the narrative than some of the longer works.

The opposite of that for me is Charles Dickens. He is my literary hero in every sense. I know his faults and I don’t mind them, so it is true love in that sense! What I adore in Dickens is that he’s a consummate storyteller. His range of characters is breathtaking, whilst the twists and turns of his plots are so clever. Just think of the moment we discover Magwitch is Pip’s benefactor in Great Expectations or we discover Steerforth has run off with Emily in David Copperfield. Just awesome plot moments that I’d write my whole life to get anywhere near. Yet, he’s also hilariously funny as well as having this profound sense of injustice and a social conscience to be reckoned with.

I think Eliot had the mightier brain than Dickens, but I feel the latter was the better storyteller. In my wildest moments, I’d like to aspire to a bit of both, in trying to tell stories that keep you turning the pages and make you think. That’s what I’m struggling to do, anyway.

(I absolutely agree about Eliot / Dickens – Eliot’s brain, Dickens’ ability to tell a story and I’m reminded of both his journalistic and theatrical background in with this – it was the sense of humanist morality that I was getting the reminders from rather than style)

I’ve been really struck, in both books, but perhaps even more so in this, that whilst you are writing strong female characters, strong female role models, who have had ‘real’ women giving a springboard to your imagination, you aren’t creating women who are opposed in their struggles by individual reactionary men. This kind of comes back to the previous convoluted question – I feel an optimism about humanity in your writing – a kind of inclusive, not a separatist, feminism. Does this analysis ring true?

That is a fascinating analysis. I’ve heard it once before from a friend of mine who read the first draft of this and she said the men were all really nice and if she’d written it, they certainly wouldn’t be! Well, I think I probably am an optimist at heart. I do like to think the best of people. I’m not naturally suspicious. I grew up with three wonderful brothers who I love very much. I’ve also had many close friendships with women over the years, that I value extremely highly. So, when it comes to the males and females within my peers, I’ve known lovely people of both sexes – but don’t get me wrong, I’ve been around long enough to have come across some real rotters too, male and female.

In this story, Dawnay’s benefactor –Markham Woods – is a kind man, but he is quite reactionary too. It is Dawnay who educates him a bit. But remember that he is widely travelled and that has broadened his horizons. Her mentor – Stephen Applebee – is a very kind man, yet again he has shadows in his life we discover later.

And the most reactionary of all is the sea captain, who starts out quite infuriating, yet he changes too.

People are changed by their experiences – they learn from them – so I hope the best of my characters do that. Those that won’t are the voices we hear around the dinner table on board ship, who feel the poor are another species. Those minds will never be changed. Even Dawnay’s early mother-figure, Matron at the orphanage, is set in her ways and unlikely to ever alter her course. But she’s human and she cares for Dawnay too, and that softens her.

For me, this story is about someone with no advantages who fights her way through the restrictions of her time. One of those obstacles is being female in a world ruled by males, but to me that doesn’t mean that men are the enemy there. They are all victims of their age in that sense. Her other problem is her poverty and that was just as difficult to overcome in that age. So the antagonist for me was always her society, her culture, and not one person or thing. And God too, and Nature. She battles with these concepts as well. People are small fry compared to the forces she’s squaring up to!

As I noted in my review, I had a question mark about how safe, as a lone female, Dawnay might be on her various travels. I was a bit ambivalent about this, because of course, as readers, we do care about Dawnay and want to keep her safe – but I did wonder, whether you as a writer had felt a strong urge that you wanted to keep her safe?

Blimey, another corker of a question. Let me think. Well, I think I’ve probably changed a lot as a writer since I became a mother. Before my daughter was born, I was writing a novel set during World War II (as yet unpublished) and I remember bumping off characters left, right and centre with no qualms whatsoever. I finished that novel after I had my daughter and mysteriously people who died in the first draft were resurrected and their lot generally made much easier all round! So, yes, I am a bit of a softie about my characters these days. I can’t bear novels where characters are punished horribly in scene after scene. I just don’t want to read about that any more. I know that some people have the most horrific experiences in life and these should be told. But I also feel that some people go through their lives generally surrounded by some nice people, having quiet, reasonably happy lives with only the ordinary, everyday tragedies that we all are familiar with. To me, that doesn’t make great fiction necessarily, but conversely I don’t think you need to haul your characters over the coals repeatedly to make a good story. Dawnay does suffer throughout the story and goes through some difficult times, and that was enough for me. Yes, women were more at risk in many ways in the C18th than they are now, but I would say the same was true for everyone living in that time: life was cheap, there was no organised police force, the penal system was extremely harsh, some children were whipped and beaten, and some people in pillories were stoned to death. Yet, there were plenty of other folk, including women, who went through their lives without being assaulted or attacked or molested in any way, just like people today. So, I maintain that if I want my character to escape such horrors, then I have the vagaries of history to back me up. And as I said, I certainly don’t think she escapes unharmed or untouched by the things she sees and suffers.

