This is just a quick look at some of the best reviews the amazingSanctuary Linehas been getting, along with a chance to catch-up with a couple of lovely interviews with Jane:
Urquhart’s beautiful prose propels this quiet tale of familial love, parental absence and loss.
Finally, as Liz’s memories sharpen, there is a revelation that forces a complete re-evaluation of the narrative. A thoroughly engaging read.
This is a mesmerising, beautiful book which draws you in almost slyly. There are two reasons for this and the first is the plot. It builds, layer upon layer, tale upon anecdote until this family has worked its way under your skin.
Liz Crane is a wonderful narrator, honest and self-effacing, used to being solitary and never needing to put herself at the centre of events. It’s a story of love – and love affairs which might or might not be the same thing – and loss, of how place affects us and makes us who we are, or highlights who we are not. . .
The second reason is the quality of the writing. There’s nothing showy or clever-clever but you have a sense that every phrase has been crafted and carefully placed.
-Read this outstanding piece in full at The Book Bag.
THere are a couple of amazing interviews with Jane available too. She has been interviewed for RTE’s premier arts show, Arena, and on TV3; click here to listen and watch, respectively.
Born and brought up in southern Sweden, Karin Altenberg moved to Britain to study in 1996. She holds a PhD in Archaeology. Her thesis was published in 2001 and won the Nordenstedska Foundation Award.
Island of Wings is Karin’s first novel. It is set in the hebrides on the remote island of St Kilda during the 1830s and follows the story of Reverand McKenzie and his wife Lizze.
As the two adjust to life on an exposed archipelago on the edge of civilization, where the islanders live in squalor and subsist on a diet of seabirds, and babies perish mysteriously in their first week, their marriage – and their sanity – is threatened.
Caroline Butler: In Island of Wings St. Kilda is almost one of the main characters itself. What drew you to this setting in particular?
Karin Altenberg: Growing up I spent all my summers on a rocky, barren island (a visiting friend once reffered to it as Alcatraz) off the west coast of Sweden. This seascape environment defined me and I have since been drawn to islands – the rockier the better. Some of the physical descriptions – especially the scents – in my book are probably drawn as much from the island of my childhood as the actual St Kilda.
Caroline Butler: St Kilda is a remote and sparsely populated island and the story is set in the 1830s. How difficult was it to research? Did you rely heavily on your archaeological training?
Karin Altenberg: Nothing is difficult if you are driven by curiosity. I love doing research – historic research particularly is a bit like travelling. There is that old cliche: ’the past is a foreign country’ – but if you have enough imagination you can make the places and inhabitants of those countries come alive – and that is very exciting. This is something I learnt from doing archaeological reserach and it is obviously useful when writing a novel. I also think training as a landscape archaeologist gave me an eye for seeing things in the landscape.
Caroline Butler: Did you manage to visit the island whilst you were writing the book?
Karin Altenberg: Yes! I sailed there on a beautiful yacht and we were lucky enought to be able to go ashore. Getting to St Kilda is totally dependent on wind and weather. You may reach the islands but not be able to get ashore because of the wind direction or the strength of the weather. I was lucky, and it was great to spend some time on Hirta and sail around the other islands in the archipelago. I would not have been able to write the book if I hadn’t actually set foot on St Kilda.
Caroline Butler: Reverend MacKenzie and his wife were actual historical figures from that period, how much did you draw on what is known about them for the characters in the novel?
Karin Altenberg: In Mr MacKenzie’s case quite a lot – I had some biographical data (even his final grades from University) and some of his own writing. He took notes about the birds and the weather and his struggles to make the islanders become more zealous Christians. But his character is my fiction, based to some extent on the way he wrote about the islanders. In Elizabeth’s case (Lizzie in my novel) I had very little information beyond the basic biographical data (when and where she was born, her parents’ names and her father’s occupation, where she died, number of children). Her husband mentioned her once, I think, and a visitor wrote that she ’made an agreeable cup of tea’. So, she was another one of the invisible women in history. I enjoyed giving her a life of her own, albeit a tough one…
Caroline Butler: Were there any other characters or incidents in the novel that reflected the actual history of the Island?
Karin Altenberg: Yes, I tired to involve characters who actually existed on the island at the time, Betty Scott for instance and the Maor MacKinnon. I tried to stick to the actual timelines and to events that happened on St Kilda during MacKenzie’s residency but, as a novelist, one likes to make things up so I threw in a few extra events for effect…
Caroline Butler:Several reviewers have pointed out the parallels between Island of Wings and a number of post-colonial novels, the difference being that this is actually set in the British Isles. However, it is also the story of a relationship and a marriage. Which of those came first when you sat down to write it?
