Interview with Liz Harris - author of The Road Back

If you’re looking for a compelling story set in Ladakh, a remote region north of the Himalayas, then Liz Harris’s debut novel is just the book. The Road Back is the story of Patricia, who accompanies her father to Ladakh in the early Sixties. There she meets Kalden, a man destined to be a monk - but how can their forbidden love survive?

Dynamic ex-teacher Liz is a great friend of mine and agreed to be interviewed about the path to publication. Liz will also be giving a talk at Thame Library in Thame, Oxfordshire, on Friday October 12 at 1pm. Find out more here.

Did you write as a child and did you always want to write novels?

Liz: I don’t know that I wanted to write novels, but I loved writing essays, letters, anything I was given to write. I think it was some time before I connected the books that I adored reading with the process of writing. As a child, I rather assumed that books just happened. If only!

You were a teacher before becoming a novelist. What did you teach and did your years in schools help your writing in any way?

Liz: I taught secondary school English and French. If you approach me speaking fluent French next time we meet though, I should warn you that I feel a lengthy bout of laryngitis coming on. I think those teaching years did help me.  Apart from studying texts in the way that you have to do when teaching A level English, which gives a great awareness of what can be done with language and of the importance of the relationship between character to plot, a school is a microcosm of the larger world. It is a hotbed of seething emotions - although perhaps not quite as seething as Waterloo Road…

Your first novel, The Road Back, is just out. Can you tell me about the road to publication and how you got a publishing deal?

Liz: For the seven years prior to being accepted for publication, I kept on writing. I’d send a novel out, feel bereft and instantly start on another. I’d also send my novels for a critique. I believe that every novel needs independent eyes to help the author to see clearly what needs work. A published author has an agent/editor to be those independent eyes; not so an unpublished author, as I then was. I love writing, and I never thought of giving up for so much as one moment.

What gave you the idea for The Road Back?

Liz: Three years ago, my cousin, who now lives in Australia, appealed for help in finding a home for an album of notes and photos compiled by my late uncle after a trip he’d made to Ladakh in the 1940s, when stationed with the army in North India. No one in Australia was interested. The ink was fading fast and she was anxious to see it preserved. The album is now in the Indian Room of the British Library. It was brought to England by friends of my cousin. When I collected it from them, I held on to it for two weeks, read it and instantly fell in love with Ladakh. I knew that I had to set a novel there and I began to research its tradition, culture and geography.

How did you go about researching the novel? Did you visit Ladakh, the area where it is set?

Liz: Visiting the place where a novel is set is the ideal, and that’s what I’ve been able to do with my next novel.  I went to Wyoming, where it’s set, in August.

But Ladakh is at a very high altitude and I have very low blood pressure. I would have been susceptible to altitude sickness, and I was advised not to go there. However, since the gates of tourism were opened in 1974, Ladakh has become a mecca for trekking tourists, and thanks to the internet, YouTube and some excellent books on Ladakh, I was able to go there with them. I can close my eyes and see Kalden’s village, see the monastery suspended above the white houses below, and the distant mountains, just as well as if I’d been there.

How and where do you write? Do you shut yourself away from your family? Do you spend a certain number of hours writing or do you set yourself a daily word count?

Liz: In my pre-publication days, I’d come down, have my breakfast whilst catching up with my emails, then I’d write all day.  Whilst I can write anywhere, I prefer to be in my study. My husband, as practical as I’m impractical, would busy himself in the house until the evening. A blissful arrangement.

Post-publication, things have changed. It’s much harder now to find a concentrated period of time in which to write as there are so many other calls on one’s time. When I start work on my next book, which will be soon, I shall probably give myself a couple of days in the week when I don’t switch on the internet.

Do you have any tips for writers working on their debut novels right now?

Liz: Don’t worry about getting published: just write. Write what is crying out in you to be written, and don’t worry about anything else. In the end, it’s a matter of luck whether an author gets published. Hopefully, everyone will be as lucky as I’ve been, but giving birth to people who didn’t exist before you put finger to keyboard, people with emotions, who live and breathe in a world that didn’t exist before you created it – that is the real thrill. Getting published is only the icing on the (chocolate) cake.

What is your own favourite novel? And are there any particular novelists who have inspired you?

