How to build a Book Festival

 

Have you ever wondered what it takes to put the Book Festival site together in Charlotte Square Gardens?

 In addition to the work that goes on behind the scenes, programming, organising and promoting the Book Festival, there’s the not-so-small matter of building the site where it all takes place. It takes over two weeks to construct and furnish all of our venues, bookshops, spaces to eat and drink, the entrance tent and all of the walkways, as well as everything else required to keep our customers and authors comfortable and happy.

Watching the whole thing come together is quite magical. Photographer Chris Scott captured some of this magic with his camera, and he’s written a lovely blog piece about it.

What we’re reading… Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s the brand new Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru…

In this striking novel by Hari Kunzru, what at first appears to be a series of disparate and unrelated stories soon emerges as the unfolding history of a place; a specific spot in the Arizona desert which acts as some kind of bizarre conduit to another dimension. This is a magical landscape where anything seems possible, but where time leaves little trace of the secrets and stories that it might hold.

Reading it, you often feel like you are in the middle of one of Louis Theroux's 'Weird Weekends' complete with wacky tales of alien encounters, hippy cults, creepy military bases set up as fake Iraqi encampments and mythical stories of voyages into the ancient native Indian Land of the Dead, but what emerges from all these 'far out' scenarios is both a sense of how little we know for sure about things beyond ourselves and a deep sense of interconnectedness.

Despite taking place decades or even centuries apart, the characters jump between stories, appearing in another character's tale in a different guise or a different age and reminding us that no act that we commit is a single, unrelated event and that even the most seemingly random and insignificant encounters are in fact only part of a much bigger chain of being. 

The episodes are often told with humour and a tongue-in-cheek playfulness whilst challenging our beliefs, or perhaps rather our lack of belief. Only one thing remains certain and that is that we can never know anything for sure…

Hari Kunzru will be at joining us in Charlotte Square Gardens on 14 August at 7pm. Tickets cost £10 (£8 concessions).   

What we’re reading… Jack and the Flumflum Tree by Julia Donaldson

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s one for the kids - Jack and the Flumflum Tree written by Children’s Laureate Julia Donaldson with illustrations by David Roberts…

The hero of the tale, Jack, is tasked with going to the Isle of Blowyernose to seek out the fruit of the Flumflum tree – the only cure for his Grandmother’s Moozles (she’s is covered in large purple spots – EEK!).  

Accompanied by his pals Stu and Rose, and equipped with a patchwork sack full of objects kindly donated by his Granny, Jack sets sail on the open sea to a schnozzle shaped island. Overcoming shark infested waters, a leaky boat, a man overboard with balloons, chewing gum and a skipping rope, the trio succeed in fetching the fruit and curing Granny.

Julia Donaldson’s humorous rhyming text deals deftly with courage, adventure and teamwork and is a delight to read aloud. I’m sure the refrain ‘“Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” said Jack “Let’s have a look in the patchwork sack”’ will soon be a popular catchphrase for little ones and adults alike.

David Roberts’ illustration has a wonderful retro feel. From patchwork quilts to a rather fetching Fair Isle jumper, the pages are reminiscent of the homes of grandparents across the land. Bright sections of primary and complementary colours dominate the pages, along with wonderfully expressive human and animal characters. Don’t forget to try and spy the witty illustrative reference to one of Julia's other picture books. Clue: it rhymes with Buffalo…  

We are delighted that Julia is our Guest Selector for this year’s RBS Children’s Programme. She will be joining us on several occasions across the Festival period.

What we’re reading… Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s Annabel by Kathleen Winter

"Whenever she imagined her child, grown up without interference from a judgemental world, she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other, and as being secretly, almost magically powerful."

In 1968, into the beautiful, isolated environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once.

Wayne’s father, Treadway decides to raise their baby as a boy, whilst secretly his mother Jacinta and her friend Thomasina nurture the girl curled up inside of him. Kathleen Winter takes us on a journey through two decades of Wayne’s struggle to come to terms with the female identity inside of him, known to him and Thomasina as Annabel. Not only is it a story about Wayne but it's also the story of his parents over these years; as well as Thomasina who studies to become a teacher and travels Europe sending postcards to Wayne; and a childhood friend, Wally Michelin, a young girl with a passion for music. Winter teases out the inner emotions of the characters, and their change over time, without judgment but with obvious love. It's hard not to care for every character fleshed out here, and empathise with their flaws as well as celebrate their triumphs over the raw land, relationships changing over time, regrets and their attempts to make amends.