I was very aware, at the start of this novel (as I was with The Visitors) that you are a mother – there’s a close observation/inhabitation of a child’s perception of the world, and we make that journey, with both Adeliza and Dawnay – who they are as adults is very clearly linked to them as children. I know we talk of books and the writing of books being ‘like the author’s child/baby’ but I wonder, with starting your central characters from very young childhood, how much they, not just the book itself, feel like additional children, growing up remarkably fast!

That’s a superb observation. I certainly think that an important similarity between being a mother and creating my characters has been this sense that they are connected to me in a profound way and yet very definitely separate and with their own identities and lives to lead. I felt that from the earliest flutterings of my baby in the womb, that this was a whole other being with inclinations all her own. As parents, her father and I are there to guide her and love her and all that, but she belongs to herself. I absolutely feel that about the characters I create too. They may spring from my subconscious but they have their own internal logic that I feel I have little control over. As a novelist, I have a similar obsession with childhood as Dickens, who is of course brilliant at inhabiting the child’s point of view, as George Orwell noticed. I do believe in the power of formative experiences – as a parent, this is terrifying as we consider the mistakes we make and the effect this might have one day on our children! But as a novelist, it’s a state ripe for exploration and one I find endlessly interesting.

I’m also very aware, as I was with The Visitors, that you have had a background in teaching – there is a real passion about both teaching and learning, in both books – there are inspiring teachers in both, and the central characters are inspiring learners. Did/do you write that exciting, heady, greedy desire to learn out of your own experience of learning, and your own (perhaps idealised, given current educational strictures!) teaching experience?

Yes, education is definitely a theme of mine. I have personal experience of different types of teaching in varying setups with varied success. When I was a full-time schoolteacher, I certainly had a lot of big ideas about the ideal teacher and the problems inherent in the school system. But I’m also a voracious learner, as you guessed. I can’t help myself! I just want to know everything about everything, all of the time! Sylvia Plath once said something about wanting to speak to every person in the world and I know exactly how she felt. The world is endlessly interesting to me and I believe to all children. If the teacher can tap into that wonder all children have, that’s half the battle. And you probably shouldn’t get me started on all the issues I feel there are in the current school system that actively work against encouraging that sense of wonder. Yet I don’t think the education we see in either of my novels is necessarily ideal – both characters are very isolated and find it quite hard to go out into the world and form relationships, possibly partly for that reason. I imagine that the ideal would be a mixture of both i.e. the best of schools and the best of one-to-one mentors. If only!

Both Adeliza and Dawnay are definitely exceptional, heroic, out of the ordinary, inspirational characters – to those around them, as well as to their readers. Do you as a writer find that it is the idea of some kind of ‘heroic’ which inspires you?

I actually think it’s difficult to be exceptional. The very nature of someone who is out of the ordinary means that they are likely to find life tough. It can be much easier to fit in than it is to stand out. Some people thrive on that and want to be the centre of attention. Others are comfortable being invisible. Quite a few writers I’ve spoken to about this have always felt themselves to be on the edge of things, not quite in the club, in the team. On the outside looking in. That may well be a good place for a writer to be – observing, considering – but it can be more fun to be in the thick of it! The people I admire in real life are not necessarily heroic in any traditional sense of the word, but quite often they are those people who quietly revolutionise things without making much fuss about it. I love the idea of great thinkers squirrelling away for years in obscurity, doing necessary and ground-breaking work for the love of it and not the glory. I also think it’s pretty heroic to stick around and make life better for the people around you, rather than going off on adventures like the traditional hero does. In my life, my heroes are people who manage to be kind, caring and generous despite the busy, chaotic nature of modern life. I also think in that way that everybody has the capacity to be a hero to someone else. Both of my heroines so far are very determined, which I admire. They are also very gobby and hot-headed! And a bit impetuous, which can get them into trouble. Interestingly, my current work in progress (which I can’t really say much about – I’m superstitious that way!) has a much quieter heroine and I’m really enjoying her watchfulness and silence, and the contrast between that and what’s really going on inside her head. But, as with all works-in-progress, that may well change!

