Around the World in 80 Books: the fourth leg

Blimey, this travelling lark is slow. I'm sorry I seemed to forget Southern Europe – I'm not going to Germany next at all. Poor old Italy. With its wealth of literature, from feline to flagellatory (always fond of literature that portrays Odysseus as the rotten fibber he truly was), I'm afraid I lumped for something altogether less translated.

Third stop: Italy. Or… the Roman Empire. So, lots of Europe, but mainly centred around Rome.

Book: I, Claudius, by Robert Graves

I'm not sure why I haven't read this already. Maybe it's my mother-in-law's habit of referring to it as "One Clavdivs"*, which is v. v. pleasing but leads me to expect some kind of Wodehousian educational hoot, or maybe it's the clunky jacket on the edition I owned as a youth; either way I'm enormously grateful to Naomi Alderman for suggesting this as my Italian destination.

The Penguin blurb describes this as "one of the most… gripping historical novels ever written", but somehow I feel that this doesn't do it full justice. Rather than merely being a juicy and salacious novelization of Rome, it's mannered, and dry, and genuinely feels as if it's been translated, but really thrives on all these things, and lacks any of the fustiness or distance that translation could sometimes entail. It's funny, and frightening, and despite the fact that I couldn't sketch that family tree if you paid me (although I don't think I'm alone in that), I found all the characters to be incredibly well-drawn and unutterably fascinating. It's a page-turner, and, most importantly, features passages like this:

"'The cook's a genius,' they are all thinking. 'The mullet with piquant sauce, and those fat stuffed thrushes and the wild-boar with truffles – when did I eat so well last?… Ah, here comes the slave with the wine again. That excellent Cyprian wine.' … And everyone says, thinking of the thrushes again, or perhaps of the little simnel cakes, 'Admirable. Admirable, Pollio.'"

'Thinking of the thrushes again'? If I was served fat stuffed thrushes, I wouldn't just be thinking of them a few minutes later, I'd be stuffing the chef into my bag and locking him in my own kitchen. Mmmm… tiny cooked birds…

Conclusions as a traveller:

Probably not the right country to marry your first wife's new son's second cousin's grandmother. A little too much poison knocking about to ensure the wedding ceremony didn't go off without at least one guest collapsing and dying, and tricky to ensure that you weren't your own sole inheritor.

I am so excited about hitting the rest of Europe. Germany, if all goes according to plan, will be my next-but-one stop, and then I'll try to thread up through Scandinavia. Thank goodness I didn't throw out my moonboots.

Sam the Copywriter

*This is the same mother-in-law who told me about Poe's Raven almost being a Parrot. Then she said, "Lenore! Nevermore!" in a parrot voice. Boy oh boy, it made me laugh, but I will never be able to read Poe again.

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Around the World in 80 Books: the third leg

Again, thank you for all your suggestions. Although I haven't taken up all of them, they are grist to my plodding-route mill and spark off many ideas (as well as bulking up my Amazon wishlist). I think I've got a fairly clear route of where I'm going to go in Europe now, and I think I can even begin to see glimmers of another continent. Hurray! Although I'll regret saying that when all the bedding looks funny and I'm forced to eat three meals a day at McDonald's just to feel like I recognise something.

Third stop: SWITZERLAND! More specifically, Lake Geneva

Book: Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner

I have to confess, I'd never read any Brookner before. I think I'd dismissed her as a bit wimmin-y, and although there's the odd phrase here or there that reads a bit heavily-autobiographically, the whole book is neat, and light, and captures perfectly both the sadness of out-of-season resorts and the weight of one's baggage when one flees heartache. Edith Hope, a romantic novelist, has been ordered to Switzerland by her loved ones after a 'shocking' romantic indiscretion. Poor Edith, constantly reminding us that she's been compared aesthetically to Virginia Woolf, is shipped off, carrying her feelings like precious eggs, tuning them constantly but never really examining them, so certain is she of what kind of life she has agreed to.

Although not hugely, uniquely Swiss, I think this conjures up that cold, clear, medicinal travel that only autumn in that kind of place can provide – and I loved Edith's wit, and her sense: in another lifetime, she might have been Elinor Dashwood (and ended up with Hugh Grant SQUEEAAAL). The recognition of her hotel room decor as "veal-coloured" is something that made me snigger out loud on the Tube, and her overactive imagination (and subsequent disappointment) as she views each fellow-guest is something so sadly recognisable.