Karin Altenberg: The story of the relationship was always going to be at the centre of the novel. I am intrigued by all the silent, faceless women in history who followed men around the world. Lizzie would obviously have had a mind of her own but her actual possibilities to change her situation in the 1830s would have been limited – I wanted to stay true to history in that sense.
I am interested in the Scottish enlightenment and the liberal ideals which were born out of it. But even the liberal philosophers were at times a bit confused about who belonged to the liberal society and who didn’t. Mixed with the Protestantism of the time I believe even people with good intentions may have struggled to see themselves as equal to ’primitive’ people.
Caroline Butler: This is your first novel. How did you become a writer? Did you always want to be a writer?
Karin Altenberg: Yes, it is my first novel. I have always been writing but for a long time I wrote academically. I suppose I just was not brave enough to write fiction. The process of writing fiction is both exposing and exhausting – even though your fiction is not autobiographical you are still drawing out the lives and thoughts of your characters from inside yourself. Writing in English, my second language, somehow gave me the confidence to finally write a novel.
Caroline Butler: Who is your favourite author?
Karin Altenberg: That is almost impossible to answer – there are so many past and present. The poetry of Tomas Tranströmer meant so much to me growing up and I still read a lot of contemporary British poetry. Patrick White was a master of prose. There is a great deal to draw from the classics; Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony is a brilliant shortcut to that wonderful treasure trove of stories about why we exist – and what we exist for.
Caroline Butler: What do you think of eBooks, online writing, blogs etc? Are you involved in any online writing yourself?
Karin Altenberg: No, I am not, but I have nothing against it. I can see the allure of being able to carry a library of e-books in a Kindle or iPad and online writing, especially blogging, has recently been very important for freedom of expression around the world. But I’m not personally a natural blogger (yet) – I wouldn’t know what to say and I am rather private. It is exhausting enough drawing from inside yourself to fill the pages of a novel – the thought of having to communicate widely every other day makes me feel a bit sapped.
Caroline Butler: How do you divide your time between your day job and writing?
Karin Altenberg: Island of Wings was mainly written over weekends and holidays while I was working at the Swedish Embassy in London. In such a job you have a line to stick to and I guess I had the need to express myself differently in my own time. At the moment I have six months off my day job (at the Swedish Heritage Board in Stockholm) to write my second novel – then we will see…
Really excited to report that David Tennant is to be appearing in the BBC Radio 4 Production of Daniel Glattauer‘s amazing novel Love Virtually. The show stars David alongside Emilia Fox and is set for for broadcast on Thursday 8th March.
To keep up with all the latest news, head on over to the David Tennant Forum.
Also please feel free check out our amazing interactive flipbook below for an extract from this remarkable book:
Corban Addison’s A Walk Across the Sun has been getting some absolutely wonderful reviews and I thought I’d collect together a few of the best here:
His presentation of the subject is so powerful and original. In creating a fast pace thriller rescue mission spanning three continents this book will appeal to readers of fiction everywhere.
Addison’s use of written imagery is intense and vivid. The reader is enveloped in both the beauty of India and its culture, and the excruciating despair of the Brothels of Mumbai. The characters are so genuine.
I felt the same despair and frustration that the girls and Thomas experienced with each failed rescue attempt. . . There is no doubt that this is a book worth reading. It will change your way of seeing the world.
Note: I thought it interesting to note that John Grisham remarked that he is often approached by authors hoping to be published asking him to endorse their book. He has declined every time until he read A Walk Across the Sun.
If you are looking for a novel that is full of suspense, lost love, and redemption “A Walk Across the Sun” is what you have been looking for. If you need a gripping tale that will introduce someone to the topic of human trafficking, “A Walk Across The Sun” is it. If the novels you have read about sex trafficking don’t seem realistic, “A Walk Across The Sun” depicts the horrors of sex trafficking without crossing the line of becoming gruesome, yet it doesn’t leave the reader without hope.
I was engrossed with A Walk Across the Sun. The novel captures you right from the beginning to end, and even in between. That usually doesn’t happen to me. Somewhere in a novel, I can loose a part and drift off and get bored. But, not with this one. I loved all the characters, cared about Sita, and Ayala, and Tom, and his wife, Priya. I want to know what happens to them all. But, like every novel, or movie it has to end sometime.
***
Written in such a way as to make you well aware of what is taking place without all the graphic details being spelled out, A Walk Across the Sun is a masterpiece. . .If there is one book we all need to read, be moved by and share with others, A Walk Across the Sun is that book! It will take you on an unforgettable journey into the “darkest and most resilient corners of the human heart”, but it will hopefully also leave you a changed person in the sense that there is something each and every one of us can do in helping to eradicate this global pandemic.