Are you at all drawn to the idea of making a male character your central one, and the challenge of writing a male sensibility?

Yes, I would like the challenge of that one day. I have written from the male point of view in the past, in novels (unpublished) I completed before The Visitors. I will admit that I don’t find it as easy to write as a man and so it would be slightly nerve-wracking for me to have a go at it. At the moment I am interested in the theme of a woman in a man’s world, yet I have an idea for book 4 that has nothing to do with this, so perhaps my protagonist in that novel – or at least one of them – may well be male, who knows! I try so very hard to be authentic in everything I write – whether it’s the historical details or the sensibilities of a character, so being a woman and writing from the male viewpoint always feels a bit risky or even presumptuous. But I know that’s probably nonsense, as some of my favourite male characters have been written by women and very much vice versa. After all, we are engaged in the act of writing fiction, and thus we use the only tool that really matters: the imagination. I probably ought to trust in mine more than I do.

Thank you Rebecca

Now I enjoyed all that enormously, especially trying to frame some of the burning questions I had without revealing any spoilers, and Rebecca was being equally careful in giving me answers whilst choosing non-spoiler illustrations too. Not to mention the fact that Rebecca’s answers made me think even more enjoyably about other ideas and reflections related to the book.

And now I’m intrigued by the watchful, quieter heroine who (at the moment) is expressing herself a little differently in Rebecca’s book-in-process.

Here are links which will take you to look insides, and you can see if that intriguing young child on the streets catches you as expertly as she caught me…..

Song of the Sea Maid Amazon UK
Song of the Sea Maid Amazon USA

And if you are keen to see other Q + A’s with Rebecca Mascull on Song of The Sea Maid, I found the Monday one, on Onemorepage.co.uk As this isn’t a WordPress blog, I couldn’t ‘like’ it and have it automatically appear as a link in the widgets, hence including here

Rebecca Mascull – Song of the Sea Maid

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Book Review, Rebecca Mascull, Song of the Sea Maid

‘they have slackened my rope and given me a taste of the world beyond my fence. And I will have more of it, mark my words’

So states the female central character of the eighteenth century set Song of the Sea Maid.

I have been eagerly and anxiously waiting for Rebecca Mascull’s second novel, as her first, The Visitors, was one of my stand-out novels of 2014

I did indeed enjoy, enormously, this second novel by Mascull, even though I was not as completely bowled over, entranced, blown away as by that first novel.

And the reason for this is in part the huge challenge for an author when they create a character (particularly in a first novel) who is unusually memorable and richly complex, whose story is fascinating and believable, and where everything about the writing and structure of the novel, including subsidiary relationships, just works. And Adeliza in The Visitors, was that character. I could still feel her, metaphorically, over my shoulder, grabbing my attention and memory as I read this, very different book, though one also with a heroine of similarly feisty nature, in advance of her time, and challenged by the lack of opportunities afforded to her gender and class, in that time.

Margaret Bryan, born circa 1760, British Natural Philosopher and Educator, with her children (Wiki Commons)

Starting towards the tail end of the 1730s, the book follows the story of a young girl, initially unnamed; one with a ferocious intelligence, a watchful observance, even at aged 4, as a young vagrant, living through stealing what she can in the company of her older brother. I was immediately captivated by this child, and Mascull took me inside her head, I could hear her voice, the excitement, the undisciplined, dynamic, finely assessing intelligence of the child.

Little Dawnay Price is arbitrarily named by and for the ‘benefactor’ who captures her on the street and takes her to a place for destitute, impoverished children. The place is presided over by a man who sees nothing wrong in the society which gave rise to that destitution, which is certainly not the children’s fault, and neither may it be the fault of the parents, but rather of the structure of a society which gives to the haves and castigates the have-nots. Little Dawnay – whose voice is utterly believeable, whose intelligence, originality and burning desire for learning captivates – is of course doubly disenfranchised, by being a girl, and a powerless poor girl at that.

