Elaine Dundy can write her sexy ass off...

Don’t worry – it’s not like I’m in love with Angelina Jolie or anything. No cheesy-cliché-typical straight girl/sickly-stickly-starlet lesbian love affair fantasies pour moi — I’m different. (Besides, as far as starstruck starlet-inspired lesbian love affair fantasies go, I’m more of a Rose McGowan girlcrush girl myself.) (It’s her aura of dirty-hot whisky sex that does it for me.)

En plus ? My woman that I’m in love with? With the uncle I also have the hots for? Uhm, she’s dead. Has been for a few years. So there’s that too.

The thing about Elaine Dundy is that while she most certainly was a woman, she was most certainly not a lady. Nor a chick or a gal or even a dame. Elaine Dundy? She was a Broad. In the biggest, boldest, broadest, Broad-iest sense. She was sex and the city four long decades before “Sex and the City” (but not, of course, before sex, or cities, or desperate housewives). She was sex and a single girl when they’d already invented both sex and girls, but of all the sexy single girls, she really knew how to pull it off. You know – in that lusty-boozy-busty-Broad(y) kind of way. Which is why I love her. Wouldn’t you?

Oh, and another other thing about Elaine Dundy? She could write her sexy ass off.

I met her here in Paris. (Well, O.K., so I didn’t really meet her-meet her, her being dead and all, but you know…) I met her through her novel, The Dud Avocado. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but once you read the book you’ll get the title.) There she is “…drifting down the Boulevard St. Michel, thoughts rising in [her] head like little puffs of smoke…”  Eleven o’clock in the morning, and she’s wearing an evening dress as brazenly as if it was still eleven o’clock in the evening. (Holly Golightly be damned, when Capote would eventually create her years later.) She was doing what ladies call the Walk Of Shame and what broads call the Stride Of Pride. Anyway, that’s what I’d like to believe. Wouldn’t you?

This was la Belle Époque. Well, not the real Belle Époque (it being the 1950s and all), but back when francs were such soft currency they smelled strongly of fromage, back when the euro didn’t even exist, let alone teeter on the cheese-plate of extinction, like Camembert left outside on a summer luncheon table. Back when American trust-fund babies and G.I. Bill babies and American students and American scholars and American beatniks and their even more horrifying British counterparts tore up the Left Bank (where all the wrong ones, or their ungodly grandchildren, still have their pied à terres) playing make-believe bohemians like the privileged brats that they were. And life was fabulous. Formidable. Fromage-y. Truly, really, la Vie en Rose, la Belle Époque, the Banquet Years. This was Elaine Dundy’s world, she was a part of all this, tearing up far more than her share. Makes me kinda jealous as hell. Et vous ?

Elaine Dundy (and/or Sally Jay Gorce, her fictitious/autobiographical protagoniste) was a part of all this…and yet somehow she wasn’t. While she hung out with her compatriots, she found them more than kind of annoying too: “A rowdy bunch on the whole, they were most of them so violently individualistic as to be practically interchangeable…The ones who Did Anything (and there were plenty not averse to Taking It Easy – or whatever the course was called at the Sorbonne), mostly painted. That any of them would actually be talented had never occurred to me…” Of course, mais oui, this didn’t stop her from letting them buy her drinks, or even sleeping with them, and sometimes even talking with them, of which I honestly, thirstily, wholeheartedly, hornily approve. Et vous ?

The back jacket blurb on my edition of The Dud Avocado bills her novel, her unexpected, unprecedented first novel like this: “…Dyeing her hair pink and vowing to go native in a way none of the natives can manage, she’s busy getting drunk, bedding men, losing money, losing jewellery, and losing God knows what…” (Oops – forgot to tell you before: She dyed her hair pink.) (In the Fifties.) (Pink!) (Long before there was Manic Panic.) (Paris!) (Pink!!) As far as book-pimping book-jacket blurbs go, this one bombs: Elaine Dundy may have lost her pearl necklace, her passport, and even her pinky-pink virginity, but in reality (fictitious or autobiographical or otherwise), she didn’t lose a pink thing. She gained. She gained so much more. (And what the hell’s wrong with losing your virginity anyway?) (And why do we call it “losing” in the first place?) (What the – pardon the pun – fuck?) (As opposed to your house keys, which are important —  when was the last time you went hunting between the cushions for your virginity?) (How much does it weigh, anyway? Can we total it up as weight-loss?)

“I want my freedom!” a not-quite-but-almost-nearly 13-year-old Sally Jay (Elaine Dundy’s autobiographical etc.) protests to her Uncle Roger. (Uncle Roger’s the guy who eventually ends up funding her séjour in Paris.) (Because Uncle Roger’s filthy-stinking rich.) (Dear Old Uncle Roger.) (Let it be said: Along with Elaine Dundy, I’m kind of in love with Uncle Roger, too.) “Your freedom? Ah yes, of course. What are you planning to do with it?” inquires Tonton Rog, all wisdom and wryness and wit. (He’s so hot.) “I want to stay out as late as I like and eat whatever I like any time I want to…I think if I had my freedom I wouldn’t allow myself to get introduced to all the mothers and fathers and brothers of the girls at school…I wouldn’t get introduced to anyone. I’ve never wanted to meet anyone I’ve been introduced to. I want to meet all of the other people…” (I’m so hotly-hot for him.)

An unexpected, unprecedented first novel

Freedom. Call up any woman in any city – like Pittsburgh or Poughkeepsie or Pemberton or Paris (Texas) – and tell them that you live in Paris (France). They sigh. Loudly. Plaintively. Parisian-ly, as best they can. And then they go silent. You can hear them rifling through their Rolodex for a divorce lawyer. Or for the number of their own Uncle Roger. Ahh, freedom. Always easier to attain with a chequebook-wielding Uncle Roger in the wings, bien entendu. But . . . freedom. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? (Ahem, Uncle Roger….??)

