Today I’m doing what everyone says you shouldn’t: reading my own reviews! The Peace Garden has had its first review on Amazon Kindle. And I’m relieved to see it’s a good one. The reviewer also manages to communicate the essence of the book far better than I could!
So, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, here you go:
This is the fascinating tale of an uneasy mix between English suburban values and South African apartheid, which builds up to an unexpectedly explosive finale. The
unlikely starting-point of plants being stolen from the gardens of a quiet Newcastle street draws you in, as does the deftly-portrayed character of young Natalie Porter, a floating trophy of her parents’ ever-shifting
diplomatic/journalistic lifestyle, who finds a semblance of permanence staying with her Geordie grandmother – and leaps at the opportunity to emulate her fictional heroine, girl-detective Nancy Drew.
Natalie’s sleuthing efforts bring her into contact with an enigmatic black South African academic and his teenage son living at the end of the road. Everyone has them down as the plant thieves; and issues of racial prejudice are sensitively explored both in the English suburban context and, later, in South Africa itself.
Interwoven with the escalating mystery of the missing plants and the past lives of the possible perpetrators – which brings the reader unavoidably face-to-face with the tragic history of apartheid – is the delicately portrayed off-and-on romance that develops between young Natalie and Thabo, the bitter South African teenager now forced by circumstances to live with his father in Britain. Is he a `good guy’ or a `bad guy’? Natalie’s doubts on this score – and the reader’s – persist
almost to the last page.
This is a great story, with a compulsively page-turning conclusion, which also gives the reader an inside look at many of the conflicting issues of racial prejudice in its most notorious institutional expression – apartheid South Africa.
I’ve been thinking lately about seed. As a writer covering many different media I always have a lot on the go. My story ideas are seeds and the soil they are planted in the medium of choice: a book, a film, an article, a play. I have a story idea at the moment about a boy from a council estate who dreams of going to space. But what is the right soil for this seed? Should it be a play (which I’m leaning towards) or a book or a film? Or perhaps, even a radio drama. I’m not sure.
I have another play on the go that I believe is right for the stage. But I’m struggling to find a producer to take it on. When my proposal is turned down does that mean it’s not good ‘seed’ or just that the soil I was trying to sow it in isn’t the right environment? Perhaps another theatre or another producer might give the play a better chance to grow.
The same principle can be applied to our lives in general. Do you have seed but don’t know where to sow it? Or have already sown it but are not seeing it grow? It could be a seed of relationship or career or finance. Are you investing time and energy into something that just isn’t bearing fruit? You need to ask yourself if it’s the right seed in the wrong soil … or vice versa! Or perhaps it is simply the wrong season.
Jesus, who is a great hero of mine, talks about seed and soil too. His story is found in the Parable of the Sower. There’s a lot to ponder there if you have some time to sow.
I have recently finished the fourth book in the historical crime novel series about an amateur Roman detective called Ruso. Ruso and the River of Darkness, is, in my opinion, the finest in the series by British author R.S. Downie.
Comparisons with Lindsey Davis’ Falco series are inevitable. In fact it was because I had enjoyed the Falco books (the mock-noir tales of a PI in Rome whose humour is drawn from our familiarity with the style of the detective novels and films of the Forties and Fifties) that I picked up the first in the series, Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls, in the first place.
Unlike Falco, Downie’s sleuth is a reluctant detective. He is an army doctor (medicus) based in Britannia, who gets drawn into murder investigations via his patients (some dead, some living). I suppose he is a Roman version of Quincy – only far better looking! Yes, he’s a very attractive hero and female readers will inevitably fantasise who will play him in any film adaptation (I would opt for Ethan Hawke). However, unlike Falco, he is not a playboy (although in the latter books in the series, Falco has settled down). In fact, he finds romantic attachments a distraction. Despite this, he reluctantly falls in love; with whom I will omit from this post so as not to spoil the plot of the first book.