By a series of fortuitous encounters with people of unusual benevolence and open-mindedness, and ability to stand against a morality which defended the status quo, Dawnay begins to transcend her bleak beginnings, and gets an education. This is, after all, The Enlightenment. Dawnay’s observant mind and ability to grasp complex practical and philosophical concepts mark her out as a ‘natural philosopher’ – in other words, a scientist.

She has an independent nature, an independent mind, and through those lucky encounters, becomes a person of some independent means.

Ribeira Palace, Lisbon, mid eighteenth century, Wiki Commons – Portugal is a central setting

Eventually her travels – both in the world of books, of knowledge, and out in the real world, lead her to begin to formulate some very advanced conclusions – questioning the existence of a Deity, and making suppositions about evolution – a good century in advance of Darwin

Maria Gaetana Agnesi, born 1718, Italian mathematician and professor of mathematics, Bologna University. Wiki Commons

Now, Mascull is a meticulous researcher, as was clear in The Visitors, and also in this book. She is one who also manages to wear her research lightly, in that the reader does not feel lectured by the author, but her wealth of background reading is woven into the novel. However, with a novel which has a female scientist, and moreover one coming out with some very advanced theories a century early, the reader might find themselves frowning and thinking too much licence is being taken by the author. Mascull clearly anticipates this, as at the end of the novel she explains what her researches threw up. Firstly, there WERE a few female ‘natural philosophers’ at this time. In the main, we do not widely know of them, because history is written by the winners, the rulers, the elite. And because of this, the farther we go back in time, the less likely it is that history will feature herstory. There were also ‘proto-evolutionary theories’ bobbing around, there were fossils, and fossil hunters, even though it wasn’t till a little later that Cuvier began to bring this discipline into mainstream.

The challenge I found, however, – and it’s one which Mascull admits – is that all those female ‘natural philosophers’ were wealthy, daughters of the ruling classes. She did not want to write a kind of fictionalised biography of one of them, and was interested instead in writing the fiction of someone who had more struggles to engage with than purely that of her gender.

As reader, I wasn’t altogether believing of all the good fortune Dawnay experienced, and perhaps particularly, the fact that she did not suffer the violence which a young woman, alone in a man’s world, breaking the codes, living solitary, would be most likely to encounter. Maybe this is twentieth century cynicism. My criticism, or question, is that whilst I certainly would not have wanted the kind of gratuitous violence and almost salacious enjoyment which some writers seem to visit on their female characters in dubious environments, I did wonder if Mascull’s clear kindness and desire for her characters to overcome challenges was glossing over potential dangers and keeping them well out of Dawnay’s way. It struck me that almost all the characters in the book have a kind of nobility of nature – certainly all the characters we really get to know well. The adversities Dawnay meets are those of broad attitudes and beliefs held in society, rather than individual people with malevolent intent.

So this was an interesting realisation – challenge and struggle and overcoming odds is the stuff of both life itself and literature. Mascull does not have Dawnay particularly engaged in struggle with an individual ‘predator’, rather, the struggle is that of cultural and, indeed physical environment (very long term view Darwinian!) . Various historical events, whether created by mankind or by natural disaster also become the field of struggle and adversity which must be survived.

Steller’s Sea Cow, discovered 1740s, hunted to extinction by 1768. Wiki Commons

In the central swathe of this book, Mascull’s wonderful ability to capture individual emotional tone, the voice in the head, of the central character was not quite present for me. What was happening instead, was considered observation, analysis of theory. It wasn’t the sense of an author being determined to use her research material. Dawnay herself is doing the puzzling out and the analysis. Mascull’s writing continued precise, careful, avoiding cliché, but I missed the emotional quality taking me into feeling the heart of the character.

And I believe in part this is because, during the central core of the book, what drives Dawnay Price is her scientific interest. Actually, Mascull was succeeding rather too well. Dawnay is always observing, reflecting, analysing – and doing that scientific thing of standing at remove. I absolutely believed Dawnay, but I could not quite get close to her.