“All the outrageous things my heroine does like wearing an evening dress in the middle of the day are autobiographical,” she told the Elvis Information Network. (Yeah, I know – but it makes sense because later on she wrote a book on Elvis.) (And in the context of contemporary journalism, how can the EIN not be at least as credible a source as….well, fill in the acronym.) “All the sensible things she does are not.”

Elaine Dundy went on to be free and then not free and then free again, and sensible and unsensible and probably insensibly unsensibly sensible too. There was a failed marriage (he was a famous theatre critic, incredibly so, and sounds like he was a jerk, incredibly so too), and a daughter, and acting stints, and more books, and splashy cocktails with Orson Welles and Tennessee Williams and Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh in between. But as for Paris? A girl gets the impression that it was here that she figured it all – or at least the most important stuff – out.

“It was around then, in Paris, that I became aware of something about myself only previously suspected,” Dundy wrote, writing about her writing The Dud Avocado. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I KNOW…but this is what happens when you let your jerky jealous critic husband title your genius first novel.) “I had an alter ego, a second self, a not so ghostly increasingly intrusive highly comic character whom I had to acknowledge. In fact whose presence I could no longer deny. I had to accept her, had to give her space, for she would pop up getting things wrong when I least expected her to…” You’ve probably met that bitch, haven’t you? Isn’t she your best, bestest friend? Elaine was so lucky — she met her when she was so young, and so very much in Paris.

The back jacket blurb on my edition of The Dud Avocado gets one thing right. It describes Elaine Dundy’s fictitious/autobiographicalprotagoniste as “…a woman hellbent on living.” She was, certainly, but I’d go further: Elaine Dundy/Sally Jay Gorce was too much. Much too much. And that’s why I love her/her. Ladies: Girls: My Bitches: Ever been told you’re too much? Of course you have. Know what? At the risk of sounding preachy? In that annoying self-helpy-sounding preachy sense? Be too much, too too much, much too too much, and then be that much more. Because even when we’re not being too much, they’re gonna tell us we’re too much anyway. So why not go all the way?

I’m quite sure that’s what Elaine Dundy would’ve wanted.

And Uncle Roger, too.

Scarlett Thomas' Our Tragic Universe

I commute for work one hour each side of every weekday. Most people think that I’m mad to do this. The truth is, and it’s a controversial statement to make, I really like commuting. The reason being that it gives me time to read (though most of the time with the elbow of a fellow passenger firmly lodged just under my ribs), and so those two hours of my day have become very important to me.

Throughout this series of articles I will be reviewing a broad range of books written by women in Europe that are good to read whilst commuting. The first book I’ve selected for review is a novel, Our Tragic Universe, by the English writer Scarlett Thomas.

The book was brought to my attention when it was thrust into my hands a couple of weeks ago by a friend, who hadn’t yet read it and wouldn’t have time to read it for a while, so perhaps, would I like to read it? I took it, having not read anything by Thomas before, nor read any reviews of the book, nor been offered a personal recommendation. But the pages were edged with black and there was a quote from Philip Pullman on the front declaring that it was ‘a delight’. That was enough for me.

Our Tragic Universe was not what I expected from the blurb on the back, which made it out to be a sort of mystery adventure. In fact the book, which is predominantly about writing a novel, is constructed of various narrative strands that are spun through the main character, Meg.

Our Tragic Universe is a non-linear novel. It is built up of stories from Meg’s past, the pursuit of lines of thought, conversations held between friends on philosophy, literature, science; emotions felt at the beginning, middle and – inevitably – the end of relationships. It doesn’t rely on the exploits of a hero, a fixed morality, or one final resolution. Instead it is constructed of a multitude of elements that spark off each other, almost in the manner of a storyless story, which is one of the narrative aspects within the book.

Thomas’ prose is rich and her dialogue very human. I’m not sure whether it is a testament to the strength of her writing, or puts a question mark over the quality of my memory, but I have been in conversations where I’ve been close to hitting my head against objects around me in an attempt to recall which book I read about cultural premonitions, or some crazy idea about how, once the universe ends, all living things ever created will be perpetuated for eternity at Omega Point. I later remembered that these are elements within Thomas’ playful and very engaging book.

Our Tragic Universe is well suited to commuting. Whilst there are no chapters, there are plenty of marked breaks providing opportunity to put the book down. It is also very easy to pick back up again.

There is just one bit of the book that I’m still not entirely sure about; the paragraph on the reverse of the novel suggests that Meg finds a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe. Although Meg does knit in the book, it is socks that she learns how to make. Does this, then, suggest that the universe is shaped like a sock, or cosy feet? Or maybe a pair of hands holding four slim double pointed needles is knitting the universe in four-ply, continuously? I may just have to let that one go…

Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas is published by Canongate Books, and is available to buy online here.

If you would like to suggest any books (preferably by European women) for review, please let me know in the comments section.

An animation by the Oscar-winning Tandem Films to celebrate the launch of Scarlett Thomas’ novel Our Tragic Universe.

The Art of Colour: Georgia O’Keeffe

A year in art, music, cinema and literature features and there have been some fascinating, thought-provoking pieces on everything from banned books to cinema in Berlin. For your reading pleasure, we’ve rounded up the best of best; a look back over Culturelle in 2011…

Brits and the Boards: Women in UK Theatre

Alice Stride edits a go-to guide to the brightest and most brilliant women working in British theatre today: an inspiring must-read for any budding theatre-luvvies out there.

The Enigmatic Artists

Plum Woodard takes a look at five of music’s most enigmatic female artists, from rock and pop, soul to blues – and from ceaselessly out there to near on unknown…

The Art of Colour

In considering the works of celebrated artists, the exploration of the expressive use of colour can unveil ardent sensitivity and insight into some of the great masters in history and how they inspire us, even today. Kaiti Vartholomaios looks at the art of colour.

Ten of the Best… Historical Novels

As a fun and engaging way to learn about the past, historical novels offer more than your average ‘airport’ read. Viola Levy noses through ten of the best.

