Returning to Mandalay
It’s eight years since I visited Burma to research Return to Mandalay and it was an amazing experience.
We began the trip in Yangon. At 6.30 a.m. it was already so hot that the Burmese were using umbrellas as sunshades. First up was the Shwedagon Pagoda – it’s immense and beautiful; it also has an air of spirituality unlike anything I’ve ever seen; truly awe-inspiring.
Architecturally, Yangon has retained much of its colonial history; it’s poignant to observe the differences in the Burmese living conditions, both now and then.
The lively street markets haven’t changed hugely since that time; the flavours and aromas of woodsmoke and sweet frying oil, of incense and the smell of the sewers running just below the broken pavings, all remain… In Return to Mandalay, Lawrence meets Maya in one of these markets. So far, so romantic..?
Lawrence would have stayed at one of the colonial buildings on the waterfront, probably the Strand Hotel where my late father-in-law Peter Innes stayed in the 1930s. Peter worked in Burma in the logging industry and served with the Chindits during the second world war. His wife Hazel kept a lot of excellent source material, especially records from his company, Steele Brothers, books about Burma such as Helen of Burma by Helen Rodriguez, which gave me valuable information about nursing and hospitals during the war in Northern Burma, and photographs – pretty much gold dust for a writer.
From Yangon we took an internal flight on a tiny and fragile plane to Mandalay and went by road to Maymyo where Lawrence would have stayed at a colonial ‘chummery,’ now a guesthouse, and where Maya’s family had a weekend home. Maymyo is ridiculously British… Anyone visiting Burma should read George Orwell’s ‘Burmese Days’ for sure.
On which note, the Royal Palace and Cultural Museum in Mandalay provide important information about the final Burmese dynasty when Queen Supayalat and King Thibaw were ousted by the British and all their riches ‘confiscated’. If you’re British, it’s not something to be proud of sadly.
We also walked along the famous U Bein bridge – it’s thought to be the longest and oldest teak bridge in the world and it’s quite something.
It was in Mandalay that I experienced my first earthquake…. We spent the night in the foyer of the rickety hostel we were staying in. It was as scary as it sounds but miraculously we and even the hostel survived.
Inwa was like going back in time – there’s no motorised traffic; everyone travels by horse and cart or bicycle. It must have been a bit like that for Lawrence in the 1930s, though there wouldn’t have been so many children trying to sell crayoned fans and melon-seed bracelets!
Finally, we travelled for ten hours by boat along the Irriwaddy River to Bagan, home to thousands of temples.
On a practical note, when we visited Burma, I was advised not to write openly in my notebook, as this could be seen as a politically threatening act, and also not to declare my occupation as ‘writer’ on my entrance visa. This meant storing thoughts and observations until I could write them down in the safety and privacy of our room at the end of the day. I still did a lot of writing though – turns out it flows more easily when it’s not allowed…
Return to Mandalay is only very loosely based on Peter Innes’s story. I also talked to Bill Johnson one of my creative writing students from Alston Hall, Preston, who had served in the second world war in Burma and who had a lot of stories to tell. And I read the memoirs of the late John Sams, father of our friend Mervyn, who fought with the Ghurkas there. Sadly, all of these men are now deceased but hopefully their stories live on to some small degree, in this fictional world.
Writing at the Finca in February
This February 2020 I took a writing group to the finca el cerrillo situated in the mountains of Andalucía near the small and unspoilt village of Canillas de Albaida. We’ve held a writing holiday here every year in early July for the past eleven years, but this was the first time we’ve visited in February. And it was fabulous…
The finca hotel – once an olive mill – is run by Gordon and Sue Kind who have carefully retained its original character whilst creating a quirky but luxurious boutique hotel in gardens set within an olive grove and planted with palm trees, carob, hibiscus and jasmine, so that intoxicating scents follow you as you walk down the meandering paths and terraces.
There is a white air-conditioned studio/ workroom, outside courtyards and terraces with plenty of sunny and shady chill-out areas, an indoor salon for dining in the chillier months and an outside pool for the warmer ones. There is even a two-storey tree house created by Gordon in the branches of an ancient olive tree, complete with chairs, tables, candles and fairy lights.