And then in the latter part of the book Dawnay makes some significant journeys in her own emotional development, as well as the journey in scientific understanding and analysis, and at this point, with a rush, I was back with the same kind of engagement and freshness that Mascull created and crafted in the voice of the young Dawnay.

Rebecca Mascull is a fascinating writer. Old fashioned, in many ways – she’s not doing edgy, flamboyant pyrotechnics in structure. There are interesting characters, particularly of course her central character. There is a narrative, things happen, people change. And her writing is excellent. Her books don’t end when you close the last page, but continue to provoke reflection.

This came so close to 5 star for me (4 ½, rounded up). Strongly recommended – this is one which can provoke good and fruitful discussion. And the more I reflected on the book, the closer I have grown to love, rather than to strongly like it. ( 4  ¾, rounded up!)

Terrific. A vindication of the pleasures of reading………..a book which draws the reader in, deceptively making it an easy, page turning journey, and then pounces on the complacent, relaxed reader and swallows them up!

I was delighted, not to mention impatient, to receive this hot off the advanced press as an ARC, as I had been sending many emails plainting ‘when, when, when!’ Publication date is 18th of June, on both sides of the pond, so not too long to wait

Song of the Sea Maid Amazon UK
Song of the Sea Maid Amazon USA

And incidentally, Wiki has a page listing the names of known female scientists from antiquity, well before education became widely available. We WERE there, though our schools rarely taught about us!

Almost stop press! :

watch this space (or at least, another post on another day, in this place) I had SO many questions Rebecca’s book fruitfully raised for me that I wanted to put them to her. and will be doing a Q + A on 16th, as part of a week-long blog tour all around the blogosphere, to coincide with publication. Not only am I enthusiastically looking forward to the answers for my own Qs, but also to everyone else’s

(5 –  no rounding up – any book which kept making me think think think for days after finishing, getting more and more interested in the questions it was posing ………..)

Author Interview – Rebecca Mascull: The Visitors

Tags

Author Interview, Book Review, Literary Fiction, Rebecca Mascull, The Visitors

Following my review of Rebecca Mascull‘s wonderful first novel The Visitors, the previous posting on here,  I was delighted to be offered the chance of doing a Q + A with her. as her book gave me much to think about, and curiosity about her authorial process. So……..with my question marks neatly polished, here we go:

I was particularly struck by the sense of kinaesthetic awareness you brought to Liza’s experience. How did you get inside the inability to express, the being locked within oneself, and then the explosive newness of each experience she has?

I think the turning point for me in trying to understand the condition of not seeing and not hearing was when I read an account of the deaf-blind experience which explained that reality for a hearing/seeing person has memories related to what they have seen and heard which help to create a solid sense of who they are, where they are and their life up to that point. For a deaf-blind child this sense of reality is thin and splintery, creating a kind of chaotic and sometimes frightening existence in relation to themselves and the world. That sense of confusion and frustration was so heart-rending to me and made me feel so lucky to have my senses in good working order, and made me determined to represent some aspects of the deaf-blind experience as faithfully as I could. I researched a couple of key deaf-blind personalities. Firstly, Helen Keller, by reading her autobiographies; and also Laura Bridgman – the first deaf-blind child to be formally educated in America – particularly by reading an almost daily account of her education at the Perkins Institute. I also spent time with some staff from the deaf-blind charity Sense, who showed me videos and talked a lot with me about the unique needs of deaf-blind adults and children. Years ago, I read an astonishing account of a blind woman who had her sight restored in later life: ‘Emma and I’ by Sheila Hocken, and her description of the moments after the bandages were first removed was mind-blowing. This new sense of wonder at the world was highly influential in rendering Liza’s experiences. I believed it was crucial to convey the idea that the lack of senses such as sight or hearing were not Liza’s problem in themselves, but her real obstacle at the beginning of the book was that of being unable to communicate – once she is given the key to this by Lottie, there’s no stopping her, despite her limitations. That was a message I wanted to come across very clearly, that with determination and help, one can overcome almost anything.

Without wanting to give any spoilers away, for readers who haven’t read the novel, I was fascinated by the explanation you gave in a previous interview, printed at the end of the novel, where you talk about the characters beginning to take over and insist on their own journey. How do you explore that, how do you ‘get inside’ character and inhabit character?

