Close to Home ....Carys Bray

As a book reviewer I have made contact with authors from all across the globe and feel immensely privileged to be able to share some amazing work. However, there is always something rather special when a book comes to my attention which has been written by an author in my part of the North of England. So with this in mind I have great pleasure in featuring some of those authors who are literally close to my home. Over the next few Saturdays, and hopefully beyond, I will be sharing the work of a very talented bunch of Northern authors and discovering just what being a Northerner means to them both in terms of inspiration and also in their writing.

Today I welcome North West Writer

Carys Bray

Hi and welcome back to the blog, Carys. Please tell us a little about yourself and what got you started as an author?

I grew up in a very religious family and married young, as was expected. I had five children in the first seven years of my marriage. When I was thirty and my youngest child started nursery, I knew that I wanted to go to university (I had previously dropped out in order to get married) and I started doing a BA in Literature with the Open University. It was wonderful, like waking up after a long sleep. I went on to do an MA at Edge Hill University, during which I wrote my short story collection Sweet Home. Then I did a PhD while writing my first novel A Song for Issy Bradley. Those years of studying and writing were some of the happiest of my life.

Windmill Books
2015

Your books are written in North West England - how have the people and its landscape shaped your stories?

When I first started writing I had this strange idea that I couldn’t and/or perhaps shouldn’t write about a small, northern town. I’m not sure why I felt that way – it was pretty silly, but it was something that bothered me: was it okay to set my novels in Southport? Once I’d decided that yes, of course it was okay, I started to look at the town differently. I noticed the eeriness of the beach and the marshes, the lovely Victorian houses, the profusion of trees and so on. I started to think about how the landscape might feature in my stories. In my first novel, the beach is a really important place. Much of my second novel takes place in an allotment plot at the edge of Churchtown. I’m just working on a third novel that takes place on the moss, an area of farmland that used to be a lake and was drained over a period of three hundred years. It’s quite a strange, liminal landscape and I hope it will contribute to the uncanny atmosphere of book three (fingers crossed!).

If you were pitching the North West as an ideal place to live, work and write – how would you sell it and what makes it so special?

People are very friendly here, they chat on the bus and in the shops, neighbours talk to each other and my son’s friends pop in and out of our house whenever they feel like it – I like that, I like feeling part of a community. Houses are (relatively) cheap and there are museums, art galleries and theatres etc. not very far away in Liverpool and Manchester (I love Liverpool – the waterfront is beautiful and it’s a great place to go shopping). Plus, you’re only a 2 hour train ride from London if you need to pop to the capital for any reason.

As a writer based in the North West, does this present any problems in terms of marketing and promoting your books and if so, how do you overcome them?

I don’t think so. I certainly haven’t been aware of any problems. There have been a few funny moments: for example, I had to explain myself after mentioning one of the Liverpool underground stations in The Museum of You as the person who was reading my manuscript didn’t know that there were any underground stations up here and thought that I had made a mistake, but that’s a pretty tiny thing.

Windmill Books
Paperback edition
published April 2017

Writing is a solitary business - how do you interact with other authors?

Mostly online in Facebook groups and via messenger and email, but I have a few friends who I try to see at least a couple of times a year. Some of them are local writers (the lovely Rachael Lucas and I discovered that we live in the same town and our sons are in the same class at school!) and others live in various parts of the country meaning that we occasionally arrange to meet at places like Gladstones Library to catch up and discuss our latest projects.

How supportive are local communities to your writing, and are there ever any opportunities for book shops, local reading groups, or libraries to be involved in promoting your work?

We have an amazing independent bookshop in Southport called Broadhursts and we also have a Waterstones. I’ve launched each of my books in Broadhursts and Waterstones has been supportive by putting my books on a table beside a ‘local author’ sign. Sadly, my nearest library (Churchtown) closed – I still feel angry and impotent whenever I think about the way that Sefton Council behaved. But I have spoken at the main Southport Library and at several local writers’ groups, something I really enjoy doing. It’s great to meet new people and to chat about books (plus there’s usually cake, so what’s not to love?!).

Windmill Books
2016

You can find out more about Carys and her writing by visiting her website 

Follow on Twitter @CarysBray #MuseumofYou

My thanks to Carys for spending time with us today and for telling us about her love for the North West and for sharing her writing with us.

I hope that you have enjoyed this Close to Home Feature

Coming next week : Sue Featherstone




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Review ~ The Museum of You by Carys Bray

Hutchinson
June 16 2016

A bit of blurb..

Clover Quinn was a surprise. She used to imagine she was the good kind, but now she's not sure. She’d like to ask Dad about it, but growing up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story is difficult. She tries not to skate on the thin ice of his memories.

Darren has studied his daughter like a seismologist on the lookout for waves and surrounded her with everything she might want – everything he can think of, at least - to be happy.