Street Art Now

Spray cans at the ready; SJP takes a look at the progression of street art, key artists and where you can see the best tags, bombs and burners…

Banned Books: The Novels You Weren’t Supposed to Read

Banned by governments, Brogan Driscoll presents an edit of some of the most famous outlawed titles – and a few that might surprise you.

Brushstrokes and Bitch Fits: Women who Changed Art

It’s certainly not that female artists don’t exist – it’s simply that they’re not given the wall space that their male counterparts are. Sandra Smiley considers ten key female figures from the art world…

Magathèque: Volume 20

It’s your final Magathèque and the best ever yet! To conclude two years of short film exploration,  Pippa Rimmer reminds you of some of the best shorts we’ve profiled…

On Location: Greece

It’s been a long time since Greece was one of the globe’s greatest exporters of culture, but that hasn’t stopped international production companies from turning its landscapes into cinematic starlets…Kaiti Vartholomaios explores the Greek cinematic landscape past and present.

Upper Class Reads

The fictional – and not so fictional – adventures of the rich and fabulous have fascinated readers for centuries, and it is hardly surprising, thinks Katie Byrne.

Running in Heels: Jasmine Cullingford – Artistic Director

Alice Revel  takes a peek behind the curtains and meets the lady who makes the on-stage magic happen at one of the UK’s most inspiring, eclectic arts venues.

Meet Diana Athill 

Speaking to Harri Sutherland-Kay , the legendary, award-winning British writer and editor adresses the important themes of writing, political activism, feminism, education, religion and the afterlife.

The Ex Factor Playlist

SJP presents your essential guide to the best break-up tracks of all time. Grab a bar of chocolate, arm yourself with tissues and press play to listen to the Ex Factor…

Work by artist Yolanda Dominguez

A Space to Write

Monique Rubinslooks at how a woman needs time, a means to live and her own space if she is to find form for the muddled – but wonderful – ideas that for too long have been buried somewhere at the back of her brain.

Blogging in Heels: Katy Evans-Bush – Baroque in Hackney

Alice Revel quizzes fascinating books and culture blogger Katy Evans-Bush about her sharp, witty musings on literature and London.

Bitches of the Big Screen

Audiences love them, actresses love playing them, the only question is why don’t we see more of them?! Victoria Todd give you our best Bitches of the Big Screen.

Meet Yolanda Domínguez

Jem McCarron meets the young Spanish artist, whose ground-breaking work investigates and challenges our gender conceptions through new, innovative art forms.

Cinematic Cities: Berlin

Continuing your cinematic journey of Europe, Francesca Robson takes you to a city which has inspired some of the most dedicated depictions on celluloid: Berlin

Beach Reads: The Guilty Pleasures

Unfold your towel, settle into the sunshine and enjoy the dog-eared pages. Alexia Healy chooses some of the best literary junk food for snacking pleasure!

Meet Rose Balston

Fran Harris talks classical treasures, architectural anecdotes and bringing London’s artistic heritage to life with the young, passionate founder of Art History UK.

Five of our Favourites… Northern Soul

Not so familiar with the genre? Plum Woodard takes a look five of top Northern soul tracks that are bound to get you spinning on your heels in no time…

The Magic of Writing: Patricia Duncker

Literary doyenne and idea aficionado Patricia Duncker speaks to Deirdra Eden Keane about love, suicide cults, literature festivals and everything in between…

One of our five Northern Soul picks, Dobie Gray’s Out On The Floor

Literary doyenne, Patricia Duncker

Let it never be said that Patricia Duncker is a person of few words – the author is a complex and engaging character with a depth of literary knowledge as rich and yielding as the treasures contained within the John Rylands library; part of The University of Manchester where Duncker is Professor of Contemporary Literature. Recently, Duncker delivered her short story, The Madonna at the Midland, a specially commissioned work set and read aloud by the author at the iconic Midland hotel as part of the Manchester Literature Festival. Duncker’s voice is one that shakes and inspires, each word burying the story deep within its recipient. With Duncker, for every word there is a story, for every laugh an experience.

An author of five novels, two collections of short stories and volumes of essays, Duncker’s award-winning work echoes a philosophical precedent set by Michel Foucault.  Duncker’s novels are concerned with, or touch upon a ghostly void – whether dealing with group suicide (The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge, 2010 Bloomsbury) or of lost love that continues to linger, (The Madonna at the Midland) Dunker orchestrates chilling yet tender tales that ignite and then haunt our imaginations.

What was it about the Midland hotel that inspired you to write such a tender love story in The Madonna at the Midland?

I was appointed writer in residence at the Midland Hotel in May 2011 as it was one of the sponsors of the Manchester Literature Festival, so it was a way of bringing it into the literary aspect of the festival. I had always gone to the Midland with my friend and it was one of our pleasure sites. So that element in hotels — the mixture of public space and private space is something that has always interested me. Jean Paul Sartre lived his whole life in a hotel.

Listening to the author deliver their story adds an extra element of listening and engagement. Is there an ideal way to read a short story?

I tend to write short stories specifically for the voice. A novel is more capacious, it’s a larger scale space and you can afford to incorporate ideas that take a bit of time to think about. I often do that with more philosophical novels that I am very fond of reading. With a short story the action is the main thing. A short story should give you emotion and event.

Tell us about your most recent novel, The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge.

There is a close link between the novel and the places where I spend my life. Part of the novel is set in France, part in the Jura and Lübeck before it eventually comes back to Britain.

There are two big themes in this book – faith and what we believe and why; and strength of the ways in which we believe.

I am interested in mad, religious sects and I was also intrigued by various suicide sects from the 1970s and 1980s, particularly the Temple of the Sun. A part of that sect killed themselves in Switzerland in the 1980s and then another part killed themselves in the mountains of the Jura in 1994. That is where the book starts, with the bodies in the snow.

