Punctuation for the petty-minded

Tags

prizes, proofreading, punctuation, Samuel Plank

I’m back from my hols in Ischia – an island in the Bay of Naples (it’s the less glitzy neighbour to Capri).  It has the most amazing Aragonese castle which we overlooked from the roof terrace of our Airbnb lodging, and which we toured for an afternoon (you have to read about what they did with the dead nuns).  I’d love to include it in a Sam story but I can’t think of any earthly reason how or why he would find himself in Ischia.  Perhaps I’ll save it for a post-Sam novel…

Before we went I visited our local library and selected eight books for the ten days; I finished them all, plus two from the shelves of the Airbnb (one of which I might have chosen, and the other turned to in desperation – it was that or a tome called “The History of Socialism”).  Two of the eight I enjoyed enormously: “The Street” by Bernardine Bishop and “Euphoria” by Lily King.  But one left me puzzled.  “The Hiding Place” by Trezza Azzopardi was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2000, and the cover tells me that the Observer thought it “a scalding, thrilling book”.  It’s about the Maltese community in Cardiff, and is written in the first person by Dolores, the youngest of six daughters who grew up there in poverty in the 1960s.  Now it’s a good story, with an element not quite of whodunnit, but rather “heavens, what’s going to happen next?”.  But I found it a difficult read for two reasons.

Firstly, the author does not use inverted commas to indicate speech – just indents.  (And you know that I have strong views on inverted commas…)  But then indents are also used for new paragraphs, so it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s speech or explanation.  And secondly, the story jumps backwards and forwards in time, but with no indication of where you are except the text itself – in other words, you don’t know at the start of the chapter/scene and have to deduce it from what is happening.

So in order for a book to be considered thrilling and prize-worthy, does it have to tread new ground stylistically?  A bit like modern art, does it have to do something more/else than just telling a good story or showing a good depiction of something recognisable?  I’m not being a grumpy old woman (well, not much…) but I do wonder why I spend all those hours proofreading and checking, when I could simply leave in all the typos and pretend it’s an intentional stylistic affectation to show my impatience with the petty bourgeois norms of grammar and punctuation…

Dreaming big for Sam

Tags

awards, prizes, writing

In exchange for a full day of writing tomorrow, I have spent today helping my husband to sort out and tidy the loft.  Much of this has involved retrieving clothes that we had bunged up there years ago, trying them on, laughing hysterically at what we used to wear in public, and then sorting them into three piles: keep (very small pile), charity shop, and bin.

One item we came across was the most gorgeous long evening dress – mine, not his.  It is vintage, red satin, sleeveless, full length, with a sort of fish-tail at the back and a matching red satin long coat.  I cannot remember buying it, although I do sporadically collect 1950s dresses, and it fits perfectly.  But when on earth would I wear it?  It’s not really practical for financial training, fiction writing, sitting in court or cycling around Cambridge, which is how I spend my waking hours these days.  My hand hovered sadly over the charity shop pile.  “Wait!” said my husband suddenly.  “You’ll want something fancy to wear when you win the Booker Prize.”  “True,” I said, “but where will I keep it until then?”  “Back in the loft, in a special clothes bag, and when you hear you’re on the short-list, we’ll get it down and it can air.”  And that, dear reader, is why I married him.