Author Patrick Gale joining us on for a chat on Tuesday 16th June between 1 and 2pm

[RachelMumsnet]

Patrick Gale, author of Mumsnet Best Award winner, Notes from an Exhibition will be joining us for a chat and to tell us about his new book, The Whole Day Through. If you're unable to join us on Tuesday please send your questions in advance to Patrick here.

it's Gloucestershire

mollyroger here, surruptitiously typing on a slightly sticky keyboard at work...

Are you a Quaker, Patrick? If so, is it a lifelong thing or...?

Somewhere in Gloucestershire. Full of ladies who lunch, i suspect... Mary Ann Singleton would love it...

hee hee !

We're really delighted to introduce Patrick Gale - he's on a slow laptop with v slow connection, so please do bear with him - and be assured that he will try and answer all the questions even if it's not within the hour, so if you don't see an answer to your question immediately, do log on again later this evening and have another look.

Welcome Patrick Gale....

We are ladies who don't lunch, well, not today anyway!

Do you want new q's, or have you read the thread?

No i'n not a Quaker, Mollyroger. I was just curious and then got really fascinated by it as a religion once i started researching the novel. I'm really a sort of genetic Christian because my childhood was extremely godly as were both my parents, but i get so furious with the C of E over their childish attitudes to women and sexuality that the Quakers felt like a very welcoming and sane place to visit.

I'm on a steam powered laptop. Very very slow so I'd love new questions and I'll answer the ones on the thread later on I expect.

hello Patrick Gale..i loved Notes from an Exhibition and may consider becoming a Quaker after your fab descriptions of the peace and quiet of their meetings.

i would like to read another of your books, which would you recommend?

can I ask about Notes from an Exhibition and about Rachel ? Did you like her ?

Well Chuffinell, when people enjoyed Notes From an Exhibition I usually tell them to read Rough Music next as it inhabits a similar territory - fraught family full of secrets, Cornish setting, seriously difficult mother etc. But my publishers would tell me to recommend my latest one, The Whole Day Through because it's a five-hanky job and will be perfect for your next afternoon off. Not that mothers get many of those.

ah thank you! I wondered because if I were to feel the urge for religion, I always reckoned Quakers seem like a decent bunch, for exactly the sorts of reasons you have mentioned.
And you do seem to write about them with a great deal of 'affection' and (my quaker boss says) a good deal of knowledge...
I love the idea of ''carrying people in the light''
I'll probably have to read the rest of this later, as i am not supposed to be on here right now
Hope the others are gentle with you x

Patrick Gale chatted with me!!

thank you so much - i will order them both, but read Rough Music first...it may be a while before i can have an afternoon off with 5 hankies!!

Quakerism appeals hugely to me too, I sent off for their literature and was all set to go along to the Meeting House in town but my parents had the same idea and have been along - I rather wanted it to be my thing. Am a very lapsed Catholic and the peace and silence seem very attractive..Catholicism is full of ritual and an almost OCD-ish amount of repetition which suits my personality but might not be good for my mental health - the guilt etc particularly.

Well, MaryAnnSingleton. did I like her? I suppose i like all my characters in the end. I knew from the outset that I wanted to write the most difficult and challenging mother I could without making her downright abusive but I also was keen to show that she was also rather amazing, not just as an artist, but as an inspiration to her children. I decided that, for all that she could be scary and neglectful, Rachel could also be enormous fun and hugely exciting to be with. I think Anthony is not nearly such a saint as some readers make him out to be. I think he really damages the children by always putting his adored wife's needs before theirs. If only he had put them first a little often, they'd have had the confidence to face up to her better. Especially poor Morwenna. I still worry about Morwenna. I hope she's okay somewhere...

I really felt for Morwenna reading her birthday chapter yesterday. Agree about Antony - urging the children to be gentle and kind to Rachel because she feels things more than we do

Hmm. I know what you mean, MaryAnn, about Catholicism. But don't get the wrong idea about Quakerism. It may be quite quiet but it can also be very VERY challenging because it leaves you nowhere to hide. With no ritual, no music, no man in a dress telling you what's what, you have to fall back on your own inner resources and your own thoughts. It made me realise how I'd always used religion as a sort of pacifier. In my latest novel I made a point of having two chapters side by side where the man and woman go to church, in both cases against their will, so I could deal with this... And I suspect my next novel is going to be about a really lousy father, who just happens to be a C of E priest with an adoring parish and a longsuffering wife...

I have to confess I'd not heard of you before Mumsnet announced you were coming on to chat (I must get a life) but I have since read some of your book reviews and they sound really good. However a story about a mad artistic woman sounds a bit too close to home! Which of your books would you recommend I start with?

Hi Patrick, have to confess I'm a big fan . This question was sort of asked earlier, but are there characters in any of your books that you'd consider revisting? There are often fairly peripheral characters in your books whose stories I would love to hear in full.

I know that you don't paint, but your descriptions of the paintings and Rachel's making of her artwork is deliciously evocative and pitched just right - it could have been wankily annoying - it just me want to go to my desk and draw

Which other author do you get most pleasure from reading?

Well, Fruitshoots, it's always nice to chat to someone for whom I'm a completely unknown quantity! If mad mothers are a bit close to the bone for you, my new one might be better as it features a totally sane mother, albeit a naturist with osteoporosis. it's a love story, a sort of modern day Brief Encounter, about a man and a woman who get a second chance at love after a twenty year gap. It's very quiet and gentle, compared to Notes, but plays similar games with memory and the way we kid ourselves about the past in order to make our futures bearable. Or perhaps you'd enjoy something more comic, like A Sweet Obscurity, which is about the romantic mess spun by four people in charge of the same troubled young girl. Or perhaps you'd enjoy an old fashioned boarding school story with a twist? Friendly Fire has been described as being a bit like Mallory Towers with added sex. End of advert. Just buy the things, you don't have to read them all straightaway!

Hi Patrick

I'm a 'Morwenna' so MUST read your book with my namesake. Which one is it - I can't seem to find it named, on the chat so far? (Sorry for stupid question.)

Anyone else feel their brain cells slipping away, since child/ren?!

[Did I really do a lit degree?!]

x

Sorry, Prozacpopsie, I should have said. Morwenna's the daughter of the troubled family in Notes from an Exhibition. Well done on having such a lovely name. Are you Cornish too, or just pretend Cornish?

Friendly Fire provided the ladies of my book group with their first encounter with cottaging ! I have to say that they were not keen on that book but am delighted to report that they seem to universally love Notes.
Have you met Armistead Maupin btw ?