Much of your work retains a haunting quality. Are you interested in Gothic literature?

I am very interested in Gothic and in the supernatural because there is a magical element to writing, we are prepared to use our own imaginations to allow the fantastic in. One of the problems with material reality is that it is very intractable, whereas in imagined realities you can transform lives. Often, we imagine different destinies for ourselves and that can be the very way in which we change our lives. I am an uncompromising defender of our right to imagine anything. But you have to realise that if you open your mind to imagined worlds you also let the horror in.

Is it a difficult transition moving between short story and novel writing, particularly as they are concerned with divergent ways of storytelling?

I would stick with Edgar Allan Poe’s definition of a short story, of being “A piece of writing, a tale that can be read in one sitting” so that the short story’s definition has a relation to the reader. It has much more impact if you read it in one go and you don’t do anything else until you have finished.

Duncker's most recent literary work...

France appears in much of your writing — does this stem from a personal love of the country or do you feel that travel within fiction enriches your novels?

I was born in Jamaica and so one of the things about my childhood is that I had not only come from an island that was one of Britain’s colonies, I come from a mixed family [Duncker’s father is West Indian and her mother is English]. When I studied literature in school I was studying something that was entirely alien to me. I consciously chose English as my language and literary tradition so my investment in the history of English is huge.

In 1986 I was very ill. I thought that I didn’t want to die in England so I went to live in France where I then lived for nine years. One of the reasons I went to France was because I couldn’t understand the language so I was encased in silence, which was where I wanted to be. This is amusing because not 60 miles away, Montaigne had done this before me. In Montaigne’s time the life expectancy was 35-40 years. When he reached his 30’s he decided he would retire to his tower near Bordeaux and prepare for death but he lived into his 60’s. He sat there writing essays and thinking about life.

For some writers there is an anxiety to be original. When you are in a process of writing do you read other people’s work?

Absolutely. I hold on to other writers with both hands. Quite often I come across young writers who are anxious to be original and therefore fear to be influenced. I have just finished reading Elizabeth Cook’s Achilles. The Iliad is one of the oldest stories we have, it stands at the head of Western literature as one of the most extraordinary stories of love, betrayal, honour, hatred, courage, bravery, magic. Cook has done a wonderfully condensed re-writing of the story. I know the story of Achilles backwards and I sat there reading it as if for the first time. Anyone who isn’t a voracious reader has no business trying to be a writer.

How do you decide when a novel is completely finished?

It changes over your writing life. I’ve got two whole, full length novels in drawers. I haven’t destroyed them because they are good as a memory. I use my journals as writing books and they are like my private room and practice space. I always write about my reading and reactions. I recently re-read my reaction to Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending because I read it before it won The Booker Prize and I wrote down my rather savage opinion. I went back to see if I still agreed with it and I found that I had become even more rabid in the intervening period. I think it is important to have quite extreme views about writing because I think you write better if you do.

What’s next for you?

I have two trains in the tunnel, they are both historical. Very often when you finish the first draft of a novel there is a temptation to start on the second draft right away. Don’t. Always leave it for as long as you can. What tends to happen when you have finished your first draft is you see the book you wanted to write, not the one you have actually written. When you stand back you will then see what you did write and you will be able, with renewed ruthlessness to pull it around, cut it down, and trim it off, re-think whole sections if you have to.

BBC’s Frozen Planet depicts an arctic moth that takes 14 years to complete its metamorphosis because it’s waiting for just the right moment. The moth seems to fit the writing process you have described.

That’s the writing process for you and that is the metaphor for writing as it should be. People write for different reasons: some write because they want to or need to make money and they write commercial, crowd-pleasing material to make a quick buck. Others write for fame and that is the maddest reason of all. What will fame be for you? To be remembered like Achilles, thousands of years hence? They are certainly not prepared to pay for it with their lives as Achilles was.  I’m with the moth and hibernation — if you want to write something that is literature rather than a heap of books you go with the moth.

The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge is available from Bloomsbury, or from Amazon for Kindle.

Duncker’s short story, The Madonna at the Midland is expected to go live on her website from 6^th December 2011.

Novels, collections of short stories and volumes of essays by Patricia Duncker - extracts are available to read on her website

Acclaimed British writer, Diana Athill

You can see the original version of this interview on Women’s Views On News.

When Diana Athill decided to move into a residential care home in north London last year, she faced the task of having to dispose of most of her belongings. Initially she enjoyed the process, it was “like giving presents” she says. “But my books,” she adds, “nearly killed me.”

It was thanks to Athill’s nephew spending a day going through the collection of books with her, that she was eventually able to whittle them down to the 300 she could fit into her room. It was also her nephew who sorted out her room, hanging the curtains, making the bed, putting her books on the shelves and hanging the pictures which bring her compact and colourful room, where we met earlier this year, to life.

Athill, now 94, is a British writer and editor who first made her name editing for the publishing house André Deutsch. She has had two books published this year; a collection of short stories that she wrote years ago and which appeared in magazines, were published by Persephone Books in April, as well as a volume of letters (Letters to a Friend) published by Granta last month. The letters, which she exchanged with American poet Edward Field, she says, “are a record of something very valuable. They are a record of a very good friendship and pretty much my life story over 30 years.”

Athill loves writing; she says that it has always come very naturally to her and has never been a labour, but she doesn’t feel that there’s another book in her. She has “always written from personal experience and nothing much happens to you in your 90s.” Best known for writing memoirs, Athill has written three books since the age of 80 – something she wasn’t expecting to do. The public recognition of her work increased dramatically after her 2009 memoir Somewhere Towards the End won the Costa Biography Award.

We talk about the way in which her fame has gone against the grain of the norm in that she has become much better known in her later years. “It is quite the most strange thing in my life,” she says, “I really find it very baffling.” One of the advantages of her reputation as an older writer has been the avoidance of celebrity culture. Her fame, Athill says, has been interesting and fun, but it hasn’t actually changed her, whereas for younger people it seems vitally important.

