HOLDING A MIRROR TO CULTURE

A REVIEW OF THE BIRMINGHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2016

What Haunts the Heart at Waterstones, Birmingham

9th October 2016

On an average day, books shops are rarely busy, instead their interiors are scattered with the casual browser. Most will wander in, half-heartedly scan the array of offers presented at the front of the shop, and casually drift back into the bustling city centre, where tantalising scents of refreshments and must-have fashions are the more palatable purchase. Of course, the exception for this is when said bookshop is host to an event. All of a sudden, the city’s population tap into their literary interests, (or perhaps it is merely their curiosity), and take the plunge into the shop’s depths. If, of course, they manage to make it past the other members of the crowd.

Finding a small sign indicating that the events were being held upstairs, I squeezed my way past the body of browsers, and climbed the stairs to find a figure dressed in a bright red BLF shirt. I asked them whether the What Haunts the Heart event was here, only to have the short reply: ‘Fourth Floor’. When I finally reached the correct floor, I took a seat in the third row, and waited. A while. On the ‘stage’, people were setting up the speakers and microphone stand, while an increasing volume of noise throbbed around the room. The organisers had obviously underestimated the number they would receive as extra chairs were crammed in. Not a good start.

A few minutes later, the microphone was tested, before someone proclaimed that there were ‘technical issues’, and to spend your time browsing. Well, we were in a book store.

They were running late and I watched as a member of staff, and what I took to be the organiser, retested the microphone, until they eventually gave in. No microphone, then. Wonderful.

As a ‘virgin’ festival attendee, my expectations were largely based on the typical conventions of a literature festival I had read about. I expected to hear the authors read their stories, but I also expected a discussion about the finished product. As Wenche Ommundsen clearly puts it, the audience don’t ‘come to hear authors read, they want to find out who they are, as writers and as human beings, to experience the aura surrounding the creator of literary works’. As I hadn’t heard of the writers before the festival, I could only learn more about them.

We can all read or listen to stories. We can do it anytime. It is on these occasions,

during literary events, when readers want to find out more about the authors.

Or is that just me?

There was a brief introduction to the event, but not much detail about the authors,

apart from the fact that they all had roots in the West Midlands. Although this linked

the event to the host city in which it occurred, I would have expected to hear the

writer’s backgrounds, the reasons for writing what they did, or their influences for

the stories. While the time schedule may not have allowed for extensive life stories,

I felt there should have been something more; a discussion, a little bio, inspiration

for their story, perhaps? We got none of this. Even the texts had nothing to suggest a local theme. I felt as if I had been cheated.

Introduction over, the event plunged straight into the reading. With no microphone, the authors would have to speak clearly to reach the large audience, and while the first speaker did this, many of the stories were left unheard, even by me, in the third row and beyond. I had a copy of the text with me, but I imagine those who didn’t were not enraptured by the ‘performance’. There was certainly a lot of coughing, and shifting in seats.

One of the readings is more memorable than the others, mainly because most of the audience heard it. Katya Johanson and Robin Freeman claim that the ‘consumers of books now expect the author to be not only a writer but a performer’. One of the authors seemed to have taken this to heart.

When one particularly soft-spoken writer had finished their extract, William Gallagher introduced himself and explained his reasons for the story title, ‘Time Gentlemen Please’. A pause. Suddenly, he seemed to change. I thought at first, there was a problem, but soon realised he was acting out his story. A phone goes off in the middle of his performance. He carries on. As this author had experience in the drama and film industry, he must have seen fit to entertain his audience in this way.

Then again, perhaps he simply noticed the awkward fidgeting noises from the audience.

The fact that the event was hosted by the Birmingham Literature Festival could be enough to suggest that it ‘offers an encounter with literature connected to the place in which it is experienced’, as Millicent Weber indicates. Although the themes, locations, and characters themselves do not explicitly lend themselves to this community, the fact that they are the creations of local writers may be enough for readers and the audience to connect with them, and their stories.

I believe that many of the themes explored within What Haunts the Heart could be taken as universal themes, which would appeal to readers both in and outside of the West Midlands. Peter Pierce’s study of Australian Literary Festivals can be applied here, in that a local festival could celebrate the city or location’s own ‘cosmopolitanism, its own place in the international order’. What Haunts the Heart includes stories which appeal to a variety of cultures, rather than those found exclusively in the host location. Lost love, abandonment, and of course, you can’t have a collection about haunting without a good ghost story or two, are universal themes we are all familiar with.

If only the event itself had been a little more organised. We could have heard the authors’ own opinion on these ideas.