Again, like Falco, there is a great deal of humour in the books, but there is also a serious side. And that’s what I like about them. Like my own book The Peace Garden and all of my plays, I like mixing darkness and light. I also enjoy writing and reading books and scripts that deal with issues of social justice. In The Disappearing Dancing Girls it is human trafficking, in Ruso and the Demented Doctor it is the domestic oppression of women in forced marriages, in Ruso and the Root of All Evils it’s the issue of class and in The River of Darkness it is institutional corruption. But Downie has a light touch and the books can simply be read as rollicking historical crime drama.
If you’re not already familiar with the series, I would strongly recommend remedying this. For readers in the US, the books are published under different titles. (Medicus, for instance, is the American version of Disappearing Dancing Girls). And now, I’m eagerly awaiting the next in the series …
I’m relieved and excited to finally have finished my literary thriller, The Peace Garden. One of the most common questions readers ask is “Where did the idea for your book come from?” Some authors I know get irritated by the question and sarcastically say: “A warehouse off the M1” or something equally flippant. But I don’t mind it. In fact, it helps me to understand my own creative process.
A story of two worlds
The Peace Garden is about a group of neighbours who live between two worlds. They are all displaced in some way: either by being literal immigrants, or being from different races, religions or socio-economic classes. I was born in Northumberland but moved with my family to South Africa when I was 10. Every four years or so, I would come back to England to visit my two grandmothers who both lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. As an adult I visited a couple more times and finally moved here with my South African husband when I was 32. During those holidays I became increasingly aware of a sense of displacement; of wanting to feel that I belonged somewhere but never knowing whether I was truly South African or English. Some of this is expressed in the main characters of Natalie, Thabo and Gladwin.
A story of gardens
Grandma Veitch, Uncle Ernie and Auntie Emma
On one of my visits to my Grandma Veitch who lived in a cul-de-sac very similar to Jasmine Close, she took me to see her sister Emma who lived around the corner. Auntie Emma lived in another cul-de-sac, and just like my grandma, was very proud of her garden. She told us that the neighbours were up in arms because someone had been stealing plants from them. She said that they all suspected the-man-at-the-end-of-the-street because he was the only one with a wall around his front garden. My grandma thought this was a good assumption.
I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard and I began to wonder who that man might be. The writer in me took over and before I knew it, Gladwin Nkulu, the political exile from South Africa, was born.
A story of mystery and terror
The Peace Garden started out as a literary novel using people’s gardens as a metaphor for their lives. But as the story began to unfold, it became clear that it fell into the mystery genre. I suppose this is the inevitable outcome of starting a story with a character hidden behind a garden wall. This was not an unwelcome development for me as I love reading mysteries and thrillers and much of my writing for children falls into this genre too. The book is divided into three parts. The first is a mystery about the main character, 12-year-old Natalie Porter, investigating plant theft in her Grandma’s cul-de-sac. She finally meets the-man-at-the-end-of-the-street but does not realise at this stage that he has a terrifying past. That past, and the horrors of Apartheid South Africa, are explored in the second part which ratchets up the tempo from mystery to thriller. The third part picks up with Natalie as an adult when she gets caught up in Gladwin’s shady world of international terrorism.
Soweto township, where Gladwin spent his youth
A story with humour
Although The Peace Garden deals with some serious themes and depicts violence, tragedy and injustice (particularly in the South African section) there is also a great deal of humour. Natalie is a charming narrator and has a quirky take on the world. So if you like your books with a good mix of darkness and light, you will find both in The Peace Garden.
A story of love
The Peace Garden is also a romance. Natalie falls for Gladwin’s son Thabo, but as in all love stories worth reading (or writing) not everything goes to plan…
In 1896 a Greek peasant girl, Stamata Revithi, heard that the Olympic Games were being relaunched in Athens. A gifted runner, Stamata decided to enter the marathon, not realising that women were banned from competing. Inspired by a true story, ‘Marathon’ is the story of how one athlete’s quest for justice came into conflict with the politics, scandal and corruption of the first modern Olympic Games.
Athens Olympics 1896
A staged reading of my latest play, Marathon, will be held at The Customs House in South Shields, on Monday 10th October, 3.30pm. Entrance free.