That’s a fascinating question. I do believe the creation of character and fiction writing itself is a very mysterious process. I can’t really explain it, other than describe what happens when I write. I am a very methodical writer in some ways, in that I plan narratives in a lot of detail once I’ve got a plot arc more or less worked out. I write detailed synopses and chapter plans and work from them. Not all writers do this, of course; it’s a very individual process. Having said that, amongst these best laid plans, characters do seem to take on a life of their own. They can be most awkward and muck up all your intentions for them. Pirandello explored this beautifully in ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’; it’s so very true. Once created, they do march around and call the shots. They are probably different aspects of the writer’s personality yet I like to think there’s something more magical going on, a kind of channelling or curious act of empathy. The act of writing a fictional narrative does include a bit of magic which you can’t really analyse or explain. One example is the way plot problems resolve themselves by actively NOT thinking about them consciously. I’ve found that ideas for plot and character percolate in the brain and work themselves out with little input from my conscious mind. So, I don’t believe I really do inhabit the characters as much as watch them present themselves, fully formed, and yet sometimes they allow me the kindness of jumping inside their heads once in a while and looking out.

What I very much pick up from this book, is a sense of quietness and waiting – from you as a writer. It made me wonder about how you work, whether you are someone who has background music or whether you are someone who needs space and solitude?

That’s such a beautiful thing to say, thank you. I think part of my previous answer relates to that, the act of watching characters to see what they’ll do next. I absolutely do prefer to write in solitude and silence, whenever possible. I do most of the actual prose itself during the school day, when the house is empty and mostly very quiet. But life sometimes intercedes and I have to write with stuff going on around me now and again. My ideal writing conditions are in my house, alone, whilst it’s snowing outside; thus the world itself is quiet and muffled too, and there’s something eerie and magical about snowfall. But I don’t get that very often, so school days have to suffice. The silence helps me listen to that inner voice that does all the really good bits of writing, all the subconscious stuff where the flow comes from. Sometimes I do close my eyes and bend my head to let it in, to hear it. I’m starting to sound a bit odd now, I think…

The only note within this book which I could not quite understand, was, very early, when Liza is still within her having no one to communicate with, before she learned the palm signing, there is mention of how touch, smell and taste are preternaturally sensitive – and that she gets sent out by Cook, Nanny or a maid to gather particular herbs – and I couldn’t imagine how that request might have been imparted to her. How did you envisage that being communicated?

Ah, well spotted! My mum pointed this out to me in the first draft too. My answer then was that I thought Cook would give her a sprig of the herb to go and find or perhaps merely the scent of it somehow. But I liked the flow of that sentence and didn’t want to add more detail in. Perhaps I should have done now! It’s an example of how the deaf-blind in this early period before education were able to circumvent their limitations and get by, such as making up their own signs for hunger and thirst etc.

The Visitors, at least what Liza means by The Visitors, as opposed to the wider context of the meaning of the book’s title, are a very integral or natural part of the story, and Liza has always been aware of them. They are of course frightening to others, or possibly thought of as being indicative of madness. Liza senses she must keep the secret of them close. Because the reader primarily identifies and sees the whole story through Liza, I believe we accept the reality and normalcy of them too. I wondered whether they were pure imagination for you, or whether you had awareness of another dimension?

I’m really glad you felt like that about the Visitors. I wanted them to be part of the fabric of Liza’s world and yet not overpower it. It was important to me that the focus of the story be Liza and her development as a person, with the ghostly aspect an interesting addition yet not the whole point of the book, despite the book being named after them! You’re quite right to mention the wider context of the title and I’m glad too that you did, as I wanted the term ‘visitors’ to apply to all the different kind of outsiders we find in the story, such as the English in South Africa and even the Boers themselves, and the hop-pickers on the Golding farm, and Liza herself in the Crowe household. It is a theme of the story, of being on the edge, looking in. As for the ghostly aspect, my answer is that I don’t really believe in ghosts as such, yet I’m a pretty open-minded person and my general philosophy in life is – what do I know? I was always into the idea of ghosts and mediums – I read Doris Stokes as a teenager – and loved ghost stories and movies, especially ‘Poltergeist’ which I was terrified of and obsessed with in equal amounts. Later I became fascinated with stories of alien abduction too! Yet I’m also a very rational person and adore science, though I don’t have a very scientific mind. As a writer, anything that is unexplained and mysterious is fun to play with and I did relish working out the rules of how the ghosts would behave i.e. who they can and cannot see, what they understand about their own condition. I think deep down they are probably a metaphor for our fears and about holding on to the past, but, as ever with writing, that wasn’t something I thought consciously of when writing about them. I just enjoyed them!