What Clover wants is answers. This summer, she thinks she can find them in the second bedroom, which is still full of her mother’s belongings. Volume isn’t important, what she is looking for is essence; the undiluted bits: a collection of things that will tell her the full story of her mother, her father and who she is going to be.

My thoughts about The Museum of You...

Sometimes a sad story can make you laugh out loud and even though you are laughing, it really is breaking your heart into a million pieces. Such is the pull of The Museum of You that the further you get drawn into Clover’s story, the more you can’t help but admire this feisty twelve year old who is doing her utmost to bring back some sort of memory of her mother, who her father seems to have shut out of their lives. 

I adored Clover from the first page when she hefted her watering can and an old bucket and lifted her face to the sky and tasted summer, and I loved her even more when she was so enamoured of her school trip to Liverpool’s Maritime Museum that she decided to make a museum of memories dedicated  to the mother she never knew.  But the story doesn’t just belong to Clover, it belongs to her hapless father Darren, who does his best to be both mother and father to his spirited daughter, and with a little help from the deliciously quirky Mrs Mackerel, Clover is turning out to be a delightful contradiction of sound common sense and fanciful daydreams.

The story is set in Southport a place I know really well and an added delight was to travel the town as a passenger on Darren’s bus and to cycle with Clover on her bike to her granddad's flat and to their allotment, all combined to make the story come alive in my imagination. I wanted to stay with Clover and Mrs Mackerel for ever, in fact, what I really want is for Mrs Mackerel to come and be my next door neighbour, she reminds me so much of my nana’s friend, Mrs Spencer, who was equally as deaf as Mrs Mackerel, and who used to shout to me, MIND HOW YOU CROSS THE ROAD and DO YOU WANT AN UNCLE JOE’S. Those who live in my part of the North West will UNDERSTAND this reference.

It’s testament to the author’s exceptionally good style of writing that she can imbue so much that is left  unsaid into a narrative, which whilst making you smile at life’s little oddities, is also making you stop, listen and take a look at your own life and the way in which you are living it.

I’ve got to share this quote if I may… because I think it’s so beautifully expressed and it brought, one of many, tears to my eyes

“When you grow up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story, you’re forever skating on the thin ice of their memories …”

In many ways The Museum of You is a coming of age story. It’s all about those shades of growing up that twelve year olds feel when they’re just on the cusp of adolescence, and yes it’s also about loss, loneliness and grief, but there's also kindness, simple joy and the love of good friends and family.

Best Read with….A cup of tea and a cheeky packet of Jelly babies BUT DON’T EAT THEM ALL AT ONCE…

About the author

You can discover more about Carys and her writing on her website  or follow her on Twitter @CarysBray or visit her on Facebook 

Read an article about Mrs Mackerel here

Read an extract from The Museum of You here

Amazon UK

My thanks to the author for sharing her book with me and 

also to the publisher for my review copy.

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Blog Tour ~ The Museum of You by Carys Bray

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting a stop on the 

The Museum of You Blog Tour

Hi Carys, welcome to Jaffareadstoo. Thanks so much for inviting us to be part of your exciting blog tour and thank you for sharing this guest post about Mrs Mackerel with us today...

The Museum of You – Meet Mrs Mackerel

I’m lucky to have quite a few older women in my life. There’s nothing benign or retiring about any of them; they’re of Jenny Joseph’s generation, women who are (metaphorically, at least) wearing purple. They enjoy a few drinks and a good laugh; they’re sometimes cheeky, often awkward, and extremely independent.

My grandmother died in her sleep ten years ago, a half packed suitcase beside her bed – she was getting ready to go on another cruise. She was 90 years old, fierce and determined, with a keen sense of humour.

In 2013 my other grandmother had a brain haemorrhage. She was very lucky; she had emergency surgery at the Walton Centre and made an excellent recovery. During the weeks and months that followed I finished editing A Song for Issy Bradley, and I took my Gran to numerous follow-up appointments. One of those appointments was with a doctor who looked about 12 years old. His name was Doctor Mackerel. I don’t remember much about the appointment because I was thinking about his name. Afterwards, in the car on the way home, I told my Gran that there was going to be a Mrs Mackerel in my next book and I started to imagine her.

The Museum of You is, at times, a sad novel, but I wanted it to also be funny. I hope Mrs Mackerel provides some moments of amusement. She is a LITTLE BIT DEAF and, as a result, operates on two settings: loud – for normal words, and EXTRA LOUD – for the words she wants to be certain have been heard.

Mrs Mackerel calls the cinema THE PICTURES. She hasn’t been to THE PICTURES since the Odeon on Lord Street closed in 1979. Her favourite films are usually about the past because it is WHOLESOME and GOOD CLEAN FUN, even when terrible things happen. Films she has especially enjoyed include Les Miserables, which she pronounces like it’s named after an unhappy man called Les – SUCH LOVELY SINGING – and The Great Gatsby – SUCH LOVELY COSTUMES. The fact that neither film has a happy ending doesn’t bother her at all.