I learned a lot from this book and it managed to tell me these stories without descending into utter darkness – yes, it’s grim, but not so grim that its painful to read. Fast-paced once it gets started, filled with charming characters of all kinds (both good and bad) and all of their competing agendas, this is a read that kept me up nights. Recommended.
Sean Barrett has appeared in numerous theatre, TV and films roles and is well known for his audio narration work. Rose Tomaszewska met him at Strathmore Recording Studios to talk about his reading of the latest Lennox thriller, The Deep Dark Sleep.
Rose Tomaszewska: How did you first come to be a reader?
Sean Barrett: I’m not entirely sure that I remember! I was a member of the BBC Repertory Company (now called the Radio Drama Company) There was more reading on the BBC that they do now. Somebody heard a story that I read and asked me to come and do something for them and it grew and grew.
Rose Tomaszewska: Is your other acting work different to reading audio books?
Sean Barrett: No, not really- everything is telling the story. That’s what it is. You’ve got to make something work, make it clear to your audience, whatever medium it is. Obviously an audio book you have a lot of control over, which is quite jolly, and you get to play all the parts.
There was one splendid radio drama producer who used to use the phrase, ‘the camera is with you’. And you knew exactly what he meant – the focus was on the character that you were playing –you don’t have to move in and out of the microphone, the camera is working with you- as you go up the stairs, ‘the camera is with you’- and you actually saw it, you saw the picture.
Rose Tomaszewska: You’ve just finished recording The Deep Dark Sleep by Craig Russell, the newest title in the Lennox series of crime thrillers. What do you enjoy about these books?
Sean Barrett: They’re great! The phrase ‘the camera is with you’ is very apposite because the books have got echoes of all the marvellous film noirs, ‘down these mean streets – or these foggy closes in Glasgow – a man must go.’ And there are a lot of quirky characters popping up, so it’s fun to do.
Rose Tomaszewska: The books are written in first person from Lennox’s point of view, so your narratal voice is actually his. Having told his story over the last two books, do you feel you identify with Lennox?
Sean Barrett: I don’t think I do, he’s a man who’s scarred by his experiences in the war, pretty violent, and worried about his own violence- that’s the thing- which sometimes he uses to excess. So I don’t think I understand him, but he’s an intriguing character.
Rose Tomaszewska: What do you like about playing him?
Sean Barrett: It’s the great lines, the great finishes of a scene, the great entrances through the door. A famous thriller writer said, ‘When in doubt, have a man come in through the door with a gun.’ Well, that makes it sound like it’s a knock-down, drag-out all the time, which it isn’t.
And the women are very interesting as well – think of those ‘tarts with the heart of gold’ and ‘the good girl’; they’re in all those old movies, but it isn’t as obvious as that in these books at all. That’s one of the nice things about Lennox – he likes women.
Likes them as opposed to using them, though he’s conscious that he does- he’s got a great eye for the ladies! But he actually likes women, doesn’t despise any women. There’s one woman that he figures out and says what her trouble is and why she behaves like she does, but he isn’t hard on them. He’s a bit of an old-fashioned guy, thinks women need to be treated better than his own gender.
Rose Tomaszewska: All these characters and the atmosphere are very much a part of this world of Glasgow in the 1950s, a sense of place and of people which is really at the heart of the Lennox books. Do you know Glasgow at all and what do you think of the way it’s brought across here?
Sean Barrett: The interesting thing about Glasgow and its people is the friendliness. One of the things Lennox talks about is a bus queue, a whole bunch of strangers who actually start chatting to each other while waiting in the fog for a tram.
They don’t know each other, but they really are very chatty and very friendly to each other. And in the pub there’s a mixture of classes, with one aim in view to drink as much as you can! It’s almost like a small town, they all know each other; so they don’t say ‘ooh that’s a very nasty character and we stay away from that’. It’s much more mixed up, it’s not ghettoised at all.
I’ve worked in Glasgow- I was touring ‘Candida’ (a play by George Bernard Shaw) and we went to the Alhambra, an infamous music hall where acts got a very hard time- and we did the last ten minutes of ‘Candida’! Hahaha! It was very interesting, amidst all these Scottish comics and singing of ‘There was a soldier, a Scottish soldier!’ and the house is rocking and all these fags are being smoked, ‘cos you could smoke in the theatre in those days.
And in Candida, it ends with a wonderful bit – after Marchbanks, who I was playing, leaves- she turns and puts her arms out to her husband and says ‘James!’, and there was this HUGE wolf-whistle, and the stage manageress was wheeling down the curtain saying, ‘Bastards! Uncouth bastards!’ That was great! So it went down pretty well.
