Beyond Marquee Names: Giving Voice to the Voiceless

Guest blogger, Mary Sharratt

Recorded history is wrong. It’s wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.

These are the words of the late, great historical novelist, Mary Lee Settle, author of the classic Beulah Land Quintet, published in the 1950’s when both academic history and most historical fiction were narrowly focused on the elite. So many people have been written out of history: not only the vast majority of women, but also people of the peasant and labouring classes, and people of non-European ancestry. My goal as a writer, from my first novel onward, has been rewriting the voiceless back into history.

My new novel, Daughters of Witching Hill, concerns the true story of Elizabeth Southerns, aka Old Demdike, the most notorious of the 1612 Pendle Witches of Lancashire, England. An impoverished widow, she served her community as a cunning woman, or healer, for decades before her arrest on witchcraft charges at the age of eighty. By retelling the Pendle Witch tragedy from her point of view, I longed to serve her memory and give her what her own world denied her—her own voice.

One of my inspirations is author Sarah Dunant, a champion of more inclusive, non-elitist historical fiction. Dunant has become an international bestseller by writing about people on the margins of history. Her most recent novel, Sacred Hearts, explores the secret world of Benedictine nuns in 1570 Ferrara, Italy.

Speaking at the Bluecoat School in Liverpool in May 2010, Dunant described how she first fell in love with historical fiction when she was a twelve-year-old in postwar Britain, which she remembers as “a grey, colourless, bleak place” where nobody wanted to talk about the war. On the brink of adolescence, she found a wonderful escape in Jean Plaidy’s novels of the crowned heads of Europe. These books not only opened up another world that was colourful and glamorous but they inspired Dunant’s lifelong love affair with history. She went on to study history at Cambridge. “The history I learned,” she recalls, “was the history of great battles, great empires, great men.”

But what inspired Dunant to become an historical novelist were the sweeping developments in academic history that occurred after she left Cambridge in 1972. This new history embraced people who did not belong to the elite. She cites Joan Kelly-Gadol’s 1977 essay, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” as one of the turning points in the development of how we look at history.

“Modern historians,” Dunant explains, “know that there is a multiplicity of history—there is more than one history, one fact. The history I’m using has been hard won over the past twenty to thirty years.” And this history allowed her to write novels about a past that simply wasn’t regarded as history even thirty years ago. For Sacred Hearts, she has drawn on two generations of young historians who examined court records of nuns who got into trouble.

Similarly, I could not have written Daughters of the Witching Hill without the drawing on groundbreaking social histories, such as Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic; landmark works on Reformation Studies, like Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars and Ronald Hutton’s The Rise and Fall of Merry England; as well as recent studies on historical cunning folk.

So will this new history open the door to a Renaissance in historical fiction? Will more and more authors draw on this wider window into ordinary people’s lives instead of rehashing the same old tired tales of Tudor royalty? Dunant believes that historical novelists possess every potential to be on the cutting edge of bringing this new history in an accessible form to a modern audience.

Sadly, although the world of academic history has moved on light years since the 1950s, historical fiction often appears to be stuck in a rut. An increasingly conservative publishing world urges new and established authors alike to play it safe by writing about “marquee names,” such as Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette, instead of drawing on a social history of the less privileged. Must we all write like latter day Jean Plaidys in order to meet our publishers’ sales expectations?

“This is the backwash of celebrity culture,” Dunant says, “and our greed for sensation and scandal. People read about Anne Boleyn when they tire of reading about Paris Hilton. We’ve gone back to kings and queens, a celebrity history, because we’ve squeezed Paris Hilton dry.”

Yet a 2009 market research poll conducted by blogger Julianne Douglas on Writing the Renaissance indicates that only 11% of the people she surveyed buy historical fiction based on the appeal of “marquee names” alone. Readers want so much more out of their fiction: fascinating characters and storylines, arresting and richly realised settings. Above all, I believe that people are drawn to historical fiction to learn things about the past they don’t already know. Perhaps we are indeed ready for a Renaissance in historical fiction.

Mary Sharratt’s acclaimed new novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To learn more about Mary and the true history of the Pendle Witches, visit her website: www.marysharratt.com .

Daughters of the Witching Hill:
Buy it on Amazon

Sarah Dunant:
www.sarahdunant.com/

“Time to Change the Marquee” by Julianne Douglas

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

In Defense of … What?