I was intrigued, at the very end of the book, looking forward to Liza’s and Lottie’s future plans and ambitions, there is a very subtle placement of them, almost as a throwaway onto a particular real location that has quite a curious and oppositional history (difficult to describe this without spoilers!) I thought there was something a little (deliberately) ambiguous about this. Are you drawn to open-ended rather than neatly tied–up?

Yes, let’s not include spoilers, but you’re right – this place does have a wonderful history and I do have an idea of what will happen to them in the future. I do have a sequel story in mind, but who knows whether it’ll get written or not – we shall see! As for types of ending, I remember someone saying once that endings should be unpredictable yet feel inevitable. That’s a great standard to aspire to and I would always try for that. I would want the reader to feel that the main plot points have been resolved enough to feel satisfying, without being too neat and tidy. I also like the idea of the characters living on in the imagination after the end of the book, that is, of a reader thinking, I wonder what they’ll do next? I love books like that, where the characters are still alive in my head and going about their business. So, I think my perfect conclusions are always a bit open-ended, though I can’t be doing with what I’d call unfinished narratives, where everything is unresolved in a very modernist way. At the very least, I’d want some sort of epiphany for the characters, so that something has changed irrevocably in their lives. And after all, these are novels we’re talking about, not real life, and so I feel a little bit of resolution is in order, to give the reader a prize for going on that journey with you, a destination of some kind, instead of leaving them stuck on a road to nowhere…

Finally – and forgive me if somehow I missed something – in your acknowledgements, you thank a couple of people for loving or defending ‘Daniel’. I can’t remember a Daniel in this story and wondered perhaps if the central male character had been re-named – or, is this perhaps a character who will feature in your forthcoming novel. And could you give a bit of a tease preview by telling of the general territory which it inhabits….

Ah, Daniel. I wrote three novels before ‘The Visitors’ and one of them was about a character called Daniel. It was turned down by a lot of publishers but it did secure me my agent Jane Conway-Gordon, who loved that book and stuck with me whilst I wrote ‘The Visitors’ next. Several friends and family members also read that book about Daniel and loved it and still talk about it now. So, he is very dear to me and I do hope to rewrite it one day and improve it, so that perhaps he’ll get his story heard. It was a very ambitious novel, set during WWII in London and Poland and I think now I was probably just too inexperienced to do justice to it. I think I’ll wait a while until I’m a better writer – and a bit older and wiser – and tackle it again.

My forthcoming novel is called ‘Song of the Sea Maid’. It’s about an C18th orphan girl who is educated through a benefactor and becomes a scientist. She defies the conventions of her day to travel abroad and makes a remarkable discovery.

I’m about to start my next novel which will be set in the early C20th. I will be a bit secretive about that one, as I’m never quite sure myself where it’ll all end up, so I’ll keep it under my hat for the moment…

Well all I can say, after getting Rebecca’s fascinating and thoughtful answers to my questions is, if I HADN’T read the book I would be racing over to do the one-click/buying/download thing! HAVING read the book her responses deepened my appreciation even more.

There were some lovely images and ideas in her answers. Solid reality formed by visual and auditory memory, and a thin and splintery reality when parts of sensory experience and memory are lost. were responses which absolutely underlined my sense that Rebecca really inhabits the reality of what she is writing, and because of that, can take the reader into inhabitation of her characters and world too.

I’m delighted Book 2 is ‘forthcoming’ and a book 3 is being written, and even the possibility of a future for Liza and Lottie, not to mention the mysterious Daniel. (books 4 + 5?) But no doubt there will also be other characters waiting for Rebecca to listen for their voices……………

Thank you Rebecca

The Visitors Amazon UK
The Visitors Amazon USA

Rebecca Mascull – The Visitors

Tags

Blindness, Boer War, Book Review, Deafness, Disability, Rebecca Mascull, Sign Language, The Visitors

A quietly written, surprising, delight

Rebecca Mascull’s debut novel, first of all, reads nothing like a debut novel. The author writes with subtle, understated assurance this fascinating, alluring story of a deaf-blind girl, in late Victorian England, then later in South Africa during the Boer War.