Liz: I’m going to be so corny now – I adore Pride & Prejudice. I love all of Jane Austen’s novels, though Northanger Abbey less than some – and I re-read them most years. I particularly love the way in which she lets her characters condemn themselves. She doesn’t take on a narrative voice – she lets the characters speak, and through their words we see their foibles. This is a rare art. But who initially stimulated my imagination as a child? The answer is Enid Blyton. I loved her school stories and the adventure stories. The Famous Five were six when I read the novels, and I led the way with a torch!

I know you’re an avid theatre-goer in your spare time. I can’t resist asking you about the best drama production you have seen this year. And what are you seeing next?

Liz: I’m going to see the drama about a family, Jumpy at The Duke of York’s. I missed it the first time it was on in London as it was instantly sold out, but I was at the head of the queue when it returned this year, again with Tamsin Greig, and I’m very much looking forward to it. The best drama production I saw last year may well be something most people won’t have heard of. It was Witness, an absolutely spell-binding production of a story of great emotional intensity. 

The Road Back by Liz Harris (Choc Lit, £7.99)

Friday book review - Ratburger by David Walliams

David Walliams is the fastest growing children’s author in the UK  – so children aged nine and up will be thrilled to hear that his fifth novel has hit the bookshops.

Like its predecessors, Ratburger is hilarious, sad and at times downright revolting. It isn’t for children of a nervous disposition but most young readers will laugh uproariously from start to finish – in between gasping in horror at Burt, Walliams’s evil, burger-van driving new villain.

Walliams excels at writing uproarious, laugh-out loud stories that combine humour and heart, and this one’s no exception. Zoe, his latest young heroine, has a back story that brings tears to your eyes. Her mum died when she was a baby, her dad’s lost his job at the local ice cream factory and Zoe’s got a horrible new stepmother called Sheila who eats prawn cocktail crisps all day and is so idle she asks Zoe to pick her nose for her.

The only bright spot in Zoe’s lonely life is Gingernut, her pet hamster – but that ends in tears when Zoe finds him dead in his cage. She suspects Sheila might have had something to do with Gingernut’s sudden demise but as she says, “what kind of person would want to murder a defenceless little hamster?”

But one night Zoe hears a baby rat scrabbling in the corner of her room and decides to adopt him as her new pet. Desperate to hide the rodent from the wicked Sheila, she takes him to school in her blazer pocket and calls him Armitage (after spotting the name Armitage Shanks in the girls’ toilets).

With brilliant illustrations by Tony Ross, this story is great for boys and girls alike. Walliams is a huge fan of the late, great Roald Dahl and children who enjoy Dahl's books will definitely like this.

Ratburger by David Walliams (HarperCollins, £12.99) 

Jeremy Vine at the Henley Literary Festival

How can a whole year have flown by since the 2011 Henley Literary Festival? And how can this year's autumn weather be so different ? Twelve months ago I listened to Bella Pollen and Kay Burley talk about their books in sweltering sunshine. This year the audience at Jeremy Vine’s event were all in winter coats, scarves and (in my case) fingerless gloves.

But who cared about the chilly temperature when Vine was there to treat us to a hilarious hour of anecdotes about his journalistic career – from his cub reporter days on the Coventry Evening Telegraph to his 25 years at the BBC.

Interviewed by the Daily Mail’s Sandra Parsons, Vine received a rapturous reception at Henley’s packed Kenton Theatre. A tall rangy figure clad in jeans, dark jacket and bright turquoise socks, he talked at top speed for 60 minutes, barely pausing for breath. Along the way he listed his top five DJs – Kenny Everett, John Peel, Terry Wogan, Chris Evans and Steve Wright – and his top four TV interviewers – Richard Dimbleby, David Dimbleby, Robin Day and Jeremy Paxman (or Paxo as he called him).

Even though I often listen to Jeremy Vine’s lunchtime show on Radio 2, I’d never realised what a brilliant mimic he is. Talking about his days as a political reporter at Westminster (and his trip round the UK in an ancient VW camper van during the 2001 general election) he got Peter Mandelson down to a tee. His Terry Wogan impersonation wasn’t half bad either.

I loved Vine’s recollections of working as a reporter on the Today programme. Those were the days when the late, great Brian Redhead was at the helm and Vine recalled Redhead’s habit of smiling when he turned his microphone on. “And when he spoke you could hear the smile in his voice,” said Vine in awe.

It’s All News to Me by Jeremy Vine (Simon & Schuster, £18.99)

Do 12-year-olds really need beauty treatments?

A glorious Lake District hotel is just about the last place I’d expect to start offering facials, massages and manicures to the over 12s.

