Man at the Helm - July book club

gardener

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it amusing and fascinating from beginning to end ( though I have to admit I could have managed without the detailed description of the men's toilets !! )
I have read that it is a semi-autobiographical book - in that you moved with your family to a country village under similar circumstances .

This prompts the question :-
Is it easy / hard to start writing about your own childhood and then put in all these imaginary characters and events?

I love the idea of the "heavy pig" on page 278
Have you had many of these " weighty pig days " ?

I'm glad the mother found a "Man at the Helm " and I agree that she turned out to be a hero.
Thank you Nina and Gransnet......a brilliant book.

P.S. The last few sentences of the book are absolutely priceless !!!

I’m so glad you enjoyed the book. I have had very few pig days in my life… mainly because my mother told us to accept them (when they came) and take each day at a time. I’m glad you liked the last section. Mr Holt is very real and very much still our Man at the Helm!

Lottie2tiger

I'm surprised at some of the comments about the beginning of this book as I found it easy to get I to and really wanted to get to the end to see what hapoened.
My question is: it made me smile a lot but also made me feel quite sad in parts. Was it deliberate to try to bring out both emotions in your readers?

Yes, I wanted the book to be funny and sad because that’s how life was and is. I look back at the absolutely hilarious things and then have a little cry at the awfulness.

trisher

Finished this. I have mixed feelings about it. It was sometimes funny but I thought some of the comedy was too manufactured. Some episodes were really successful- Maxwell the pony was one-but other situations felt forced.
I thought the ending was a bit contrived. I would like to ask Nina if she ever wrote or thought of writing an alternative ending?

I did try to think of an alternative ending but in the end I wrote what actually happened and it seemed right. The whole thing being so autobiographical. I wished I could have written that my mother took the helm but she didn’t and in the end I thought I should just write the truth. Sorry it didn’t ring true. That’s the thing about the truth, it can seem contrived!!

kyalami

Has Nina got any other novels on the back burner?

Yes, there’s a new one coming in 2016. More Lizzie Vogel. x

Buddie

I agree with several others that the bad language used added nothing to the story and seemed outside of the supposed time scale, too. I would like to know if the author has personal experience of this period and if so whether it was spent in a rural location.

Yes to both. I was brought up in the 1970s in a village by a swearing upper-middle class drop out! Sorry about all the swearing but that’s just how it was.

lettie

I would like to ask Nina about her reasons for including Lizzie's mother's play dialogue - it didn't seem to carry the plot any farther forward. Was it to inject some 'white space', or for another reason? And, without naming names, were any of the main characters (humans or animals) inspired by her own experiences.

Thanks Nina, and Gransnet, for a good read.

I included the plays because I thought they offered a bit of explanation as to what the mother character was thinking and feeling. Most of the animals and humans are based on real animals and humans… especially Maxwell (my pony).

bumblebee

Most gracious thanks to Gransnet and Penguin Books for a copy of this book. I seem to have received it a lot later than everyone else, looking at the dates of the above posts. As a result, I still have a bit of a way to go to complete the book, but shaping up to be a good read so far.

I'd like to ask Nina a few general questions, if I may ......

QUESTION ONE:- Do you have a personal favourite out of the two books you've had published? And out of books published by other authors?

I love both books in different ways. I love the Adrian Mole books by Sue Townsend.

bumblebee

QUESTION TWO:- What would be the first piece of advice you would give to anyone attempting to write fiction?

Write in your own voice.

bumblebee

QUESTION THREE:- Can I ask you about your writing process? How do you plot everything? What was the initial spark for 'Man at the Helm', and was it based on personal experiences, completely made-up, or a mixture of the two?

I don’t plan enough to begin with and just write and write and then try to impose order on top of the chaos. I wouldn’t recommend this approach though! The book is pretty autobiographical, not faithfully, but a mix of real and made up.