Friday book review - Alys, Always by Harriet Lane

Snow, gridlocked traffic, hosepipe bans – the lead-up to Easter hasn’t exactly been cheery this year. In lots of ways I’m quite pleased to be hunkering down at home for the weekend with (hopefully) a stash of chocolate eggs and a pile of good books.

If you’re doing the same in your neck of the woods and are looking for a great read, I can’t recommend Alys, Always highly enough. I’d been interested in Harriet Lane as a writer for a while, ever since I read a moving Daily Telegraph piece about her sight problems. A former staff writer for Tatler and The Observer, she suffers from a rare auto-immune disorder affecting her optic nerve and has lost the sight in one eye.

After losing the journalistic career she loved, Lane decided to turn to novel writing and joined a creative writing class. It was a wise move. In May 2010, the germ of an idea for her debut novel appeared in her head and she began writing. Five months later she’d found a publisher.

Alys, Always is the story of Frances, a lonely, 30-something sub editor on a paper called The Questioner. At work, the literary editor and her bumptious 23-year-old deputy treat her like a skivvy, and at home she leads a colourless, solitary existence where nothing much ever happens.

But one winter evening, as she heads back to London after a visit to her parents, she spots an illuminated shape through the trees. A car has crashed off the road and inside the crumpled wreck a woman is dying. Weeks later, the woman’s family contacts Frances “to meet the person who was there” and she is drawn into their brittle, privileged world - with life-changing consequences.

Alys, Always is a subtle, beautifully observed and exquisitely written novel – the sort of book you read in one beguiling go. I can’t wait for Lane’s next.

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane (Orion, £12.99)

Dear Virginia Ironside - Hell is NOT a room full of other women

It’s been a bad week for women, I reckon. First we had Samantha Brick wailing how other women hate her because she’s so beautiful and today the usually astute agony aunt Virginia Ironside has written a piece in the Daily Mail titled “Hell on earth is a room full of other women!”

Ironside claims: “I have dozens of female friends and I’m deeply fond of them all. But if you put a load of women together, a toxic chemical change seems to occur – one that turns them into bitchy, gossiping harpies, and produces an explosive reaction to me. And I’m not the only person to feel this way.”

Well, I’m sorry, I don’t know ANY women who feel this way. I’ve worked in loads of offices where women have been in the majority and have encountered nothing but professionalism, support, friendship and fun.

Ironside mentions that she used to work at Woman magazine, where she says, she found “how bitchy and cruel women can be when they’re in a group – women, who on their own, are perfectly nice and friendly.”

Funnily enough, at the time Ironside was writing for Woman, I worked as a feature writer for the opposition, Woman’s Own. The two weekly magazines were in the same South Bank tower block, two floors apart, and I’m sure the offices were pretty similar. The Woman’s Own features department consisted of one man and around ten women, and I can’t remember any bitchiness at all. Deadlines were tight and the pressure to get the best interviews intense, but we worked hard and had fun. I made lifelong friends there – in fact if my best pals Lesley and Daff phoned right now and suggested lunch I’d drop everything and go like a shot.

I’m a freelance writer now and mostly work from home so I wondered if I’m perhaps out of touch. But over the last five years I’ve worked closely with an international PR company, writing newsletters about apprenticeships, skills and training. All my colleagues there are high-flying women in their 20s and 30s and I’ve found exactly the same environment of hard work, courtesy and respect.  No back-biting whatsoever.

And then there’s the fabulous (mainly female) Romantic Novelists’ Association. From providing advice and support to up and coming authors to throwing ultra-glam parties to celebrate the achievements of their top names, the RNA proves once and for all that hell is NOT a room full of other women…

Teenagers, cars and insurance

When my teenage daughter celebrated her 17^th birthday I rashly promised that I’d buy her a car once she’d passed her driving test. We lived 20 miles from her school at the time, a journey that took more than an hour as the number 59 bus wove its way through the pretty villages of north Oxfordshire. Not surprisingly, she couldn’t wait to ditch her bus pass and drive her own car.