Guest blogger, Catherine McKenzie

When my publicist told me that an ezine was looking for someone to write a defense of chick lit I have to admit my first reaction was to cringe. Why would I want to defend a genre that it irks me to belong to? But then I thought, as I have before, why does it irk me? Why are these two words so annoying when applied to my book, or to books in general? And why does this genre, or any genre, for that matter, need defending?

I wasn’t sure, so I did what any self-respecting author does these days when they have a question. I turned to Twitter. And what were the results of my very scientific Twitter poll? (Question posed: Does chick lit need defending? & What the hell is it anyway?) Well, if the responses I received are any indication of how the masses feel (and not just the small subset who follows this author) the answer is: Yes, it does need defending. Mostly against the pejorative connotation that has attached to this term. Chick lit is good, they tell me. It’s funny, it’s smart, and sometimes it even makes them think.

How did this happen? How did a bunch of funny, smart books written (mostly) by women for women get so demonized, so we-can-look-down-our-noses-at-it-because-it-can’t-be-very-hard-to-do? The same thing that’s happened to a bunch of other genres I think. A little something I like to call Genre Saturation Induced Lack Of Quality Control. You see, while publishing is not quite the blindfolded roulette wheel that many seem to think it is, it does fall too easily into the chase-after-whatever-was-last-popular phenomenon. Which means that when Bridget Jones’ Diary came out in the mid-1990s and took the publishing world by storm, agents and editors were suddenly bombarded with books describing themselves as the next BJD. And a bunch of books that probably shouldn’t have got published because they had that BJD checklist: wacky main character, group of zany BFF’s including the requisite gay man, fashion, big city, perfect leading man who is initially hated but wins over wacky girl’s heart. And by publishing these books, the genre suddenly became what the name implied. Or the name began to reflect the genre. Chicken. Egg.

So what am I saying? Don’t call my book chick lit. No, seriously. Don’t. OK, OK. What I’m really saying is: quality never has to be defended. And that’s what people should care about. Not pink covers.

Catherine McKenzie was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. A graduate of McGill University and McGill Law School, Catherine practices law in addition to being the author of the national bestseller, Spin (HarperCollins Canada, January 2010.) Follow Catherine on Twitter at @CEMcKenzie1. Visit her Web site at www.catherinemckenzie.com.

A Parisienne in Chicago: Uncovering Madame Grandin’s Personal Journey

Guest blogger Mary Beth Raycraft

My recent translation of Madame Léon Grandin’s A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition, turned out to involve much more than simply rendering the author’s conversational tone into English. From the very beginning of the translation process, I was charmed by Madame Grandin’s witty observations and sketches of American life. As I translated her spirited reactions to American women, marriage, and education, I couldn’t help but wonder about her personal life in late 19th-century Paris and Chicago. So began a year long hunt for clues to her identity. Complicating my task was the fact that she had published her book under her married name, Madame Léon Grandin. Though it seemed strange that a woman who had managed to get her book published in late 19th-century Paris had chosen to hide behind her husband’s identity, at least his name gave me a starting point for my research.

Since Léon Grandin was a well-known Parisian sculptor who had worked on the Columbian Fountain for the Chicago Exposition, I had no trouble finding his obituary in a Paris library. Thrilled to learn that he was buried in the Cimétière Montparnasse, I headed to the cemetery under a gray Paris sky. Although I had hoped that his wife’s grave would be adjacent and that her name would appear on the gravestone, that was not the case as the engraving “famille Grandin” seemed to mock my efforts to uncover Madame Grandin’s identity. The next stop was the Paris Archives where I requested a copy of their marriage certificate in the hope that I would at least discover Madame Grandin’s first and maiden names. I was not very optimistic about gleaning any other information as women have not had a particularly easy time of it in the archives. As Linda Colley points out in the introduction to her remarkable biography The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, A Woman in World History, “women seldom left any extensive mark on the archives unless they had the misfortune to be caught up in some particular catastrophic event.” Fortunately, Madame Grandin did indeed find herself in a situation that left its trace on the official records.