The novel is a beautiful and haunting portrait of a person trapped in a body that the outside world sees as a dreadful mistake. An exploration of small town life as well as gender and sexuality, this book is extremely worth reading.  

Kathleen Winter will be discussing the multi award-winning Annabel in an event with Megan Abbott on Sunday 14 August at 3.30.

What we’re reading…Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu...

Three Sisters tells the story of Yumi, Yuxiu and Yuyang who grew up in Wang Family Village, China, a place attuned to the rhythm of work and the slogans of the Cultural Revolution. Split into three parts, the book follows the sisters’ lives as they struggle to change their destiny in a China that does not belong to them.

Famed for the characterisation of women in his novels, and his ability to get inside the Chinese female psyche, Bi takes the reader on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery for the sisters as they move to the emerging cities, tackling the themes of sex, power and loss of face.

The women’s lives depend heavily on the influence and decision making of the men in the book - their husbands, fathers, teachers, employers and lovers. Once the first sister Yumi realises that her future is beyond her control Bi writes, 'She began to see herself as a sheet of paper floating in the air, no matter where the winds took her, the result was always the same, she was either ripped to shreds or trampled to the ground.' The text is peppered with these proverbs or idioms common to traditional Chinese literature called chéngyŭ, giving the book a wonderfully strong identity that manages to remain intact even after translation in to English, due in a large part to the renowned translator Howard Goldblatt.

A thoroughly interesting novel that offers a deep insight in to the lives of women in China only 20 or 30 years ago, it is no surprise that Three Sisters won the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize, the most respected prize for Asian writers.

Bi Feiyu will appear with other writers shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, Tabish Kahair and Manu Joseph, in Voices of Asian Literature on Thursday 25 August at 7pm.Tickets cost £10 (£8 concessions).

What we’re reading… Pure by Andrew Miller

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s Pure by Andrew Miller...

1785. Jean-Baptiste Barratte is a young engineer sent by the king to demolish the church of les Innocents in Paris and remove “every last knucklebone” of the thousands buried there. A modern man, not given to superstition, Barratte is full of ideas but unsure of his position in the world. He recruits an old friend from the mines at Valenciennes, and a gang of enigmatic miners for whom digging up thousands of old bones is a better job than the one they’ve left. He buys a suit and falls in love. The stench and putrefying decay of the cemetery hangs over the district, as the spectre of the forthcoming revolution hangs over the novel.

Full of detailed observations and atmospheric description, Pure shows us Paris and its people through the eyes of Barratte, coming to the city from the provinces and finding his optimism and view of the world sorely tested. It’s a rattling good story guaranteed to have you gripped from the opening lines to the bittersweet end.

What we’re reading… Bed by David Whitehouse

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s Bed by David Whitehouse...

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you went to bed, never to get up again?

That’s what Mal did. And David Whitehouse’s extraordinary story tells the tale of what happened to him, and to his long-suffering parents, his loyal brother and his neglected girlfriend.

Mal was no ordinary child. He was a dreamer. A non-conformist with a penchant for taking his clothes off at inappropriate moments.

When the harsh realities of the grown-up world failed to meet his expectations of how life should be, Mal decided to do something drastic, something extraordinary. And so, on his twenty-fifth birthday, he went to bed, forever.

What ensues is a life story told in graphic yet surprisingly un-shocking detail about what happens when a man takes to his bed for decades with food as his only comfort. Whitehouse's style is refreshingly straightforward. His observations about the everyday things with which we are familiar makes us see them in a new light. Whilst his matter-of-fact descriptions make the extraordinary aspects of the story seem mundane: the realities of what happens to the human form when over-fed and starved of movement; the basic practicalities of housing an ever-expanding body; the complex relationships that enable and perpetuate the situation by killing with kindness. These are all territories that Whitehouse explores with his sparse, honest wit, providing a vivid account of what life is like when affected by extreme, ever-expanding, all-consuming obesity.

Tender, touching and funny, Bed is ultimately a story of love in its many forms: the accepting love between brothers; the understated love of a father for his children; the unconditional, yet stifling love of a mother for her favourite son; the twisted, adoring love of strangers for a local celebrity/freak-show; and the bitter-sweet, all-consuming, unrequited love and its slow transformation into something tangible.

David Whitehouse will beappearing at the Book Festival on Monday 15 August at 5pm. Tickets cost £7 (£5 concessions)