Mary Stewart Speaks Volumes - Madam, Will You Talk?

The title of Mary Stewart's Madam, Will You Talk? comes from a folk song:

So, let me invite you to walk the Mary Stewart talk with me. 

Her first novel was born, it is said, from the pain of being unable to have a child:

"I wanted four children. I even had the names chosen. However, there it is. I don't suppose I would have written books if I'd had them," she once said, a memorable admission from an intensely private woman.

 Out of her personal heartbreak came our pleasure. Madam,Will You Talk?, telling the adventures of Charity Selbourne, was published in 1954.

heraldscotland.com 

And adventure is, basically what a Mary Stewart is all about. Action and suspense are guaranteed in any Mary Stewart and Madam, Will You Talk? is no exception:

... the intensity of the suspense, ... a young war widow who, while on vacation in Provence, stumbles upon a kidnapping and a murder plot. Madam also features two incredible car chases through the French countryside – the heroine learned to drive race cars from her husband – that were incredibly exciting and suspenseful. 

 vanessakellyauthor.com

Likened to a Hitchcock thriller, the novel is set in the south of France, Provence - Avignon, Nîmes, Marseille, the Château d’If:

The Château d'If, small gothic revival house ordered by Alexandre Dumas in the gardens of "Monte Cristo" castle. He wrote here. Le Port-Marly, Yvelines, France.
Jebulon, Wikimedia Commons

Mary Stewart’s story starts out in Avignon and even includes its famous bridge as a setting of one scene. The heroine arrives in the medieval city at the best hotel

Places Savvy

A must-have if you're France bound. Pages such as Mary Stewart’s Marseille and Photo gallery: Madam, Will You Talk? will be handy should you decide to undertake a Madam, Will You Talk? yatra. 

Relatively unknown today, Mary Stewart still finds avid fans. An added bonus in the novel are some tasty descriptions of French cuisine, based upon which a blogger has created a recipe: 

The dinner I had dreamed up proved to be every bit as good as the dream. We began with iced melon, which was followed by the famous brandade truffee, a delicious concoction of fish cooked with truffles. We could quite contentedly have stopped there, but the next course - small bird like a quail, simmered in wine and served on a bed of green grapes - would have tempted an anchorite to break his penance. Then crêpes Suzette, and, finally, coffee and Armagnac.

Crêpes Suzette. Madam, Will You Talk?

Mark Mitchell - Flickr: Lemon Blueberry Crepes, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32144988

Appetite for adventure is not all a Stewart feeds. Her novels not only engage but enrich. Boasting chapters that open with quotes from the likes of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Madam, Will You Talk? has a hero spouting T S Eliot!

It’s not just history that tantalizes the reader: in the first four pages, there are references to Alice in Wonderland, Shakespeare, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, Kipling, Norse epics, and the famous Chinese painter Ma Yuan. None of this is thrust in as awkward wodges.

Romantic Suspense

Mary Stewart was a favourite when I was young. Her "anti-namby-pamby" reaction rang the bell for much needed change from the mush that was then the staple diet for women.

A Mary Stewart is generally set in an exotic location. The Alps figure high. As do Damascus, the Greek islands, Spain, France and Austria. Stewart’s ladies travel far from home, get embroiled in dangerous missions and are rewarded with such dour hunks as would set any maiden’s heart afire.

What would it be like to read a Mary Stewart today? By all accounts, women still enjoy her novels. At my local library, copies of her book are in circulation.

There are many reasons to enjoy a Mary Stewart and you can even find out which one you'd most enjoy.

I'll safely bet that a set or even just any one of her books will make a fine gift for any lady around the world. Indeed, I'll bet a non-lady would lap it up too. And it would be wonderful for a traveler, a convalescent trapped in bed and so on! Something to curl up cosily and relish.

Arthur Hailey and the Disaster Genre - The Airport Story

Disaster books hit the shelves just a little before the movies. However, the cinema versions seem to have fared better and soon the literary genre appears to have sunk like the Titanic.

In reality, we do continue to produce and relish disaster fiction. The difference, I think, is that contemporary tastes run to alien settings. In other words, while books continue to be published that revel in disaster scenarios, these are not the ones we routinely read about in the daily papers.

Whatever the reason for this shift, Arthur Hailey books are now ex-best sellers at best. Arthur Hailey's Airport was a bestseller in the seventies when I was very young and ripe for such things.   

Airport is basically about a bomb on a plane. And, around the ensuing ruckus, we get sucked into the lives of airport staff and others involved. It is quite engaging. 