Their marriage certificate revealed that Marie Lédier married Léon Grandin on November 18, 1884 in Paris. She was twenty years old at the time and was employed as an elementary school teacher. The fact that she had taught school in France made clear why this twenty eight year old school teacher had been so interested in visiting American schools during her visit to Chicago in 1892. The most interesting tidbit of all, however, came in a handwritten scrawl on her birth certificate which indicated that she had remarried in New York in December 1901. It quickly became clear that two parallel plots were at work in her story. While Madame Grandin was commenting on relationships between men and women in Chicago, her own marriage was apparently starting to unravel. Less than two years after her return from Chicago, she left both her husband and France behind. A ship manifest in the Ellis Island records revealed that she returned to New York in July of 1895 in the company of a young French man named Alexandre Ferrand and was expecting a child. It turned out that I had been looking in a cemetery on the wrong continent, as she died and was buried on Staten Island in December 1905 at the age of forty one. In the end, the back story of Madame Léon Grandin’s cross-cultural journey through late 19th-century Paris, New York, and Chicago revealed itself to be every bit as intriguing as her memoir. Struck by the relative freedom of American women in late 1890’s Chicago, Marie Grandin made the decision to leave both her husband and France and live out the rest of her life in America, making her trip to Chicago not simply a tourist’s excursion but a decisive moment in her personal journey.

Mary Beth Raycraft teaches French at Vanderbilt University and is the translator of A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition, (University of Illinois Press, 2010). Read more about A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition at www.aparisienneinchicago.com.

University of Illnois Press, 2010

“If they had known about the book, they might have behaved.” – Memoirist Robert Rummel-Hudson

That quote is spot-on the mark for its simple truth. Writers of all stripes are natural spies, unconsciously absorbing their environment, picking up details and dialogue for a story they have yet to write. And quite often, a story is inpsired by a slice of conversation between a couple we overhear in the next restaurant booth – “This is not the time or place, Fred!” or the way someone artfully complains to a steward on an airplane – “Maybe this service goes over well at Greyhound, sweetie, but this is first class and I shouldn’t have to tell you.”

Recently, when having drink with a friend at a coffee chain, I couldn’t help watching another couple take a seat on the outside patio.

They didn’t arrive together, that was clear. She, natural and not in-your-face-pretty in a Gwyneth Paltrow kind of way, sat down first and crossed her legs. Her ram-rod straight posture against the hard, wire-framed chair suggested she felt very relaxed and confident. But her crossed leg, bobbing up and down, was the only quality that signaled unease.

He, equal to her looks in an everyman, not leading man fashion, carried a large laptop case, pulled out his chair and made to sit down – but not before his whole case came tumbling open and the contents of it, including his laptop, spread around on the pavement at his feet. Fortunate for him, it was not a windy day. He stood there for a moment looking like he’d just wet his pants on the playground in front of the popular girl. He scooped the papers and pens back into the case and shoved them under the seat. (I noticed she did not help him with this task.) Then, he sat on the edge of his seat, slightly hunched toward her, continuously running his hand through his hair. He was talking fast. Whatever he was saying, probably tinged with a healthy dose of nervous laughter, just made her more interested in her frothy drink and straw, which she was moving up and down inside the cup with the tips of her coral colored manicure. She was bored. I assigned her a bubble thought: “I think on my next polish change, I should go with Make Mine Mauve.”

His bubble thought shouted, “Idiot! Stop talking about how your new Dell laptop can withstand a drop from three and half feet.”

I felt bad for them. Well, actually, I felt bad for him. It was clear this interview-like hell date was a first and possibly last meeting.
Through the window glass, I never heard any of their exchange. Still, I could see a story play out in front of me. Would she be worn down by his nervous charm when he called her the next week and they’d go out again? Or was she counting the minutes until she could text her girlfriend about this bad date? Was he waitng for her to leave so he could sufficiently flog himself for being so clumsy, fueling the start of his future serial-killer infamy as the Manicure Maniac? Or, would this send him inside for a double-tall latte from a sweet barista who would become his next girlfriend merely because she asked, “Is that the latest Dell laptop?”

The story could go so many directions, which is the pure joy of writing. We take human observations and weave in our own “what ifs” and life experiences until an interesting scenario emerges.

So you tell me: Do you observe people and conversations? Do you sometimes fill in the blanks about what is taking place?

Karen Harrington is the author of the psychological thriller, Janeology. Visit her at www.karenharringtonbooks.com

Which came first – The writer or the mama?

In the south, it’s not uncommon to hear this expression: “Don’t you have people?” This refers to the hired help a woman might have to help keep up with her domestic bliss. Nannies. Lawn Service. Housekeeper.
I don’t have people. However, I have kids (ages 3 and 4), a house, a lawn, and dust bunnies with squatters rights. All of these things make me a better writer. I write during naptimes and after my children go to sleep. My laptop is perpetually open on the kitchen counter. Sometimes it’s ignored. Sometimes it’s there so I can capture a thought I want to work on later. I don’t have time for the muse to appear. I just write.
Joyfully, I am not the only writer/mama to employ this practice to great effect.