What I love most about this special place is the air of tranquillity. It embraces you the moment you arrive and then you just sink deeper and deeper into the peaceful vibe. It’s magical.
In our morning writing sessions, we do various writing exercises, including visualisations and freewriting, focusing on a theme and practising a writing technique (for example getting to grips with viewpoint/ structure/ plotting / imagery or whatever it might be that day). My aim is to provide a springboard for ideas that can either be used to create new writing or develop an existing work in progress.
I will also read a piece of work and offer 1 to 1 sessions during the week to discuss this. The rest of the day is free for participants to write (or relax!) until the late afternoon when we have a group ‘reading of writing’ workshop.
And it’s not all about the work… The food at the finca el cerrillo is superb; we go out to nearby restaurants on three evenings for a change of scenery and there is a day off during the week when Sue can arrange a day out to Malaga old-town or Nerja on the coast, for example.
This week, Sue and Gordon took a small group of us on an easy-going mountain hike on the old Silk Route, which was just brilliant. And the evenings were great fun, especially the final ‘Desert Island Discs’ night…
This week’s group quickly settled into life at the finca and soon formed a supportive, sharing and trusting group. The writing ranged from autobiographical memoir to historical romance, taking in plenty of emotional drama and humour along the way. Some writers were more experienced than others but everyone seemed to find ways of adapting the writing exercises to progress their own writing project. It was wonderful to witness this and I loved listening to their words.
As someone said – ‘what a week…’ The writing was powerful and lots of emotions were coming to the surface – but definitely in a good way. There was plenty of laughter and also some tears. I so enjoyed working with this very special group and hope that they will all return to the finca on another writing holiday very soon.
These are the dates for our next writing holidays:
6th – 13th July 2020
27th February – 6th March 2021
Check it out…
Some comments from the February 2020 writing group
‘What an incredible week – we all learned a huge amount, and had such a lot of fun as well.’
‘I couldn’t believe the finca would be as beautiful as the website portrayed, but it was even more so.’
‘Can’t believe it’s over. Feel slightly bereft.’
‘Such a special week with amazing people.’
‘The best week I have experienced in my writing life – the beautiful finca and the surrounding villages and towns, the amazing workshops and learning opportunities, and one of the warmest, friendliest, most generous groups of humans I have had the privilege of working and playing with. Just brilliant.’
‘How amazing is it that we arrived as strangers and left as friends?’
‘What’s really special about the retreat is that the environment and the group leadership mean you can leave all your other hats at the door and just be a writer for one week. I know my skills came on in leaps and bounds and I achieved far more than I set out to.’
‘It’s restored an impetus and confidence I needed that was lacking after a really difficult few months. I would love to go back.’
‘The February Writing Week at Finca el Cerrillo was a perfect balance for me. Inspiring morning workshops were directly relevant to my WIP and the afternoons offered enough dedicated time to write while the early evening feedback sessions, with a great group of supportive co-writers, helped build confidence and the whole programme formed the basis of really enjoyable relaxing evenings! Rosanna is an excellent teacher/coach/motivator and I found her one-to-one sessions exceptionally useful. We all admired how much hard work and dedication she gave to making the week a great success as well as great fun. The location was lovely, wonderful friendly hosts and superb food. Wish I was still there! ‘
Email me for more details…
Winter Reading
Here are my winter reading recommendations for this year… Curl up by a roaring fire and enjoy!
Normal People by Sally Rooney
This is the story of two young people, Marianne and Connor, the relationship between them and their attempts to fit in (or not) with society as they attempt to make sense of the world around them. So, it’s kind of the story of their relationship to each other and the world. And a fascinating and insightful story it proves to be…
We meet Marianne and Connor when they are both seventeen and at school. Marianne comes from a privileged background that lacks love and Connor from a working-class background, brought up by a single working mother (who happens to clean for Marianne’s family) with love in abundance. Connor fits in at school, Marianne doesn’t. As time goes by, their relationship develops and changes, and by the time they go to college, their social positioning has reversed. They both find it hard to be ‘normal people.’ But do we have to be? Can we be unconventional and weird and yet also be not lonely or disturbed. And what or who is ‘normal’ anyway?