I’ve been to Armathwaite Hall lots of times. A magnificent castellated manor house with lawns bordering the shores of Lake Bassenthwaite, it has views as far as the fells and the dramatic peak of Skiddaw beyond. My in-laws held their golden wedding anniversary party there and the hotel did them proud.

But I’d have thought Armathwaite Hall would have had more sense than to launch a teen spa. The hotel is offering everything from 30-minute make-up lessons for 12 to 14 year-olds (at £28 each) to a £150 “just be together” package for a parent and their teenager. The name is as cringeworthy as the idea.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned but there’s just one thing the over 12s should be doing in the Lake District – and that’s enjoying the great outdoors.

A hearty walk up Catbells (above) and along Maiden Moor is one of the best days out in the world – whatever your age. The fresh air is far better for your skin than a facial, while striding up the fells will do more for your well-being (not to mention your thighs) than a massage ever can…

JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy - the verdict

In an interview with The Guardian’s Decca Aitkenhead last weekend, JK Rowling said: “I just needed to write this book. I like it a lot, I’m proud of it, and that counts for me.”

Well, I think she’s right to be proud of The Casual Vacancy, and I said as much when I reviewed it for the Daily Express this week. Even though Rowling’s first book for adults features “teenage sex, drug addiction, swearing and scenes that would make Harry Potter blush,” I called it “a highly readable morality tale for our times.”

The book’s been out for two days now and everyone I know is desperate to read it. My husband’s visiting my daughter in Paris this weekend and the first thing she asked him to bring from the UK was a prized copy of The Casual Vacancy. “I’m going to stay in all weekend and read it,” she said happily. “I can’t wait.” Her excitement took me back to the old days, when we used to drive to the old Borders shop in Oxford and queue at midnight for each newly published Harry Potter story.

I’ve been stunned by the vitriol that JK Rowling has attracted in some quarters this week. The New York Times’s Michiko Kakutani judged her book to be “willfully banal” and “depressingly clichéd” and said it read like “an odd mash-up of a dark soap opera like Peyton Place.” And writing in the Daily Mail, Jan Moir acidly declared that it was “more than 500 pages of relentless socialist manifesto masquerading as literature crammed down your throat.”

I completely disagree with both of them. The Casual Vacancy isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s a gripping story. I read it in one go, barely glancing up to make a cup of tea or switch the lights on as dusk fell. Yes, the themes are dark, most of the characters are unlikeable and Rowling’s style is workmanlike rather than literary, but she is a brilliant storyteller. There was no way in a million years that I could have stopped reading this book. In my newspaper review I gave it four out of five stars and I stand by every word.

A Street Cat Named Bob - the most cheering book I've read in ages

If you’re fed up with the lashing rain or feeling sad about your empty nest (sob), then I’ve just discovered the perfect book to restore your spirits.

You may have heard of James Bowen and his adorable ginger cat Bob already. The pair are a big hit on YouTube, have appeared on Radio 4’s Saturday Live and have been profiled by loads of newspapers. Bob is probably the most famous cat in London.

Now James’s book about how he and Bob found each other is out in paperback and it’s the most uplifting story I’ve read in ages. Subtitled How One Man and His Cat Found Hope on the Streets, it's a special book – even for people like me who haven't even got a cat. I tore through A Street Cat Named Bob in a few hours and it cheered me up no end as I sat in a claustrophobic Oxford waiting room.

The tale began in 2007, when James found an injured stray tom curled up on a doormat in the hallway of his block of flats in Tottenham, north London.

For days James resisted the temptation to take the green-eyed cat home with him. As he says: “…the last thing I needed right now was the extra responsibility of a cat. I was a failed musician and recovering drug addict living a hand-to-mouth existence in sheltered accommodation. Taking responsibility for myself was hard enough.”

But eventually he gave in and gave the cat a home. He named him Bob, after a character in Twin Peaks, lovingly nursed him back to health and even took him busking. The pair were soon inseparable and became a familiar sight around the streets of Covent Garden and Islington. Sometimes Bob pads alongside James on a lead, sometimes he drapes himself across James’s shoulders.

In one interview James said that Bob had saved his life. At the time he thought his remark was a bit “crass” but in the book he admits that the cat really did transform everything. Bob  helped him get his life back on track and as he declares in his acknowledgements: “Everyone deserves a friend like Bob. I have been very fortunate indeed to have found one…”

PS. James is currently working on a children’s edition of his book. Bob: No Ordinary Cat is due out in the spring.

A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen (Hodder, £7.99)