Here are a few more moms who discovered that if you love to write – you just might be more prolific after procreating.

JODI PICOULT, best-selling author of twelve novels and mother of three
“I would be with kids all day long and would write until ten or eleven at night. I learned how to write quickly and efficiently, and have never had writers block. Anyone who has ever been pressed to write knows you don’t have the luxury of wandering around waiting for your muse. Some days, I write pure dreck, but I can always edit that the next day. I just plough through and then go back and edit.

As soon as my kids were in school, I had daytime hours to write even though I was interrupted, taking one or the other to and from school at different times. I was writing plots on laundry tickets!

For more check out: http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/sep01/picoult.htm

MARY HIGGINS CLARK, best-selling author of twenty-four novels and mother of five

“When my children were young, I used to get up at five and write at the kitchen table until seven, when I had to get them ready for school. For me, writing is a need. It’s the degree of yearning that separates the real writer from the “would-be’s.” Those who say “I’ll write when I have time, when the kids are grown up or when I have a quiet place to work,” will probably never do it.”
For more check out: http://www.simonsays.com/content/destination.cfm?tab=1&pid=352932&agid=8

J. K. ROWLING, best-selling author of the seven Harry Potter novels and mother to one

“I wasn’t a struggling single mother all the time that I was writing the first “Harry” book. It was only during the final year of writing that I found myself poorer than I’d ever been before. Obviously, continuing to write was a bit of a logistical problem: I had to make full use of all the time that my then-baby daughter slept. This meant writing in the evenings and during nap times. Nobody knows better than I do that I was very lucky — I didn’t need money to exercise the talent I had — all I needed was a Biro and some paper.”

For more check out: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/03/cov_31featureb.html

So all of the writer/moms out there, I salute you. Put down that laundry right now and go write your next sentence. Maybe it will be about laundry angst. Maybe it will be the first sentence of the next best-seller. You never know. And then drop me a line and share your writing practices and what works for you.

-

Karen Harrington is the author of the psychological thriller, JANEOLOGY. Read an excerpt at www.karenharringtonbooks.com

Overheard at a booksigning

Hello, HerCircle friends. As you might recall, my debut novel Janeology launched last month and I have been out and about promoting the book. So today, I’d like to share some of the most memorable exchanges that have taken place at my various book signings. Enjoy!

Of my books on the signing table.

“Are these complimentary?”

Of the topic of filicide.

“I can’t read this. I read The Lovely Bones and I hated it.”

Of my pitch that it’s about a man trying to understand his wife by way of understanding the family secrets and ancestors in her family.

“Oh, we all have black sheep in our family. My brother’s wife just left him and he’s now realizing it had something to do with her mother.”

Of my description of the book to a kind old man.

“Sounds good. Let me go ask my wife.”

Of my offer to sign a book for a woman.

“Oh, are you the author?”

Of my introduction to the next person who approached my table, “Hi, I’m the author Karen Harrington.”

“Hello the author Karen Harrington.”

Of the mints on my signing table.

“What are these for?”

Of the puzzle on my signing table.

“Why did you cut up your cover like that?”

Of the woman who ran over to my table with her hubby and told me her name was Jane.

Hubby: “If I read this, will I understand my wife better?”

Me: Huh Huh. Maybe. Here’s a bookmark.” (She leaves. Returns 10 mintues later.)

“OMG! My husband’s name is Tom!” (See, the couple in my book are Jane and Tom.)

Of my accidental penning “Very best pictures” (Doh! Should have written WISHES)

Me: “Oh, I’m so sorry. We were talking about pictures, and, well, ha ha…well, if I become famous, one day this will be very valuable.”

