Open Writing

Not so long ago a Web site editor offered me a free ticket to a London play and suggested that I write a review. I turned it down because I knew that I would struggle to say anything other than "It was nice" and "I liked the choice of ice cream in the interval."

I have trouble writing reviews because for me books, plays and films are about escape. As long as they carry me into another world and keep me there by avoiding contradictions of plot and repetitive prose I am happy. So what can I say about any story except that it did the trick?

This week I read two very different novels about 19th-century British and Irish people. In terms of atmosphere, narrative and subject matter they were chalk and cheese but they both worked their magic on me.

"The Terror" by Dans Simmons (2007) is usually described as a horror novel. If like me you prefer to avoid horror fiction, don't let that label put you off. It is scary in parts but it is also an imaginative and detailed fictional account of Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition of 1845.

Franklin and his men were attempting to find the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific when they became trapped in the ice. The novel begins with the expedition's two ships marooned a mile apart and the men afraid of something that is killing them off one by one.

Simmons paints a vivid picture of daily life on a 19th-century Royal Navy ship and displays a keen knowledge of nautical history. His central character is Francis Crozier, the Irish captain of HMS Terror, who takes command of the expedition after Franklin's death. Crozier is a heartbroken and aged drunkard who would probably be played by Daniel Craig in a movie version. He has that kind of charisma about him.

There is little more that I can say without ruining the plot for you. There was nothing predictable about Simmons' writing and so the reader is able to share Crozier's doubts about the exact nature of the monster that stalks them. I liked that because it made the ending a complete surprise.

An Irish girl is the star of "The Observations" by Jane Harris (2006). The story is set in the lowlands of Scotland in 1863 and is narrated by teenage maidservant Bessy Buckley. She has been asked to write her experiences down and she does so with casual grammar, poor punctuation and plenty of slang. Harris's book editor must have had a tricky job knowing what to correct there!

Bessy has been taken on as a maidservant by an Englishwoman called Arabella Reid, who asks her to perform a series of odd tasks. When Bessy is drawn into Arabella's world, she sets off a chain of events that end in a very unexpected way.

The best thing about Bessy is her humor. I've spent all day recalling the following passage and chuckling over it:

I simply kept running alongside the track. Despite the clamour in my brain, it was good to be running. I got quite a rhythm going. I was the running girl, so I was. After some time, it might have been a few minutes or it might have been many, I came to a station. There must have been a train due because people were stood on the platform looking down at me running along the track. There they were, waiting on a train and instead what comes puffing along but a girl. I found that enormously funny for some reason. All these people staring at me, some of them with GREAT disapproval, you could just see it on their phizogs. Would you look at that girl there, running along? Trespassing on railway property so she is, causing a nuisance, acting in an unseemly fashion!

I also liked Bessy's cutting assessments of her social superiors. It left me wishing that I could go back in time to class-ridden Victorian Britain and hear what people had to say about the toffs. Let's just say that Bessy's views are not the sort you'll find in a Bronte novel.

It is clear that Harris and Simmons both did a lot of research before they began their books. I'm sure that is the reason why they succeeded in carrying me back to the 19th century. There's a lesson in that for all writers.