On the same page

I saw Dr Nigel Speight, retired consultant paediatrician, speak yesterday afternoon, it was a joy to listen to a doctor express such openmindedness and curiosity and compassion about ME. He was on the panel of the International Consensus Criteria 2011, so it is not surprising he is such a great advocate. It was frightening to hear what some children with severe ME are being exposed to in terms of psychiatric assessments. Shame on all of those assessors. This from an ME conference in Northern Ireland in August gives a flavour of what he was saying yesterday.

(Interesting too that when he first got involved in ME in the mid-1980s in Durham he was seeing a lot of Coxsackie, which of course is the virus that triggered my own ME.)

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So Eleanor Catton has won the Man Booker for her second novel The Luminaries, hugely impressive at 28-years-old, her acceptance speech was gorgeous, though I have to say the book itself does not appeal to me.  I don't think it appealed to Robert McCrum either, who wrote this, a bit uncharitable I think,  before the prize was announced. Still, passions run high when it comes to the Booker.  I did agree with him about the Ozeki and my mother liked it even less, she left me a message on Tuesday night saying, Thank God that awful book didn't win (I'd persevered because it was Booker-shortlisted and I believed it had to redeem itself at some point, she persevered because my stepdad had given it to her for her birthday, which means I had given it to her as I choose all my stepdad's gifts for her now, his dementia is, of course, worsening).

 In this Guardian interview, I like Catton's comments:

It is the peculiar constellation of her age, gender and the particular nature of The Luminaries that has, she believes, provoked "a sense of irritation from some critics – that I have been so audacious to have taken up people's time by writing a long book. There's a sense in there of: 'Who do you think you are? You can't do that.' Something else related to that is to do with the omniscient third person narration of the book. There's a feeling of: 'All right, we can tolerate [this] from a man over 50, but we are not going to be spoken to like that by you.'"

In my current writing project, am wrestling with 3rd person omniscient myself, though I will soon be as old as those male critics. But it is a challenge and I will hopefully get there  (I like that much is made of the ten year gap between both Ruth Ozeki and Donna Tartt's last books - for those of us who have horribly limited energy, ten years are nothing.)

 I also enjoyed dipping into this timeline of the Booker, the backstage gossip.

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Very long novels can be off-putting, and Cornflowerbooks has written a post asking if we are discouraged from reading books  because of their length (I'd say yes).  Still, I am keen on reading The Goldfinch, though have not been able to get into Donna Tartt before. I loved her on The BBC Review Show last week,  her clarity and confidence. When Kirsty Wark suggested that secrets were at the heart of all of her books, she replied that secrets are at the heart of all novels. This I loved. And while Kamila Shamsie (above) raved about The Goldfinch, Julie Myerson was not impressed at all.


And if there were a Booker 2013  for ME doctors, I'd give it to Dr Speight. He has helped children with  ME enormously (I think he said he had seen almost 600 cases nationwide over the years). With fiction you can argue whether a book is good or bad, it is subjective. Medicine, of course, is not always black and white either: experts can disagree, have conflicting views on the best treatments. That is different though than manipulating a neuroimmune illness, turning it into a psychiatric illness, moulding it like Plasticine, as the Wessely school have done since the late 80s. Dr Speight began his talk by apologising for the medical profession's treatment of people with ME. You know you are on exactly the same page when a doctor does this. We need many more like him, those who are passionate about the pursuit of truth.

More on Dr Speight's career here,  scroll down to see.

A Tale For The Time Being, some thoughts

I have only read one of the Man Booker-shortlisted novels and am afraid I was rather underwhelmed. Here is my recent Goodreads review of  A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. Even some of those readers who loved the book and gave it 5 stars seemed to find the sections narrated by 'Ruth' to be a little dull. I really was disappointed in this novel but have tried to highlight the positives as well as the negatives - it is always easier to write the negative stuff when talking about a book - or film you - didn't love.

America and the Man Booker

I haven't really given it much thought - whether America should be in the Man Booker - though am probably more against than for - but I like meandmybigmouths's thought no.10.

Have just started one of this year's shortlisted, Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being. I can't say I love it yet, but books don't always reveal their strengths immediately. I certainly want to keep reading it.

And delighted to see this great new review of The State of Me up on the Booksquawk review site.

A wee thrill

Congratulations to the winners of Bridport Prize(s) 2012, the results were officially announced this weekend! I was delighted to be on the Flash Fiction shortlist and just saw my name is first on the list - which denotes nothing, purely random! -  but it gives a wee childlike thrill. The Bridport website was revamped earlier in the year and it looks fantastic.