INTERESTING STATS

Signings: 3

Books sold: 43

Ratio of male/female purchasers: 30%/70%

A Good Death

by Grace Andreacchi

Enough about the writer’s life, let’s think about the writer’s death for a change. It’s sure to come, after all, for of all things nothing is more certain than death. A big subject, and arguably the starting point for much if not all of the world’s literature. Without death we would have no Wuthering Heights, no Death Be Not Proud, we would have neither metaphysical sonnets, nor lamentations, nor elegies, nor grief and certainly no Sylvia Plath with her poor little head in the oven. Without death it’s questionable whether we’d have any literature at all, as it is perhaps the knowledge of oblivion that tempts us to leave a record, to say – this was my life, this was my time, this my vision, my world. Remember me when I am gone/Gone far away into the silent land…

Is there such a thing as a good, a particularly appropriate and satisfying death for a writer? Without trespassing upon delicate ground of individual conscience and belief, I would suggest there is. Who does not admire the dash of Lord Byron, casting his young life away heedlessly in a Grecian swamp? Who is not moved by the terrifying double suicide of Heinrich von Kleist and the mortally ill Henriette Vogel? Before he died Kleist sat down and wrote eloquent letters to just about everybody he knew, and they make exciting reading. So this to his cousin and close friend Marie von Kleist:
‘Your letter broke my heart, my dearest Marie, and I promise you, if it were in my power, I’d give up this idea I’ve got of dying. But I swear to you, it’s completely impossible for me to live any longer; my soul is so wounded that, I might even say, if I go and press my nose against the windowpane, the very daylight that glimmers there is enough to cause me pain.’ He shot Henriette and then himself on the shores of the Wannsee near Berlin. He was only thirty-four.

Well, count on a German for a good, romantic Liebestod, but the letters are a touch. Surely only a writer feels the desire, nay, the compunction, to sit down and knock off a few choice paragraphs before the big exit. What really was getting Kleist down was the absolute failure of his written work to make the slightest impression on the world. God forbid any of us should take the inevitable rejection letters that much to heart! Better, perhaps, to follow the example of Jean Rhys, hiding out in a cottage in soggy Devonshire, drunk and disorderly, and brandishing against the dying of the light only her best book ever.

Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New York City but has lived on the far side of the great ocean for many years – sometimes in Paris, sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London. Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease, which received the New American Writing Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories and poetry appear in both on-line and print journals.Her work can be viewed at http://graceandreacchi.com.

An American Writer in Paris

by Grace Andreacchi

Things are different in Paris. The food is exquisite, the apartment buildings, even in the slums, are high, elegant and decorated like wedding cakes, the light is pale lavender all day long, and writers are, quite simply, gods. It makes no difference if you’re published or unpublished, famous or totally unknown, just to be a writer is to be a god. To one accustomed to the usual American response to the shy and unwilling revelation, ‘I’m a writer’, the French response is nothing short of astonishing. People take a step back, overcome with admiration. People say things like, ‘A writer, c’est formidable!’ (They really talk this way in France.) People do not tell you they’re planning to write a novel soon themselves, or their cousin’s written a novel and can you help get it published, or they know this really great story that happened to a friend of theirs and they could write a novel about it but really haven’t got the time, would you like to hear it and then maybe you can use it for your next book? No, you will never hear any of these things cross the rapid-fire lips of the French. People respect you. It’s unaccustomed, and heady stuff.

When I first moved into my apartment on the rue Montcalm in Montmarte I was stopped on the stairs by a curious-looking little man in a state of great agitation. ‘Madame,’ he began, pulling nervously at his hairnet. ‘You walk around the whole night long. You are rolling a ball about in the night, just above my head! Madame, it is impossible for me to sleep!’ I thought for a minute and realised the ‘ball’ he was hearing must be the wheels under my chair. I apologised profusely and explained about the chair, explained that I was a writer and kept strange hours, but would be most careful to walk on tiptoe and not to move the chair. But the little man was no longer interested in his sleep problems – I was a writer! That was something completely different! God forbid his petty complaints should interfere with the functioning of the muse! Could I tell him about my books?

I was turned down in both London and New York for a bank account – not enough reliable income. But in Paris when I asked for a bank account the branch manager asked me shyly for an autographed copy of my latest novel. When I was obliged to seek help from the gendarmerie over a lost passport, the Capitaine showed up in person at my door – I thought he’d come to arrest me on charges unknown, but he’d come with a bottle of Bordeaux grand cru, to chat about literature. ‘It’s always been my dream to talk to a writer,’ he confided. ‘I love watching them on the télé.’ Like I said, things are different. The only problem is, it can go to your head like champagne.

Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New York City but has lived on the far side of the great ocean for many years – sometimes in Paris, sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London. Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease, which received the New American Writing Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories and poetry appear in both on-line and print journals.Her work can be viewed at http://graceandreacchi.com.