Sally Rooney explores these interesting questions with wit and emotion. Her writing is compact and precise and I felt completely drawn in to the world of her characters; their stories, their lives, their love. According to reviews, this is a ‘Marmite’ book. I found it compelling, highly charged, vivid and fascinating. Yes, Reader, I loved it.
One Moment by Linda Green
Linda Green’s new novel is rather different from those she has written in the past. Linda is known for her twisty and psychological domestic noirs. Although there is some suspense in this story, in One Moment, she is exploring something rather different.
Finn is a boy who is also ‘different’. He doesn’t like football or rugby, he has ginger hair and is unusual, or ‘good-weird’ as his mother puts it. He is bullied at school, and a bad situation is escalating. Kaz is a woman in her fifties who has spent her life caring for her brother Terry who has mental health issues. The book is written from these two viewpoints. They meet once and then a second time. Everything before the second time is titled ‘before’; everything after the second time is ‘after’. We know right from the beginning that something traumatic occurred at the second meeting, and we know part of the ‘what’, but we don’t know exactly how until almost the end of the book.
What we are presented with throughout the novel are the consequences of the second meeting/ traumatic event for both Kaz and Finn, who go on to form an unlikely but enriching friendship which helps both characters cope with what has happened.
Linda Green tells this story with a great deal of emotion and her usual fast pace. It is warm and emotive, heart-rending in places and really makes you think about what some people have to deal with. Good on you, Linda, for writing something that was important to you and for being brave enough to step outside of your usual genre and therefore confront reader expectation.
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
LJ does it again. Brilliantly plotted, full of twists, menace and emotion, this is one of her best, in my opinion.
Our first narrator (identity unknown to begin with) takes us through what happened in the big family house of his childhood in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea in the 1960s when some people moved in and gradually took control of both house and occupants. At the start of the story, three of these occupants are found dead, apparently in some suicide pact, alongside a healthy baby.
Our second narrator (Lucy) is living in poverty in France with her two children. She too has a connection with Cheyne Walk. But can she get back there to see ‘the baby’? The third narrator is ‘the baby’ herself, Libby who was adopted and who inherits the house on her 25th birthday. She decides to try and solve the mystery of what happened twenty-five years ago and of course she finds out much more than she’d bargained for.
Riveting. Unputdownable. Thought-provoking. Spooky. Highly recommended.
The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
This is the story of Nuri and Afra, two refugees, who are forced to leave their troubled, war-torn homeland of Syria to make the long and difficult journey to the United Kingdom.
Nuri is a beekeeper in Aleppo and with his friend and cousin Mustafa he has created a meaningful and fulfilling life for himself which is centred around his bees, his wife Afra and their son Sami. But when this life is threatened, the Syrians are forced to contemplate escape, despite terrible personal tragedy. After his wife and daughter have already done so, Mustafa leaves and eventually makes it to England; it is his voice through email messages that reaches Nuri and Afra and urges them on, however bad things may be, to stay strong and to find a way to a new place, a place where once again they can work with bees and build a new life together.
Christy Lefteri creates a delicate balance in her portrayal of the relationship between Nuri and Afra which moves from light into darkness and back again as both characters try to come to terms with traumatic events and circumstances and find a way forward together. And yet, despite the subject matter, this is a story of hope and resilience; an important story which gives voice and a personal narrative to people who are too often classed together as one i.e. as ‘refugees’. Lefteri reminds us that everyone has a personal story and that every escape is deeply traumatic and hard-won. A compelling and thought-provoking novel. Highly recommended.
The Confession by Jessie Burton
I very much enjoyed this exploration of some of the complexities of women’s lives told via a dual timeline narrative. In the 1980s, the young, beautiful and naive Elise Morceau meets Constance Holden on Hampstead Heath. She soon comes under the spell of the older, more confident and charismatic Constance, a writer whose novel is being turned into a big Hollywood movie. They begin an intimate relationship and go together to Los Angeles. Whilst Constance enjoys the glamour and Hollywood façade of LA, Elise finds herself out of her depth and their relationship begins to fall apart.
