the children’s book is a novel by
celebrated British author AS Byatt the
novel is a social and political portrait
of the era towards the end of the
nineteenth and turn of the 20th century
hi I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’re speaking
with buy it
about her book and her writing process
first off can you give us a brief
synopsis brief of the children’s book
it’s a difficult book to give a synopsis
of it has a very large number of
characters some of whom are children at
the beginning of the book in 1895 and
some and young adults at the end of the
book in 1919 it works on various levels
it it tells some of the fairy stories
there’s a level at which it is a fairy
story and there’s another level at which
it is so for history and there’s another
level at which it is sort of people’s
personal histories and how they nth wine
with each other tell us about writing
the children’s book and maybe how the
writing of it was different or the same
as your other novels it’s support which
required an enormous amount of research
and the research was intensely
pleasurable because it’s a period of
about which I knew nothing really I know
a lot about the high Victorians in the
1830s and 1840s but I always rather
disliked this generation of session
lists and bright young things
I thought they were all rather silly and
the writers were more silly than the
ones before them or the ones after them
then I had to do a lot of research on
Germany because a lot of the characters
go to Munich and then I had to do a lot
of ordinary political history research
because it ends up with the First World
War and you’ve done enough research when
you get around to finding books
mentioned in footnotes that you have
already read you seem very adamant that
you’ll never write a quote me book can
you explain to us why that is and what a
me book is exactly I do believe writing
or not to be self-expression I think if
all you want to do is express yourself
you should probably go and work in a
hospital or be a social worker which is
the kind of fate I was brought up to
believe was the best phage
was brought up by the Quakers who
believe very very strongly that you
shouldn’t be self-centered I also have
read enormous numbers of books by young
women who simply want to describe their
feelings and lives and I don’t know
quite why you would bother to write a
story about your own feelings except
that you might feel they weren’t real
and you would make them real that way
but I think a good novel all the novels
I had loved looks out it tries to
understand what the world is and put it
together in a new shape thank you very
much thank you
celebrated British author AS Byatt the
novel is a social and political portrait
of the era towards the end of the
nineteenth and turn of the 20th century
hi I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’re speaking
with buy it
about her book and her writing process
first off can you give us a brief
synopsis brief of the children’s book
it’s a difficult book to give a synopsis
of it has a very large number of
characters some of whom are children at
the beginning of the book in 1895 and
some and young adults at the end of the
book in 1919 it works on various levels
it it tells some of the fairy stories
there’s a level at which it is a fairy
story and there’s another level at which
it is so for history and there’s another
level at which it is sort of people’s
personal histories and how they nth wine
with each other tell us about writing
the children’s book and maybe how the
writing of it was different or the same
as your other novels it’s support which
required an enormous amount of research
and the research was intensely
pleasurable because it’s a period of
about which I knew nothing really I know
a lot about the high Victorians in the
1830s and 1840s but I always rather
disliked this generation of session
lists and bright young things
I thought they were all rather silly and
the writers were more silly than the
ones before them or the ones after them
then I had to do a lot of research on
Germany because a lot of the characters
go to Munich and then I had to do a lot
of ordinary political history research
because it ends up with the First World
War and you’ve done enough research when
you get around to finding books
mentioned in footnotes that you have
already read you seem very adamant that
you’ll never write a quote me book can
you explain to us why that is and what a
me book is exactly I do believe writing
or not to be self-expression I think if
all you want to do is express yourself
you should probably go and work in a
hospital or be a social worker which is
the kind of fate I was brought up to
believe was the best phage
was brought up by the Quakers who
believe very very strongly that you
shouldn’t be self-centered I also have
read enormous numbers of books by young
women who simply want to describe their
feelings and lives and I don’t know
quite why you would bother to write a
story about your own feelings except
that you might feel they weren’t real
and you would make them real that way
but I think a good novel all the novels
I had loved looks out it tries to
understand what the world is and put it
together in a new shape thank you very
much thank you
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