Is All Fair

by Grace Andreacchi

I recently heard an interview with the writer Orhan Pamuk in which he was asked – had it changed his life much, winning the Nobel Prize? I’m a little bit in love with Pamuk these days (those big brown eyes, those labyrinthine torture gardens of the mind…), and listened eagerly for what he would say. Oh, dear Orhan, please don’t be a schmuck, please don’t tell us how great it is to be totally famous. ‘I thought it wouldn’t change my life at all’ he said, ‘but I was wrong, it did. My family started speaking to me again.’ If you’ve read his ravishing Istanbul: Memories and the City then you know the many reasons the Pamuk clan had to take umbrage. And yet this deeply honest, self-searching, wildly sensitive account of le petit Orhan and the people and places that helped make him is one of the best things I’ve ever read in the genre ‘portrait of the artist as a young monster’. Pamuk spares neither himself, nor his mother, nor his father, nor his big brother (who claims most of it’s made up anyway), he shows a little bit of reserve towards a former girlfriend, which I find rather gallant of him. Is it fair to treat people like this? And, if it isn’t fair, what on earth are we to write? How are we to write?

It’s a question of genuine moral import, and every writer must wrestle that angel on her own. I make it a rule not to say anything in print I wouldn’t say to a person’s face, at least if I had the gumption to face them. It’s of some comfort to know that when you do ‘put’ people into books, they often don’t recognise themselves, but of course others may, and draw their attention to it. Then there are those who insist on seeing themselves where they are not. And those who do recognise themselves may call you on it. I’d say as a general rule that ex-lovers are fairly safe territory, as long as they’re firmly ex. They’re unlikely to risk a painful rendezvous merely to complain that it didn’t happen like that and you’re telling it all wrong. But a neat vivisection of the writer’s Christmases Past is sure to bring the roof down around one’s ears. Of course, if, like me, you already enjoy a relationship with your family on the outermost edge of the deeply estranged and totally dysfunctional then by all means go for it. What have you got to lose? You might even win the Nobel Prize.

Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New York City but has lived on the far side of the great ocean for many years – sometimes in Paris, sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London. Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease, which received the New American Writing Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories and poetry appear in both on-line and print journals.Her work can be viewed at http://graceandreacchi.com.

The Bakery Lady

by Grace Andreacchi

The writer’s life is, essentially and not incidentally, a lonely one. You shut yourself up in a room, ignore the tempting sunshine, unplug the phone, and even refuse to come to the door when you’re ‘working’. You keep unsociable hours, skip meals, refuse invitations all in pursuit of the grand illusion. A consent to the absurd proposition that the reality inside your head is, for the duration, more important than the ‘real world’ is the sine qua non. All of this can get to be a bit much.

For a while I lived in an apartment on the Anzengruberstraße in Berlin, directly over a bakery. There were many advantages to living over a bakery. The bakery lady was everything a bakery lady should be, she was round and smiling, pink-cheeked and maternal. When I stopped in towards the end of the afternoon for my daily Brötchen she’d often insist on giving me two of three for the price of one. ‘You need to eat more,’ she’d say, shaking her head. ‘Too thin!’ Germany was ahead of the curve in the world obesity epidemic (this was the mid-nineties), and my naturally slim frame was rare enough to be considered exotic. In my lonely pursuit of the chimera it was enormously comforting to have this bakery lady looking out for me.

On those nights when I’d lost all track of time and lingered, bent over the page (we still wrote on paper in those far-off days) till the wee small hours, when that hour arrived when the world seems not so much asleep as dead and the over-active imagination begins to fear – there is nobody else on the planet left alive, I’m the only one… at that terrible hour when the blood freezes, ghosts walk, and fear eats the soul, at that very hour the bakery lady and her husband would arrive downstairs. I’d hear them clanking about as they opened the shop to begin another day of mixing and kneading and baking the bread, rolls and cake for the hungry hearts and stomachs of the neighbourhood. So I’m not the only one left after all, I’d think. The bakery lady is here. And with a sigh I’d lay down my pen and crawl into bed, drifting off to sleep to the elemental odour of baking bread. If you ever have the chance to live over a bakery, jump at it.

Copyright © 2008 Grace Andreacchi Hadas

Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New York City but has lived on the far side of the great ocean for many years – sometimes in Paris, sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London. Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease, which received the New American Writing Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories and poetry appear in both on-line and print journals.Her work can be viewed at http://graceandreacchi.com.

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