Earns extra Swiss points by having one character eat lots of delicacies from the Patisserie.

Conclusions as a traveller:

Don't bring your dog to Switzerland. They hate dogs. And probably don't bring your daughter, either.

Right, next stop, Germany. Now these guys are seriously witty, so I am bracing my ribs for some first-class tickling. Please keep the suggestions coming in – although I do have a German book in mind, I'm a bit scared of it.

Sam the Copywriter

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Two weeks, thirty-six stores and fifty-three elephants

Last year we endured countrywide flooding, cancelled trains and a swan that attacked our car on the banks of Lake Windermere – so it was with some trepidation that I embarked on this year’s tour with Gervase Phinn to promote the publication of the paperback of ‘The Heart of the Dales’.

This year, as well as signing at 36 bookstores, performing at 8 events, we ate rock in Blackpool, saw dozens of plastic sheep in Liverpool, then dozens more plastic elephants in Norwich. We got lost in midnight Leeds (that one way system…), scared away a fox in a Secret Garden at dusk (that tiny brown smudge at the back of the garden is the exiting fox), and had to contend with some fairly adverse weather conditions on the road once again. I even managed to get Gervase into Lancashire, which for a Yorkshireman still smarting about the War of the Roses, was no mean feat. It turns out the best thing to come out of Lancashire ISN’T the road to Yorkshire after all – it’s the extremely lovely booksellers and bookshops there. 

To say that I used Gervase’s time well is an understatement – the two week tour ranged across most of the length and breadth of the country, and Gervase signed at an average of 5 stores a day, followed by an event each evening. When I said goodbye to him yesterday at Exeter Station, I joked that I’d lied to him that this was the last day of the tour, and that in fact we had another 3 days of the tour to go.  It turns out that only one of us should be making the jokes – and he’s the one selling out venues across the country each year, rather than the one holding the lead balloon.

It’s always nerve racking in those 2 minutes before the scheduled signing, approaching the bookstore not really knowing how enthusiastically the bookshop has been promoting the event in advance of the author’s visit.  I won’t post mortem each signing and event – largely the signings were really well attended and really well promoted by the various wonderful booksellers at each store, but there’s always the inexplicable exceptions, where despite the hundreds of leaflets which have been picked up by enthusiastic book buyers, the posters everywhere, and the ads and author interviews going out in the local paper – you’ll get 4 people turning up with a large tumbleweed following along close behind. But these quieter ones were definite exceptions to the more general tour madness, and were in the most part linked to bad weather rather than a lack of enthusiasm by customers and/or booksellers. Sold out events and massive book sales in each evening venue testify to Gervase’s countrywide and long lasting general appeal. 

A further few specific comments about the tour: to the friendly waiter in Pocklington who was sure that he knew me – I’m afraid we lied to you – you don’t know me off Casualty and I have never been swathed from top to toe in bandages on the telly.  To Gervase and Barry – it turns out that Nobby Clark is also an accomplished musician as well as Morris Dancer, bell ringer, pub landlord and all round keen bean – who knew? And to the author sharing the stage with Gervase at one event, having read from his novel for 45 interminable minutes, and asked at 10pm ‘have I got time to read any more?’ – the answer is always going to be a resounding NO! Good lord…

The nice chart position in the top ten of last weekend’s bestseller lists is gratifying, and solidifies the raison d’etre for the 2 weeks away from home, however it’s meeting Gervase’s enthusiastic fans in every town that really makes it all worthwhile. Most people who meet Gervase tend to thank him for cheering them up; from the lady in Christchurch who had a brain haemorrhage last year and was kept going for many long weeks in hospital by listening to all the Dales audio books, to the woman in Derby who was pulled over by the police for suspected driving under the influence, but was in fact listening to Gervase and laughing so hard she was swerving all over the road. The policeman, it turned out, was also a fan, so let her off without charge.

Going on a book signing tour with an author is one of my main reasons for wanting to work in the publicity department of a company like Penguin.  It’s incredibly hard work, but ultimately rewarding and, when you’re on the road with someone like Gervase, full of helpless laughter. Note: Evil Knievel was NOT the guy riding that bike in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’.

Katya Shipster
Press Officer

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