She tells me that she always felt guilty about not being politically active; although she was sympathetic to the cause of feminism, she wouldn’t refer to herself as a feminist because: “I didn’t join in, I wasn’t active. I’m a sort of fellow traveller.” Athill talks of how disillusioned she has become with party politics. “Imagine waking up in the mornings and thinking ‘oh God, I’m Prime Minister, I’ve got to run the country’. It’s not possible to run the country. It’s such a problem now, economically, in every way, I don’t know how any of them could do it and certainly not all the fools who stand up and think they can. It’s just depressing, so depressing. I don’t have any idea of how it could be solved.” Her disillusionment has increased through feeling more cut off the older she gets: “I was thinking the other day, each week I read the paper there are more things that I’m not interested in, and I turn the page quickly because they are irrelevant to me.”

Having said this, there are still political issues that Athill is passionate about, including library closures and the state of education in the UK. On libraries she argues that: “We should all get out there like the Egyptians…because so many people depend on them.” On education, she is concerned that the standard of teaching and our expectations of pupils are dropping. “They are knocking back education, which is absolutely the last thing any government should do.”

We agree that the key to a good education is curiosity. However the current political obsession with targets and the drive to get young people through exams, often means that curiosity and creativity are forgotten. Part of the problem, Athill says, is that “prosperity has become taken for granted in the world. Everyone’s become so comfortable in the developed countries…it’s taken for granted…So the whole of life now has to be convenient, everything has to be easy, luxurious really, and it’s hard for people to have other values. We are much more materialistic now. The higher standard of living is a good thing, but it hasn’t come with the right sort of education.”

Our conversation meanders onto religion, in particular Athill’s stint as guest editor for the BBC Radio 4 Today Programmelast year, when she spoke with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. “It was wonderful,” she says, “I knew I was going to like him the minute I went into his study. I’ve never seen such an untidy study with so many books. I mean there were books knee-deep in every direction.” Athill wonders how much enjoyment Williams gets from being Archbishop, having to be constantly involved in the tedium of church politics, dealing with the “fools” who make an issue of gay and woman priests, the traditions around which she describes as nothing more than “habit, silly habit”.

Athill's recent collection of letters

She and Williams came to the conclusion in their short meeting that, despite their opposing opinions on the existence of god, there really wasn’t that much difference between them. “I don’t think there is all that much difference between people who say, ‘I believe in it and I call it God,’ and people like me who say, ‘I simply don’t know’. I don’t understand why people should suppose that they could be capable of knowing what it is. It is a mystery. Life is extraordinary.”

We discuss the intriguing beauty of that which is unknown, and Athill expresses her annoyance at people who are constantly looking to the idea of an afterlife to cement the reason for being alive. “Life is, in fact, coming and going, it is starting and ending. Everything begins and ends making way for something else to begin and end. That’s how it works,” she says. “The planet is wearing out,” Athill continues, “and nature is going to very cruelly sort out our problems…I think sooner or later we’re going to go the way of the dinosaurs.”

A brilliant raconteur, Athill tells me about the pleasure she shared with her friend Edward when they learnt that a publisher had accepted her letters. She talks about one of her co-residents who, at the age of 105, still attends demonstrations and strides around the garden, and of how her perception of residential care has been transformed by the Mary Feilding Guild’s home in which she now lives.

An incredibly insightful writer with six volumes of memoirs, one novel, a book of short stories and a collection of letters, Athill’s is a life very much told in her own words.

Women’s Views On News is the women’s daily online news and current affairs service, operating on a ‘not for profit’ basis. The site provides up to date news on all the major national and international stories of the day, in much the same way as any newspaper or online news service, but the stories featured are always about women.

Diana Athill introduces Instead of Book: Letters to a Friend, from her home in north London

The Dangerous Women themselves...

“Bien dans ta peau: This charming French expression is true, elegant and simply means ‘to feel happy in one’s skin’. If you are bien dans ta peau, you are not self-conscious, or mirror grabbing or in need of constant flattery.”

From Dangerous Women: The Guide to Modern Life

Clare Conville is co-founder of Conville & Walsh Literary Agency; one of the Observer’s “top 50 players in the world of books,” and one third of the writing team behind new book, Dangerous Women: The Guide to Modern Life. The book provides  an advice compendium covering subjects as diverse as the life-enhancing qualities of camiknickers to the importance of not delaying a mammogram; it’s the product of a regular Friday night bottle of wine with co-authors Liz Hoggard and Sarah-Jane Lovett. The value of the wisdom shared between women has been captured and turned into Dangerous Women.

Clare describes how the friends compiled a huge list of entries and divided it, and would meet, over the course of the year that they were writing it – sometimes often, sometimes sporadically – around their working lives to read, review and refine. The completed book is, to Clare, “the book I wish my mother had given me,” and her daughter “said that she loved it. She’s very proud of me and has been buying copies as presents for her friends”. The fact that the book has been sold in nine countries is testament to its ability to travel. Clare agrees: “The advice is universal”.

“Camiknickers: Our grandmothers knew what they were up to. Classic but sexy, comfortable, practical and flattering, camiknickers are a wardrobe essential….Camiknickers will cover lumpy bottoms, make thighs look trim and, most importantly, wearing them will give you secret confidence.”

Clare realised the importance of the book being a lexicon and having entries that were cross referenced so that there was a path “like the internet”. Before I met Clare, I had spent hours starting at Confidence or Complete Wankers, following the path and always somehow ending up at Camiknickers! I asked her for the one single entry that we all should read: “Bien dans ta peau” about the self confidence which is “increasingly really difficult for women”.