It took her nearly a year to do it but she passed her test first time (thank you to BSM’s wonderful Tracey). So despite my misgivings I threw caution to the wind and bought her a second-hand Renault Clio. That’s when, like many other parents, I discovered how expensive it is to insure a car for a teenager. So when the Sainsbury’s Bank Family Bloggers Network asked if I’d like to run a guest post on car insurance for teenagers on House With My Name, it seemed like a pretty good idea. Here it is:

Will you be paying for your teenager’s car insurance?

Most teenagers can’t wait to pass their driving test and discover ultimate freedom with their first car. Before you know it, a savings account will be empty and a new motor will be parked outside, waiting to be driven by an ecstatic teenager. Only trouble is, it could cost them thousands of pounds to insure. 

Cue an intervention from loving parents, who are only too happy to help out. Is there any harm in lending a helping hand? Well, that’s the question. So to avoid any major headaches, it’s important to be aware of the pros and cons.



Risk



First things first – if the new driver is to have their own car, it will be worth their while choosing one with a small engine. Anything sporty or with modifications will add to an already large insurance bill. 
Some insurance companies won’t even insure 17 to 20-year-olds, even with a small car. This is mainly due to the high risk posed by younger drivers, especially 17 to 19-year-old males, whose average claim according to 2010 figures is £3,433 – almost three times more than a male over 50. 

Now, that’s not to say all teenagers are dangerous drivers, but it explains why insurance providers are wary.


‘Fronting’ the policy



Many parents choose the option of adding their teenager as a named second driver on their own policy, and this can be a good way of saving money. However, deliberately ‘fronting’ a policy for a teenager when they are in fact the main driver of the vehicle is considered fraudulent. If the young driver was to have an accident, the insurance company could refuse to pay out, and might even prosecute. 



Insurance providers have methods of discovering who the main driver of a vehicle is – they might examine the contents of the car or trace who’s been paying for the fuel bills. So if you’re going to name anybody on your own policy, make sure they remain the second driver – and that they drive safely, of course.



Protect your no claim discount



So adding a teenager to your own car insurance can save you money, but there are also disadvantages. For example, they might not be able to build up their own no claim discount this way, and that could be important in reducing their insurance bills in the future. So consider choosing a policy that offers a no claim discount to second drivers, as well as the main policy-holder.

Another disadvantage is that your own insurance premium could increase with a young driver added, plus you may risk losing your own no claim discount if the second driver has an accident.

Every teenager is different

As a parent, you’ll know your teenager the best and make your decisions accordingly. Some might feel it best to delay the age their offspring starts their driving lessons, until they’re older and in a better position to pay their own way – and their insurance bills might be cheaper by then too!

Some parents might consider lending their teenager a percentage of the insurance premium, on the condition they’re prepared to earn the remainder. This option allows them to appreciate the responsibilities of being an adult – surely an important lesson.

Whatever option you choose, it's essential that you and your family pick a car insurance policy that meets your needs.

Guest blog written by Jules Anthony. 

A winter let in Sandbanks

Sandbanks in Dorset is famous for its eye-wateringly high house prices. A narrow peninsula jutting into Poole Harbour, it boasts golden sands, vast mansions, stunning views across Poole Bay to the Purbeck Hills and a plethora of luxury yachts sailing by. A chain ferry clanks across the harbour mouth to Studland all day long, so within a few minutes you can be strolling along glorious Shell Bay, one of the loveliest beaches in the country. 

Houses at Sandbanks don’t come up for sale very often but there’s bound to be loads of interest in the latest, a five-bedroom beauty that’s right on the beach and has been in the same family for 44 years. The only downside is that it costs £5 million.

If I owned a house at Sandbanks (if only) I’d never move. My family lived there for six months when I was 11 and it was completely glorious. Our garden backed straight on to the beach and me and my sister spent hours building sandcastles on the shore, skimming stones and leaping into the waves. We could see the sea from our bedroom and watch dinghies tack back and forth as we did our homework.

Our house was a very ordinary-looking white-washed bungalow called Flintshore. We rented it over the winter, when the beach was deserted and rents were low. Sadly, when Easter came and the summer rental season burst forth, our short, blissful sojourn at Flintshore was over.

Funnily enough, Flintshore hit the headlines a few years back when it went on the market for a cool £4 million. With a location like that, I’m sure some billionaire or other snapped it up in a trice.

