Mind the gap! By Sue Purkiss

At the moment, I'm grappling with a structural problem in the book I'm writing. My story is set in World War Two, and most of it takes place in a prisoner of war camp. My problem is that the significant events of the story  occur in the first two years and the last few months of the war. One of the worst things about POW camps was that from one month to another, very little changed; nothing much happened in the intervening two years, so I have a desert to cross.

A similar thing happened when I was writing Warrior King, about the earlier part of the life of Alfred the Great. (I was going to make a note to myself at this point to choose my subjects more carefully - but a) sometimes the subject chooses you, and b) I guess that actually, this must be a common problem for writers of historical fiction as history is decidedly inconsiderate in the way it spaces out events.)

Anyway, to return to the magnificent Alfred. (Just look at him on the cover there. Isn't he gorgeous?) The problem here was that the bits that interested me occurred when he was growing up, and then ten years or so later, when he was forced to flee to Athelney and take up baking. There was another problem too: Warrior King was a book for young people, and so it would be better to tell the story from a child's viewpoint. After trying out one or two possibilities, in the end I divided the book into two parts. At the end of the first part, Alfred has just become King. He goes into the room where his small daughter is sleeping, and he makes her a promise.

      It seemed to him that he had never seen anything as lovely as the curve of her dark eyelashes resting on the softness of her cheek, and he touched her hair very gently, letting one golden curl wind itself round his finger.
      "Up till now," he said very quietly, "everyone I've ever loved has either died or gone away. Now my last brother's gone, the best of all of us. And so I'm king. And from this day on, so help me God, I'm going to keep the people safe, and I'm going to keep you safe. I will find a way. No matter what it takes."

The second part begins with the great crisis of his reign, when his ability to fulfil that promise is tested to the utmost. And the story is told now by that same daughter, Fleda, who is determined to be part of her father's struggle.

My last post sparked off a discussion in another forum about historical fiction books we knew and loved as teenagers. Frances Thomas reminded us of Desiree, by Annemarie Selinko. Thanks to Kindle, I was able to download it in the wink of an eye, and I'm re-reading it at present. It interests me to see whether old favourites stand the harsh test of time. An earlier, huge favourite, which I borrowed from the library time after time, was The Amazing Mr Whisper by Brenda Macrow.. I was thrilled when I eventually managed to track down a copy a couple of years ago, only to find that it's been superseded by subsequent books in a similar genre (ie, real children find their way into a parallel world which owes much to myth and legend) and the magic was tarnished.

As far as I can find out, Annemarie Selinko was an Austrian journalist and political writer, married to a Danish husband. They were living in Denmark when the war broke out, but fled from the Gestapo to Sweden, where they worked with the Swedish Red Cross assisting refugees. She used aspects of her experiences in Desiree, her last novel, which tells the story of a silk merchant's daughter who  was once engaged to Napoleon and later married one of his Marshals, subsequently becoming Desideria, Queen of Sweden.

Annemarie Selinko was clearly no lightweight, but the same cannot be said of her heroine. Desiree is appealing, bright, courageous and funny, but she is poorly educated and despite the position in which she finds herself, she is uninterested in politics. She is the narrator, so everything must be filtered through her. Somehow, Selinko has to convey through her the complexities of Napoleon's career and campaigns - because the story of Napoleon is at the centre of this book: Desiree's story, beguiling as it is, is a means to an end. How does she do it?

(Interesting, to see an old cover and a recent one!)

Well, sometimes a character imparts an improbable amount of information over a gossip and a cup of hot chocolate, and it doesn't quite work. But mostly, it does. Selinko uses Desiree's political naivety to her advantage: Desiree needs to know what is going on because it will directly affect her marriage and her family - so she nails someone in the know and makes them explain everything to her in words of one syllable. Or again, a political big hitter such as Talleyrand or Fouche explains things to her because they need to use her as a conduit to her husband. Or else she explains things to someone even less clued up, such as her sister or her son.. It's all very cleverly done: so we read a story which seems to be light and frothy, but in fact a vast amount of complicated history is being imparted. I remember 'doing' Napoleon at school, and learning far, far less.

All of which, I think, is suggesting to me how I should approach my current dilemma.. So - better get on with it!