POPULAR CATEGORIES

CLASSICS

ROMANCE

MYSTERY/SUSPENSE

SCI-FI & FANTASY

YOUNG ADULT

HISTORICAL FICTION

Cristina Sanchez-Andrade, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre 8th October 2016

‘We writers do not choose our characters.

Our characters choose us.’

-Cristina Sanchez-Andrade on The Winterlings

In contrast to Sunday’s event, I had attended another literary event the day before, at the Birmingham Repertory. As the ticket included a free drink, I ordered a bottle of water and headed towards the area. While What Haunts the Heart was hosted on a whole level in Waterstones, ‘Cristina Sanchez-Andrade’ took place in one corner of the Repertory’s café, Marmalade. This wasn’t much of a problem to begin with, as the audience was not large. However, hosting an event in a café at lunch time is not the best idea, and towards the end of the hour-long presentation, the surrounding noise of leisurely meetings meant that the Q&A was abandoned.

Instead of using Katya Johanson and Robin Freeman’s ‘‘medieval

experience of being read aloud to’, Cristina was joined by Dr Raquel

Medina, a Senior Lecturer of Spanish at Aston University. Her prompts

began the discussion by stating her fascination with the novel.

The book itself did not become ‘subordinate’ or ‘redundant’ as Wenche

Ommundsen suggests happens during a literary event. Instead,

Cristina’s inspirations for writing were discussed in depth, as she

referred to sections in the novel. She revealed anecdotes of her

journey to her grandmother’s childhood home; how she found the title

of the novel, Las Inviernas, or The Winterlings in English, on a drive

through a Spanish backroad. Her narrative was drawn from oral

traditions to better capture the culture and magical essence which is

characteristic of old Galician village communities.

A member of the audience, a middle-aged man who had been taking images on his camera for most of the event, asked about the translation process of the novel. It was interesting to find that translating the book from Spanish to English went smoothly, apart from a few exclusively Galician words describing foods. Wenche Ommundsen’s theory that a festival should ‘reflect the character of its host city’ does not explicitly relate to Cristina’s event; it is still intriguing to hear from an author who is as unfamiliar with Birmingham’s cultural habits as the audience were with those explored in her novel.

Towards the end of the event, Cristina read two extracts of her book. One reading was in English, which was heavily accented, but clear to the small audience; the other was in Spanish. When it came to the story in her home tongue, the narrative seemed more suited and flowed better than the long, hesitating pauses in English. And yes, she did all of the character’s voices.

I managed to hear all of this, even with the steadily rising voices of lunch customers.

We were, of course, in the middle of a café.

While these two events were not quite the experiences I had expected as a first-time attendee, the elements of these expectations were there. Leo Schofield, quoted by Wenche Ommundsen, argues that a literary festival should meet the needs of the visitors and ‘confront their assumptions’. From these two events alone, one might take away the idea that literature festival events differ in their individual structures, and that many are unorganised, noisy affairs. In both of the events described above, neither strays far from the traditional views of a literary event. Both involved reading extracts from the texts, and one went further to discuss the author’s motives.

I mentioned earlier that Cristina’s event was not necessarily a reflection of Birmingham’s culture. Unlike the authors of What Haunts the Heart, not only is she a Spanish author, but Cristina had attended several other events around the UK prior to attending this one, her last, before travelling home to Spain that evening.

However, her representation of her grandmother’s childhood village, with its rich scents of Galician foods, and the stories around the lareira or hearth, bring out the cultural features of Birmingham and the West Midlands in general by contrasting them with her own country.

The protagonists in The Winterlings, refer to their time living in England, having been sent there during the Spanish Civil War. This in itself gives a vivid contrast between the archaic Spanish village of their childhood, and the bustling, cultural city of London in the 1950s. Having been in another country for so long, the sisters feel disconnected from their original home. The reference to their host country gives the audience a familiar setting, which is then placed beside the unfamiliar. In the same way, Cristina’s event is set in a city very different from her own, but this only offsets the themes in her novel. Rather than alienating the audience, The Winterlings seems to kindle an interest in the lives of people in other cultures, and allows readers to reflect on their own lifestyle.

As a city, Birmingham prides itself on the accommodation of a diverse range of cultures, and the Birmingham Literature Festival seems to be an extension of this. In the two events that I attended, tradition is mingled with the contemporary in a way that brings people, whether they usually attend literary festivals or not, together to experience diversity through the words of the authors, and their beloved characters.

To read a review of Cristina Sanchez-Andrade’s novel, The Winterlings,

Want to find out more about the book discussed here? Click on the images to be taken to the Goodreads page.

Amazon prices:

What Haunts the Heart: £7.99.

The Winterlings: £12.09.