Jane Shilling, middle age and House With No Name's birthday

If I’m honest, the main reason I booked to hear Jane Shilling’s talk at the Oxford Literary Festival was because she’d been teamed up with Rachel Cusk.

Cusk is the writer whose recent memoir about her divorce, Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation, has prompted a flurry of criticism and debate.

But at the start of the discussion, the audience (like me, mostly middle-aged and female) was told that Rachel Cusk had had to pull out. No reason was given, but instead, the session on Women in Middle Age would be Jane Shilling in conversation with writer and journalist Rebecca Abrams.

Abrams got the event, held at Christ Church, off to a cracking start by telling us that while Shilling calls her book about middle age “a monument to introspection,” she reckons it's “a call to arms.” She also referenced two brilliant quotes from a couple of Hollywood stars. While Doris Day said “the really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you’ll grow out of it,” Lucille Ball declared that “the secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age.”

Jane Shilling began writing her own book, The Stranger in the Mirror, in her 40s, when it suddenly struck her that she was becoming middle-aged. Her frank memoir garnered plenty of headlines when it came out, largely because of its cover (above). There can't be many 40-something women who would countenance posing naked in front of a mirror - but that's what Shilling did.

“It’s very painful to relinquish youth,” she said. “But part of living a good middle age is to embrace it. At some point you arrive at the realisation that what remains is more important than what has been lost.”

And despite newspapers’ stereotypical view of middle-aged women as either desperate to look younger or grumpy old women, she reminded us all that the middle aged are in the majority. Not only that, interesting role models are “coming out of the woodwork” – women like Helen Mirren, Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett.

Ending the discussion on an upbeat note, a woman in the audience piped up and said she wanted to “put a more positive spin on things.” Middle age isn’t all empty nests and worries about ageing, she said. “I have just hit 50 and there are some very good things to be had."

PS. Today is House With No Name's first birthday! It seems no time at all since the very first post, but thank you so much to everyone who's read House With No Name over the last 12 months and here's looking to the next 12.

William Boyd at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

The massive marquee at Christ Church was full to bursting for William Boyd’s talk at the Oxford Literary Festival on Saturday night. The event was a sell-out and fans were so keen to hear him talk about his latest novel, Waiting for Sunrise, that an orderly queue formed outside – just in case there were any empty seats.

In a way, Boyd, with slicked back hair and wearing an immaculate dark suit and dazzling white shirt, was back on home turf. He spent three years as an English literature tutor at St Hilda’s in the 1980s and said his time there coincided with the start of his writing career. In between, he told us, he’d done just about every writing job going – “from restaurant criticism to Hollywood movies.”  He’s written 17 novels to date, along with a myriad of screenplays and short stories, and been awarded the CBE.

For me, the most enthralling part of Boyd’s hour-long talk came when he outlined the details of how he writes. Famed for his amazing settings – from 1920s Berlin to Africa to Vienna before the First World War, he admitted that he doesn’t necessarily go to these places before writing about them.

“It’s the power of your imagination that makes it work and makes it feel real,” he said. “I send my imagination as a proxy traveller, and recreate a city in my mind. I have never worried about visiting a place. I do it from my armchair. Sometimes the use of imagination is more true than the documentary evidence that your eyes and ears provide you with.”

He reckons you need three things for a novel – the ability to express yourself lucidly, a relish for observation (“I take enormous pleasure in the cinema of everyday life”) and a well-functioning imagination.

It was fascinating to hear that before Boyd writes a word of his novels, he’s often spent two years planning them and thinking them through in very precise detail.

“I have a particular working method,” he explained. “Iris Murdoch talked about periods of invention and periods of composition. I have a long period of invention and maybe two years will go by before I start writing. I maybe travel a bit, acquire a small library of books that will help me, fill notebooks of ideas and think about the characters.

“It’s only when I know precisely how the novel will end that I start on page one and the period of composition begins. I write with confidence because I have done all my thinking and have a very clear plan. I add flesh to the bones but the actual writing of the novel is done, not with ease exactly, but with peace of mind.”

Unlike many writers and thanks to his tried and tested method of writing, he never finds his characters suddenly doing something he hadn’t expected them to do either. “My characters are my creatures and do my bidding,” he said firmly.