Mrs Mackerel is part protector and part provocateur; both an irritant and an inspiration. The novels I enjoy the most are those that offer light and shade; books that make me smile and leave me with a lump in my throat. I hope The Museum of You is that kind of book.

The Museum of You is available from your local bookshop and online.

A moving and surprisingly funny novel – The Independent

The Museum of You – Excerpt

When she got home from the museum Dad was kneeling in the hall. He’d unscrewed the radiator and his thumb was pressed over an unfastened pipe as water gushed around it. The books and clothes and newspapers that used to line the hall had been arranged in small piles on the stairs. Beside him, on the damp carpet, was a metal scraper he’d been using to scuff the paper off the wall.

‘Just in time!’ he said. ‘Fetch a bowl. A small one, so it’ll fit.’

She fetched two and spent the next fifteen minutes running back and forth to the kitchen emptying one bowl as the other filled, Dad calling, ‘Faster! Faster! Keep it up, Speedy Gonzalez!’ His trousers were soaked and his knuckles grazed, but he wasn’t bothered. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, as if it wasn’t his day off and plumbing and stripping walls was his actual job.

Once the pipe had emptied he stood up and hopped about for a bit while the feeling came back into his feet. ‘I helped Colin out with something this morning,’ he said. ‘The people whose house we were at had this dado rail thing – it sounds posh, but it’s just a bit of wood, really – right about here.’ He brushed his hand against the wall beside his hip. ‘Underneath it they had stripy wallpaper, but above it they had a different, plain kind. It was dead nice and I thought, we could do that.’

Dad found a scraper for her. The paint came off in flakes, followed by tufts of the thick, textured wallpaper. Underneath, was a layer of soft, brown, backing-paper which Dad sprayed with water from a squirty bottle. When the water had soaked in, they made long scrapes down the wall, top to bottom, leaving the backing paper flopped over the skirting boards like ribbons of skin. It felt like they were undressing the house.

The bare walls weren’t smooth. They were gritty, crumbly in places. As they worked, a dusty smell wafted out of them. It took more than an hour to get from the front door to the wall beside the bottom stair. That’s where Dad uncovered the heart. It was about as big as Clover’s hand, etched on the wall in black, permanent marker, in Dad’s handwriting: Darren + Becky 4ever.

‘I’d forgotten,’ he murmured. And then he pulled his everything face. The face he pulls when Uncle Jim is drunk. The face he pulls when they go shopping in March and the person at the till tries to be helpful by reminding them about Mother’s Day. The face which reminds her that a lot of the time his expression is like a plate of leftovers.

She didn’t say anything, and although she wanted to, she didn’t trace the heart with her fingertips. Instead, she went up to the bathroom and sat on the boxed, pre-lit Christmas tree dad bought in the January sales. When you grow up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story you’re forever skating on the thin ice of their memories. That’s not to say it’s always sad – there are happy things, too. When she was a baby Dad had a tattoo of her name drawn on his arm in curly, blue writing, and underneath he had a green, four-leaf clover. She has such a brilliant name, chosen by her mother because it has the word LOVE in the middle. That’s not the sort of thing you go around telling people, but it is something you can remember if you need a little boost; an instant access, happiness top-up card – it even works when Luke Barton calls her Margey-rine. Clover thought of her name and counted to 300.

When she went downstairs Dad had recovered his empty face and she couldn’t help asking a question, just a small one.

‘Is there any more writing under the paper?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘She didn’t do a heart as well?’

‘Help me with this, will you?’

They pulled the soggy ribbons of paper away from the skirting and put them in a bin bag. The house smelled different afterwards. As if some old sadness had leaked out of the walls.

About the Author

You can discover more about Carys and her writing on her website  or follow her on Twitter @CarysBray or visit her on Facebook 

Huge thanks to the author for her invitation to be part of this lovely blog tour.

Do visit the other stops on the tour for more exciting book content.

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Review ~ Sweet Home by Carys Bray

Windmill Books
2012

The seventeen stories which make up the short story collection found in Sweet Home explore the very ordinariness of everyday life and yet, the stories themselves are all far from ordinary. Delightfully quirky, often with a twist you don't see coming, the stories are a perfect example of the short story genre. All are crisp, beautifully observed vignettes which individually highlight the vagaries of modern family life and which tug away at your consciousness until the stories get right into your soul. Even now, days after finishing the stories, I want to climb back into the book to read them all again.

To say more would be to spoil the effort which this fine author has put into each individual story, but suffice to say, you could pick up this book at the start of any story and I guarantee that you will want to read on until the end, just to see what happens.

With a complete blend of light and dark, happy and sad, mischievous and the distinctly odd, there is no doubt that Sweet Home shows life in all its many guises.

Best Read with ….a nice cup of tea and a gingerbread biscuit…

About the Author

Visit the author's website

Find on Facebook

Follow on Twitter @CarysBray

My thanks to the author for sharing these stories with me.

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