Dangerous Women combines the humour of entries such as Incest and Folk Dancing with the gravity of subjects like Therapy, Money Matters (“women have a different relationship with money”) and Medication, and Clare recalls that this “balance has come naturally”. Cancer is tackled not as a monolithic subject, but as small positive tips about different aspects of life with illness (the entry Hair Loss includes “Dig out your mum’s retro-Seventies Elizabeth Taylor-style turban and add a sparkling paste brooch for added panache”). The name of the book didn’t come easily – “we struggled with the title” – until one of Clare’s friends said “It has to be Dangerous Women”. The subtitle “Live as well as you dare” is taken from a letter from Sir Sidney Smith to Lady Georgiana Morpeth advising her on how to cope with melancholia.

Debt: There is no excuse to be in debt, although probably most of us are in one way, shape or form. Take control…

Clare set up her literary agency with Patrick Walsh in 2000 after work in teaching, cataloguing antiquarian books and theatre public relations led her into the publishing industry. I asked her whether there are turbulent times ahead for the book world: “There are still people who want to write and people who want to read… the challenge is how books get to reader, in what form and how publishers and book sellers deal with it”. She told me that there are more women than men in publishing, although this “switches at the top”, and that it is an industry that plays to very feminine strengths from the ability to connect with an author to an eye for the aesthetic and a “determination” for empathy.

A compendium of vital information

Famous for discovering DBC Pierre, Clare describes the moment of finding new writing talent: “the hairs on the back of your neck stand up…it’s like a Jack Russell seeing a rat” A self -confessed “ferocious reader”, when I asked the desert island books question, she answered that she would need “a minimum of a book a day” and would use the opportunity to “tackle Proust and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. Looking to the future, aside from dreaming of taking “some time out to travel”, she has an idea for the next book and has started the unforgiving process of working on some fiction: “I had to burn a novel at the bottom of the garden!”

The magical properties of camiknickers were fast becoming an obsession for me and, on the way back to the Conville & Walsh offices, Clare led me into a lingerie boutique and held up an exquisite pair of sheer lace knickers that were expensively cut to the very top of the thigh. They weren’t quite camiknickers, but were close and, in a world of thongs, had the quiet confidence and sensuality that would befit a dangerous woman.

Dangerous Women – The Guide to Modern Life by Clare Conville, Liz Hoggard and Sarah-Jane Lovett is available to buy online here.

Moyle's fascinating story of Mrs Wilde

I hate people who are smug about literature. You know, the ones that don’t read gossipy magazines, and manoeuvre any conversation so they can say something about their latest book to prove their superior intellect: “That cheese sandwich you’re eating really reminds me of the heroine in the novel I’m currently reading…no, she wouldn’t actually eat cheese, she’s lactose-intolerant, but there is a minor character called Milky Joe…YOU HAVEN’T READ IT? DON’T WORRY. As SOON as I’m finished you can borrow it, and then we can swap notes on its major themes and symbols!” Yuck. People that spew book-recommendations are as appealing as haemorrhoids; as such, I’m worried this list may be haemorrhoid-esque. So, in order to negate this, I shall tell you now that, despite a degree in English Literature, I’ve never read Jane Eyre, or Pride and Prejudice, and Real People is my weekly magazine of choice. Enjoy!

Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde – Franny Moyle

Oscar Wilde, the flamboyant, self-destructive genius, fascinated the world during his life, and has continued to do so from beyond the grave. Constance, his wife, has always played second-fiddle to Oscar’s big bass: the broken background wife, powerless in the face of her husband’s taste for young men and opium. In fact, there are many people unaware of her existence: “How could he have married? He was gay!” Franny Moyle does Mrs Oscar Wilde a great service in this fascinating biography, taking her out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Constance’s story is indeed captivating: a fierce intellectual, a fashion maverick, a feminist, a published writer, witty, popular, the toast of society – in short, everything the modern women wishes she could be. Her demise is painful; Moyle recounts the tale with sensitivity, revealing a tough woman who dealt with the scandals brought to her door with extraordinary grace. She was a woman in love, and this would undo her. For this reason, her story hits a nerve – haven’t we all been blinded by love, despite how strong and successful we may be? It’s a gripping tale, begging to be turned into a screenplay. It’s time for Mrs Oscar Wilde to shine.

Fraulein Else – Arthur Schnitzler

Set in northern Italy at the turn of the 20^th century, and written as a hazy, dreamlike stream of consciousness, Arthur Schnitzler’s extraordinary novella explores the dark underbelly of humanity, the motivation for money, sex and power – and the interchangeable nature of all three. Fraulein Else, our narrator, is a high-spirited, impetuous nineteen-year old, holidaying with her wealthy aunt.

Else is an unstable character, prone to fits of macabre spontaneity in her thoughts as fantasises about death and love. She is smug about her beauty, growing conscious of her special hold over men, and delights in her command like a child with a toy; an unsettling juxtaposition of worldliness and innocence. She is on the cusp of the awakening of her sexual power, a moment many women can relate to. However, Else’s kittenish pleasures and musings are shattered upon the arrival of a telegram from her mother, begging her to ask an old family friend, Herr Dorsday, for a loan, or her father will be ruined. Thus begins Else’s cruel induction into the adult world, with dire consequences. A century later, and money, sex and power continue to make the world go around; Schnitzler’s bite-size masterpiece is most certainly a timeless classic.

Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis – Wendy Cope

Ah, Wendy Cope: that rarest of creatures, the unique literary juxtaposition. Cope is a poet, and a bestseller to boot. I came across Cope this summer whilst watching the BBC Proms with my grandpa (I never said I was cool). She had written a poem about the orchestra for children, and seemed so damn intelligent and lovely that I had to find out more. Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis is her first collection of poetry, published in 1986 – and it is wonderful. Funny and poignant, she muses on the joys and pitfalls of life with wit and eloquence, and parodies the poems of literary greats such as T.S Eliot to hilarious effect. My personal favourite is ‘Giving Up Smoking’(something I’m trying to do myself at the moment). Here it is, in all its loveliness:

Wendy Cope's debut poetry collection

There’s not a Shakespeare sonnet
Or a Beethoven quartet
That’s easier to like than you
Or harder to forget.

