Glasshopper: Growing up in Fiction

On Thursday Isabel Ashdown guested Hove Library to talk about her debut novel Glasshopper at an event called "Growing Up in Fiction". I first heard Isabel speak at the Chichester Writing Festival and was intrigued by how her novel came to be a novel. It all started with a short story competition for the Mail on Sunday. Isabel submitted her story, and forgot all about it. A year later she gets a phone call and is told that she's the winner of the competition! It's the kind of phone call all writers are waiting for ...

Isabel, who discussed her writing process with literary agent Adrian Weston, told the audience that Glasshopper in fact contains several chapters that were orginally written as short stories. Perhaps that's why the novel is so good, because when you write short stories you have to be more precise in your writing. The novel follows Jake who grows up in Portsmouth in the 80s, and parallell to his story the novel follow his mum Mary growing up in Hove in the 60s. Interestingly enough Jake first started off as a girl and Mary started off as a dad instead of a mum ...

What I love best about Glasshopper are the family secrets bubbling under the suface, and the ending is brilliant. To me it's the perfect twist, both believable and shocking. Isabel revealed that she didn't have much of a plan when she started off, the ending came as a surprise to herself about half-way into the writing.

Tom Connolly, author of The Spider Truces, was also supposed to be at the event, but sadly had to cancel at the last minute. Instead Adrian Weston read an extract from The Spider Truces, another novel that deals with growing up in the 80s. Both Tom Connolly and Isabel Ashdown are published by Myriad Editions, and Isabel has a second novel secured with them, to be published this summer. It's called Hurry up and Wait. I can't wait!

Films or Books?

This is not going to be a blog post discussing whether the book is better than the film or the other way round. In this case there isn't even a book. It's just a film. What I want to discuss is films or books in general.

Some people seem offended when I say that I haven't watched many films. In average I watch 5 films a year. This is not because I don't like films. One reason is that I've never had access to my own DVD or video player. It wasn't until last year that i discovered that I could watch films on my laptop ... So I'm obviously not that bothered. Another reason could be that I didn't watch much TV as a kid or a teenager. I think watching a few bad Hollywood films really put me off. I thought that's what all films were like. I had a big problem (and still have) with action films. They are too fast for me. I can't follow what's happening and can't even figure out who's the good guy and the bad guy ...

It feels like I've got a lot to catch up on. A couple of years ago, thanks to working in the library, I discovered that there are quite a few good films around ... The films labeled "World" or "Arthouse" or "Artifcial Eye" are my favourites. In short: alternative films set in France, Romania, Poland or any European country that is not Britain ... Then there are few Asian films that really appeal to me, mostly because of their visual impact.

I don't know what has happened. I've now watched two films in less than a week's time. I think I'm procrastinating editing and re-writing the end of Replacing Angel ... And somehow I really don't feel like reading, apart from the brilliant handbook Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway.

Tonight I watched 4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days by Cristian Mungiu. It's set in communist Romania in the 80's and is about a girl who has an illegal abortion. Well, it's not really about the girl who's doing the abortion. It's about the girl's friend who supports her ... That made me think of Replacing Angel. You'd think my novel is about Angel - she's the one with the real drama - but it's really about her friend Natalie. So now I feel quite inspired to get back into writing again ...

But back to the topic ... I get offended by people who don't read. Sadly, in my opinion, most people seem to watch more films than they read books. This includes a lot of my good friends and people working in the library. For me watching a film can never replace reading a book. I prefer creating my own images in my head and do it at my pace. Often I lose the plot in a film because I see things that makes me think of other things and the association machine is in full action ... This happens when I read as well. But the beauty of reading is that you can stop and take a breather where each paragraph ends. O.K. I know you can press the pause button when you watch a film, but it's not very convenient to do that every 5 minutes ... Especially not if you watch it with someone else. I don't even like watching films with other people because I often feel embarrassed that I don't understand things that they do. This has nothing to do with English being my second language, I have the same problem with Swedish films!

Then there are other things I like better with books ... The fact that you can carry them with you and read wherever you are. It's possible to dip in and out. To read for only 10 minutes a day, whilst you'll have to set aside at least two hours to watch a film and as time is precious to me I'm afraid of wasting two hours of my life on a bad film and I don't often get a chunk of time with nothing to do anyway ... Reading is also more active: you have to concentrate hard and you have to turn the page now and again instead of just sitting down and staring at a screen.

So, dear blog readers ... how many novels have you read this year? How many films have you watched?

I've read 28 novels and watched 4 films. I think I'll reach my average of 5 films a year as I'd like to watch Let the right one in. Mostly because it is based on a novel and I want to compare the two different medias ... Once I've watched it, I can write another blog post - on the topic whether the film is better than the book or the other way round.