I have to admit I nearly missed this one, as the combination of publisher blurb and the rather muted pretty cover had me mistakenly convinced that this would be a slightly fey and marshmallow book. Whilst not averse to fey, I don’t do soft-centre that well.

However………never judge……and all that

I’m so pleased I gave this one a try (after being offered a copy for review by the publisher, Hodder)

This is most surely a book ‘about stuff’ and whilst it is very clear Mascull has done much research into the time, place and subject matter of her story, she is a writer who wears that research extremely lightly, and almost instructs the reader subliminally, in a very natural and easy way.

Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan 1888 Wiki Commons

Adeliza Golding is born almost blind, the daughter of a successful Kentish hop farmer and his wife, the only surviving child after a series of miscarriages. She is deeply loved by her sorrowing parents. An early illness leaves her completely blind, and also deaf. By the age of three she is enraged and half-feral. Fortuitously, one of the seasonal hop-picker families, oyster fishers (another seasonal industry) from Whitstable, had a deaf-blind daughter themselves, and had come in contact with a clergyman who was aware of the technique of palm signing. The oldest daughter, Lottie, is the first person to break through Liza’s rage – a rage born not of feebleness or savagery, but of her inability to communicate:

For many years, my deaf-blindness was like a monster from myth. My aim was to overcome it. Every monster has a weakness exploited by the hero to win the day. In my darkest memories, I see my early self as a blind monster crashing through the wilderness. But it was not my disability which kept me there. It was my ignorance. Once I found language, the spell was broken and I assumed human form. One does not need sight and hearing to be fully human, only communication. My lack of sight and hearing were not the enemies, only my lack of connection was my monster, my isolation

The early part of the book, describing Liza’s journey out of that isolation, and the relationship which develops between Lottie as teacher and Liza as pupil, and the almost overwhelming nature of the world which can finally be revealed for Liza, as more and more refined ways of communication tools become available, are stunning, and wonderful.

Liza’s world soon becomes even more expanded, as she develops a wider relationship with Lottie’s family.

Liza does have a secret however – she has spectral, ghostly communicants ‘The Visitors’ which no one else can see or hear. Within the book, the Visitors are far from some sort of fey authorial device, yet this is not primarily ‘a spooky story’ either. Liza herself, like the reader, grows in understanding the nature of these communicants.

Boers at Spion Kop 1900 Wiki Commons

In the broader world, war is on the horizon, (the Boer War) and this becomes also a central part of the story, with some of the potent historical issues playing out in the lives of Mascull’s fictional characters.

This brings me to something else in her writing. There is a major relationship which develops in the story, and at a couple of points I found myself thinking ‘oh no, oh no, please don’t say this fine and truthful writer is going to start moving her characters around like pawns in order to satisfy some plot-shock’.  She doesn’t. No spoilers revealed here, but what I will say is that there was a sense of absolute authenticity to the complex, layered characters Mascull had created – and I was intrigued, in her afterword, an interview conducted with the author, she discovered that what had happened for her in the writing was that magic, where though she had intended her characters to have one journey, somewhere, they up-sticked and said NO.

My sense, all through reading this book was that here is a writer of authenticity and listening. One not showy, one not ostentatious:

I just want my reader to be able to enter a different world and to care about the characters. I don’t want the story to be directed before it is told. I want the characters to do what they want and not to be restricted by genre. Genre is a useful tool but I prefer to use it lightly

(from an interview with the author, included in end-notes)

A wonderful, thoughtful piece of writing, which is about a lot, yet says it all economically, without indulgence, without histrionics, and with humanity and precision.

However – reader beware, I note with some surprise that no less than 3 novels, by 3 different authors, were published early this year, with the self-same title. This one is by Rebecca Mascull, and I shall definitely be looking forward to her second book, whenever that shall be.

The Visitors Amazon UK
The Visitors Amazon USA