You think that sounds extravagant?
I haven’t finished yet –
I like you more than I would like
To have a cigarette.

Cope wrote that “”People who have never been addicted to nicotine don’t understand what an intense love poem it is.” I hear ya, Wendy.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer

The earnest , geeky little boy is a child I can make time for, and so I fell utterly in love with Oskar Schell, the nine-year old narrator of this wonderful book. Oskar lives in New York. He is a vegan, a pacifist, a jewellery-maker, a loner, and terribly intelligent: a charming melting-pot of curiosities. Oskar’s father, his hero, died in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Oskar finds a key in a vase and, believing it is connected to his father, decides to find the lock it opens (despite there being , he calculates, 162 million locks in New York alone).

And so begins Oskar’s epic journey, a wonderful, hilarious delve into all walks of life, and a testament to the human spirit. A parallel narrative, told by Oskar’s paternal grandparents, weaves in and out of Oskar’s, taking the reader to and from wartime Germany and the 21^st century with incredible force. Jonathan Safran Foer is a remarkable writer; Oskar’s grandfather’s memory of the Dresden bombings had me biting my fist. This story will make you laugh, weep, and punch walls. Oh, and there’s a film based on it out in 2012. Read the book first, though – we all know the film is never as good.

Huxley's 1931 novel Brave New World

Throughout the years, hundreds of books have been banned by governments or shunned by societies. Some may think it is a thing of the past and that many Western societies are now at least free to read what they see fit. But to this day books of a sexual nature are targeted by conservative societies; those with political or ideological significance honed in on to uphold a party line or prevent extremism; and sacrilegious texts rejected by the religious.

You need only cast your eyes back to the hoo-ha over the new censored version of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in January this year to know that this is not the case. What does provide some consolation is that, ironically, the very censorship or objections themselves often act in the books favour and see a novel’s popularity grow overnight. Here are some of the most famous, and a few that might surprise you.

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

In an attempt to anticipate the effects of scientific developments on future society, Huxley created a world of future. Themes of sexual promiscuity and drugs feature heavily in Brave New World, and thus it is perhaps unsurprising to learn that it was banned in Ireland shortly after publication in 1932. I was a little more shocked to read that in 2010 Huxley’s work was one of the most complained about books in the US and that in 1980 it was removed from US classrooms.

Animal Farm – George Orwell

Orwell, who was deeply critical of the Soviet Union and it’s form of Communism, has arguably written the most famous dystopian allegory of all time. The plot mirrors the evolution of Communist Russia from the Revolution in 1917, through the power struggle and Stalin’s totalitarian rule. It replaces the Bolshevik party with pigs, where Snowman and Napoleon represent Trotsky and Stalin respectively. It was banned by Soviet authorities because of its political content and its publication was even put on hold in Britain for fear of upsetting the country’s Soviet allies.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H.Lawrence

One of the most famous British obscenity trials was that which surrounded Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The ruling lasted for 32 years, revoked only in 1960 in line with the revised obscenity laws of 1959. Objections surrounding the books publication are reportedly due to the explicit language used. My bets are that it was more likely due to a female character’s pursuit of sexual satisfaction, in a time when the thought of women enjoying sex were largely dismissed. Well I say Constantine!

The Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank

In 2009, a Lebanese school removed a textbook which featured excerpts of The Diary of Anne Frank., claiming that it promoted Zionism. The issue was first discussed on a Hezbollah TV station, Al-Manar. Ironically, Anne Frank’s story had recently been translated into Arabic and Farsi with good intentions: in an attempt to spread awareness of the Holocaust and to combat racism.

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

None have had quite as mixed reviews as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The story tracks the life of one family as they leave Oklahoma in search of a better life in California. The book became a bestseller, selling over 500,000 copies in its first year, and bagged itself the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Sure. But it was also banned and even burned in parts of New York and California. I guess in the midst of the Great Depression and mass upheaval, Steinbeck was up against a pretty tough crowd. It remains one of the most contested books of this day in the US.

Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler

Everyone knows this one, or at least I hope so. Part autobiography, part political ideology, Hitler wrote this while in prison following a failed Putsch. It is banned in parts of Europe for being extremist.

Banned by Stalin: Orwell's 1984...

Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four is the story of a society ruled under dictatorship by a party inventively called, The Party. They ensured the population followed the official party line through vigorous surveillance and censorship. Protagonist Winston Smith begins to doubt the official party line, and this is where the story unfolds. Stalin seems a little paranoid about Orwell’s novels, seeing this too as a satire based on his leadership. So what does he do? He bans it. Anyone else spot the irony?

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

In Lolita, Nabokov tracks the illicit love affair between paedophile Humbert Humbert and 13-year-old nymphet Dolores Haze as they travel across America. At times, and somewhat disturbingly, Nabokov’s poetic language depicts the union as a beautiful forbidden love affair. As I’ve said in previous reviews, you almost forget the awful crime that is taking place. No wonder it was banned in the UK and France.

The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall

The Well of Loneliness was banned shortly after publication in 1928. The decision followed a somewhat hysterical crusade by Sunday Express editor James Douglas, who claimed that he ‘would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussicacid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.’ The novel was written partly to publicise sexology and the ideas of the likes of Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis on homosexuality. Its fame is definitely more a result of its content than its literary merit.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe

The story centres on three slaves: Eliza and George, who run away to freedom in Ohio, and Uncle Tom, whose obedience to his masters as he is sold and torn from his family is both infuriating and tragic to say the least. Written by an abolitionist author in 1852, it is unsurprising that this novel sparked major controversy, especially among those in the American south.