And afterwards I got on the train to Edinburgh, and the train filled up with, you know, LADS, and I thought ‘Oh god…’ First of all they all put their feet up- but they took newspapers and put them on the seats, and put their feet on the newspapers.
And then one of them looked at me and said (strong Glaswegian accent) ‘Do I know you?’ and that’s a terrible thing to hear, a Scotsman saying, ‘Do I know you?’! And I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m a stranger here.’
And he said, ‘Just a minute, are you an actor?’ And I said ‘Yes,’ – ‘Were you in a film?’ and he mentioned a film I was in, ‘Ahh yeah, I remember that!’ and then we shared some of their chips. So you don’t actually feel threatened, in my experience, although you knew there were some hard cases about.
Rose Tomaszewska: You’ve done a great deal of audio work in your career, what’s been your favourite project?
Sean Barrett: The Dickens- Barnaby Rudge, and Martin Chuzzlewit – the Dickens are great to do – again because there’s that wonderful mix of people, so you get a crack at everybody- there’s these great raunchy characters. And I really enjoy these Lennox books, they’re great fun.
Rose Tomaszewska: How do you think downloading has affected audio books?
Sean Barrett: On Audible you can see people reacting- in the past one got letters from people saying how much they enjoyed the books- but there you get a full spectrum of people who like it or don’t like it. So download seems to be involving people a lot more, they can get much more immediate contact with listening to the book or reacting to it.
Rose Tomaszewska: Do you read your reviews?
Sean Barrett: There are those like, ‘this was a great book, etc., Sean Barrett was very good….’ Or: ‘I thought this was very boring,’ you get the occasional one of those! But luckily they’re in the minority. There have been some nice reviews for Lennox actually.
Rose Tomaszewska: Do you have an ideal listener in mind when you’re reading?
Sean Barrett: No, not really. I think the ideal listener- and going back to ‘why is it different?’ from TV, or theatre, or movies – it isn’t, because the ideal listener is the person that the character is talking to in the book – or sometimes you feel the narrator is running through it for himself.
There are some books like the Just So Stories, and then the ideal listener is the friend, the Best Beloved. Then again, I remember one of the doyens of Radio when I was a young fellow learning technique; he said, ‘always treat the microphone as a friend’.
My wife’s aunt was partially sighted so she devoured audio books, but I couldn’t actually direct audio books to her- especially not some audio books- like these! Although she did like a bit of ‘hmm-hmm’! So I don’t think of that at all – there’s not an ideal listener, and although some people say it’s ‘into the ear of one person’ it’s actually a lot of people…maybe an intimate circle, around the fire…
Rose Tomaszewska: What is the hardest thing about reading an audio book?
Sean Barrett: You have to have a bit of stamina- you spend a lot of time sitting in front of a microphone; although some people will stand- good luck! And keeping the energy levels going- I’m happy to say, our producer here is very good at noticing a dip in energy levels at ‘that time’ of the day. You can fall into a rhythm – that’s the hard thing! –to actually not fall into a rhythm, and it gets a bit monotonous and easy and you’re getting through the pages. It’s a bit of a discipline there really. You have to think about where the fireworks can happen!
Rose Tomaszewska: How do you prepare?
Sean Barrett: I know some people just read the book first- I tend to start preparing from page one, making notes as I go. And sometimes it can be frustrating because the story does pull you along, and you want to know what happens. And then suddenly on page 155 you discover he is an imposter, and he really comes from somewhere else, with a completely different voice!
Rose Tomaszewska: Do you have any tips for someone wanting to become an audio reader?
Sean Barrett: You can practise yourself, reading aloud to somebody – in person, it’s interesting –you can have an ideal listener, someone who says, ‘go on, read to me’ and the more you do that, the better. You have to keep it going, keep telling the story, keep telling the story, you can’t make it up- you have to work with the page- and another page, and another page… And just accept any job that’s going- although everybody has a line to draw!
Rose Tomaszewska: What else have you been doing lately?
Sean Barrett: I’m doing a lot of post-production voice work on movies and animations. Recently there’s been the new Aardman Picture, by Nick Park; it was called ‘Pirates!’ but I think they’re changing the title to ‘Briny Rogues’ or something like that. Hugh Grant is the lead.
It’s fascinating to see how it’s put together, you can see all the characters, you know – ‘you’re the one with the eye-patch’. So that’s been quite fun. I’ve been doing a lot of voice work, and I would like to do some more, as someone called it, ‘whole body acting’ again- but I’m not too fussed, I quite like sitting in front of a microphone.
This is just a quick look at some of the best reviews the amazing Sanctuary Line has been getting, along with a chance to catch-up with a couple of lovely interviews with Jane:
Really excited to report that David Tennant is to be appearing in the BBC Radio 4 Production of 