In the contemporary story, Rose, mid 30s, is going through a life crisis and is full of uncertainty when her father gives her some information, the catalyst which sends her on a search to find out her mother’s story. She meets Constance and under false pretences, begins to work for her. This relationship becomes critical to Rose’s development and journey as Constance too, faces up to events of the past. I was however, slightly disappointed by the ending of the novel, which felt too inconclusive to be satisfying.
Jessie Burton is a brilliant writer and her characterisation of Elise, Constance and Rose is thorough, authentic and compelling. The contrasting locations are well-evoked and the novel positively shimmers with emotion. I very much enjoyed this novel about motherhood, friendship, love and search for identity. Highly recommended.
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
It is very brave, I feel, to write a novel solely from the POV of someone with senile dementia/ Alzheimers. By definition, this must become a fragmented, perhaps repetitive narrative. This said, Emma Healey minimises the repetition and adds humour which works well.
Maud, in her eighties and with worsening dementia, is the sole narrator. Her long-suffering daughter Helen looks after her and the relationship between the two of them is poignant, well-expressed with bitter-sweet emotion. So, this is a story about the effects of dementia. But it is also a story of two mysteries: one concerns Elizabeth – is she missing? The other concerns Maud’s sister Sukey who went missing back in the late 1940s.
Maud’s wandering mind and her difficulty in snatching fragments of memory and piecing them accurately together provides a useful device through which the author can keep returning to the events of 1947 to give us clues about Sukey’s disappearance, though I found the lack of variety in the catalyst slightly irritating. However, it is this story which really sparks the reader’s imagination since Maud’s perspective is naturally so much clearer back then, the characters of Frank and Douglas add interest to the story and the mystery seems real (while the mystery of Elizabeth exists mainly in Maud’s mind).
The writing is excellent, the use of language is vivid, and up to a point, the story is engaging. My main gripe with the novel is the fact that for a long time we do not hear through dialogue where Elizabeth actually is. Whilst I appreciate that we are in Maud’s viewpoint, we do hear lots of other dialogue, so this is slightly inconsistent, I feel. However, that said, this is a fascinating story of dementia, held together and made engaging by a mystery; a strong cross-genre book of literary/ crime that is definitely worth a read.
News
- Autumn Reading 2024
- Summer Reading 2024
- Finca Writing in March and June 2024
- My Spring Fiction 2024
- Themes and Schemes
- Top Winter Titles
- Autumn Leaves
- Summer Pages
- Spring Reading Delights
- Writing at the Finca in March
- Winter Chillers
- Autumn Pages
- Researching in Liguria
- Writing at the Finca in July
- Summer Sizzlers 2022
- Spring Reading 2022
- Flash Fiction Slam at BAC
- Writing at the Finca March 2022
- I Am Editing…
- It’s getting colder – time for some late Autumn goodies…
- Writing and Researching during a Pandemic
- Summer Sizzlers – my summer reading
- The Seville Orange and Almond Cake
- The Writing Walk
- Winter Reading Hotties
- Returning to Belle-ile-en-mer
- The Creation of a New World (to Everyone who Does It)
- Autumn Warmers
- Research in the Walled Gardens
- Late Summer Reading…
- Writing Cinematically
- June News
- Spring Reading (In Lockdown…)
- Returning to Mandalay
- Writing at the Finca in February
- Winter Reading
- Oranges in Seville
- Autumn Reading
- Portishead Visit
- An Italian Supper
- Spirit of Place
- Writing at Finca el Cerrillo – seven reasons for a group leader to host a Writing Holiday
- Summer Reading – 8 books to add to your summer tbr pile
- Self-Promotion – how ready are you to shout about it?
- Featuring The Lemon Tree Hotel
- On the Scent of a Storyline
- Location for The Lemon Tree Hotel
- Spring Reading 2019
- March Madness
- The Books I Read this Winter (so far…)