An imaginative read from Emma Smith

Having never needed an excuse to visit and re-visit the heavenly store that is Persephone Books (an independent publishing house and bookshop that champions forgotten women writers, mostly around the WWII period) it was there I first fell upon The Far Cry. I had to admit I was slightly put off by the title – which seemed to suggest a convoluted plot and migraine-inducing prose. Luckily the pretty end papers of a vintage 1930s tapestry drew me in, as did an extract from the novel re-printed in the inside jacket cover, and I decided to risk it. Published in 1949, The Far Cry was written by Emma Smith when she was just 26 years old, shortly after her trip to India as part of a documentary film crew – which included the writer Laurie Lee. Consequently her most famous novel, which depicts India seen through English eyes – was written, became a great success and ended up winning the 1949 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.

The book focuses on 14 year old Teresa Digby and her relationship with her introverted, lonely father, Mr. Digby. Having been brought up by a strict uncaring aunt for most of her life, Teresa has never met her mother, who lives abroad and is out of the picture until Mr. Digby receives word that his frivolous ex-wife is coming back to claim her estranged daughter. With that, he whisks Teresa away to India to stay with his elder daughter Ruth (from another marriage) and her tea planter husband Edwin. To Mr. Digby, Ruth represents all that is good and beautiful about the world, and for the first part of the book, remains the shining light at the end of his and Teresa’s uncomfortable and difficult journey across India. But inevitably when the two finally arrive, nothing is all that it seems.

Refreshingly the author doesn’t try to make Teresa likable – at the beginning of the book we learn she has received little affection or encouragement from her peers or parental figures, resulting in a resentful, uncaring and awkward little girl who finds it difficult to make friends or form a meaningful relationship with her father. However, the unlikely friendship she eventually strikes up with Sam, her father’s Indian manservant, is quite touching, as is her relationship with Mrs Spooner, another English traveller whom she and her father meet on the journey out there. She acts as a caring mother figure towards Teresa – albeit in a subtle, unsentimental manner. Mr. Digby has the same character flaws as his daughter, with a good measure of arrogance and strong sense of how things ought to be, thrown in. Yet as the book progresses you do find yourself caring for these characters and to a certain extent identifying with them – especially in my own case. Having taken many trips abroad with my single father as a young teenager, I found the clash in ages and interests and general awkward relationship depicted between the two protagonists all too familiar…!

The story is beautifully written and the language a real treat to savour; the below passage describes Teresa’s visit to the Kali Puja festival.

“Lights, no bigger than the candles on a Christmas cake, fringed every balcony, every wall, every stall, every hovel, a multitude of tiny red flames flickering alive in the huge dark night. They were still being lit: glistening haunches bent forward, hands poured a trickle of oil into saucers… The warm air was soft with sorrow. They trod among the muddy unseen ashes of the dead. Widows lay along the slushy steps, prostrate in grief, or crouched forward silently setting afloat their candles in little boats of tin the size and shape of withered leaves.”

Refreshingly for a book written in the 1940’s, Indian people – their lifestyle, culture and general outlook are generally handled in a respectful manner, and despite the clownish servant Sam there are upstanding, intelligent figures too, such as Miss Spooner’s academic brother-in-law. However, some of the English characters’ attitudes towards them are very typical of that era, ranging from condescending to downright vile – and pass without comment or consequence, something which a modern reader may find hard to digest. Thankfully the author’s palpable sense of awe for India, and open-minded approach more than make up for any prejudices on her characters’ part.

The book is essentially a coming-of-age story from Teresa’s point of view, and as her character develops and events unfold the reader’s heart goes out to her – as she and her father both reveal themselves to be lost souls, trying to find their place in the world. Some readers used to fast-paced plots and twists at every turn may become frustrated with the book’s slow burn narrative, but if they persevere they will find the story pays off in the last few chapters. For me, the quality of the writing, and the evocative and often humorous depiction of two dysfunctional English people arriving in India in the 1940’s make it a great book to curl up with on a cold autumn evening.

The Far Cry by Emma Smith is available to buy online here.

Emma Smith in the spring of 1944, second from the right, on the canal boat she wrote about in Maiden's Trip, an earlier novel

The author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

“Go forth and prosper”. This instruction, which Shelley herself bids to her most famous literary work in the introduction, is one which I heartily pass on to newcomers to Mary Shelley’s seminal novel Frankenstein.

But first off, let me dispel one or two important things. Almost all of us claim to know Frankenstein in some form, even those who have yet to leaf through its pages, which are heavy with ideas. Think of Frankenstein and we instinctively picture Monster Mash and Young Frankenstein, not Shelley’s complicated and articulate creature, whose image has been almost washed away with the popular culture tide. But erase any preconceptions from your mind. Frankenstein, a short gothic novel, deserves fresh reading.

Published in 1818 and conceived when the author was only eighteen, Frankenstein has stood among the giants of English literature. Not just a ghost story and not really a standard telling of good versus evil: Frankenstein refuses to slot into box A or B. It is, however, a story rich with chilling detail that’s beautifully written and expertly executed. Frankenstein’s structure, for example, features narratives within narratives – we hear from the scientist Doctor Frankenstein, moving on to his invention, the creature, and back to Frankenstein. They are, to create a tidy symmetry, bookended by letters written by a faithful listener of the story who becomes embroiled in the protagonist’s plight.

At the beginning of the story we are told of a man named Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious student at university obsessed with taking his place among the greatest scientific minds in history. Consumed with desire, his extreme experimentations result in the birth of a monster whom he rejects immediately. Casting him out he cries: “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”

Thus begins a story of man versus monster; and a tussle fraught with deep questions and terrifying consequences. It’s with great skill that Shelley doesn’t fall on either side of the argument. Instead she weaves dilemma after dilemma into a story which is played out in a nail-biting game of cat and mouse. In fact, it might come as a surprise that Frankenstein is perhaps the mother of all chase dramas.

It’s true that the very best books seek out, or attempt to solve the big ideas in life such as morality, justice, science, social responsibility and education; and this 19^th Century text does more than simply flirt with these weighty subjects.

Go forth and prosper is what every person clutching their first copy of Frankenstein will do. Because – if they’re anything like me – their minds will be spinning with thoughts for days to come.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is available to buy online here.