Always too many on the shelves

There are always books you can give to charity, always too many on your shelves, even when you have given away as many as you can bear. I almost donated George Simenon's La Verité sur Bébé Donge a few weeks ago but when I opened it I realised it was my French prize in fifth year at high school so, of course,  I can't release it. Why we keep these things I do not know. I doubt I'll read it again and it will  continue to gather dust.  I can't release The Lord of the Rings either, that was my Maths Prize.  I've never read it, and I probably won't - though we had to do The Hobbit in English, that's probably why I chose it in the first place. (I  haven't seen any of the hobbit films, but I do remember Bilbo Baggins' name, it's intriguing what stays in your head from books you read years ago.) I'm also quite tempted to give away Doris Lessing's Briefing for a Descent into Hell, I don't think I ever got through it, but it's signed so I can't. I must've seen her at Edinburgh Book Festival but  don't remember when.

Always the bridesmaid...

Found out last night I'd been shortlisted for the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2012 (officially announced next month). Of course would love to have been in the winners' category, but this is the first flash fiction I've ever submitted to an award, so I'm happy (I still feel *very* inexperienced in writing flash). Last year, I was shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize, so it maybe now feels a wee bit 'always the bridesmaid' (in distant past been shortlisted for both Asham and RLS Award), though I'm just pleased I can still write meaningfully as my output has been very thin and sporadic - necessarily so, and the uveitis saga didn't help - since The State of Me. I have an idea for a longer piece, a slim book, but I'm saying nothing until it is written (or has assumed a decent shape), I learned that the last time. Otherwise, for the next three, four, five years, everyone will be forever asking, How's the writing? And it is too much pressure, I can't write to deadlines, I can't write to order - I know from experience it makes me (more) ill -   and I certainly can't write every day, or even every week (at least, not anything remotely substantial): I write when I can and that is that. I must stick to my own pace.

I am a perfectionist and have huge self-discipline, from my pre-ME days, and no one puts more pressure on me than myself.

And, of course,  I read too;  so much of writing is reading. You have to engage with the world.

I have another fucking chest infection, only got rid of the last one six weeks ago - after two lots of antibiotics - and am now on a third lot. Coughing constantly is exhausting, you feel almost as if you're putting it on, is so dramatic sounding.

Books & snails & MRC behaving badly

Great to see that The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey has won the Stanford 2012 William Saroyan Prize for writing. (I have hazy/fond memories of Stanford, my brother studied there many years ago). If you google Amazon and 'myalgic encephalomyelitis', there's an Aladdin's cave of books, the quality varies greatly, but this is easily one of the best. It's a gem and made me think differently about snails, this one was on the shed for a few days last month.

Nice to have some good news round this illness after the latest nonsense from the MRC, which should really get a gold medal for misrepresenting neuroimmune illness. Seems to have changed its tune - or gone back to the same old same old - since its last outing. It really is a kind of medical mafia. (I love Dr Derek Enlander's comment: The thrust of financial gain perhaps to the insurance companies and the government were priorities rather than improvement of the patient condition. Little was mentioned about the relapse that we frequently see in ME/CFS patients after exercise. This was also illustrated by Dr Shepherd’s figures. Presently we are studying pre and post exercise immunology, pathophysiology and genetics in a study at Mount Sinai Medical School, New York in a privately funded million dollar grant.)

And more here on narratives of illness, a post from 2011.

Two lovely things

Congratulations to Kitty Aldridge and the other winners of the Bridport Prize 2011, announced yesterday! I was v. chuffed to make the shortlist of 100 (out of 6000 entries) in the short story category, a long time since I had written anything new. Also, delighted that The State of Me has been in top 100 paid Kindle literary fiction for last month (with occasional dips out). I'm sure the bargain 99p has something to do with it.  A nice short Kindle review here.

Blowing your own trumpet

My back is fucked again, really it is getting ridiculous, I shouldn't be at my laptop but there are things to say.

Today is RLS day, wonderful Robert Louis Stevenson. This is the first official celebration.

I was,  many years  ago, shortlisted for the RLS Memorial Award on the strength of a short story. I didn't win, which in a way was good as I would not have been robust enough to go - everyone cycled through the forest to get their groceries - and that would have been  shattering, two stays in France being hijacked, my year abroad in 1982/83 when I first got ill, and this prize, two months in a remote, idyllic retreat.

But at least I was considered, my voice was heard, and that is what is maybe more important.

It strikes me again that here is so much pretense with this illness, you pretend you are more well than you are - for many reasons.

But in the end, you can't pretend, you can't keep up the mask. You can't sustain things.

And when you are in a severe phase, of course there is no pretending. Some people never get out of the severe phase: the wonderful Countess of Mar  in the House of Lords yesterday.

A pack of ME Research UK Christmas cards just arrived,  there are so many charities needing support, I always spread my choices over four or five. It can feel a bit like blowing your own trumpet when you send ME cards. My friends and family support me all year round and here I am reminding them that I am ill, but the money has gone to research so that is fine and dandy. But there are Amnesty International, Down's Syndrome Association,  Alzheimer Scotland, children with terrible diseases, starving children, children with no clean water, you would go mad if you thought about everyone who needed help.

And the abandoned cats in Greece (just saw an ad for them in The Big Issue).

Now I am off to do some cobras and corpse  positions (yoga).