Around the time I read it, the film was also released.

I suppose, the book and film, more than anything else led to a lifelong panic that I experience on planes.

The book will charm the modern reader as many things have now changed drastically since that time.

It was fascinating to read about “stowaways” because in the current situation Ada Quonsett would not get past the entry gate without a ticket. At the time when this novel was written, people could actually board a plane to say good bye or handover something forgotten and then get off – contrast that with today where your friend or family member just drops you off at the entry to the airport because its just useless to try and even enter the terminal.

BINDU KRISHNAN

Apparently, Hailey wrote poetry and short stories when a child but was a dropout as teenager, as his family could not afford college. After a period as pilot in World War II, he moved to Canada, hoping to write for a living. To support himself, he worked at various jobs: real estate agent, advertising executive, editor and sales promotion manager. On the side, he dished out pacy stories and TV scripts about detectives and doctors.

“Flight Into Danger” was his first produced screenplay. It did well and so Hailey could devote himself to writing - starting at 6 a.m., to type 600 finished words a day.

And, thus, he produced a series of typical novels: The Final Diagnosis, Hotel, Wheels, The Moneychangers and Strong Medicine. Some went on to become films and TV shows, though he remains famous for Airport, his fourth novel. It was with that book that the disaster genre was officially launched.

He was extremely well paid for his books and their film-rights. And ended his days in the Bahamas - this fairytale ending is the dream of many a writer.

If you wish to analyse the 'formula', perhaps this page will help - certainly, a regular regimen of writing does result in a volume of output and, in some cases, there is a progressive improvement. However, given the sinking popularity of Hailey's 'Comet', we can see that mere daily writing does not ensure a dedicated readership.

Airport bred a series of films, each, reportedly, worse than the other and a delightful outcome was:

Whatever present oblivion has clouded Arthur Hailey's books, they remain eminently readable and, mostly, accessible. I can bet that if you embark on one, you're bound to want to read your way through his output.

Bad Luck and Trouble

From a helicopter high above the empty California desert, a man is sent free-falling into the night…. In Chicago, a woman learns that an elite team of ex–army investigators is being hunted down one by one.... And on the streets of Portland, Jack Reacher — soldier, cop, hero — is pulled out of his wandering life by a code that few other people could understand. From the first shocking scenes in Lee Child’s explosive new novel, Jack Reacher is plunged like a knife into the heart of a conspiracy ...

bookbrowse.com

And so are we. Plunged into the action from the spectacular first chapter of Bad Luck and Trouble. From then on, there's no looking back. The book boasts excellent action scenes and Child's detailed writing does not detract from the enjoyment.

This is my third Lee Childs. And the Reacher I'd read before this one had already won my approval. 

The Wikipedia entry, for Bad Luck and Trouble, has some engaging trivia on the book - a must for Reacher aficionados. Jack Reacher is Child's protagonist for a series featuring this singular man's various adventures. Jack's family, if any, is, effectively, the army. 

Recently, I read another Jack Reacher, The Enemy, which was not as enthralling as this one, where I learned about and met his mother and brother. However, in Bad Luck and Trouble, it's to the aid of his ex-comrades from the army that he rushes. All it took was a mere sequence of numbers.   

This Reacher is not one of his usual lone wolf stories. While it's true that a Reacher story usually has him teaming up with someone, often a lady, in this novel, it's almost like one of those J. T. Edsons where different members of the cowboy hero's extended family come together, from diverse parts of the country, to bring the villain/villains to justice.

Of course, there's the lady with whom Reacher will sleep in the course of the book - but that's part of the Reacher format, in any case. Here, however, we have two women in the team but no orgies! One of the reasons I do like my Lee Childs is that the author does the fairly decent thing in how he portrays the female actors in the dramas.

A part of the Reacher charm is the reflection of some of the author's life philosophies - some that he appears to try to live and others that he perhaps upholds. Thus, Reacher is not bound by the fetters with which most of us in today's world are chained: roots, credit cards and other such. It is said that Lee Child also follows some of that banking advice. However, while Child has used his earnings from the books to live well and has property, Reacher is like an Indian sadhu - free of all attachments.

"Lee Child, Bouchercon 2010" by Mark Coggins. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons - https://wiki2.org/en/File:Lee_Child,_Bouchercon_2010.jpg#/media/File:Lee_Child,_Bouchercon_2010.jpg

Apparently, the title is taken from a song:

Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan - Born Under a Bad Sign

The very title holds promise - what can be worse than bad luck? Bad luck and trouble!  

 A must-have Jack Reacher!