Book Quote Friday: Making Your Mother Blush

     If we're really thinking about it (let's do that. Yawn, stretch.), I guess one might liken fiction writing to the laying out of the contents of your mind, experience and imagination on the tablecloth, and then obscuring it from sight by applying layers of narrative, characterisation or style. 

     Ideally this adding of layers generalises it, allowing it to transcend the writer’s individual experience, making it palatable and accessible and, all being well, moving it from the realm of the confessional into the realm of art. Some writers layer thickly, others less so. The thinnest veils come inevitably with biography or memoir, when the writer themself is the story and there is no extra narrative or characterisation added as a disguise. This is known as letting it all hang out*.







How Pathetic is your Fallacy?

     Pathetic fallacy is a somewhat clichéd device, most often seen when a distressed person walks around in the rain or a happy couple frolic in the sun, but something I like to do as a reader is create my own i.e. read books in locations that reflect their content, location or tone to enhance my enjoyment of them.

     I spent the last week in a tiny Austrian village near Salzburg and it was as you might picture it – epic mountains, rustic detailing, piles and piles of snow. You might think of this is the ideal place to splash out on winter sports kit and go play in the snow, but seeing as I definitely do not ski, and everyone else in the party does, for me it is the perfect place to read. So, rather than packing skis and helmets, I packed my snow boots, a notebook and oodles and oodles of books.