It’s been a while since we discussed the wartime thriller. So let’s bring you all up to speed…!

Too often on this blog do I seem to be saying, “It’s been a while!” Apologies — been gone a few months. Needed a bit of a break from the fiction side of things while things picked up on the journalism side. Sales of Sin & Secrecy have been disappointing, to put not too fine a point on it — I’m putting that down to people being careful with money due to the pandemic. And also, I started a Masters in Creative Writing & Publishing at Bournemouth University, which has been taking up my time too. More on that if you’d care to hear it, but in a future post. This update is to be dedicated to my latest major project, You Can Hear Chopin from the Attic.

The last in-depth update I issued about this project was back in January 2019. And the main reason that nothing noteworthy happened to it in all that time is that I ended up revising and publishing Sin & Secrecy instead. It was always my plan to come back to it, and now, after a hiatus of nearly six months, I finally got back into it last weekend.

WHAT IS YOU CAN HEAR CHOPIN FROM THE ATTIC ABOUT?

In a departure from the settings explored in The Berylford Scandals, i.e. Regency period England, this new novel, You Can Hear Chopin from the Attic transports us to Berlin in 1943. Most of the action is set at the Heinrichsturme Hotel, one of the last luxury establishments in the city neither doubling as a hospital or a barracks, nor blown apart by bombs. The story follows Heinrich Oeunhausen, the precocious young manager of the hotel, whose duties are divided between keeping his guests satisfied, his business operational, and his staff safe. All of these are impeded by the presence of a gaggle of SS officers and other Nazi Party members, led by the formidable Standartenführer Leopold Upfauer.

Heinrich is pressured to join the Party himself, but is reluctant to do so for a number of reasons, not least because his young wife Sofie is mentally ill and a target of the Nazis. For her protection, he has her shut away within the hotel, her condition placated only by music provided by Itzhak Zylberman, an elderly Jewish musician who must play endlessly for the sake of his life. As if all these secrets weren’t enough, Heinrich’s latest trouble comes in the form of glamorous and impetuous journalist Cordelia Knesebeck, whose snooping quickly risks exposing everything he has set out to hide. But she has an agenda of her own, and soon enough, one is forced to help the other, with no shortage of casualties along the way.

 INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS

Originally the idea came in a dream – literally the image of a pair of people climbing up to an attic, where they find an old man playing Chopin on the piano – specifically the Nocturne in G Major (one of my favourites). That slowly developed the more I thought about it into a story of false imprisonment – I don’t know when that all warped into the wartime thriller it has become now. Some of you may think there’s a parallel there with Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, the story of classical musician Władysław Szpilman. The story is a light inspiration, admittedly, but my Itzhak Zylberman will be an entirely different kind of character in the grand scheme of things.

The hotel setting is partly down to familiarity, as I have spent a lot of my working life in such establishments, so there are plenty of experiences to draw from. Both dramatic and comedic (there will be some light moments in this novel or it’s going to be awfully heavy). The decision was also made from an intellectual perspective — how hotels in Germany ran during the war is a largely unexplored topic (in fiction, anyway). As such, it will be fun to research.

Meanwhile, the characters’ appearances, personalities, and interrelationships are partly inspired by the people I was closest to at the time — my friends and colleagues from my days working at Nationwide Building Society.

Want to know more? Let me know if you want a Chapter Preview or a Character Profile for the next post about You Can Hear Chopin from the Attic. Why not let me know in the comments? For more author news and views, my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages are here.

“One for the scholars”, a phrase that will appear in Sin & Secrecy, is in fact a passing tribute to a group of old friends of mine, many of whom are pictured here.

As I do my last wave of final checks on the new book, I’ve been taking the time to chuck in a few hidden extras. A little bit of fun for those who know what to look for…

People like stories with messages behind them. I personally enjoy ones that aren’t necessarily there to teach a lesson or to represent the author’s inner feelings (we had a few examples of those in a post earlier in the month), but instead offer subtle allusions and homages to other work, or have inside jokes for the analytical readers to smoke out.

The upcoming second instalment to The Berylford Scandals series – Sin & Secrecy – has a couple of such Easter Eggs in it, including use of the phrase, “One for the scholars” – a little tribute to some very good old friends of mine, to whom the book is dedicated. In addition, I have drawn intentional parallels between the family of Abel Stirkwhistle and my own – in that Abel has one sister and nine first cousins, same as me (though I like to think we’re a lot nicer bunch of people!) I’ve also thrown in a couple of subtle references to Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, Shakespeare’s Richard III and Poe’s The Raven – if you plan on buying the book, I’d love to see if you can find them!

There are very few deliberate allusions to speak of in Lust & Liberty beyond the full name of the main setting – Berylford St. Barbara, and its pub, The St. Barbara’s Arms. These, of course, are passing tribute to my grandmother. A little homage to one of my favourite short stories, The Snow Child by Angela Carter makes its way in there, and scenes towards the end and the fate of the one of the characters is partly inspired by Puccini’s opera Tosca.

But surely I’m not the only one who does this. Of course not! Here are a few allusions, inside jokes and Easter Eggs that made their way into some famous works of literature.

1. Lewis Carroll’s Last Tribute to Alice

At the end of Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll included an acrostic poem entitled A boat beneath a starry sky. The acrostic spells out Alice Pleasance Liddell, the girl after whom Carroll’s Alice was named. Carroll’s relationship with Liddell, whom he knew when she was a child, is the subject of some mystery and controversy – a lot of which considers the idea that Carroll had a paedophilic infatuation to Alice and her sisters. The Liddell family’s friendship with Carroll did come to an end in 1863 and the reasons for the rift have been left unexplained. One for the scholars, I think…

2. Tolkien’s Special Title Page

J.R.R. Tolkien was a great lover of words and language as is fairly common knowledge. Hence the numerous ones he constructed himself for his Middle Earth legendarium. But the languages and the writing systems he designed offer more than the authentic feel of being transported to another world. They also made their way into a little Easter Egg on the original title page of The Fellowship of the Ring. Some hardcore fans made it their business to know what the pretty writing actually says, and translated it as follows: “The Lord of the Rings translated from the Red Book of Westmarch by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Herein is set forth the history of the War of the Ring and the Return of the King as seen by the Hobbits.”

3. It Leads to Misery

Any Stephen King fans out there? Eagle-eyed ones among you might have sniffed out the link between two of his most famous stories — It, published in 1986, and Misery, which came out the following year. One of the children tormented by Pennywise in It just happens to be the next-door neighbour to the family of Paul Sheldon, the unfortunate protagonist of Misery. 

4. The Recurring Cruttwell

Evelyn Waugh’s work often featured characters named Cruttwell – never the exact same one, though they are always absurd or dishonest. And this is a scathing back-handed tribute to his old tutor at Hertford College, Oxford — C.R.M.F. Cruttwell. The characters continued to appear in Waugh’s work until the real-life Cruttwell’s late-life mental illness and subsequent death.

Kingsley Amis did a similar thing with his work, in which featured characters called Caton. They were named after Amis’ publisher R.A. Caton, and again this was done as more of a mild revenge than as a compliment. Amis believed that his first book of poetry, which Caton published, was not promoted properly. The character Caton in Amis’ 1966 novel The Anti-Death League dies in the novel, and the name does not appear thereafter.

Got any other examples of allusions, Easter Eggs and inside jokes you’ve found in your favourite books? Why not let me know in the comments? For more author news and views, my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages are here.