JUNE BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION - come here on Tuesday 1st July for our June bookclub chat

[TillyBookClub]

this is the thread to come to for June's Bookclub chat on Tues 1st July - I'll keep you posted about the author chat..

[TillyBookClub]

It was the loss of Thea, wasn't it, that drove Rebecca away? Which must be devastating for Rosamund, if their relationship only made sense when there was a child with them.

[billybass]

lemurtamer that was nice.Photos can be funny things.Not everyone wants a record of their life.

[wheelybug]

Maybe it was the case with Rebecca that the relationship had run its course for her and Thea had made it work again (The 'staying together for the children' cliche) and when she was no longer there, there was nothing else.

[TillyBookClub]

love that story lemurtamer.

[billybass]

I thought that Beatrix was Rosamunds greatest love rather than Rebecca even though Rosamund denied this.
What do you think?

[lemurtamer]

I had forgotten that she'd seen Rebecca, and yes that makes sense.
Am now feeling quite tearful about my grandmother.

[TillyBookClub]

Yes, billybass, I agree. Beatrix was the dominant force in her life. Rebecca was a holiday, but Beatrix was always the main event.

[lemurtamer]

I thought it was more that Beatrix gave her a feeling of family, which is why she was so desperate to keep Thea and then Imogen, to continue this. Although aren't we all trying to recreate or heal our family in our choice of partner?

[Marina]

Oh, yes, billybass, agreed
Is anyone else wondering about Beatrix and Rosamond Lehmann, Ivy Compton-Burnett and Rebecca West btw?
Lemurtamer, what a vivid story. We have a very precious and much pored-over family album too, all of it captionless and part of an oral tradition

[TillyBookClub]

It's time. I am now delighted to introduce Mr Jonathan Coe...

Jonathan is going to post answers to the advance questions first, and then he'll be answering all your messages till 10pm.

Jonathan, first of all, thank you very very much for joining us...

[lemurtamer]

Marina, I wasn't, because I'm not that high-brow! Don't even know who I C-B was.

[JonathanCoe]

Hello everyone. What a weird experience this is. Have never done this before, so I?m sorry if it doesn?t really look as though I know what I?m doing. Anyway, thanks to the people who voted for my book, and thanks to the people who read it even when it wasn?t their choice. I had a look at some of the earlier posts and wrote a couple of answers already. So here ? Valerie Singleton style ? is one I made earlier:

By lalaa on Mon 30-Jun-08 16:32:32

I found I liked Rosamund less and less as the book progressed. I found her to be very self-orientated and I began to feel quite angry with her. There were points in the narrative after Thea's return to her mother where I was thinking why would Rosamund want to tell Imogen this apart from to make herself feel better? My question to Jonathan is, did you intend to make the reader feel this way? (Or was it just me?!)

OK: Since it was published I've found that readers of the novel divide into two groups: those who like Rosamond, and those who don't. Personally, I'm in the first of these groups, but that doesn't make either of them 'right'. Certainly her motives are ambiguous. She says that she wants Imogen to know the truth, but, as you say, she is also telling this story in order to make herself feel better. My own view is that, at the end of her life, after the disappointments she's had, she's entitled to do that. Also I think there is ambiguity about whether she really expects Imogen to hear the tapes, and therefore who she is talking to - to Imogen, or to herself? So her position is unclear, and the status of the narrative is unclear. What I didn't want, though, was for her to be a straightforward "unreliable narrator", whose version of events has to be decoded or seen through. Sometimes she is reliable, sometimes she isn't.

[Marina]

Ivy Compton Burnett, gay novelist

[lemurtamer]

My question is what makes a male author want to write as a female narrator, especially a lesbian one? I don't mean that as a criticism, as I didn't wonder this while reading the book.

[JonathanCoe]

lalaa again: Also, here's another one: what led you to choose the device of using photographs to map out the narrative?

Two things. One was a general sense that there hadn't been enough (or even any) visual description in my earlier books - where the stories tend to be driven by dialogue - and this time I wanted to do something different. The other was the experience of looking through old family photograph albums with my own young daughters, telling them the stories behind each photograph, and realising that in this way it was possible to construct a whole family history from photographic sources. (Because I don't come from a family who use the written word very much, and there are hardly any letters or anything like that between my parents or grandparents.)

[lemurtamer]

(Marina, thank you.)

[JonathanCoe]

lemurtamer: I write novels in order to escape myself (I think most writers do that, to one degree or another) and so writing in the voice of a female character is a way of slipping out of my own gender for a few hours every day. A great relief sometimes, I can tell you!

I made her a lesbian partly because of the undercurrent of that in some of Rosamond Lehmann's fiction (esp. Dusty Answer) but also for obvious plot reasons - I wanted her to be childless, to be situated outside the traditional nuclear family and yearningly looking in.

[Pruners]

Message withdrawn

[JonathanCoe]

By the way, to the poster who asked me if I'm coming back to Bordeaux - yes, if the owners of that lovely cinema invite me again. (Which, so far, they haven't ...)

[Marina]

Me too lt and pruners, it's one of the things that draws me to your novels very strongly Jonathan

[JonathanCoe]

Thank you, Marina. Here's an answer to your earlier question about France:

By Marina on Mon 30-Jun-08 20:37:48

I'd like to ask Jonathan what he feels about his popularity in France. I found it curiously funny and touching to see a copy of Les Nains de la Mort in a bookshop in Lille, alongside his more recent and extensively promoted novels.

Do you get involved with the translation of your novels into French? Why do you think it is that the French "get" you and appreciate your writing? Could it be that they savoured the bleak picture of modern Britain painted in What a Carve-Up? Interesting choice of title too, Testament a l'Anglaise...

Yes, it's very strange. My popularity in France is a mystery to me as well. I also do very well in Italy and Greece, but I've sunk like a stone in Spain and Germany. Go figure ... But actually British writing is very popular in all of those places. The shameful thing is that we don't reciprocate - when was a modern Greek novel last translated into English? It's partly to do with the cultural clout of the English language, I suppose, and the head start that this gives to British and American writing. I know the French also value (maybe more than we do) that 20th century British tradition of satire and irony which includes Evelyn Waugh, David Lodge and Tom Sharpe - all of whom are well-loved over there - and when What a Carve Up came out they saw me as falling into that tradition. The Rain Before It Falls hasn't been published there yet, and I'm a little nervous, because it's not the kind of book they'll be expecting from me. (In Italy and Greece my most popular book is The House of Sleep, so this one wasn't seen as so much of a departure.)

I don't get involved with the translation at all. I'm friends with my translators, who are a very nice married couple from Paris, but I don't interfere with their work. My French is terrible anyway.

[snowleopard]

I wonder which other novelists you admire and what you think of recent novels generally - as yours always seem so different and not influenced by trends or other leading novelists. If that makes sense!

[JonathanCoe]

I seem to have stunned everyone into silence. I think I'll go and see if my daughters are in bed yet.

[fryalot]

Jonathan - there are a couple of us here tonight who have only read this one book of yours.

We are going to rectify that situation forthwith, of course.

What would you recommend that we start with?

[fryalot]

now that's real mumsnetting that is, leaving a thread to go and check on the kids. Next you'll be typing one-handed as you feed a baby