(no subject)

[liadnan]

Only a month or so after Antonia Forest, and children's literature loses another star: Joan Aiken. Now we'll never know what happened to Dido and Simon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3383233.stm
(link from The Other Marcus)

Comments

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Simon became King, but Dido refused to be Queen. So they engineered a revolution to overthrow the monarchy and Dido was elected the first President of the Republic of Great Britain and Ireland. Her first act was to appoint Sophie as Secretary of State for Social Welfare.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Actually, we will discover the next bit of their story in "Midwinter Nightingale" which is already published...

[liadnan]

Had a look this morning but it didn't seem to be around yet.

I am very hungover.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Try here (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385730810/qid=1073746275//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-8732561-8208608?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). Amazon UK seem slightly confused about their book stocks atm...

[fuckjaws.livejournal.com]

I used to read Joan Aiken ALL the time.
Usually in the car on the way to the beach.

[fuckjaws.livejournal.com]

PS: Hi. How are you? We havn't done this for a while!

[liadnan]

I am well.. actually, right now that's a lie, I am extremely hungover and ought to be on my way to Oxford already. But I'll live.

Grieving readers

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

Tragic enough that we'll never know what happened to Nicola and Patrick and co. I met Antonia Forest in 1998 when I was visiting the UK, and she said she was writing a 13th Marlow book, but that it was progressing "stickily". Wonder if they'll make the unfinished manuscript available to her fans?

Before I met AF, I wrote to her about my own writing career and she recommended I avoid using my Chinese middle name because the British would be too shy to ask for a book by someone whose name they couldn't pronounce! Interesting, in the light of her real name coming to light. Did she decide "Rubenstein" was too foreign looking?

I note you've friended me... welcome to my LJ!

Re: Grieving readers

[liadnan]

On Forest, you might be interested to read the inimitable A. J. Hall's eulogy.

I imagine the fate of any manuscript will depend on its state and the opinions of her executors. Girls Gone By are reprinting her work: J. knows more about this.

Re: Grieving readers

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

She told me that she writes in linear fashion (i.e. in chapter order), so it may be in a reasonable state. That said, in today's Forest surfing I read that she overwrote and then pruned brutally at the end, so it may be rambly. Not that her bereaved readers would mind (hints on what happened with Esther and Patrick at any price is my motto). Apparently she also wrote two adult novels, which Faber rejected (looks hopefully at executors).

Have you read Anne Heazlewood's 'The Marlows and their Maker'? I've put a link to it in the LJ entry I've just written, together with futher details on my afternoon with AF herself in '98.

Have you read Anne Heazlewood's 'The Marlows and their Make

[liadnan]

No indeed. Will have to have a look.

Re: Grieving readers

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and thanks for the eulogy link! A fine eulogy indeed.

Her father, Conrad Aiken's, poetry

[sobelle.livejournal.com]

So nice to have someone be able to put your own grief to printed word...


Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart that you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
- They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

Conrad Aiken

Re: Her father, Conrad Aiken's, poetry

[liadnan]

I didn't actually know her father was a poet until I read the BBC article. I did, however, know that her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge, also wrote: Austen pastiches being the ones I remember.